A convent is an enclosed community of , , or . Alternatively, convent means the building used by the community.
The term is particularly used in the Catholic Church, Lutheranism, and the Anglican Communion.
Etymology and usage
The term
convent derives via Old French from Latin
conventus, perfect participle of the verb
convenio, meaning "to convene, to come together". It was first used in this sense when the eremitical life began to be combined with the cenobitical. The original reference was to the gathering of mendicants who spent much of their time travelling. Technically, a
monastery is a secluded community of monastics, whereas a friary or convent is a community of
Mendicant orders (which, by contrast, might be located in a city), and a
canonry is a community of
canon regular. The terms
abbey and
priory can be applied to both monasteries and canonries; an abbey is headed by an
abbot, and a priory is a lesser dependent house headed by a prior. In the
Middle Ages, convents often provided to women a way to excel, as they were considered inferior to men.
In convents, women were educated and were able to write books and publish works on gardening or musicology
or on religion and philosophy. The
abbess of a convent was often also involved in decisions of secular life and interacted with politicians and businessmen.
Unlike an
abbey, a convent is not placed under the responsibility of an abbot or an abbess, but of a superior or prior.
In modern English usage, since about the 19th century, the term convent almost invariably refers to a community of women,[See Etym on line] while monastery and friary are used for communities of men. In historical usage they are often interchangeable, with convent especially likely to be used for a friary. When applied to religious houses in Eastern Orthodoxy and Buddhism, English refers to all houses of male religious as monasteries and of female religious as convents.
History
The mendicant orders appeared at the beginning of the 13th century with the growth of cities; they include in particular the
Dominican Order, the
Franciscans, the
Carmelites, and the
Augustinians. While the
Benedictine monks and their various variants devoted themselves to their agricultural properties, the
mendicant friars settled from the start in the cities, or in the suburbs thereof, preferably in the poorer and more densely populated districts. They therefore had to adapt their buildings to these new constraints.
See also
-
Christian monasticism
-
Enclosed religious orders
-
Former Carmelite Convent at Nantes
External links
