Dear Visitor,

Welcome to the tranquillity of the beguinage ter Hoyen. My name is Johanna of Constantinople, Countess of Flanders. Eight hundred years ago I founded this beguinage, and many others in the Low Countries, with my sister Margaret. We gaveofferd shelter to a group of headstrong women: ladies who wanted to live a pious and independent life, without getting married and without having to enter a convent. These women, called beguines, would venture into complicated theological questions. They also longed for an intense and direct contact with God. This sometimes made bishops and popes quite nervous. And not only them. Princes and rulers also saw our intelligent and militant sisters as a threat to their power. 

My sister and I sympathised with their ideal. As women of nobility, we had very little to say. Marrying men as powerful as our fathers and having children to provide successors was our task. The beguines broke free from that role. They were mocked, vilified, and persecuted. We wanted to help them. So we gave them a vast pasture just outside the city, where they could build cottages and practice their piety undisturbed. If they prayed for our and our family's salvation, we would protect them. That was the agreement.

That's how this beguinage came into being. A lot has changed in eight hundred years, of course. Those stone houses, with their red facades, and that proud, baroque church, the beguines only built from the seventeenth century onwards. And today all sorts of common people live behind the gates. But the spirit of the past is still around. 

So settle down for a moment, on this bench. Enjoy the silence, don't disturb it. And feel free to walk around. You won't find my sister and me here any more, of course. Or maybe there's still a lingering touch of our presence. The walls surrounding the beguinage, between the Scheldt and the rest of the city, are still our protective arms.