Double monastery

As a double monastery is called a monastery district in which monks and nuns lived under the guidance of a common religious superiors, but subject to the male and female communities a strict separation. The only remaining double monastery is an amalgamation of the monasteries of Einsiedeln and driving.

Origin and development

The shape of the double monasteries dating back to the convents of Basilian and Basilian who lived in Eastern Europe and the Middle East in the local monastery districts. They lived according to the rules of the order of St. Basil ( 330-379 ), he had founded the male religious orders, while the establishment of the female religious communities whose sister Macrina the Younger ( 330-379 ) is returned. Despite the ban by Emperor Justinian I ( 482-565 ), the further prohibition by the Synod of Agde in 506, and finally the prohibition by the Second Council of Nicaea ( 787), the way of life set in double monasteries at least in the East and the Orthodox by churches and was maintained until the 14th century.

Macrina the Younger

Emperor Justinian I.

History

In the West included the lifetime of the double monasteries, especially in the earlier Anglo-Saxon countries, the 5th to the 9th century. Here, the monastic institutions were almost always led by the abbesses. The abbots were of the religious communities to the outside and were the link between secular and religious power. In France, Italy and later Germany, the double monasteries flourished in the 11th and 12th centuries. While the Premonstratensian completed the separation between monasteries and nunneries in 1140, the Cistercian decided to continue. In the 13th century, the double monasteries were abandoned almost everywhere; one of the two communities disappeared or has been moved. Reasons for this were the critical attitude of contemporary church leaders to the double monasteries and the embossed by this setting, general onset of refusal of orders, take nunneries or provide support. Also, the Order of the Redeemer, founded in the 14th century by Birgitta of Sweden, whose original concept envisaged that in a monastery next to the nuns and priests monks and lay brothers should live, gave this way of life after the Reformation.

Pens in which to live and of the Canon canons under the direction of an abbess or a provost shall be designated as a double monastery.