NUNS
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NUNS
arithmptioa p ppomctria" (Antwerp, 1567); "Annota-
<;6es !i Mcchanica de Aristotelcs e ils theoricas dos
planetas de Purbachio com a arte de Navegar" (Coim-
bra, 1578).
AIo.vTDCLA, HUtoiredee math. (Paris, 1799. 1802); NavaRRETE, Recherches sur leg progrks de Vastronomic et des sciences nautiquea en Espagne. Fr. tr. de Mofrab (Paris, 1839) ; Stockler, Ensaio historico sobre a origem c progrcssos das vuuhematicas em Portugal.
Paul H. Linehan.
Nuns. I. Origin and History. — The institution of nuns and sisters, who devote themselves in various re- ligious orders to the practice of a life of perfection, dates from the first ages of tiie Church, and women may claim with a certain pride that they were the first to embrace the religious state for its own sake, with- out regard to missionary work and ecclesia,stical func- tions proper to men. St. Paul speaks of widows, who were called to certain kinds of church work (I Tim., v, 9), and of virgins (I Cor., vii), whom he praises for their continence and their devotion to the things of the Lord. In the earliest times Christian women di- rected their fervour, some towards the service of the sanctuarj-, others to the attainment of perfection. The virgins were remarkable for their perfect and per- petual chastity which the Catholic Apologists have extolled as a contrast to pagan corruption (St. Justin, "Apol.", I, c. 15; Migne, "P. G.", VI, 350; St. Am- brose, "De Virginibus", Bk I, c. 4; Migne, "P. L.", XVI, 193). Many also practised poverty. From the earliest times they were called the spouses of Christ, according to St. Athanasius, the custom of the Church ("Apol. ad Constant.", sec. 33; Migne, "P.O." XXV, 639). St. Cyprian describes a virgin who had broken her vows as an adulteress ("Ep. 62", Migne, "P. L.", IV, 370) . Tertullian distinguishes between those vir- gins who took the veil publicly in the assembly of the faithful, and others known to God alone; the veil seems to have been simply that of married women. Virgins vowed to the service of God, at first continued to live with their families, but as early as the end of the third century there were community houses known as -n-apeevQi/es; and certainly at the beginning of the same century the virgins formed a special class in the Church, receiving Holy Communion before the laity. The office of Good Friday in which the virgins are mentioned after the porters, and the Litany of the Saints, in which they are invoked with the widows, show traces of this classification. They were some- times admitted among the deaconesses for the baptism of adult women and to exercise the functions which St. Paul had reserved for widows of sixty years.
When the persecutions of the third century drove many into the desert, the solitary life produced many heroines; and when the monks began to live in monas- teries, there were also communities of women. St. Pachomius (292-346) built a convent in which a num- ber of religious women lived with his sister. St. Je- rome made famous the mona.'^tery of St. Paula at Beth- lehem. St. Augustine addressed to the nuns a letter of direction from which subsequently his rule was taken. There were monasteries of virgins or nuns at Rome, throughout Italy, Gaul, Spain, and the West. The great founders or reformers of monastic or more generally religious life, saw their rules adopted by women. The nuns of Egypt and Syria cut their hair, a practice not introduced until later into the West. Monasteries of women were generally situated at a distance from those of men; St. Pachomius insisted on this separation, also St. Benedict. There were, how- ever, common houses, one wing being set apart for women and the other for men, more frequently adjoin- ing houses for the two sexes. Justinian abolished these double houses in the East, placed an old man to look after the temporal aff.airs of the convent, and appointed a priest and a deacon who were to perform their duties, but not to hold any other communication with the nuns. In the West, such double houses ex-
isted among the hospitallers even in the twelfth cen-
tury. In the eighth and ninth centuries a number of
clergy of the principal churches of the West, without
being bound by religious profession, chose to live in
community and to observe a fixed rule of life. This
canonical life was led also by women, who retired from
the world, took vows of chastity, dressed modestly in
black, but were not bound to give of their property.
Continence and a certain religious profession were re-
quired of married women whose husbands were in
Sacred Orders, or even received episcopal consecra-
tion.
Hence in the ninth century the list of women vowed to the service of God included these various classes: virgins, whose .solemn consecration was reserved to the bishop, nuns bound by religious ijrofe.ssion, canon- esses hving in common without religious profession, deaconesses engaged in the service of the church, and wives or widows of men in Sacred Orders. The nuns sometimes occupied a special house; the en- closure strictly kept in the East, was not considered indispensable in the West. Other monasteries al- lowed the nuns to go in and out. In Gaul and Spain the novitiate lasted one year for the cloistered nuns and three years for the others. In early times the nuns gave Christian education to orphans, young girls brought by their parents, and especially girls in- tending to embrace a religious Ufe. Besides those who took the veil of virgins of their own accord, or decided to embrace the religious life, there were otliers offered by their parents before they were old enough to be consulted. In the West under the discipline in force for several centuries, these oblates were considered as bound for life by the offering made by their parents. The profession itself might be expressed or implied. One who put on the religious habit, and lived for some time among the professed, was herself considered as professed. Besides the taking of the veil and simple profession there was also a solemn consecration of virginity which took place much later, at twenty-five years. In the thirteenth century, the Mendicant Orders appeared characterized by a more rigorous poverty, which excluded not only private property, but also the possession of certain kinds of property in common. Under the direction of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Clare founded in 1212 the Second Order of Franciscans. St. Dominic had given a consti- tution to nuns, even before instituting his Friars Preachers, approved 22 December, 1216. The Car- melites and the Hermits of St. Augustine also had cor- responding orders of women; and the same was the case with the Clerks Regular dating from the sixteenth century, except the Society of Jesus.
From the time of the Mendicant Orders, founded specially for preaching and missionary work, there was a great difference between the orders of men and women, arising from the strict enclosure to which women were subjected. This rigorous enclosure usual in the East, was imposed on all nuns in the West, first by bishops and particular councils, and afterwards by the Holy See. Boniface VIII (1294-1.309) by his constitution "Periculoso", inserted in Canon Law [c. un, De statu regularium, in VI" (III, 16)] made it an inviolable law for all professed nuns; and the Coun- cil of Trent (Sess. XXV, De Reg. et Mon., c. v) con- firmed that constitution. Hence it was impossible for religious to undertake works of charity incompat- ible with the enclosure. The education of j'oung girls alone was permitted to them, and that under some- what inconvenient conditions. It was also impossible for them to organize on the lines of the Mendicant Orders, that is to say to have a superior general over several houses and members attached to a province rather than to a monastery. The difficulty was some- times avoided by having tertiary sisters, bound only by simple vows, and dispensed from the enclosure. The Breviary commemorates the services rendered
