The earliest Christian women's communities date to the third and fourth centuries and emerged out of a movement of thousands of individuals who had fled to the desert regions of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria to lead lives of strict prayer and ascetic discipline. Surviving sources, all composed by men, suggest there were far fewer female than male desert dwellers. Many ascetics lived as solitaries, but others spontaneously adopted a communal lifestyle, a shift possibly spearheaded by women since community life offered them important protections.

Women associated with this movement include the desert mother Syncletica, who appears to be addressing a community of women in sayings attributed to her; Paula, who cofounded a monastery in 386 in Bethlehem with Jerome (c. 342–420); and the Roman patrician Melania the Elder, who led some fifty women in a monastery she established on the Mount of Olives. A...