Many other Béguinages still exist in Brabant, and, indeed, all over Belgium, but many more have been suppressed, and the buildings which once sheltered the religious are now used for secular purposes. The largest of the existing communities of this kind is that of Ghent, which numbers nearly a thousand members, and the smallest is probably that of Dixmude, which has only three. The religious movement of which the Béguinage was the outcome brought forth also, about the same time, or perhaps a little later, several similar institutions for men. Of these the Beghards, or, as they were sometimes called, the Brethren of Penance, were the most widespread and the most important. Their members were all of them laymen, and, like the Beguines, took no vows, observed no fixed rule of life, and were subject only to their own superiors, but, unlike them, they had no private property: the brethren of each cloister had a common purse, dwelt together under one roof and ate at the same table. They were, for the most part, of humble origin--weavers, dyers, fullers and such like, and were often men to whom fortune had not been kind--men who had outlived their friends, or whose family ties had been broken by some untoward event, and who, by reason of failing health or advancing years, or perhaps on account of some accident, were unable to stand alone. Each establishment was self-supporting; the members plied their wonted trades, and lived as best they could on the meagre product of their united toil. If, as Monsieur Pirenne observes, 'the mediæval towns of Belgium found in the Béguinage a solution of their "feminine question,"' the establishment of these communities afforded them at least a partial solution of another problem, which pressed for an answer--the difficult problem of how to deal with the worn-out working-man.