• * This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation (...)
• 1 The quotations that follow are directly extracted from the culpa of Na Prous Boneta, recorded in (...)

1In August 1325, a woman known among her neighbours of Montpellier as Na Prous Boneta testified before the Dominican inquisitor Henri de Chamayou*. According to her culpa – an abridged version of her deposition interspersed with a few follow-up questions from the tribunal – she did so gratis et sponte, that is, freely and willingly1. This phrase, which is usually best taken with a grain of salt when dealing with confessions before an inquisitorial court, carries some weight in this case, since it was followed by a rather more anomalous et sine interrogatione – and without interrogation. It would seem then that most of the statements the famous Na Prous made in her lengthy deposition were not prompted by the kind of formulaic question list that was the inquisitorial weapon of choice to confirm suspicions of heresy, and, just as importantly, to classify trespassers into properly defined heretical identities. Her own words were damning enough.

• 2 Doat 27, fol. 55v: “Ego et tu facti sumus unum”.
• 3 Doat 27, fol. 78r: “Item dixit quod omni die et nocte et omni hora videt Deum in spiritu et nunq (...)
• 4 Doat 27, fol. 57r: “Item quod illa divinitas quam Deus dedit sibi loquenti formavit sibi unum co (...)
• 5 Doat 27, fol. 77r-v: “[…] dicens quod tali non est necessaria aliqua impositio pœnitentiæ in hoc (...)

2Among other things, Na Prous claimed that, in one of her visions, God had told her “You and I have been made one”2. This was not a unique occurrence either, for she added that “every day and night and every hour she sees God in the spirit, and he never leaves her”3. Within her, this divinity, which was directly bestowed on her by God, “formed for itself a body of the Spirit of more precious and more pure understanding than the one she had”4. Moreover, this was connected to her belief that the Age of the Spirit, which was just starting, rendered the sacraments null and void, and that the only path to salvation was believing in the works of the Holy Spirit. As part of her general dismissal of the sacraments, she claimed that doing penance or fasting were unnecessary because contrition alone was enough, and she added that regardless of how often priests attempted to perform the Eucharistic consecration, “it will contribute nothing to anyone’s salvation, nor will they confer Christ’s body because, as she has claimed and still claims, the sacraments have lost their power”5.

• 6 Doat 27, fol. 55v: “et tunc completum est illud verbum quod supra tibi dixeram quando dedi tibi (...)
• 7 Doat 27, fol. 74r–v: “Item dixit quod si Papa qui nunc est scilicet dominus Ioannes vigesimus se (...)

3Even more incriminating from the inquisitors’ perspective was the fact that Na Prous's communion with God went beyond her visionary episodes, her identification with the divinity bleeding into her daily life. She believed herself to be the embodiment of the Holy Spirit, and in some instances, a vessel for the whole Trinity6. In spite of her repeated protestations of humility – a common enough trope in the visionary genre – it was this belief that imbued her with a sense of entitlement, allowing her to disparage fasting and bodily penance along with any kind of ecclesiastical mediation. No arguments based on reason or scriptural authority could sway her, for she placed the source of her knowledge in a higher power7.

• 8 Robert E. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages, Berkeley, University o (...)

4Focusing on the trial of the beguine visionary Na Prous Boneta, her sentence, and its context, this article builds on Robert E. Lerner’s pathbreaking work of 1972 by emphasizing the role of ecclesiastical authorities in drawing distinct boundaries between heretical transgressions8. These boundaries, which were designed to facilitate the uprooting of religious deviance, will be shown to be the byproduct of a system of persecution that revolved around the inquisitorial process. As such they relied on a relational framework; or, in its absence, they imposed a relational ‘heretical’ model, the sect, on pre-existing social networks and threatening religious beliefs.

• 9 The text of Sancta romana is edited in Konrad Eubel, ed., Bullarium Franciscanum, Romae, typis V (...)
• 10 Ibid., 135: “Et ut ipsorum error ‘veritas’ et impietas ‘religio’ reputetur, plurimi eorum regula (...)

5Described as a suspect of the hæresi Begguinorum combustorum – the heresy of the burned beguins – Na Prous Boneta was among the targets of Sancta romana, a bull issued in December 1317 by John XXII against non-authorized religious groups in Italy and Languedoc9. Known as fraticelli, fratres de paupere vita, bizzochi and beghini, these groups were accused of adopting their own habit, gathering in conventicles, electing their own superiors, begging publicly, and – as the bull significantly puts it – pretending to be professed members of the Third Order of St. Francis10. The first ‘burned beguins’ died outside the city walls of Narbonne on 14 October 1319, shackled to a stake erected in the graveyard of Saint-Felix. Over the following two decades, episcopal courts and inquisitors alike followed the directives of Sancta romana prosecuting hundreds of suspects all over Languedoc and beyond; Na Prous Boneta was one of them.

• 11 See, among others, Jacqueline Tarrant, “The Clementine Decrees on the Beguines: Conciliar and Pa (...)
• 12 Emil Friedberg, ed., Corpus Iuris Canonici, Leipzig, 1879-1881, vol. 2, col. 1169: “Quum de quib (...)
• 13 Ibid: “(…) quod earum aliquae, quasi perductae in mentis insaniam, de summa Trinitate ac divina (...)
• 14 Ibid: “Sane per praedicta prohibere nequaquam intendimus quin, si fuerint fideles aliquae mulier (...)

6Scarcely two months before the enactment of Sancta romana, John XXII promulgated what have come to be known as the Clementine Constitutions, a delayed result of the Council of Vienne presided over by his predecessor, Clement V. One particular decree in this collection, Cum de quibusdam mulieribus, is famously acknowledged as the document that marked the official turning point in the papal policy on beguines. Much has been written about the Clementines and the discrepancies between the versions promulgated by John XXII in November 1317, the decretal collection approved by Clement V in Monteux in March 1314 – a month before his passing – and the actual decisions made at the council in 1312. In the case of Cum de quibusdam mulieribus, a report of one of the council’s sessions, extant in manuscript Clm 2699 at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, includes the succinct original form of the decree, which simply stated that beguines should not have convents. The final version of the resolution passed during the Council went well beyond that issue, but still remained mostly disciplinary in nature11. Despite wearing a habit, beguines, who made no vows of obedience or poverty and followed no sanctioned rule, were not to be considered religious12. In fact, the decree took matters one step further, as it singled out certain beguines who, “led by a particular insanity”, discussed the Holy Trinity and the divine essence and spoke against the sacraments13. Saddling them with the burden of suspicion, Cum de quibusdam mulieribus effectively abolished their way of life while leaving the door open for other, more sedate, and less doctrinally involved “faithful women” to continue leading a life of penance and humility14.

• 15 For Na Prous being referred to as a beguina, see, for instance, in November 1325, the deposition (...)

7Na Prous Boneta, repeatedly described as a beguina by members of her community who knew her well, ticked all the proverbial boxes for being excommunicated in accordance with the stipulations of Cum de quibusdam mulieribus15. The only vow she ever took was a private vow of virginity when she was nine years old; she owed obedience to no one, had professed no rule, discussed the Trinity, criticized the sacraments, and talked about the divine with anyone who would listen. Moreover, her conviction that she was the incarnation of the Holy Spirit arguably presented her as quasi perductae in mentis insaniam. However, there are no echoes whatsoever of the phrasing of Cum de quibusdam mulieribus in her lengthy culpa or in the sentence that saw her handed over to the secular arm on 11 November 1328.

• 16 Doat 27, fol. 96v: “[…] te Na Prous in et cum his scriptis pronunciamus, iudicamus et declaramus (...)
• 17 Sean L. Field, “On Being a Beguine in France, c. 1300,” in Labels and Libels. Naming Beguines in (...)

8Furthermore, despite the fact that the word ‘heresiarch’, master of heretics (which inquisitors did not associate with any of the other ninety-four deponents interrogated in connection with the ‘heresy of the burned beguins’) appears twice in the sentence against Na Prous, the word beguina is conspicuously absent from that same sentence16. This omission seems very much in tune with Sean Field’s convincing claim that the word beguina was intentionally left out of the public sentence pronounced against the now renowned mystic Marguerite Porete. The positive connotations of the term, liberally used in the documents related to Marguerite’s trial, could have proven problematic at the site of her execution17. It is true that Marguerite’s death in June 1310 predates Na Prous’s by eighteen years, and that their respective executions bookend a period that witnessed the promulgation of the Clementines and the dawn of a new, harsher era for the beguine way of life. Still, it is tempting to wonder whether the same pattern of purposeful avoidance can be applied to the sentence against Na Prous Boneta. Was the wish to avoid social unrest behind this decision?

• 18 For the distress associated with this period of uncertainty, see Walter Simons, “In Praise of Fa (...)
• 19 On the aftermath of the promulgation of the Clemetines and the attempts at finding alternatives (...)
• 20 J. Kolpacoff Deane, “‘Beguines’ Reconsidered: Historiographical Problems and New Directions,” Mo (...)

9In the years between the end of the Council of Vienne and the promulgation of the Clementine decrees by John XXII, rumors spread far and wide that the tide was about to turn against beguines18. The nuanced distinction between good and bad beguines that seemed to be the intention of Clement V was all but lost in its translation to episcopal action, and suddenly beguina became a tainted word, a fitting label for a tainted status that turned many women who embraced it into the subjects of harassment and persecution19. At least, that was the case in northern Europe, for, while women in the north were adopting different names and avoiding what quickly grew to be a dangerous designation, the same is not documented in the south. The apparent lesser impact of the new climate of suspicion on southern beguines has traditionally been attributed to a clear distinction between the expressions of beguine life in the north and those in the south. But several examples question the wisdom of drawing such a sharp divide. Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane has argued against the excessive regionalization of scholarship on female lay religiosity. However, when it comes to the south of the Pyrenees, her overview is limited to early-modern ‘Spain’, mostly focusing on beatas in Castile and Latin America and noticing the similarities between them and medieval beguines, but overlooking the variety of beguine ways of life that were present in the territories of the crown of Aragon in the late Middle Ages20.

• 21 For a qualitative and quantitative description of the differences between these two types of for (...)
• 22 For some of the most recent contributions on Douceline de Digne and her houses of beguines, see, (...)
• 23 The manuscript is digitized at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9061385d/f1.item. For an e (...)
• 24 According to both Jennifer Deane and Kathryn Reyerson, Kelly Morris’s (University of Minnesota) (...)
• 25 This dating of the extant version of the Vida is taken from Claude Carozzi, “L’estamen de sainte (...)

10On the one hand, although the great court beguinages of the Low Countries had no equivalent in the south, the same cannot be said about convent beguinages21. The most relevant examples in this regard are doubtless the communities of beguines founded by Douceline de Digne in Hyères and Marseille in the mid-thirteenth century22. Known collectively as Roubaud (after a nearby stream in Hyères), this foundation has an exceptional source in the Vida de la benaurada Sancta Doucelina mayre de las donnas de Robaut – or Life of Saint Douceline – extant in manuscript fr. 13503 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris23. Most probably the work of Felipa Porcelleta, Douceline’s successor at the head of these houses, the Vida also chronicles the foundation and struggles of the community24. The extant version, completed between 1312 and 1320, reflects the uncertain times surrounding the promulgation of the Clementines, while defending the scrupulous orthodoxy of foundress and community by reclaiming the word beguina and vindicating the saintliness of the status25.

• 26 Diocesan Archive of Barcelona, Communium 2, fol. 66v: “Bertrande Eymerice de Tertio Ordine sanct (...)
• 27 Archive of the Kingdom of Mallorca, Reial Patrimoni 3396, Llibre de dades 1320, fol. 90r: “a II (...)
• 28 For an overview of the variety of terms applied to beguines and to their formal and informal gat (...)

11Likewise, in the period that followed Vienne, the word beguina was consistently used to the south of the Pyrenees as an unapologetic identifier to refer to pious women who were considered worthy of praise, valued and respected by the population, but also by ecclesiastical and secular powers alike. In 1315, Dalmau Marimon, a canon at the Cathedral of Barcelona, committed to settling a debt he owed to a woman described as Bertranda Eymerich, “belonging to the Third Order of St. Francis, and commonly called beguine”26. In that same vein, in 1320, Sanç I, king of Mallorca, gave five sous to two unnamed women described as “poor beguines” who lived in Ciutat de Mallorca27. The combination of beguina with other terms such as resclusa (recluse) or terçerola (tertiary) – applied sometimes simultaneously to the same women – showcases a terminological mosaic that served to describe religious expressions very similar to those of the northern beguines who fell prey to the strictures of Cum de quibusdam mulieribus28.

• 29 The twentieth-century rediscovery of the fate of these communities must be attributed to the wor (...)
• 30 See, for instance, Elizabeth Makowski, “When is a Beguine not a Beguine? Names, Norms, and Nuanc (...)
• 31 For the presence of ‘Olivian beguins’ in the western Mediterranean, see Josep Perarnau i Espelt, (...)

12On the other hand, the adherents to the southern expression of beguine life par excellence – to which Na Prous Boneta was linked in the record of her culpa – have come to be known as the Beguins of Languedoc29. Their strong connection to Spiritual Franciscans, radical poverty, and apocalyptic expectations understood through the lens of the writings of the Franciscan theologian Peter of John Olivi have traditionally been used to set them apart from other forms of lay religiosity. This has prompted the development of alternative names, such as béguins – borrowing from the French none of them spoke – Spiritual beguins, or Olivian beguins – none of which they used to identify themselves. All of these alternatives aim at making it clear that these aren’t the beguines you’re looking for30. The most widespread label, Beguins of Languedoc, has placed the emphasis on the masculine form of the term – beguins – while confining them to the south and, more specifically, to the historical region of Languedoc. But the truth is that these Olivian beguins are documented across the western Mediterranean and, more importantly for the questioning of the north/south divide, as far north as Metz31. It turns out then that evidence leans toward the blurring of strict regional boundaries, as the northern type of beguine was not so rare in the south and southern beguins sometimes ended up in the north. Still, the disbanding of communities and confiscation of properties that followed the promulgation of Cum de quibusdam mulieribus in northern Europe did not have a counterpart in the south.

• 32 For the text of Ratio recta, see Friedberg, ed., Corpus Iuris Canonici, vol. 2, col. 1279: “Veru (...)
• 33 See, among others, Geneviève Brunel-Lobrichon, “Existe-t-il un christianisme méridional? L’exemp (...)
• 34 For the influence of Joachim of Fiore on Olivian apocalyptic views see, among others, Raoul Mans (...)
• 35 For the text of the bulls, see Joseph Hyacinthe Albanès, ed., La vie de Sainte Douceline, fondat (...)

13In August 1318, when John XXII was forced to promulgate Ratio recta in an effort to curb indiscriminate persecution of beguines – with rather mixed success – he provided a legal basis for the acceptance, if not the approval, of those beguines who kept to themselves and did not entertain “erroneous opinions”32. The beguines of Roubaud and Marseille repeatedly passed this orthodoxy test. Their origins were deeply rooted in the Joachite undercurrent that had caused so much strife within the Franciscan order in the second half of the thirteenth century, as Douceline de Digne, their foundress, was sister to Hugues de Digne, one of the most outspoken Franciscan Joachites and supporter of his sister’s choice of a life as a beguine33. In the early fourteenth century, the undeniable Joachite flair of Spiritual Franciscanism and, therefore, the Joachite links of the ‘burned beguins’ could have proven problematic for the beguines of Roubaud. Yet despite being subjected to at least one inquisition conducted by the bishop of Marseille, they were not officially suspected of harboring Olivian sympathies34. In fact, when doubts were cast upon them, inquisitions followed the guidelines of Cum de quibusdam mulieribus to the letter, as evinced by the three separate bulls that John XXII addressed to the bishop of Toulon, the bishop of Marseille, and the provost of Aix-en-Provence defending the status of the community and explicitly referring to the Clementine decree. The communities of Hyères and Marseille were under the protection of Sança of Mallorca, queen of Naples and countess of Provence by virtue of her marriage to Robert of Naples. Sança – an influential figure with strong connections to the Franciscan order – petitioned John XXII to protect the status of these beguines, and the pope granted her request by issuing a first bull on 22 November 1320 (bishop of Toulon), which was soon followed by two others dated 18 December 1323 (bishop of Marseille) and 16 February 1325 (provost of Aix-en-Provence)35.

• 36 In all likelihood, the response to the unnamed bishop, recorded in Doat 37, fols. 74v-81v, came (...)

14The last one, dated 16 February 1325, is particularly relevant to the topic discussed here, as the immediate superior of the provost, the archbishop of Aix-en-Provence, was none other than Jacques de Concots. A Dominican friar who doubled as papal penitentiary and confessor to John XXII, Concots’s meteoric rise to the metropolitan see in 1322 was paved precisely by his decisive intervention in the definition of the ‘heresy of the burned Beguins’ following the directives of Sancta Romana. As early as 1320, while the clarification of the boundaries of this new heretical threat was still in progress, Concots, then bishop of Lodève – and already rounding up suspects in his diocese - answered (on behalf of the pontiff) the request of an unnamed bishop who sought guidance on how to identify and prosecute these beguins by referring him to the expertise of the inquisitors of Carcassonne and Toulouse36. Five years later, at the height of the persecution against the ‘burned beguins’ all over southern France and northern Iberia, John XXII’s bull to the provost shows that the beguines of Roubaud living next door were still seen and judged as ‘proper beguines’, and their orthodoxy – or lack thereof – was only to be gauged against the backdrop of the Clementines and Ratio recta. In contrast, Na Prous Boneta was not condemned according to the terms of either Cum de quibusdam mulieribus or Ratio recta – and neither were, for that matter, any of the beguines of her acquaintance. The question remains: why not?

• 37 This letter, extant in the Vatican Apostolic Archive (Reg. Vat., vol. CXIV, n. 1795) is damaged (...)
• 38 Montpellier, which by the early fourteenth century was a first-order economic and social hub, wa (...)

15At least in the south, the term beguina was still very much synonymous with praiseworthy lay piety in the late 1320s, but its absence from the sentence against Na Prous was not due to some measure of reluctance to detract from the legitimacy of the inquisitorial ruling. In fact, the word beguina was not mentioned at all in the letter that the same John XXII sent to the inquisitor of Carcassonne, the Dominican Jean du Prat, at some point between August and November 1328 instructing him to refrain from pronouncing a sentence in the case of a “certain woman” named Boneta in the city of Montpellier. Instead, she was to be taken to Carcassonne to be sentenced as a heretic and executed37. There is little doubt that the woman in question was Na Prous Boneta, and although the document gives no inkling as to the nature of the “reasonable causes” that justified the transfer of the prisoner, moving her to a different diocese altogether was likely to diminish the social impact of her execution, since she was a charismatic figure in the religious scene of Montpellier. Admittedly, jurisdictional matters were especially delicate in the city, but whatever the motivation behind it, the letter was not a document for public consumption, and thus the Pope had no reason to avoid the word beguina38. That is, of course, unless Na Prous Boneta was not condemned – or even seen – as such.

• 39 In 1299, in Béziers, during a provincial council convened by the archbishop of Narbonne, Gilles (...)

16Paradoxically, Na Prous Boneta’s connection to the ‘burned beguins’, seems to have made her less of a beguina in the eyes of Church officials. Her defense of Peter of John Olivi and his apocalyptic narrative linked her to something greater than herself. Interestingly enough, the concern aroused by the apocalyptic expectations of Olivian lay supporters, so apparent in the earliest censure they received back in 1299, diluted over time. And although ecclesiastical authorities rushed to put the blame for their heretical deviance on the influence of Olivi’s writings, the main point of subsequent condemnations was, very much in tune with the times, his followers’ alleged attempt to overrule papal authority and establish themselves as a makeshift unsanctioned order39. And therein lies the crux of the problem. While in terms of canon law being a beguina was a matter of status, entering the relational space that grew around the core ideas of Spiritual Franciscanism turned some beguinae into something much more dangerous and far-reaching from the perspective of the curia: they were not seen as ‘standard’ beguines any more – and as such subjected to the directions of Cum de quibusdam mulieribus – but as part of a sect, as actors in a heretical network.

• 40 Lerner, Heresy of the Free Spirit, p. 83. For his overview of the actual evidence of “extreme my (...)
• 41 Tarrant, “The Clementine Decrees”, p. 302-303.
• 42 Friedberg, ed., Corpus Iuris Canonici, vol. 2, col. 1180: “[…] non sine displicentia grandi perv (...)
• 43 For the connections between the Mirror of Simple Souls and Ad nostrum, see Lerner, Heresy of the (...)
• 44 Tarrant argues that the Clementines’ theoretical distinctions between groups sharing the same na (...)

17Cum de quibusdam mulieribus was not the only decree in the Clementine Constitutions that legislated on the matter of beguines; the other, just as (in)famous, was Ad nostrum, which in many respects can also be considered as the de facto foundational document for the heresy of the Free Spirit, or as Robert Lerner puts it, its “birth certificate”40. Although the inclusion of beguines in the case against beghards, the true target of the decree, was a later addendum – as Jacqueline Tarrant demonstrated in her much cited 1974 article41 – the final version, promulgated at the same time as Cum de quibusdam mulieribus, did include “faithless women, commonly called beguines” as part of the “abominable sect of wicked men, commonly called beghards” that had allegedly appeared in Germany and was to be eradicated42. As is well known, Ad nostrum specifically condemned eight articles that bear a striking resemblance to statements found in the work of a certain beguine, the mystic Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, featuring antinomianism and autotheism as the pillars on which the heretical deviance of Free Spirit beguines and beghards was built43. Thus, while Cum de quibusdam mulieribus framed theological musings in terms of suspicion – suspectas habentes – and errors – errores diversos – Ad nostrum explicitly associated beguines with heresy by invoking the intervention of bishops and inquisitors – inquisitores haereticae pravitatis. Despite the regional dimension of Ad nostrum, its intensely doctrinal content combined with the disciplinary nature of Cum de quibusdam mulieribus to bring about long-lasting effects on the beguine way of life as a whole; effects upon which Ratio recta – much less widespread than its predecessors – had little bearing44.

• 45 Lerner, Heresy of the Free Spirit, p. 125-163.
• 46 In his deposition of 12 March 1322, the Franciscan tertiary Guilhem Ros, from Cintegabelle, list (...)
• 47 Doat 27, fol. 74v: “Item dixit quod si Papa excommunicaret eam propter illam inobedientiam ipsa (...)
• 48 See the culpa of a beguine called Alaraxis Bedoc, one of Na Prous’s closest companions, in Doat (...)

18As Lerner has shown, in German lands, beguines and beghards were arrested and interrogated following the blueprint of Ad nostrum regardless of their actual allegiance to antinomian or autotheist beliefs45. Meanwhile, in the South, the argument that the pope and other members of the high clergy had lost the authority and ability to perform their sacramental duties ran rampant among the ‘burned beguins’, who openly questioned the validity of the sacraments themselves, rejected the need to fast or pray, and found freedom in the Holy Spirit46. However, none of them were ever asked about the articles in Ad nostrum. The boundaries of a heresy had been established, and no trespasses were allowed. It is true that Na Prous Boneta’s words hardly made her a true antinomian, as hers was not a rejection of moral law per se; but, at the same time, her challenge to the mediating role of the Church is indisputable, since she denied the validity of the sacraments and explicitly gainsaid the authority of inquisitors, prelates, and even the pope to stand as judges of her divine revelations47. Moreover, there is an undeniable streak of autotheism that runs through her whole culpa. Na Prous presented herself as the vessel of the Trinity, the incarnation of the Holy Spirit, simultaneously donatrix and Spirit herself, affirming that for salvation it was only necessary to believe in the words of the Spirit, that is, in her words. She refused to confess her sins to a priest and to receive communion, claiming that, in the Age of the Spirit, none of that would be necessary – not even attending Mass or being baptized – for every person would have God in themselves48. And yet, she was never questioned – or sentenced – according to the articles of Ad nostrum.

• 49 Walter Simons notes how, in Flanders, the beguines of Aalst and Dendermonde were dispossessed of (...)
• 50 This conflation is apparent in John XXII’s first and second bulls, addressed, respectively, to t (...)
• 51 See, among others, the question list that was to be used in inquisitorial interrogations include (...)
• 52 Doat 27, fol. 77r: “Item dixit interrogata quod sacramentum matrimonii mandat Deus teneri et obs (...)
• 53 According to the aforementioned 1311 appeal by Bonagratia of Bergamo, Olivi’s followers had adop (...)
• 54 Doat 27, fol. 76v: “[…] et si aliquando aliqua mandatorum ipsorum transgressus fuerit si tamen p (...)
• 55 See, for instance, Conrad of Megenberg’s criticism of beguines who seldom confessed or took the (...)

19It could be argued that there was no real reason to link Na Prous to Ad nostrum, since the decree explicitly referred to a group of beguines and beghards established in Germany and therefore set geographic boundaries in advance.49 But in practice Ad nostrum and Cum de quibusdam mulieribus were sometimes spliced together to sort the wheat from the heretical chaff among beguines, in Germany and elsewhere, as the bulls issued by John XXII in defense of the beguines of Roubaud show by conflating the text of the two decrees50. As mentioned above, the interrogation of Na Prous Boneta did not follow the established inquisitorial pattern, but still, the record of her deposition contains the barest traces of leading questions. All of these were single-mindedly meant to nudge her towards admitting a specific recognizable transgression. Branded as a member of the sect of the ‘burned beguins’, her interrogation was meant to solidify that charge and no other. As part of that goal, for instance, she was asked about the sacraments, but not in the same way that suspects of the Free Spirit were questioned51. Na Prous had to say, specifically, how many of the sacraments she considered void and explain in detail her views on marriage52. This line of questioning was by no means random, as the accusations wielded against the ‘burned beguins’ included their alleged claim that marriage was but a private brothel, which in fact resulted from a distortion of the Olivian concept of marriage53. Na Prous may have insisted that transgressing the commandments did not require sacramental confession as long as the transgressor was contrite and, most importantly, believed in the Holy Spirit, and she may have said that the Eucharist had no meaning any more54, but despite the fact that ecclesiastics connected the dots between rejecting confession and Eucharist and adhering to the articles of Ad nostrum quite frequently throughout the fourteenth century, she was never suspected of ‘Free Spirit’ faults, because she was already categorized as a different kind of heretic55.

• 56 Guillaume Mollat, ed. Manuel de l’inquisiteur Bernard Gui, Paris, Belles Lettres 1964, vol. 1, p (...)
• 57 Mollat, Manuel de l’inquisiteur, vol. 1, p. 108: “Bequinorum secta, qui fratres Pauperes se appe (...)
• 58 To cite but one example, when the priest Bernard Peyrotas was brought before the inquisitor in M (...)

20When the Dominican inquisitor Bernard Gui completed his Practica inquisitionis heretice pravitatis between 1323 and 1324, he was the first to describe in depth the corpus of beliefs and devotional practices that distinguished what he called the “sect of those commonly known as Beguins and Beguines”56. Frustratingly vague as this description may by this point seem to the reader, Gui, who based the part of the Practica devoted to this group on his first-hand accounts of the trials he held between 1322 and 1323 against fifteen men and two women, must have found these terms just as vexing. Further clarifying that its members “call themselves Poor brethren and claim to follow the third rule of St. Francis,” Gui ensured that this specific beguinorum secta was not mistaken for any other57. Already at this early stage of the inquisitorial action against these particular beguins and beguines, authorities were faced with the need to provide them with a name that was sufficiently distinct. In other words, Gui, who wrote the Practica for his fellow inquisitors, was making it clear that these beguini et beguinae were not the members of the “wicked sect” at the heart of Ad nostrum, but the groups singled out by Sancta romana, alleged Franciscan tertiaries. Soon enough, ‘beguin’ and ‘Franciscan tertiary’ were used as synonyms, even if the records of the trials against the group suggest that one label did not necessarily imply the other, but that both expressions coexisted among the so-called Beguins of Languedoc58. This shows that in the early fourteenth century the words beguini and beguinae were not immediately identified with heresy. They had become umbrella terms that encompassed a wide variety of religious expressions, hence the need for qualifiers that facilitated the task of prosecuting them when needed, even if those qualifiers were the kind that made a sort of circular argument by naming them after their punishment. As uninspired a label as ‘burned beguins’ may be, it sent the message, loud and clear, that these beguins were the ones condemned as an identifiable kind of heretics, one that was legally liable to persecution.

• 59 See Doat 30, fols. 305r–v: “Extrait et collationné d’un livre des formules de l’Inquisition couv (...)
• 60 See Mollat, Manuel de l’inquisiteur, vol. 1, p. vii–xi for a discussion on the organisation of t (...)
• 61 Doat 30, fol. 120v: “In praedicta constitutione in qua damnatur secta Becardorum et Begguinorum (...)
• 62 Ibid.: “[…] supplicant inquisitores quod addatur amplius de secta illorum qui dicunt se successo (...)

21A compilation of inquisitorial texts originally kept in the inquisition archives of Carcassonne is particularly revealing in this regard. Split in two by the copyists of the Doat mission, who described it as “a parchment book of inquisitorial formulas bound in sheepskin over cardboard”, this compilation is now extant in manuscripts Doat 29 and 3059. Doat 29 consists of 318 folios and reproduces the complete first three parts of Bernard Gui’s Practica (fols. 2r-289v) followed by a section of the fourth part that continues until the end of the volume60. Doat 30, made up of 305 folios, contains the rest of Gui’s treatise also split in two, inserting in between a section with the heading De hereticis Clemens V in consilio viennii (fols. 91v-132v) that includes excerpts of some of the constitutions resulting from the Council of Vienne, followed by inquisitorial responses to them. Among them, we find Ad nostrum, or at least its initial sentences. Omitting any reference to Germany, the inquisitorial author of the response – who could very well have been Bernard Gui himself – sums up the decree as the “constitution that condemned the sect of the beghards and beguines along with their sacrilegious doctrine and the errors indicated in the said constitution”61. Most interestingly for the matter at hand, the author then goes on to request an extension of Ad nostrum so that it would also cover the group known as Pseudo-Apostles, to which, incidentally, Gui dedicated a section of the fifth part of his manual62. Despite their extreme views on poverty, these Pseudo-Apostles, who had started out in northern Italy as followers of the millennialist preacher Gherardo Segarelli, had little else in common with the ‘burned beguins’, let alone with the so-called Free Spirits. But every group needed a distinct legal framework – a proper decree – if it was to be effectively persecuted.

• 63 Makowski, “A Pernicious Sort of Woman”, p. 64-67.

22Ad nostrum, Cum de quibusdam mulieribus, and Sancta romana resulted from a climate of papal concern with forms of lay religiosity that fell outside of the comfort zone of the Church. However, these three decrees operated in different realms, setting boundaries that, once established, were not to be crossed. Despite appearances, these boundaries were geographic only in theory. Ad nostrum explicitly targeted groups of beghards and beguines in German lands, and yet it cited almost verbatim excerpts from the Latin translation of a text originally written in Picard – the native langue d’oil of its author, Marguerite Porete. Furthermore, when convenient, it was used as an orthodoxy benchmark for communities of beguines who lived further south – as the case of Roubaud shows – or even seen as the desired legal basis for the persecution of groups whose presence was never documented to the north of the Alps such as the Pseudo-Apostles. In turn, Sancta romana pointed to Italy, Sicily, Provence, and the Languedoc, but its description of beghini – and others – as pretenders who claimed to be tertiaries, thus posing as members of an approved religious order, was liberally used by canonists to underpin their condemnation of northern beguines who “were not to be considered religious” – religiosae nequaquam exsistunt63. Meanwhile, Cum de quibusdam mulieribus, the only one among the three that did not include regional constraints, was applied in places as far flung as Flanders and Provence, but at the same time was purposefully sidelined in most of Languedoc and to the south of the Pyrenees.

• 64 On the relational nature of inquisitorial sources, see Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel and Carlos López-Ar (...)

24The first stages of this process of definition usually relied on individual reports by episcopal authorities and were mostly decided at the highest levels of agency within the Church; but once the boundaries were set, inquisitions were the tried and true weapon against religious dissent. The problem was that inquisitions were relational in nature, they relied on referral chains extracted from suspects, and as such could only address religious expressions that developed through tangible connections; that is, those that involved a social framework. Religious expressions that did not exhibit such connections either remained unseen or had a social framework imposed on them by the inquisitorial process64. By the early fourteenth century, inquisitions had long become the most effective mechanism to uproot heresy, but in turn they had imposed a model of social relations on all forms of religious dissent.

• 65 For Na Prous’s influence on the community of Montpellier, see Louisa A. Burnham, “The Visionary (...)

25In cases such as that of Na Prous Boneta, whose title ‘Na’ was itself relational, an honorific rooted in social capital, the consequence of the inquisitorial relational approach was, in a way, the identification of those who had granted her such title. Na Prous – whose own deposition hardly mentions any names – was far from a one-dimensional figure; she was described by other deponents during their respective interrogations not just as an aloof visionary to be put on a pedestal or derided – although that too – but as a sister, a companion, a teacher, an inspirational character and an integral part of the group that devised strategies to help fugitive beguins and Franciscans to safety65. As a mark of respect based on spiritual charisma, ‘Na’ implied the existence of a multilayered network within which religion defined many of the relations. Given Na Prous’s controversial support of the ‘burned beguins’, such a network was a natural target for inquisitors.

• 66 Huanan Lu, “Marguerite Porete et l’enquête de 1323 sur le béguinage Sainte-Élisabeth de Valencie (...)

26In contrast, the inquisitorial framework was not so well suited to handle expressions of heretical deviance that lacked a relational component. In other words, many of the non-mainstream expressions of lay religiosity that sprouted independently across Europe in the early fourteenth century, such as the Free Spirit, provided similar responses to the perceived loss of religious reference by questioning the leadership of the institutional Church and its trappings, but the fact that these expressions were not actually connected to each other made them harder to pinpoint from a relational standpoint. The only way they could be successfully persecuted was by turning them – constructing them – into sects, into something with social structure that could be mapped out and dismantled through inquisitions. Individual forays into heresy were still prosecuted and punished but, even in these instances, the relational dimension was embedded in the system. The trial of Marguerite Porete, who for so long was considered one of these isolated examples and is now regarded as a member of the beguinage of Sainte-Élisabeth in Valenciennes, was followed by an extensive inquisition conducted by the bishop of Cambrai that sought to gauge the magnitude of her influence within the community66.