[Begijnhof, Amsterdam, photographed 2011, Source: Wikimedia Commons]
[Crop from a 1649 map of Liège by Johan Blaeu, Source: Wikimedia Commons]
[Beguinage, Kortrijk, photographed 2009, source: Wikimedia Commons]
*Few if any beguinages from outside the Low Countries survive.
**Several, however, were larger. The largest, the Groot Begijnhof in Mechelen, housed between 1500 and 1900 beguines in the 15th century, while the beguinage of St. Christophe in Liège had about 1000 beguines in the middle of the 13th century.
***Walter Simons mentions two unrelated beguines who lived out their lives together and then requested to be buried together as well.
****This was actually why some of the beguines in France survived the years after the French Revolution: they managed to get themselves classified as charities rather than religious institutions.
Simons, Walter. Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200-1565. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.
Simons, Walter. “Architecture of Semi-Religiosity: the Beguinages of the Southern Low Countries, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries.” In Shaping Community: The Art and Archaeology of Monasticism, edited by Sheila McNally, 117-128. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2001.
Woodward, Richard. "A Lost World of Women." 13 July 2008 - New York Times
Begijnhof & Kapel Amsterdam
Flemish Beguinages - UNESCO
Beguines and Beghards - Wikipedia
Beguinage - Wikipedia (English)
Begijnhof - Wikipedia (Dutch)
Begijnhoven in Vlaanderen - Wikipedia (Dutch)
Béguinage - Wikipedia (French)
Béguinages de Liège - Wikipedia (French)