Beguines were devout laywomen who, inspired to emulate Jesus and his apostles (the vita apostolica or apostolic life), pursued lives of chastity, prayer, and active service in the world, often as hospital workers and teachers. Although beguines lived religious lives (visibly signaled by their distinctive clothing and communal living arrangements) and were thus acknowledged in their communities as religious women, they were never an official, papally recognized religious order. Beguines took no formal vows; they did not give up their property, and, perhaps most troublingly for some medieval observers, they did not observe strict enclosure and could leave the beguine life at any time, even to marry. Because of their creative combination of contemplation and action, as well as their exposure to multiple, overlapping religious cultures and modalities of expression, some of the most important medieval mystical texts in the vernacular were composed by beguines. While communities of devout laywomen devoted to charity and prayer existed all over Western Europe, the gatherings that were eventually known as “beguines” were mainly concentrated in the Low Countries, a region that roughly corresponds to modern-day northern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. These communities attracted periodic criticism throughout their existence and even intense persecution in the early fourteenth century, when they were condemned at the Council of Vienne (1311–1312). Nevertheless, because beguines were connected to important spiritual and political networks, deeply embedded in their local communities, and providers of essential services, they were able to weather cycles of criticism and political change.