France in the wake of the rise of wealthy cities. Not just women in the reform orders of
the Cistercians, Dominicans, or Franciscans but also those women who joined
Waldensians or Cathars gained prominence as leaders. Béguines like Marguerite Porete
straddled the difficult demarcation between heretical and orthodox groupings, since they
had to endure a tumultuous fluctuation in ecclesiastical and civic support.
Inquisitional records provide ample evidence of women’s activities among the Cathars
and the Waldensians. A survey of such documents from the region of Quercy in the 13th
century estimates that 30 percent of active Cathars and 52 percent of active Waldensians
were women; in the diocese of Toulouse, which hosted very few Waldensians, 40 percent
of the Cathar leaders seem to have been female. In their early phase, Waldensians
permitted women to preach, baptize, forgive sins, and celebrate the eucharist. The
Cathars, or, as they called themselves, the “good Christians,” had a dual message for
women. On one hand, they rejected the female body as the representation of the evil
material world; nonetheless, women as well as men could reach the status of the
“perfect,” the highest rank among the Cathars. The “good Christians” also offered
monastic institutions for women, the so-called hospicie.
In terms of social respectability and visibility, medieval women’s mysticism had
reached its peak by the end of the 13th century—within rather than outside the church.
The following women reached fame for their religious contributions: as representatives of
eucharistic piety, Marie d’Oignies (1177–1213) from Nijvel, who is also regarded as one
of the founding mothers of the béguines; Juliana of Mont-Cornillon (1193–1258), who
initiated the feast of Corpus Christi, first celebrated at Liège in 1247; Ida of Louvain (d.
1260), who received special papal permission to receive the eucharist on a daily basis;
and Marguerite d’Ypres (d. 1237), who already showed intense devotion to the eucharist
by the age of five. As mystical writers in their own right, the Carthusian prioress
Marguerite d’Oingt (ca. 1240–1310) and the Cistercian prioress Beatrijs of Nazareth
(1200–1268) deserve mention. St. Douceline de Digne (ca. 1214–1274), who founded
two or three béguinages in southern France and whose life was recorded in Occitan by
her pupil Philippine de Porcellet, became the subject of a popular local cult. Despite
significant differences, all of the religious women of this period share the following
features.
Mystical phenomena. These include both charismatic gifts, such as levitation, inedia,
visions, locutions, revelations, the reading of hearts, ecstasies, and intellectual
transformations like increasing intuitive knowledge of divine reality, interior absorption
in God, and contemplative and meditative skills. All of these phenomena are more deeply
developed than in the early-medieval period.
Greater dependency upon male sponsors, teachers, and ecclesiastical authorities for
spiritual guidance and interpretation of experience. Due to the fluid boundaries between
heretical and orthodox reform movements, the unpredictable formation of a new
relationship between clergy and laity caused by the shift from agrarian to urban social
structures and the concomitant rise of the burgher class, and the growing importance of
vernacular languages, women’s religious roles needed to be redefined. It has been pointed
out that male biographers of religious women’s lives, such as Thomas de Cantimpré
(1201–1263/72), stressed female innocence and lack of theological training as signs of
holiness, thus creating a myth of female spiritual superiority that successfully barred
women from demanding equal access to positions of power. Since women of the early
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