This book considers the development of female religious life between Late Antiquity and the
High Middle Ages and is the first general study to address this earlier period. Chapters range
widely over major themes associated with spiritual ideas and social functions normative
structures and spatial organisation forms of communal life economic foundations and social
relationships. Along with these evolutionary aspects including charismatic beginnings and the
activity of founders in relation to institutionalization but also the effects of crises
reformation and transformation are examined in chronologically broad and geographically
diverse settings based on the analysis of significant phenomena and examples. The aim of the
volume is to provide a comparative approach which will allow a better understanding of the
dynamics complexities and differentiations in women's religious life as well as their cultural
importance and - in relation to the male religious - occasionally ambivalent status.
