The Monasticon is a repertory of profiles of women's religious
communities that existed between 400-1600 C.E. Historians use
different definitions for these communities than terms
traditionally used to describe male monastic institutions.
Women's communities were often less formal, less prosperous, and
less visible in documentary sources than male communities. They
were also more flexible; women's communities tended toward
cycles of institutional success and relative invisibility, often
disappearing for generations only to reappear under the same
name elsewhere, or in the same location but in a new form. We
seek to document here many kinds of ecclesiastical and lay
institutions. Profiles in the Monasticon record communities of
every size, affiliation, and rule including convents but also
beguinages, reclusaria, consortia, congregations, and
confraternities; hospitals, asylums, pilgrims hospices,
hospitaller foundations; converse sisters and oblates; house
churches, house monasteries, oratories and spiritual g