beguines

Cole Porter recognized early that we lack a strong music that plays the bass notes of our souls and forces us together in dances that repeat the bitter-sweetness of life itself: tangos, and rumbas and beguines.

Giles Slade: Review of Boy In The Moon 2010

The nuns’ predecessors, the beguines, were also sometimes seen as a threat to ecclesiastical authority.

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson: Questions 2008

The beguines were most prevalent in the Low Countries and along the Rhine River in Germany, but women with similar lifestyles could be found throughout Europe by the thirteenth century.

Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany 2008

This can be seen in another example from Engelthal, chronologically later than the previous instance, but while the community was still one of beguines.

Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany 2008

The canonical institution of the third order dates from the middle of the fifteenth century, when a community of Beguines at Guelders sought affiliation to the order, and Blessed John Soreth, General of the Carmelites, obtained a Bull (7 Oct., 1452) granting the superiors of his order the faculties enjoyed by the Hermits of St. Augustine and the Dominicans of canonically establishing convents of "virgins, widows, beguines and mantellatae".

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 14: Simony-Tournon 1840-1916 1913

He founded many convents of the order of friars preachers, and to many other poor religious builded churches, cloisters, dortoirs, and other edifices convenable, gave for God largely alms to the blind, beguines, daughters of God, and releved the minster of many a poor nunnery.

The Golden Legend, vol. 7 1230-1298 1900

An able man, in spite of his incurable levity, M. de Maurepas soon sacrificed the Duke of Aiguillon to the queen's resentment; the people attached to the old court accused her of despising etiquette; it was said that she had laughed when she received the respectful condolence of aged dames looking like beguines in their coifs; already there circulated amongst the public bitter ditties, such as,

A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 6 1830

If any lady must needs say paternosters or make cakes or tarts for her holy father, let her leave them alone; there is none after whom they will run a begging to be read: howbeit, there are little matters that even the beguines tell, ay, and do, now and again.

The Decameron, Volume II Giovanni Boccaccio 1344