In many religious orders and congregations, communities of men and communities of women are related, following the same rules and constitutions. In the first centuries of the Church, the one generally began with the other. Most, if not all, of the congregations which go to form the canonical order had, or still have, a correlative congregation for women. Some communities of canonesses developed unenclosed institutes of Religious Sisters to complement their activity. The
Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal, grew from the Canonesses of St. Augustine of the Congregation of Our Lady, with the same goal of free education for the poor. In a similar manner, in 1897, the Canonesses of St. Augustine in
Belgium answered the request of a
missionary priest in
Mulagumudu,
India, for help with an
orphanage he ran there. They sent several of their members to serve at this facility. Although they found, upon their arrival, that the priest had since died, they took on the care of the orphans he left behind. Not long after their arrival, and led by their
Mother Superior,
Mother Marie Louise De Meester, the Sisters went on to form an independent
religious congregation called the Missionary Canonesses of St. Augustine, composed of many local Indian women as well as
Europeans. In 1963, however, inspired by the
Scheut Fathers with whom they frequently worked and from whom they received much spiritual support, the congregation chose to drop its monastic element, and transformed itself into the
Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. In England the
Canonesses Regular of the Holy Sepulchre established a school at New Hall; although no longer ministering in the school, what they founded continues to flourish. At one time there was a community at Hoddesdon, devoted to the contemplative life and perpetual
Eucharistic Adoration. This convent was a link with the pre-Reformation canonesses, through Sister Elizabeth Woodford, who was professed at Barnharm Priory,
Buckinghamshire on 8 December 1519. When the convent was suppressed, in 1539, she went to the Low Countries and was received into the convent of canonesses regular at Saint Ursula's,
Louvain. Numerous women followed and a separate English-speaking community was established. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, this community of English canonesses returned to England. As with the canons so also among the canonesses, commitment to
liturgical prayer, discipline and love of community life at first flourished but then languished, so that in the tenth and eleventh centuries several monasteries became secular and, though living in the same house, no longer observed the spirit of
poverty or kept a common table.
Canoness regular in choir dress with ermine There are canonesses regular as well as canons regular with the apostolic origin being common to both. Communities of
canonesses regular developed from the groups of women who took the name and the rule of life laid down for the various congregations of canons regular. They would take
religious vows and, like the canons, followed the
Rule of St. Augustine. They have the same obligation to the
Divine Office as do the canons, and like them, the distinctive part of their
religious habit is the white, linen
rochet over the traditional black
tunic. Again, like the canons, some congregations have simply replaced the rochet with a white tunic for their habit. Unlike
nuns, whose communities generally followed the
Rule of St. Benedict and supported themselves through farming, communities of canonesses would dedicate themselves entirely to various forms of social service, such as nursing or teaching.
Secular canoness In medieval Europe, many communities arose where unmarried daughters and widows from among the nobility could withdraw to monasteries in which they lived pious lives of devotion, but did not become
nuns. As they did not follow a
monastic Rule (), they were termed
secular canonesses. Generally speaking, these monasteries were entirely composed of aristocrats. Unlike nuns, they took no permanent
vows, and were not committed to a life of poverty, or to a common life for eating and sleeping. Essentially they provided a respectable, yet religious, way of life for those women who might not have been desirous of marriage at that stage in their lives, or simply wanted to focus on prayer in a manner befitting their station in life. In some examples they lived in their own houses, and most had servants available. They took no vows of perpetual
celibacy (often excepting the abbess, as at
Essen Abbey), and thus could leave at any time to marry, which happened not infrequently. An influx of Greek names at Essen suggests that after the death of the Empress
Theophanu in 991, a
Byzantine princess, her Greek
ladies-in-waiting were retired
en masse to Essen, where at this period the powerful abbesses were mostly women from the ruling
Ottonian dynasty. Where affected by the
Protestant Reformation, these communities almost invariably accepted the new faith. Some continued to exist as communities of single women supported by the local rulers. Almost all had ceased to exist by the 20th century.
Notable canonesses Secular canonesses •
Gerberga II, Abbess of Gandersheim (c. 940 – 1001) •
Hrotsvitha (c. 935–973), a German secular canoness known for her impact on literature and history •
Mathilde, Abbess of Essen •
Matilda of Ringelheim •
Matilda, Abbess of Quedlinburg (955–999) •
Adelaide I, Abbess of Quedlinburg (c. 973 – c. 1044) •
Sophia I, Abbess of Gandersheim ==Present day==