Across the Low Countries, beginning in the twelfth century, unmarried laywomen gathered into walled courtyards of their own making—reading, praying, working with their hands, caring for the sick and the dying. From within those courtyards, Hadewijch of Antwerp, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete created a whole literature of their own in the form of vernacular poems and mystical treatises.