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Co-Ed Religion:

The Double Monastery

This Rock Volume 19, Number 3   March 2008     Reasons for Hope By Cherie Peacock   Letters   Are the Gospels Myth? By Carl E. Olson   Further Reading   Baptism Saves You By Fr. Dwight Longenecker   Is the Education of Women a Modern Idea? By Catherine Brown Tkacz   Early Christian Education   Co-Ed Religion: the Double Monastery   Visual Reminders of Feminine Wisdom   Further Reading   The Sin of Greed: When We Worship the Golden God By Christopher Kaczor   Greed Leads to Other Sins   Lottery Winners Come Down to Earth   The Angelic Doctor on the Virtue of Liberality   Further Reading   Damascus Road The Fall, Revisited By Deacon Bill Turrentine   By the Book The Divinity of the Holy Spirit By Tim Staples   Eyes to See Everyone's a Critic By Michael Schrauzer   Truth be Told Convent Horror Stories By Robert P. Lockwood   Quick Questions   Last Writes By Karl Keating    Subscribe    Permissions

Double monastic communities were common. The first women’s monastery, founded in the fourth century at Tabennisi, was paired with a men’s monastery. The founders were Pachomius and his sister Mary. Double monasteries began and flourished in the Near East, including the foundations of Macrina and Peter and also of Jerome and Paula at Bethlehem. In Europe also, the influential Rule of St. Benedict (c. 530) involved the education of religious men and women, and double monasteries were widespread. They existed in Anglo-Saxon England, Gaul, perhaps Ireland, certainly Spain which may have had 200 double monasteries, and in Italy, Sardinia, and Germany as well. Within double monasteries, learned women taught both men and women, as did learned men. Hilda of Whitby (614-680), for instance, directed the education of many men, five of whom became bishops. From the 10th century, separate monasteries were far more frequent, although in the 14th century new double monasteries were founded, especially by the Order of the Holy Savior, established by St. Birgitta of Sweden (d. 1373).