Belgian 'beguinages' are UNESCO site 

A walk through the Leuven beguinage is a spectacular march back into time. Meeting someone here in a habit would make more sense than that young man over there in cargo shorts and Birkenstocks.

Jeroen Laureysens, an 18-year-old theology major, lives in the Leuven beguinage. "I love the atmosphere because I like things like abbeys," he said. When he first saw the beguinage, he recalled, "it was like, 'wow' maybe in some months I will live here."

The church bells chime the hour. The white stone chapel — now the university parish - rises above the three-story red brick buildings. Today students and professors of the Catholic University of Leuven — to which the beguinage now belongs — live in the small houses that were once home to beguines.

Studying economics or computer science here would feel wrong. This place calls for the study of romantic literature or medieval history. Or, of course, theology.

Living an essentially religious life without taking vows made many of the more conservative members of society and the Church suspicious of the beguines. Why not, they wondered, simply take on the vows of sisterhood and live in a respectfully cloistered manner?

To supporters, however, the beguines represented a worthy attempt to live a godly life within a tempestuous world without shutting themselves out.

If you go Grand Beguinage: Leuven, Belgium; Leuven is 17 miles east of Brussels on the E40 Highway. There is train service three times an hour from the Brussels Central Station. The beguinage is only a 20-minute walk from the Leuven rail station through the town's centuries-old heart. Alternatively, several buses (among them No. 2 and 16) pass by the beguinage. Entrance to the beguinage is free. Click here for route and map.

The early beguines made their homes on towns' peripheries. But eventually they became gated or walled communes — which put at ease those wary of the women's insistence not to join religious orders.

Each beguinage had its own way of doing things — and that could be a problem.

The clergy felt threatened by beguines' attempts to provide spiritual guidance to the community around them, particularly when they propagated mysticism over ecclesiasticism.

Following investigation by church authorities, some of the smaller beguinages died out.

Some, particularly in the Netherlands, escaped condemnation by accommodating the church hierarchy and espousing Catholic tenets — up to a point. Vigorous condemnations lead to the decimation of beguinages in the Rhine Valley.

In Belgium, the beguines made concessions to survive, limiting the ability of members to leave the commune, taking on habit-like dress and being more stringent in following a vow of chastity.

By the 17th century, the beguinages had almost completely disappeared from the Calvinist provinces of the north, but were maintained in the Catholic Lowlands.

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After a time, many beguinages were elevated to parish status and were assigned their own priest. Though still individualized, they moved toward organized religion and became increasingly bourgeois.

In the 19th century, the fates of the beguines varied. Some retained possession of their homes. Others were taken over by religious orders or transformed into hospices and orphanages.

In 1998, 13 Flemish beguinages were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, including the Grand Beguinage of Leuven.

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