care was necessary to prevent too close proximity of
the nunneries and monasteries and to limit the intercourse of the
inmates of the respective institutions to the bare necessities of
their mutual dependence.

The rules by which women were governed in the life of the convent did
not differ much from those for the men. Some of these regulations were
very rigorous: the inmates were to have nothing of their own, nor
were they allowed to go out of the convent, and they were permitted
the luxury of a bath only in time of sickness. Continual silence,
frequent confessions, a spare diet, and hard labor were to be endured
uncomplainingly, on penalty of excommunication.

In the fifth century, prohibitions were issued proscribing the
founding of any more monasteries for monks and nuns together and
ordering the partitioning of those which already existed. No man
excepting the officiating clergy, the bishop, and the steward of the
convent was allowed to enter within its walls; and, indeed, one of
the rules enjoined that the nuns were to make confession to the bishop
through the abbess. Under no pretext whatever were the nuns to lodge
under the roof of a monastery, nor was any person who was not a monk
or a cleric of high repute to be allowed within the precincts of the
convent on temporal business; but in spite of the many rules by which
they were hedged about, in the eighth century nuns are found admitted
into the monasteries on the ground of the necessity for their presence
in sickness and similar emergencies.

Besides the nuns, strictly so called, in the eighth and subsequent
centuries there were canonesses, who differed from the nuns in
retaining more of their secular character. Their vows were not
perpetual, and they confined their labors chiefly to the instruction
of the children of the nobles.

Having cited some of the rules for the government of those who
committed themselves to the life of the nun, it now remains to perform
the delicate task of showing the degree of success which attended
the attempt to isolate a class of unmarried women, that, by religious
offices and meditations, they might wholly dedicate their time and
their faculties to the cultivation of the Christian graces, and serve
as the benefactresses of the poor in giving alms at the convent
gate. The century that witnessed the outbreak of the Reformation is
commonly regarded as exceptional for laxity of religious principle and
perversion of the institut