There was a quarrel even over the word ‘beguine’: whether it came from benignitas, which is ‘goodness’, or as one Benedictine said from begun, meaning ‘dung’.12 Its most likely origin is a word for a mumbler, someone whose speech you can’t quite hear and can’t check or control. That was especially worrying when the speech was prayer, which was meant to be spoken loud and clear in a church; the beguine’s prayers were between her and God, not laid down or certified by authority. She could be telling God anything.
