Marie of Oignies

Mary of Oignies (* around 1177 in Nivelles, † June 23, 1213 ) was a mystic, one of the first Beguines and the Inspiratorin of Jacques de Vitry.

Mary was born into a wealthy family and Brabant married at the age of fourteen. She persuaded her husband but to abstinence and their opinion godly life. The couple sacrificed the greater part of its assets for lepers and others in need, transforming his home in Williambrouk in a leprosy hospital to. Later, however, Mary left her home and moved into a hermit's cell near Oignies where lived at that time Jacques de Vitry in the Augustinian monastery, which they greatly influenced. Since they had to preach on the ban that was for women to hold, it moved instead to Jacob, in the church to hold not only the show, but bring the church by preaching the word of God. Jacob wrote to Mary's early death, her biography; this work is one of the few literary evidence about the life of the Beguines, who are ever created. It also led to a temporary ecclesiastical toleration of Beginentums which, however, with the Council of Vienne in 1311 came to an abrupt end.