medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Today (17. December) is the feast day of:
Begga (d. 694 or 695). B. (Begge, Beggue) is variously referred to as B. of Andenne, B. of Landen, and B. of Austrasia. The daughter of Pippin of Landen, she married a son of St. Arnulf of Metz (18. July). Their son was Pippin of Heristal. And we all know what that led to (in one account I looked at, B. is referred to grandly as 'the progenetrix of the Carolingians'). If she were a book hand, one might call her Pre-Caroline Majuscule.
In the 690s, after her husband's death, B. founded a religious community for women at today's Andenne (prov. de Namur), Belgium. Nothing is left of its initial seven chapels. The collégiale dedicated to her there is an eighteenth-century structure above an eleventh-century crypt; I could not readily find a view of the latter. But the originally eleventh-century collégiale at Nivelles (prov. de Brabant Wallon) dedicated to her sister, St. Gertude of Nivelles (17. March), now rebuilt after extensive bombing damage sustained early in World War II, is certainly wirth a look:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v251/Joshke/Niv1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v251/Joshke/Niv2.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v251/Joshke/Niv3.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v251/Joshke/Niv6.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v251/Joshke/Niv5.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v251/Joshke/Niv4.jpg
As is the église Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption at Mont-devant-Sassey (Meuse) in Lorraine, founded by the canonesses of Andenne in the eleventh century and rebuilt by them in the two centuries following. A distance view:
http://tinyurl.com/yyhjxu
Several views:
http://perso.orange.fr/dun-sur-meuse/mont_egli.htm
http://perso.orange.fr/stenay/francais/environs/mont.htm
This church's page at Art-Roman.net:
http://tinyurl.com/ulue5
The originals of the church's polychromed wooden statues are now in the Musée de la Princerie at Verdun. They include this seated Virgin from the twelfth-century:
http://tinyurl.com/yja75q
For B.'s role in the formation of her dynasty, see Ian Wood, "Genealogy Defined by Women: The Case of the Pippinids", in Leslie Brubaker and Julia M. H. Smith, eds., _Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West, 300-900_ (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 234-56. For a brief overview of B.'s later medieval cult in today's Belgium and The Netherlands, especially among women, see Judith Oliver, "'Gothic' Women and Merovingian Desert Mothers", _Gesta_ 32 (1993), 124-34, esp. pp. 126-27. Though B. has certainly been venerated in some of these communities, it would be wrong to say that she began the Beguines. The very thought beggas the imagination.
Best,
John Dillon
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