Tanya Stabler Miller

This book looks at the eponymous communities of religious women in Paris from Louis IX's foundation of the royal beguinage in the 1260s, through to their decline in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Miller argues that beguines played an important role in the social and economic life of the city, particularly the Parisian silk industry, and that the royal beguinage was a way for the Capetians to assert their dynastic sanctity. Of particular note is the emphasis Miller places on the collaborative links between the beguines and the secular clerics of the Sorbonne; for these university scholars, interactions with the beguines were considered essential for their training. Many of Miller's conclusions are similar to those drawn by scholars who've worked on the more studied beguines of the Low Countries (Walter Simons' Cities of Ladies comes most immediately to mind), but this careful study of these women's communities shows how their evolution could be affected by local political and economic contexts. While the beguines of the Low Countries survived into the present day, those of Paris had died out by the late fifteenth century.… (mehr)