A double monastery (also dual monastery or double house) is a monastery combining separate communities of monks and of nuns, joined in one institution to share one church and other facilities. [1] [a] The practice is believed to have started in the East at the dawn of monasticism. It is considered more common in the monasticism of Eastern Christianity, where it is traceable to the 4th century. In the West the establishment of double monasteries became popular after St. Columbanus and sprang up in Gaul and in Anglo-Saxon England. [2] Double monasteries were forbidden by the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, though it took many years for the decree to be enforced. [3] Double monasteries were revived again after the 12th century in a significantly different way [2] when a number of religious houses were established on this pattern among Benedictines and possibly the Dominicans. The 14th-century Bridgittines were purposely founded using this form of community.
In the Catholic Church, monks and nuns would live in separate buildings but were usually united under an Abbess as head of the entire household. Examples include the original Coldingham Priory in Scotland, Barking Abbey in London, and also Einsiedeln Abbey and Fahr Convent in separate cantons of Switzerland, controlled by the male abbot of Einsiedeln without a converse arrangement for the prioress of Fahr. More commonly, however, a woman, termed an abbess, ruled over the two communities. [4] In most English and many Continental instances the abbess not rarely was a princess or widowed queen.
The double monasteries of the 7th and 8th centuries had their roots in early Christian religious communities. Early female monasticism, while not as well-documented as that of its male counterpart, is known by the fifth century in the case of a convent founded in Marseille in 410 by John Cassian. [5] This preceded several convents in Rome. St. Basil and Pachomius both established female religious communities in close proximity to those of men in the East. [6] In 512, Bishop St Caesarius of Arles founded the convent of St. John the Baptist for his sister and her religious community of women. [7] It is this latter convent, and the Rule with which Caesarius endowed it, that served as the framework for the evolution of the double monastery.
Caesarius laid down that individual convents were to be governed by women. The abbess or prioress was to be "superior in rank" and "obeyed without murmuring". [8] Caesarius ensured that the abbesses of the convents would be free of forced obedience to the local diocesan bishop by obtaining a Papal letter exempting the convent from episcopal authority. [9] He also wrote the Regula sanctarum virginum, the first known rule specifically created for a convent. This rule featured a combination of old and new restrictions on monastic life, including the individual renunciation of private property, obedience to God through the abbess, and chastity for life, which served the dual purpose of protecting the enclosure of the convent's members and limiting intrusion by the secular world. [5]
By the 7th century, the Irish missionary St. Columbanus had established the most famous convent in Gaul, Luxeuil Abbey. Following the death of her husband Clovis II in 657, St. Balthild, the Queen Regent of Neustria and Burgundy became patron of the community, thereby promoting the example of Luxeuil's mixed rule — a combination of Benedictine and Columbanian monasticism — throughout medieval Europe. [10] Balthild was responsible for the foundation of an abbey of nuns at Chelles around 659, a double monastery, where she retired following her vacating of the regency of the Merovingian throne. [11] Around this same time, the brother of the bishop Audoens, Ado, formed the famous double monastery of Jouarre, also in Gaul. [12] These two monasteries shared many of the same features: they both housed male and female religious communities within the same enclosure, though these groups lived apart, and they shared a common church for liturgical offices. Both monasteries were administered by a single head, typically an abbess, a reflection of Caesarius of Arles’ view about the management of female houses. [6] While these religious houses were influenced by Columbanus’ missions in Gaul, he himself never established female religious institutions. The degree of influence which Irish monasticism might have had in the foundation of these Frankish double houses is unclear. In the 5th century, the monastery of St. Brigit of Kildare was a community of men and women living together without strict separation, but there is little evidence as to whether it was traditional or an anomaly. [13]
The involvement of Columbanus’ successors as abbots of Luxeuil, Eustace and Waldebert, is well-documented. The Rule of a Father for Virgins, attributed to Waldebert, established the mother role of the abbess on terms very similar to those of an abbot. In this Rule, Walbert asserts that abbesses share many of the powers of an abbot, including the ability to hear confessions from their nuns and absolve them of their sins. [6] These abbesses were often of noble birth, either direct or distant descendants of the family that founded the monastery. [6] Between the start of the 6th century and the mid-8th century, when double monasteries went into decline, over one hundred double monasteries or convents had been founded in Gaul. [13]
The double monasteries of Anglo-Saxon England were heavily influenced by the monastic system of Gaul. [14] Hilda of Whitby, abbess of the most famous double house in England, had originally intended to join her sister at Chelles in 647, where many other daughters of the English nobility were educated. [9] Instead, she remained in England, where Bishop Aidan of Lindisfarne, later Saint, trained her in monasticism. She continued the Gaulish tradition of noble female heads of double monasteries at Whitby Abbey, which she directly modelled drawing both upon Aidan’s teaching and the Rule followed by her contemporaries at Chelles and Jouarre. [15] By order of King Oswiu, in 664 Hilda hosted the Synod of Whitby, which brought together representatives from the Celtic and Roman churches to resolve ecclesiastical differences between them, including the Easter Controversy. [16] [17] Whitby became known as a school for bishops, and produced five during Hilda’s time as abbess, according to Bede's Historia. [18] The prominent position occupied in England by double monasteries emerges further from the fact that Whitby served in the seventh century as a place of retirement and burial for several Anglo-Saxon kings. It also fostered significant cultural achievements, such as the poems of Cædmon. [17] [19]
Beyond Whitby, Anglo-Saxon England cultivated double monasteries including Ely, which was founded by Queen (and later Saint) Etheldreda of Northumbria. After spending twelve years refusing to consummate her marriage, Etheldreda was granted the land for Ely by her husband, King Ecgfrith of Northumbria. [4] Another renowned double house, Barking Abbey, followed the Gallic tradition of separation of the sexes with one exception: after death, under Hildelith, abbess of Barking, both male and female burials were combined into a single mass grave. [20] Anglo-Saxon missionaries to the Continent founded double houses there, one example is the double monastery of Heidenheim, Bavaria, founded by Saint Willibald around 742, and later led by his sister, Saint Walpurga. [21]
A characteristic unique to Anglo-Saxon religious establishments was the simultaneous institution of double monasteries along with double minsters. Although both institutions housed both sexes, a double minster served as a church, often founded by a royal or a magnate, with an attached community of priests, nuns, and monks, rather than an enclosed religious community, to carry out welfare and pastoral work in the local area. [22] This distinction was exemplified in the dichotomy between sanctimoniala, a professed nun, and a canonica- a woman living under a religious rule, but without necessarily having taken personal religious vows, as in the case of Beguines and Beghards [22]
Double monasteries were not exclusively found in the West, however. During the 8th century, some cases of double monasteries were documented in the Byzantine Empire. These monasteries were not physically enclosed communities, and featured separate churches for nuns and monks. The most notable of these establishments is the monastery of Mantineion, founded by Anthusa of Constantinople during the reign of the patriarch Nicephorus. [23] Mantineon featured a school for boys in the male monastery, and unlike its Gallic and Anglo-Saxon counterparts, the male and female sections of the monastery featured very different lifestyles. They did, however, rely upon each other, and established a centre of activity between the two churches that allowed both monks and nuns to exchange skills and goods. [24] Like Western double monasteries, the establishment of medieval Byzantine double houses peaked by the mid-eighth century. [23]
By the end of the 8th century, the double monastery as an institution entered a steep decline. The most obvious doctrinal explanation for this shift lies in the twentieth canon of the seventh ecumenical synod declared at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. This canon reads, in part:
“Double monasteries are henceforth forbidden. If a whole family wishes to renounce the world together, the men must go into convents for men, the female members of the family in convents for women. The double monasteries already existing may continue … but must observe the following ordinance: Monks and nuns may not reside in one building, for living together gives occasion for incontinence. No monk may enter the nun’s quarter, and no nun converse apart with a monk." [25]
By banning further establishment of double monasteries and limiting their applicant pool, the Second Council of Nicaea effectively ensured that double monasteries throughout both England and Gaul would not exist within a century. This ecclesiastical ordinance was not the only limit on the expansion of the double house system. In England, the effects of constant Viking raids combined with the general decline of a cloistered life during the early 9th century all led to a sharp decrease in the populations and activities of these double houses. [26] The Danish invasions of the 9th century led to the destruction of the double monasteries of Whitby, Barking, and Ely by 870. [27] Often, former double monasteries were eventually converted into all-female convents.
Beginning in the late 10th century, Anglo-Saxon England experienced a revival of monasticism. Alfred the Great and his queen, Ealhswith, both established convents, though by the time of the Norman Conquest there remained only a few convents and no double monasteries in England. [27] In this new wave, the Regularis Concordia was compiled, which was a form of standardized monastic rule. This rule contained explicit instructions regarding the separation of the sexes, forbidding men to enter convents or disturb a nun at prayer. [26] By the twelfth century, double monasteries experienced a faint resurgence, especially in England under Gilbert of Sempringham’s rule. He established a total of thirteenth mixed houses by the end of that century. [28] These new monasteries were not without controversy, however. On canonical grounds, Pope Alexander threatened Gilbert with excommunication for promoting a banned form of religious community, and only the intervention of King Henry and prominent English bishops allowed Gilbert to continue his double monasteries. [28] There were also allegedly more mundane causes of scandal, pregnant nuns.
Double monasteries continued in Frankish society, but both sections, male and female, eventually shifted into more separate communities of canons and canonesses. [29] In Sweden, on the other hand, double monasteries experienced a great revival during the late fourteenth century with the spread of the Order of the Holy Saviour, also known as the Bridgettines after their founder, Birgitta of Sweden. [27] While double monasteries never again reached the heights of influence and ubiquity they had achieved during the mid-seventh century, the later Middle Ages saw a re-emergence and evolution of double houses and a spread across Europe.
A more recent Eastern Orthodox example emerged in England at Tolleshunt Knights in Essex where the Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist [30] was established in 1959.
The Benedictines, officially the Order of Saint Benedict, are a mainly contemplative monastic order of the Catholic Church for men and for women who follow the Rule of Saint Benedict. Initiated in 529 they are the oldest of all the religious orders in the Latin Church. The male religious are also sometimes called the Black Monks, especially in English speaking countries, after the colour of their habits. Not all Benedictines wear black, however, with some like the Olivetans wearing white. They were founded by Benedict of Nursia, a 6th-century Italian monk who laid the foundations of Benedictine monasticism through the formulation of his Rule. Benedict's sister, Scholastica, possibly his twin, also became a religious from an early age, but chose to live as a hermit. They retained a close relationship until her death.
A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone (hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which may be a chapel, church, or temple, and may also serve as an oratory, or in the case of communities anything from a single building housing only one senior and two or three junior monks or nuns, to vast complexes and estates housing tens or hundreds. A monastery complex typically comprises a number of buildings which include a church, dormitory, cloister, refectory, library, balneary and infirmary, and outlying granges. Depending on the location, the monastic order and the occupation of its inhabitants, the complex may also include a wide range of buildings that facilitate self-sufficiency and service to the community. These may include a hospice, a school, and a range of agricultural and manufacturing buildings such as a barn, a forge, or a brewery.
A nun is a woman who vows to dedicate her life to religious service and contemplation, typically living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the enclosure of a monastery or convent. The term is often used interchangeably with religious sisters who do take simple vows but live an active vocation of prayer and charitable work.
The Synod of Whitby was a Christian administrative gathering held in Northumbria in 664, wherein King Oswiu ruled that his kingdom would calculate Easter and observe the monastic tonsure according to the customs of Rome rather than the customs practised by Irish monks at Iona and its satellite institutions. The synod was summoned at Hilda's double monastery of Streonshalh (Streanæshalch), later called Whitby Abbey.
A convent is an enclosed community of monks, nuns, friars or religious sisters. Alternatively, convent means the building used by the community.
Wilfrid was an English bishop and saint. Born a Northumbrian noble, he entered religious life as a teenager and studied at Lindisfarne, at Canterbury, in Francia, and at Rome; he returned to Northumbria in about 660, and became the abbot of a newly founded monastery at Ripon. In 664 Wilfrid acted as spokesman for the Roman position at the Synod of Whitby, and became famous for his speech advocating that the Roman method for calculating the date of Easter should be adopted. His success prompted the king's son, Alhfrith, to appoint him Bishop of Northumbria. Wilfrid chose to be consecrated in Gaul because of the lack of what he considered to be validly consecrated bishops in England at that time. During Wilfrid's absence Alhfrith seems to have led an unsuccessful revolt against his father, Oswiu, leaving a question mark over Wilfrid's appointment as bishop. Before Wilfrid's return Oswiu had appointed Ceadda in his place, resulting in Wilfrid's retirement to Ripon for a few years following his arrival back in Northumbria.
The Bridgettines, or Birgittines, formally known as the Order of the Most Holy Saviour, is a monastic religious order of the Catholic Church founded by Saint Birgitta in 1344 and approved by Pope Urban V in 1370. They follow the Rule of Saint Augustine. There are today several different branches of Bridgettines.
Anna was king of East Anglia from the early 640s until his death. He was a member of the Wuffingas family, the ruling dynasty of the East Angles, and one of the three sons of Eni who ruled the kingdom of East Anglia, succeeding some time after Ecgric was killed in battle by Penda of Mercia. Anna was praised by Bede for his devotion to Christianity and was renowned for the saintliness of his family: his son Jurmin and all his daughters – Seaxburh, Æthelthryth, Æthelburh and possibly a fourth, Wihtburh – were canonised.
Christian monasticism is a religious way of life of Christians who live ascetic and typically cloistered lives that are dedicated to Christian worship. It began to develop early in the history of the Christian Church, modeled upon scriptural examples and ideals, including those in the Old Testament. It has come to be regulated by religious rules and, in modern times, the Canon law of the respective Christian denominations that have forms of monastic living. Those living the monastic life are known by the generic terms monks (men) and nuns (women). The word monk originated from the Greek μοναχός, itself from μόνος meaning 'alone'.
Hilda of Whitby was a saint of the early Church in Britain. She was the founder and first abbess of the monastery at Whitby which was chosen as the venue for the Synod of Whitby in 664. An important figure in the Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England, she was abbess in several convents and recognised for the wisdom that drew kings to her for advice.
Caesarius of Arles, sometimes called "of Chalon" from his birthplace Chalon-sur-Saône, was the foremost ecclesiastic of his generation in Merovingian Gaul. Caesarius is considered to be of the last generation of church leaders of Gaul who worked to integrate large-scale ascetic elements into the Western Christian tradition. William E. Klingshirn's study of Caesarius depicts Caesarius as having the reputation of a "popular preacher of great fervour and enduring influence". Among those who exercised the greatest influence on Caesarius were Augustine of Hippo, Julianus Pomerius, and John Cassian.
The English Benedictine Congregation (EBC) is a congregation of autonomous abbatial and prioral monastic communities of Catholic Benedictine monks, nuns, and lay oblates. It is technically the oldest of the nineteen congregations affiliated to the Benedictine Confederation.
In the seventh century the pagan Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity mainly by missionaries sent from Rome. Irish missionaries from Iona, who were proponents of Celtic Christianity, were influential in the conversion of Northumbria, but after the Synod of Whitby in 664, the Anglo-Saxon church gave its allegiance to the Pope.
Faremoutiers Abbey was an important Merovingian Benedictine nunnery in the present Seine-et-Marne department of France. It formed an important link between the Merovingian Frankish Empire and the southern Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Kent and East Anglia.
There is archaeological evidence of insular monasticism as early as the mid 5th century, influenced by establishments in Gaul such as the monastery of Martin of Tours at Marmoutier, the abbey established by Honoratus at Lérins; the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel; and that of Germanus at Auxerre. Many Irish monks studied at Candida Casa near Whithorn in what is now Galloway in Scotland.
Chelles Abbey was a Frankish monastery founded around 657/660 during the early medieval period. It was intended initially as a monastery for women; then its reputation for great learning grew, and when men wanted to follow the monastic life, a parallel male community was established, creating a double monastery.
Leominster abbey was an Anglo-Saxon monastery established at Leominster in the county of Hereford, England. The name of the town refers to its minster, a settlement of clergy living a communal life.
Hartlepool Abbey, also known as Heretu Abbey, Hereteu Abbey, Heorthu Abbey or Herutey Abbey, was a Northumbrian monastery founded in 640 CE by Hieu, the first of the saintly recluses of Northumbria, and Aidan of Lindisfarne, on the Headland Estate of Hartlepool now called the Heugh or Old Hartlepool, in County Durham, England.
In the Catholic Church, a religious institute is "a society in which members, according to proper law, pronounce public vows, either perpetual or temporary which are to be renewed, however, when the period of time has elapsed, and lead a life of brothers or sisters in common."
Marienbrunn Abbey also called Fons Mariae and Triumphus Marie was a double convent for women and men of the order of the Bridgettines, situated in Gdańsk between 1391 and 1833. It was the first convent of the order founded outside of Sweden, and the second convent of the order altogether.
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