SOURCE: Berman, Constance H. “Introduction: Religious Women and Religious Reform in the High Middle Ages, with an Emphasis on Cistercian Nuns.” In Women and Monasticism in Medieval Europe: Sisters and Patrons of the Cistercian Reform, edited by Constance H. Berman, pp. 1-14. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications and The Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages, 2002.

In the following essay, Berman provides an overview of the history of women's religious communities. Parenthetical numerical references in the text refer to documents presented in Berman's edition.

Women played a role in the history of monasticism from its origins in early Christianity. Early medieval communities of nuns were often “double monasteries”—women's houses and an attached men's house—and they were frequently ruled by a powerful abbess who came from a noble or royal family. However, many of these communities were destroyed in Viking invasions of Europe during the ninth...