Christian Nuns
The abbey of Fontevrault
The first Christian nuns, like the first Christian monks, lived alone in the desert in Egypt in the 300's and 400's AD, where they could be alone to pray all day. Gradually these people formed religious communities, where many people lived together. After some time, the bishops made the nuns live separately from the monks.
Sometimes when for some reason parents felt they
had too many daughters, or because they had made a promise to the
Church to give their daughter to the church, or because a girl felt
a religious calling, the parents
would take their daughter to a convent or abbey and she would stay
there and live in the convent for the rest of her life. Sometimes
families sent their daughters to the convent in order to pay their
tithe to the Church.
(For another reason, check out the story of Heloise
and Abelard).
Nuns all lived together, either in a dormitory or
with their own little rooms (called cells). Like monks,
they prayed many times a day and went to Mass
every day, though they did not sing like the men. Nuns were not usually
educated as much as monks either, though they did sometimes learn
to read and write. Mostly nuns
spent their days the same way other women did. Poorer nuns worked
in the gardens and in
the fields, while nuns
from wealthier families, whose families had given money or land to
the convent, spent their time spinning,
weaving, or doing embroidery
on tapestries. Like monks, nuns never married or had children,
and they did not own any property of their own. The leader of the
nuns was called an abbess.
Women did sometimes join convents when they were older. Sometimes it was because they wanted to spend more time with God. Or because their husbands had died and they needed somebody to live with. Even queens like Eleanor of Aquitaine sometimes went to live in convents when they were old. Boys couldn't become nuns, but they could become monks.
