A convent is an enclosed community of monks , nuns , friars or religious sisters . Alternatively, convent means the building used by the community.
4-588: A convent is a community of priests, religious brothers, religious sisters or nuns, or the building used by such a community. Convent or convento may also refer to: Convent The term is particularly used in the Catholic Church , Lutheran churches , and the Anglican Communion . The term convent derives via Old French from Latin conventus , perfect participle of the verb convenio , meaning "to convene, to come together". It
8-675: A convent is not placed under the responsibility of an abbot or an abbess, but of a superior or prior. In modern English usage, since about the 19th century, the term convent almost invariably refers to a community of women, while monastery and friary are used for communities of men. In historical usage they are often interchangeable, with convent especially likely to be used for a friary. When applied to religious houses in Eastern Orthodoxy and Buddhism , English refers to all houses of male religious as monasteries and of female religious as convents. The mendicant orders appeared at
12-546: Is headed by an abbot , and a priory is a lesser dependent house headed by a prior . In the Middle Ages , convents often provided to women a way to excel, as they were considered inferior to men. In convents, women were educated and were able to write books and publish works on gardening or musicology. or on religion and philosophy. The abbess of a convent was often also involved in decisions of secular life and interacted with politicians and businessmen. Unlike an abbey ,
16-511: Was first used in this sense when the eremitical life began to be combined with the cenobitical. The original reference was to the gathering of mendicants who spent much of their time travelling. Technically, a monastery is a secluded community of monastics, whereas a friary or convent is a community of mendicants (which, by contrast, might be located in a city), and a canonry is a community of canons regular . The terms abbey and priory can be applied to both monasteries and canonries; an abbey
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