The Dark Period in Nursing 89 a small house containing a few beds and elementary appliances (650 A.D.). The religious order that gradually took shape there never assumed any other duties than the ward nursing. It had no diversity through teaching or embroidery and other household arts. These Sisters are distinguished, therefore, as the oldest purely nursing order of nuns in existence. Their first six hundred years of hospital service were probably marked by no more artificial restrictions than were usual in that early time, when women were busy in building up their careers. But, under Innocent IV. (1243-54), who was opposed to self-government in women's religious associations, and following the bishop's decree, the Hotel-Dieu Sisters were given a rigid rule according to St. Augustine. They became, in effect, a cloistered order, as they could not go beyond the hospital walls except by permission of the clergy. The historical records deal with their last six hundred years, and show us self-abnegation and toil to a crushing degree, but very poor nursing as we understand it. Repression had its full effect. During the later Middle Ages the church continued to limit women's freedom. In 1545 the Council of Trent decreed that "every community of women should live in strict enclosure." It took two
