The Edge Of The World: How The North Sea Made Us Who We Are - Plot & Excerpts
Love and capital She was shouting, and Katelijne Vedelaer had every reason to shout. There were three men and one woman who grabbed her and took her by force out of the quiet of her community, over the water and out of the town of Bruges. They were not just kidnapping her. They were telling her she had no right to choose her own life among the holy women, that she had to be married and she had to marry Lievin van Aerlebecke and she had to share all she had with him instead of the community of her friends.1 She shouted to prove she wanted her life back. She wasn’t running off with a lover, she was being snatched for her property, taken off for the rape that would force her to marry. She made such a racket that the town aldermen were alerted, but they could do nothing; the holy women, the ‘beguines’, were under the special protection of the Count of Flanders. Aldermen went to the count’s bailiff and it was the bailiff who sent out the sheriff with a band of law officers.
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