Béguinage

“ A bridge over the water which runs from the Lac d'Amour leads through a gateway into the Béguinage, where a circle of small houses—whitewashed, with stepped gables, and green woodwork on the windows—surrounds a lawn planted with tall trees. There is a view of the spire of Notre Dame beyond the roofs, a favourite subject for the painters who come here in numbers on summer afternoons. ”

“ But no little window opened in the heavens. The great distant tower of the Halles, the enormous campanile of Notre Dame, a squat tower near the pond, the pointed roofs of the Béguinage stood outlined against the milky clouds, like a venerable assembly of old men. Carlino, not knowing what better to do, began discoursing in a loud voice on the most appropriate position for his window.
“What day is this?” Jeanne asked her friend under her breath. ”

“ These settlements, semi-monastic in character, were provided to afford some protection, by living in community, for women who, whilst devoting themselves to a religious life, did not wish to separate themselves wholly from the world. It was at the time of the Crusades, when the land teemed with desolate women, that their numbers increased so greatly, and the first beguinage was founded about the beginning of the thirteenth century. The beguine took no vows, could return to the world and marry if she so desired, and did not renounce her property. ”

“ And it is only because those few who remain preserve the best traditions of the lace that they count in the lace-world of to-day; the quantity produced is negligible. Nevertheless, I was delighted that my first knowledge of Bruges lace should come through the few wide Valenciennes flounces of exquisite flower and vine pattern and firm and even workmanship that I found still pinned to the cushions of the Béguinage. ”

“ And of Gerard Groot himself, the original founder of the fraternity which has made the name of the busy Overyssel town illustrious, the memory might have seemed altogether to have fled its streets and places, but for a whole suburb of benevolent foundations, spreading themselves out with more than ordinary Dutch amplitude, and garnished everywhere with those bright bits of flower-garden which in the Netherlands no Béguinage is too ancient, and no pensioner is too poor, to maintain. ”

“ Jeanne was seated by the window with the book which she had been reading open upon her lap. She gazed pensively into the oval sheet of leaden water slumbering at her feet, at the passing clouds, casting their ever-changing shadows on the little villa, on the deserted garden, the trees of the opposite bank, the distant fields, on the bridge to the left, and on the quiet roads, which lost themselves behind the Béguinage, and on the slanting roofs of Bruges, grand, mysterious, dead. ”

“ Curiously enough, in this retreat, pervaded by the sadness that inevitably reigns where the old order changes, I found the young and enthusiastic Vicaire, Professor Maertens, assistant director of the new Lace Normal School of Bruges. He [157] lives with his aunt, who is the mother director of the Béguinage and called “Madame, la Grande Dame,” tho she is still Mademoiselle. The Béguinage may in one sense represent the despair of the lace, since what is happening there is happening throughout Belgium. ”

“ The war upon the Beghards in many cases led to many respectable women being led into a life of misery and want and sometimes prostitution, until [Pg 51] Benedict XIV intervened on their behalf.63 At the Council of Constance certain rules were drawn up for the regulation of beguinages, but beguines did not thereby escape persecution. ”

“ They may not go on journeys, and no man outside, except the clergy, may enter the sacred precincts of the court, the gates of which are closed at 8 o’clock. Can one imagine an atmosphere more encouraging to hours spent patiently in lace-making? It is recorded that in the Béguinage of Ghent, in 1756, there were as many as 5,000 [156] women engaged in making the Valenciennes for which that city was famous. But the day of this particular kind of retreat has passed, and even at Bruges many of the houses are vacant; when the old die, there are few who wish to take their places. ”

“ And the real decline of Beguinism begins, not in 1250, when first the secular fraternities became conspicuous for heresy, but on that day of the year 1216 when the learned Dominic and the visionary Francis met and embraced each other in the streets of Rome.
V. At first the external position of the Beguines and the Beghards appeared in no danger and no disadvantage. Their fraternity had always been a secular fraternity; their condition of pious laymen was one which offered sanctity with independence. The beguinages still thrived and multiplied. ”

“ My mother, therefore, was quite enchanted when my admiration of the Béguinages which I had seen in Belgium led me, in the autumn of 1852, to devote every spare moment to a sort of missionary work in the low wretched districts of Southgate. I had read in St. Vincent de Paul: “L’action bonne et parfaite est le véritable caractère de l’amour de Dieu . ”

“ Every woman who shall solicit of any person any medicine, drug or substance, or thing whatever and shall take the same, or shall submit to any operation or other means whatever with intent thereby to procure a miscarriage, except when done by a physician for the purpose of saving the life of the mother or child, shall, on conviction, be fined not less than ten dollars, and be imprisoned in the county jail not less than thirty days nor more than one year. ”

“ But, if she was of full age at that time, although she continue some time in her Lord’s Custody before she is married, her Husband shall pay a Relief. When, however, the Relief has been once paid by the Husband of a Woman, it shall exempt both the Husband and the Wife during their several lives from payment of another Relief, on account of such Inheritance; because, neither the Woman herself, nor her second Husband, if she should espouse a second upon the death of the former, nor her first Husband, should he survive her, shall again pay a Relief for the same Land. ”

“ A child nursed beyond twelve months is very apt, if he should live, to be knock-kneed, and bow-legged, and weak-ankled, to be narrow-chested, and chicken-breasted." If pregnancy occur, and the mother be nursing, the consequences affect alike the mother, the babe, and the unborn child. ”

“ Let us, for the sake of illustration, suppose the following case:—A woman loses her husband suddenly, tenant in tail male, a month after marriage, and at a little more than eight months after his decease she is delivered of a perfect female child, and at nine months, she declares that she is delivered of another infant, which is a male. The heir at law, who has entered, contests the fact of this latter birth; the question therefore to be determined is, whether such an event is compatible with the known laws of utero-gestation. ”

“ There have been several recent cases in the same Union in which women have come into the lying-in wards for their confinement, where, of course, they received every medical care and attention, and where they are encouraged to stay till they are entirely convalescent, and have then gone out and claimed maternity benefit either themselves or through their husbands before they were really fit to go. It should be noted that, where the husband is an insured person, he usually regards the maternity benefit as his by right. ”

“ The King abode three months, troubled in mind and saying in himself, “I wonder whether this thing will prove true or untrue”; till one day, as the lady his Queen was sitting, the child stirred in her womb and she felt a pain and her colour changed. So she knew that she was with child and calling the chief of her eunuchs, gave him this command, “Go to the King, wherever he may be and congratulate him saying, ‘O King of the Age, I bring thee the glad tidings that our lady’s pregnancy is become manifest, for the child stirreth in her womb’.” ”

“ As is the case with mother so with the father, the initial sacrifice in the division of a portion of his body is too small to be considered, but in his case as in the case of the mother, the sacrifice for the coming progeny is only initiated with the act of procreation and continues through a period of fifteen, twenty or even thirty years—sometimes progressively increasing to the last. ”

“ Had you taken this journey for the purpose of making me your wife, were you to propose to do so this day, and bring a clergyman into the room to perform the ceremony, it would be futile. The injury to the child can never be repaired; and, for myself, I cannot imagine any fate in life worse than being compelled to pass it with you. ”

“ The study of physiology has made one decided step in advance towards acknowledging the reality of union of bloods in marriage. It says now that, only when offspring commences, consanguinity, which is a union of two bloods, occurs.
Man and wife are only one flesh, then, by offspring, we may say. ”

“ Penalty of substituting one infant for another § 194. If a man has given his son to a wet-nurse to suckle, and that son has died in the hands of the nurse, and the nurse, without consent of the child's father or mother, has nursed another child, they shall prosecute her; because she has nursed another child, without consent of the father or mother, her breasts shall be cut off. ”

“ The determining cause of labor is seated in the womb itself. The contractions of this organ occasion the 'pains' and expel the child, assisted by the muscles of the abdomen and the diaphragm. That the assistance of the latter forces is not necessary, is conclusively proved by the occurrence of childbirth after the decease of the mother. For instance, a case is on record in which labor commenced and twins were born after the mother had been dead for three days. ”

“ Impotence and sterility may arise from organic or from functional causes, and may be curable or incurable. Impotence (q.v.) is taken cognisance of by the law courts as a ground of divorce, and might, of course, be urged as a defence in a case of rape. Sterility is not a ground of divorce, but might be a question of importance in cases of legitimacy.
6. Pregnancy.—This subject presents one of the widest fields for medico-legal evidence. The limits of age between which it is possible, the limits of utero-gestation, and the signs of pregnancy may all in turn be the subjects of investigation. ”

“ Other parts which are commonly believed to remain in a sympathetic union with the body, after the physical connexion has been severed, are the navel-string and the afterbirth, including the placenta. So intimate, indeed, is the union conceived to be, that the fortunes of the individual for good or evil throughout life are often supposed to be bound up with one or other of these portions of his person, so that if his navel-string or afterbirth is preserved and properly treated, he will be prosperous ”

“ A nonpregnant woman shall mourn for her husband four months and ten days in full. A nonpregnant slave woman shall mourn for her husband two months and five days.
76. God said: “Your widows shall not be allowed to marry again before the lapse of four months and ten days. Pregnant widows shall not marry again before childbirth.”
77. A divorced wife who is still in the period of suspension can inherit unless she has been divorced three times.
78. If a person throws sweepings or melon rinds on the road, he shall be responsible for the consequences. ”

“ Premature labor designates the time of expulsion as between the twenty-eighth week to within a few weeks before the normal termination of pregnancy. Miscarriage is the term popularly used for the accidental loss of the products of conception. Abortion, in the popular mind, expresses the intentional loss of the products of conception. Abortion in the medical sense, takes place about once in every four or five pregnancies. ”

“ Usually it is arranged that the first two or three children shall belong to the first husband, and that at a succeeding pregnancy (third or fourth) , another husband shall give the bow and arrow, and, in consequence, become the father not only of that child, but of all succeeding children till some one else gives the bow and arrow. ”

“ Those of the mouth of the womb always take place, in every confinement, to some degree. They are never given any attention at the time of the confinement, unless under extraordinary circumstances, such as a more or less complete rupture of the womb, and this is such a [117] rare accident that most physicians practice a lifetime and never see or hear of one single case. Those on the outside are always attended to immediately after labor, or should be, unless they are very extensive and the patient is not in condition to permit of any immediate operative work. ”

“ By-and-by the child himself is brought down by his nurse, and the company begin to rail upon him, upbraiding him for his impertinence, and asking him what amends he proposes to make for the wrong that he has committed, and how he can look for care and nourishment from those who have perhaps already been injured by the unborn on some ten or twelve occasions; for they say of people with large families, that they have suffered terrible injuries from the unborn ”

“ The degrees of collateral consanguinity were differently reckoned in the civil and in the canon law. “The civil law reckons the number of descents between the persons on both sides from the common ancestor. The canon law counts the number of descents between the common ancestor and the two persons on one side only,” and always on the side of the person who is more distant from the common ancestor. English law follows the canon law in beginning at the common ancestor and reckoning downwards. ”