Convent is a religious community, usually of women, who have taken religious vows and live under religious rule. The term is commonly applied to an order or society of female Christian nuns, and especially to the building in which they live. The head of a convent is usually called a mother superior, but may have a different title, such as abbess or prioress.
The word convent comes from the Latin word conventus, which means assembly or gathering. Originally, the word meant any religious house. During the Middle Ages, the Franciscan order used it to distinguish its new form of life from the older abbey or monastery forms.
In a cloistered convent, the sisters and novices are isolated from the outside world. In their cloistered life, they seek their own salvation and that of others through a program of worship, prayer, and contemplation. The Carmelites and the Poor Clares are contemplative orders. Uncloistered convents include orders, societies, and institutes that conduct schools, maintain hospitals, and provide other types of social services. Examples are the Little Sisters of the Poor and the Daughters of Charity. To some degree, almost all orders seek to combine the two ways of life.
Buddhist and Taoist nuns also live in convents. They devote themselves to contemplative lives, but they are not as fully isolated from society as the Christian contemplative orders.
See also Nun; Religious life; Monasticism; Cloister.
