A double monastery (also dual monastery or double house) is a monastery combining separate communities of monks and of nuns, joined in one institution to share one church and other facilities.[1][a] The practice is believed to have started in the East at the dawn of monasticism. It is considered more common in the monasticism of Eastern Christianity, where it is traceable to the 4th century. In the West the establishment of double monasteries became popular after St. Columbanus and sprang up in Gaul and in Anglo-Saxon England.[2] Double monasteries were forbidden by the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, though it took many years for the decree to be enforced.[3] Double monasteries were revived again after the 12th century in a significantly different way[2] when a number of religious houses were established on this pattern among Benedictines and possibly the Dominicans. The 14th-century Bridgittines were purposely founded using this form of community.
In the Catholic Church, monks and nuns would live in separate buildings but were usually united under an Abbess as head of the entire household. Examples include the original Coldingham Priory in Scotland, Barking Abbey in London, and also Einsiedeln Abbey and Fahr Convent in separate cantons of Switzerland, controlled by the male abbot of Einsiedeln without a converse arrangement for the prioress of Fahr. More commonly, however, a woman, termed an abbess, ruled over the two communities.[4] In most English and many Continental instances the abbess not rarely was a princess or widowed queen.
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