A convent is an enclosed community of monks , nuns , friars or religious sisters . Alternatively, convent means the building used by the community.
7-722: The Dominican Convent, Regensburg is a convent of the Dominican Order in Regensburg in Bavaria in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Regensburg . A convent of the Holy Cross was founded in 1233 (791 years ago) ( 1233 ) and was preserved by the secularization in Bavaria. In 1803 a girls' school was founded which remains to the present time. In the library of Keble College, Oxford ,
14-565: 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 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
21-524: A convent was often also involved in decisions of secular life and interacted with politicians and businessmen. Unlike an abbey , 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
28-853: 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 the beginning of the 13th century with the growth of cities; they include in particular the Dominicans , the Franciscans , the Carmelites , and the Augustinians . While the Benedictine monks and their various variants devoted themselves to their agricultural properties,
35-686: Is an illuminated manuscript from the convent, "Lectionarium Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum" known in English as the Regensburg Lectionary (for the convent of Dominican nuns "zum Heiligen Kreuz", Regensburg, c. 1267–76). In 1853 the Prioress Mother Maria Benedicta Bauer sent some sisters to America. There are today 12 American congregations which derive from the Regensburg convent. Among them are
42-682: The Dominican Sisters of Adrian, Michigan , and the Racine Dominican Sisters . 49°01′13″N 12°05′06″E / 49.0202°N 12.0851°E / 49.0202; 12.0851 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
49-424: The verb convenio , meaning "to convene, to come together". It 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
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