Julie Ann Smith

Prouille, Madrid, Rome: the evolution of the earliest Dominican Instituta for nuns

The lifestyles of the three earliest Dominican womens communities were formulated according to their specific historical conditions and exigencies during the years 1206–21. Initially, the women associated with the preaching mission of Diego of Osma and Dominic Guzman were based at Prouille in the Languedoc and followed the Augustinian Rule. The development of the first instituta for Dominican nuns was the result of 15 years of overseeing the lives of the sisters. However, enclosure, and the institutional requirement for its observance, only came about in 1220 with the establishment of San Sisto, when St Dominic wrote an instituta specifically intended for a cloistered nunnery. This paper retraces and elucidates the historical development of the first Dominican instituta for women, and considers the remarkable choice of the Augustinian Rule as the basis for an enclosed womens order.

An Apostolic Vocation: the Formation of the Religious Life for the Dominican Sisters in the Thirteenth Century

ominic’s decision to establish the women’s communities of his Order in accordance with the Rule of St. Augustine has been understood either as simply aligning the Sisters’ religio with that of the Preachers or as complying with the requirements of Lateran IV. 1 However, this misunderstands Dominic’s intentions, and those of the Sisters themselves, and misrepresents the Sisters’ vocation. Both women and men heeded the call to the vita apostolica in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, though the perceived unfitness of women for preaching was, and has continued to be, understood as excluding them from the realization of an apostolic vocation. This presumes that the authentic apostolic life is premised on preaching, though the call that Jesus made to his followers was much broader than this and was made to both women and men. The Dominican vocation sprang from complex historical understandings of the vita apostolica, and the Dominican women’s religio should be approached as part of these same contexts and perceptions. 2 This can be most readily achieved through studying the representation of the apostolic vocation that was achieved in the yoking of the Augustinian Rule with the Dominican women’s institutes. 3 In this way, the fundamental premise of the female Dominican religio may be better understood. Hence, this study takes as its focus the n ormathe normative texts that were intended to shape the Sisters’ lives and to enable or authorize a particular vocation and that were cultural products springing from their particular religious and monastic environments. This is not a study of the lived experience of the Sisters or of how the rules and institutes may have been implemented or interpreted—that is an entirely different endeavor. Firstly, a brief historical overview of the steps that made possible

Debitum Obedientie: Heloise and Abelard on Governance at the Paraclete

Governance was a fundamental issue of monastic life and of the normative texts that shaped it. The letters of Heloise and Abelard on the monastic life, and the Institutiones Nostrae written by Heloise, or perhaps under her guidance, explore (among other things) the problem of governance for nunneries. Abelards recommendation that monks should manage both the spiritual and mundane governance of an enclosed womens community was neutralized by Heloises formulation of the Institutiones Nostrae (a very concise expression of the apostolic lifestyle of the Paraclete) in which she clearly located authority in the abbess.

Shaping Authority in the Female Franciscan Rules and formae vitae (c. 1212–63)

Between 1212 and 1263, seven rules and formae vitae were written specifically for women who wished to undertake some form of poor, penitential, or Franciscan life. The various movements of sorores pauperes sprang from different impetuses, only some of which had their foundations in a desire to share the spirituality of the Friars Minor. Despite resistance from the Friars, several experiments in rule making were undertaken that would variously shape the religiones of the sisters with their diverse visions for a Franciscan women’s religio. The specific case study undertaken here focuses on these rules and their formation of principles and relationships of authority, both external and intra-communal, for a women’s religio.