Benedictine Nuns

nuns following the order of Benedict. They claim St. Scholastica, the sister of Benedict, as their founder, but without historical grounds. All previous orders were gradually forced to adopt the Benedictine rule, and so it spread widely throughout Christendom. In France they possessed one hundred and sixteen priories and abbeys in the gift of the king alone, and in England seventy-four houses. In some of these houses the nuns followed the strictest rules, never touching meat, wearing no linen, and sleeping on the bare boards. Others admitted some relaxation of this severity. The Benedictine nunneries were rarely united in congregations, but remained single, under the jurisdiction of the diocesan bishops, rarely under that of the Benedictine monks. Irregularities and disorder spread among them earlier and more generally than among the monks; a great preference was given to the nobility, and some of the richest monasteries even changed themselves into secular institutions of ladies of nobility, which retained of the Benedictine order nothing but the name. Several congregations of reformed Benedictine nuns were founded, among which the most important were the congregation of Mount Calvary, founded in 1617, and the congregation of the Perpetual Adoration of the Sacred Sacrament, who, in addition to other austerities, are obliged to have perpetually one of their number kneeling day and night before the sacrament! They were founded by Catherine de Bar, a native of St. Die, in Lorraine, in 1615, and ratified by Innocent XI in 1676. Both have in recent times re-established several monasteries in France, the latter also in Italy, Austria, and Poland.