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Religious Orders for Women

Religious houses for women are almost as ancient as those for men. Some of the primitive solitaries were women. St. Augustine wrote his rule for a sisterhood. St. Benedict's sister, St. Scholastica, governed a convent of nuns, under her brother's direction. During the Middle Ages nearly every Order of men had a branch for women. St. Francis established a convent of poor ladies nnder the government of St. Clare. St. Dominic founded a convent of nuns before be was able to begin his Order of Preachers. But during the late Middle Ages nuns were obliged to submit to certain rules of seclusion, known as " enclosure," that were strictly enforced by Canon Law. Having once taken her vows the nun might never again come forth, under any circumstances short of the most extraordinary.

There was a rapid growth of communities of religious women in France during the early part of the 19th century. Every zealous parish priest got together a band of pious women to undertake the care of the orphanage, boarding-school, or other good works which he started ; it was necessary to give them some sort of organisation and rule, and thus they grew into religious Congregations, at first under the authority of thebishop, and afterwards, in most cases at least, with the approval of the Roman See. In this way there had sprung up an immense number of communities of women, known by all sorts of fantastic names, and wearing a variety of odd dresses, but differing little in their manner of life and organisation. They all profess the active life, and may be divided broadly into three classes, as they devote themselves to education, the care of the sick and suffering, and the rescue of souls from sin.

It is a curious fact that the great extension of religious sisterhoods should have taken place at the period when the ideas most adverse to such a state of life have prevailed, and in those countries where modern ideas have had the greatest power. In the Middle Ages convents of women were much fewer than those of men. Moreover, the countries in which the number and importance of sisterhoods is most considerable are just those in which the modern spirit is most active. France, Belgium, England and its colonies, the United States, Holland, these are the countries in which religious houses of women have most flourished. In the more distinctively Roman Catholic countries the growth of sisterhoods devoted to the active life hag been very slow. In Italy and Spain there are indeed many convents of nuns, but they were of the mediaeval type, secluded from the world by high walls and bolts and tars, and were not occupied in any useful work. There was a great prejudice in Italy against communities of the active type, and the Italians were scandalised - they are easily scandalised - to see women going about the streets in the garb of nuns.