Growing up in Bruges, one of the most beautiful medieval cities in Europe, Walter Simons never had any doubt in his mind that he wanted to be a medievalist. He was trained as a historian in Belgium and at the Center for Medieval Studies in Poitiers, France, before receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Ghent, Bruges' arch-rival from the Middle Ages. A very medieval academic peregrination brought him from his native Flanders to the United States, which he finds not very medieval but all the more fascinating. His research is devoted to the social environment of religious movements in the high and late Middle Ages, gender, mysticism, urban history, history of the Low Countries, and historical methodology; additional interests are popular culture, art, and the two world wars of the twentieth century. His publications include Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200-1565 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001, paperback 2003), A Cultural History of Peace in the Medieval Age (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), and The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. IV: Christianity in Western Europe, c.1100-c.1500, co-edited with Miri Rubin (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2009) . He retired in 2023 and is currently writing a book on a thirteenth-century woman, Elizabeth of Spalbeek.
"Persecuted by the Unknowing: The Swesteren and Lollards of the Low Countries and Lower Rhine, c. 1290 – c. 1350. Part One: The Clementine Decretals Against Lay Religious." Oliviana: Mouvements et dissidences spirituels XIIIe – XIVe siècles, 7 (2023) [online, URL: http://journals.openedition.org/oliviana/1548].
"Persecuted by the Unknowing: The Swesteren and Lollards of the Low Countries and Lower Rhine, c. 1290 – c. 1350. Part Two: The Ecclesiastical Campaign Against the Swesteren and Lollards." Oliviana: Mouvements et dissidences spirituels XIIIe – XIVe siècles, 7 (2023) [online, URL: http://journals.openedition.org/oliviana/1563].
"Persecuted by the Unknowing: The Swesteren and Lollards of the Low Countries and Lower Rhine, c. 1290 – c. 1350. Part Three: The Doctrine of the Swesteren and Lollards, and the Relationship to Meister Eckhart's Thought." Oliviana: Mouvements et dissidences spirituels XIIIe – XIVe siècles, 7 (2023) [online, URL: http://journals.openedition.org/oliviana/1568].
"Persecuted by the Unknowing: The Swesteren and Lollards of the Low Countries and Lower Rhine, c. 1290 – c. 1350. Part Four: Catalogue of Houses (Swesteren, Lollards, Beghards)." Oliviana: Mouvements et dissidences spirituels XIIIe – XIVe siècles, 7 (2023) [online, URL: http://journals.openedition.org/oliviana/1573].
(editor) A Cultural History of Peace in the Medieval Age. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.
"Worlds Apart? Beguine Communities of Nivelles and the Abbey of St Gertrude, from Marie d'Oignies (d. 1213) to the Liber Ordinarius (c. 1300)." In The Liber Ordinarius of Nivelles (Houghton Library, MS Lat 422): Liturgy as Interdisciplinary Intersection, 97–131. Edited by Jeffrey F. Hamburger and Eva Schlotheuber. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020.
"Wrestling with the Angel: Huizinga, Herfsttij, and Religion." In Rereading Huizinga: Autumn of the Middle Ages, A Century Later, 41–64. Edited by Peter Arnade, Martha Howell and Anton van der Lem. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2019.
Manual labor, begging, and religious ideals in medieval Europe.
