SISTERHOODS

are communities of women living together for religious or charitable purposes. The word S. is especially used of such congregations ag live under the jurisdiction of the Anglican Church. The monastic life for women has a history which goes back almost as far as the history of religious communities for men. It dates to preChristian times. All modern forms of community life for women are modeled upon the organization of the great religious orders of the middle ages and their descendants of today. Prior to the | Reformation in England and the disestablishment of the religious houses, such organizations for women took their ‘rise from ‘second orders’ of such con= greg a tions as the Do mini cans and the Benedictines. The following are some of the best known of the old religious orders for women in the Catholic Church, with the dates of their foundations Poor Clares, 1212; Beguines, 1170; Carmelites, 1568. After the di olution of the religious communities in England in the reign of Henry VIII., congregational life for women died out. There were one or two attempts to revive religious orders for women, but it was not until the beginning of the 19th century that S. re-appeared in the Anglican Church. An interest in such establishments revived about 1845, and was a isted by the influence of the Oxford Tractarian movement. The orders which gradually came into existence no longer looked to an ascetic life as their ideal; their purpose wag generally a charitable one. Nursing and good works were rather their objects than a cloistral and meditative life. A similar movement was obsery= able in the Roman Catholic com= munities which came into existence about this time, such as the charitable oroa ele inaugurated by St. Vincent 6 Paul.