Word Finder - nuns

definition

A member of a Christian religious community of women who live by certain vows and usually wear a habit, (specifically) those living together in a cloister.

synonyms

• moniale
• sister
• sistren

definition

(by extension) A member of a similar female community in other confessions.

definition

A prostitute.

definition

A kind of pigeon with the feathers on its head like the hood of a nun.

definition

The fourteenth letter of many Semitic alphabets/abjads (Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic and others).

A vigorous campaign against monasticism took place; the monasteries were closed, and many of them pulled down or converted into barracks; monks and nuns were compelled to marry, and exiled in large numbers to Cyprus; the literary and artistic treasures were sold for the benefit of the imperial treasury.

The law includes with clerics, monks, deaconesses, nuns, ascetics; and the word " clerics " covered persons in minor orders, down to doorkeepers.

The registration of anomalies, such as the suspended letters, inverted nuns and larger letters, enabled any one to test the accuracy of a copy.

She'd seen a handful of nuns yesterday, and only Daniela spoke to her.

Originally located in the convent of St Barbara, the university was removed in 1581 to the convent of the White Nuns, the site of which it still occupies, though that building was destroyed in 1616.

Even the nuns of Geneva were notorious for their conduct."

At Marseilles (after 410) he founded two religious societies - a convent for nuns, and the abbey of St Victor, which during his time is said to have contained 5000 inmates.

Though her reading was confined to the lives of the saints, she taught in the school kept by the nuns for the girls of the neighbourhood, to whom she endeared herself by her kindly disposition.

The monks and nuns were looked upon as the most consistent Christians, and were honoured accordingly.

It was Boniface, too, who, with the aid of numerous English priests, monks and nuns, introduced the literary culture of England into Germany.

Just to flutter the nuns a bit.

In 1212 Francis invested St Clara (q.v.) with the Franciscan habit, and so instituted the "Second Order," that of the nuns.

There were in 1901 20,707 parishes in Italy, 68,444 secular clergy and 48,043 regulars (monks, lay brothers and nuns).

On the 30th of June 1903 the patrimony of the endowment fund amounted to 17,339,040, of which only 264,289 were represented by buildings still occupied by monks or nuns.

He founded the Congregation of the French Oratory in 1611 and introduced the Carmelite nuns into France, notwithstanding the opposition of the friars of that order, who were jealous of his ascendancy.

St Helen's, Bishopsgate, belonged to a priory of nuns founded c. 1212, but the greater part of the building is later.

The Minories, a street leading south from Aldgate, takes name from an abbey of nuns of St Clare (Sorores Minores) founded in 1293.

One of the most striking changes in the appearance of Norman London was caused by the rebuilding of old churches and the building of new ones, and also by the foundation of bourhood of London, although the houses of nuns, of which there were many dotted over the suburbs of London, were governed by this rule.

It was in existence many years before the priory of the nuns of St Helen's was founded.

When we remember that more than half of the area of London was occupied by these establishments, and that about a third of the inhabitants were monks, nuns and friars, it is easy to imagine how great must have been the disorganization caused by this root and branch reform.

To the west are the archbishop's palace and a convent of Presentation nuns.

The family had strong Catholic leanings, and two of Nicholas's sisters, who must have been much older than he was, became nuns of Sion convent before its dissolution.

The house afterwards acquired such ill repute that in 1177 the nuns were dispersed and the house was attached to the abbey of Fontevrault, by whom it was re-established.

To marry, to do away with images, to become monks and nuns, or for monks and nuns to leave their convent, to eat meat on Friday or not to eat it, and other like things - all these are open questions, and should not be forbidden by any man.

In conclusion a word must be said on the Benedictine nuns.

St Gregory describes St Benedict's sister Scholastica as a nun (sanctimonialis), and she is looked upon as the foundress of Benedictine nuns.

At the present day there are of Black Benedictine nuns 262 convents with 7000 nuns, the large majority being directly subject to the diocesan bishops; if the Cistercians and others be included, there are 387 convents with nearly Ii,000 nuns.

On Benedictine nuns much will be found in the above-mentioned authorities, and also in Lina Eckenstein, Woman in Monasticism (1896).

Most of the congregations of Augustinian canons had convents of nuns, called canonesses; many such exist to this day.

It is a heritage from the middle ages, when the Knights Hospitallers undertook for men the duties discharged in female institutions by the nuns.

The foundation provided for seven to thirteen canons, with a number of lay brothers and a community of nuns.

The best girls' schools are generally those kept by nuns.

Cracow has 39 churches - about half the number it formerly had - and 25 convents for monks and nuns.

St Peter's chapel formerly served as the cathedral of the Roman Catholic archbishopric of Armagh; and in the abbey of the Dominican nuns there is still preserved the head of Oliver Plunkett, the archbishop who was executed at Tyburn in 1681 on an unfounded charge of treason.

The Order of Fontevrault was founded about 1too by Robert of Arbrissel, who was born in the village of Arbrissel or Arbresec, in the diocese of Rennes, and attained great fame as a preacher and ascetic. The establishment was a double monastery, containing a nunnery of 300 nuns and a monastery of 200 monks, separated completely so that no communication was allowed except in the church, where the services were carried on in common; there were, moreover, a hospital for 120 lepers and other sick, and a penitentiary for fallen women, both worked by the nuns.

The special feature of the institute was that the abbess ruled the monks as well as the nuns.

At the beginning the order had a great vogue, and at the time of Robert's death, 1117, there were several monasteries and 3000 nuns; afterwards the number of monasteries reached 57, all organized on the same plan.

The nuns in England as in France were recruited from the highest families, and the abbess of Fontevrault, who was the superior-general of the whole order, was usually of the royal family of France.

Immediately below Rolandseck in mid-river is the island of Nonnenwerth, on which is a nursing school under the conduct of Franciscan nuns, established in 1850.

A convent school of the Ursuline nuns is a prominent feature on a hill to the south.

There have been Basilian nuns from the beginning, St Macrina, St Basil's sister, having established a nunnery which was under his direction.

The nuns are devoted to a purely contemplative life, and in Russia, where there are about a hundred nunneries, they are not allowed to take final vows until the age of sixty.

The cope belonged to the convent of Syon near Isleworth, was taken to Portugal at the Reformation, brought back early in the 19th century to England by exiled nuns and given by them to the Earl of Shrewsbury.

It is a curious coincidence that the sister of each of the three great cenobitical founders, Pachomius, Basil and Benedict, was a nun and ruled a community of nuns according to an adaptation of her brother's rule for monks.

In the West the Benedictine nuns played a great part in the Christian settlement of north-western Europe.

As the various monastic and mendicant orders arose, a female branch was in most cases formed alongside of the order; and so we find canon.esses, and hermitesses, and Dominicanesses, and Franciscan nuns [or Clares (q.v.)] - requisite information will be found in the respective articles.

Then there were the " double orders " of Sempringham (see ST Gilbert) and Fontevrault, in which the nuns were the predominant, or even the dominant, element.

In early times nuns could go out of their enclosure on occasion; but in the later middle ages, up to the council of Trent, the tendency was to keep them more and more strictly confined within their convent precincts.

In 1609 an English lady, Mary Ward, founded at Munich the " Institute of Mary," the nuns of which were not bound to enclosure.

As women are debarred from exercising the spiritual functions of the ministry, it follows that nuns have to devote themselves either to a more purely contemplative life, or else to a more wholly active one, than is usual among the orders of men, who commonly, in virtue of their priesthood, have been able to find a mixed form of life between the two extremes.