Abbess

The abbess is the head of a community of nuns, elected by its members and holding within her house the same governing authority that an abbot holds within his.

Elected and governing

The abbess is chosen by the professed members of the community and rules its life and discipline as its mother and superior, exercising a real jurisdiction over the internal affairs of the monastery, so that within the enclosure her authority is complete in the way the abbot is within his. The office is ancient, and in the medieval period some abbesses ruled great and wealthy houses and wielded considerable temporal power, a few holding an authority over lands and even clergy that was remarkable for women of their time.

The limit of the office

The authority of the abbess is one of government and jurisdiction rather than of holy orders, for a woman cannot be ordained in the churches that maintain the office, so the abbess governs and disciplines her community but does not perform the priestly acts, which require a priest brought to the monastery. Within that limit her rule over the house is genuine and her election by the community makes her, like the abbot, the elected head of an autonomous body rather than an appointee from outside. The office is the female counterpart of the abbot, and it has been one of the principal positions of real authority open to women across the history of the church.

The abbess's authority reached its furthest extent in the double monasteries of the early medieval period, communities of both monks and nuns governed by a single abbess, the most celebrated example being Hilda of Whitby, who ruled such a house in seventh century Northumbria and hosted the Synod of Whitby in 664, a gathering that settled the date of Easter for the English church under her roof.

Some medieval abbesses held authority extending well beyond spiritual government of their own community. The abbess of Las Huelgas in Spain exercised a quasi-episcopal jurisdiction over the clergy and parishes attached to her abbey for centuries, confirming appointments and hearing cases in a manner otherwise reserved to a bishop, an extent of authority that later ecclesiastical reform curtailed. A small number of English abbesses, as tenants-in-chief of the crown, were summoned to parliament in the medieval period, though without a vote.

Vocations to the office have fallen in Western Europe and North America since the 1960s in step with the broader decline in women's religious life, while communities in Africa and Asia have grown, and double monasteries of the early medieval type have not survived into the modern church in any of the traditions that once had them.