Double monastery
[3] Double monasteries were revived again after the 12th century in a significantly different way[2] when a number of religious houses were established on this pattern among Benedictines and possibly the Dominicans.
Following the death of her husband Clovis II in 657, St. Balthild, the Queen Regent of Neustria and Burgundy became patron of the community, thereby promoting the example of Luxeuil's mixed rule — a combination of Benedictine and Columbanian monasticism — throughout medieval Europe.
[10] Balthild was responsible for the foundation of an abbey of nuns at Chelles around 659, a double monastery, where she retired following her vacating of the regency of the Merovingian throne.
In the 5th century, the monastery of St. Brigit of Kildare was a community of men and women living together without strict separation, but there is little evidence as to whether it was traditional or an anomaly.
In this Rule, Walbert asserts that abbesses share many of the powers of an abbot, including the ability to hear confessions from their nuns and absolve them of their sins.
[14] Hilda of Whitby, abbess of the most famous double house in England, had originally intended to join her sister at Chelles in 647, where many other daughters of the English nobility were educated.
She continued the Gaulish tradition of noble female heads of double monasteries at Whitby Abbey, which she directly modelled drawing both upon Aidan’s teaching and the Rule followed by her contemporaries at Chelles and Jouarre.
[15] By order of King Oswiu, in 664 Hilda hosted the Synod of Whitby, which brought together representatives from the Celtic and Roman churches to resolve ecclesiastical differences between them, including the Easter Controversy.
[18] The prominent position occupied in England by double monasteries emerges further from the fact that Whitby served in the seventh century as a place of retirement and burial for several Anglo-Saxon kings.
[17][19] Beyond Whitby, Anglo-Saxon England cultivated double monasteries including Ely, which was founded by Queen (and later Saint) Etheldreda of Northumbria.
After spending twelve years refusing to consummate her marriage, Etheldreda was granted the land for Ely by her husband, King Ecgfrith of Northumbria.
The most obvious doctrinal explanation for this shift lies in the twentieth canon of the seventh ecumenical synod declared at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787.
The double monasteries already existing may continue … but must observe the following ordinance: Monks and nuns may not reside in one building, for living together gives occasion for incontinence.
In England, the effects of constant Viking raids combined with the general decline of a cloistered life during the early 9th century all led to a sharp decrease in the populations and activities of these double houses.
Double monasteries continued in Frankish society, but both sections, male and female, eventually shifted into more separate communities of canons and canonesses.
A more recent Eastern Orthodox example emerged in England at Tolleshunt Knights in Essex where the Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist[30] was established in 1959.
