Produced by Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) EARLY DOUBLE MONASTERIES A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914 BY CONSTANCE STONEY NEWNHAM COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL & CO., LIMITED. LONDON: G. BELL & SONS, LIMITED. 1915 EARLY DOUBLE MONASTERIES. The system of double monasteries, or monasteries for both men and women, is as old as that of Christian monasticism itself, though the phrase "monasteria duplicia"[1] dates from about the C6. The term was also sometimes applied to twin monasteries for men; Bede uses it in this sense with reference to Wearmouth and Yarrow, while he generally speaks of a double monastery as "monasterium virginum." The use of the word "double" is important. The monastery was not mixed; men and women did not live or work together, and in many cases did not use the same Church; and though the chief feature of the system was association, there was in reality very little, when compared with the amount of separation. In time, the details of organisation varied, such, for example, as whether an abbot or an abbess ruled the whole monastery, though it was generally the latter. Details of the rule of the community naturally altered at different times and in different places, but the essential character remained the same. As to the object of such an arrangement, opinions differ. Some have regarded it as a sort of moral experiment; others have seen in it only the natural outcome of the necessity for having priests close at hand to celebrate Mass, hear confessions and minister in general to the spiritual needs of the nuns. There is, too, the practical side of the plan--namely, that each side of the community was economically dependant on the other, as will be seen later. However this may be, the practice of placing the two together under one head seems to be as ancient as monasticism itself. The double monastery in its simplest form was that organisation said to have been founded in the C4 by S. Pachomius,[2] an Egyptian monk. He settled with a number of men, who had consecrated themselves to the spiritual life, at Tabenna, by the side of the Nile. About the same time, his sister Mary went to the opposite bank of the Nile, and began to gather round her women disciples.