yes were to be kept lowered at all times, the hours for going to
bed and for rising were fixed, and there were minute regulations
regarding prayers, watches, and devotions. Furthermore, they were rarely
allowed to go out of their convents, they were to possess nothing of
their own, mirrors were not tolerated, being conducive to personal
vanity, and the luxury of a bath was granted only in case of sickness.

As with the ordinary rules of conduct, so the ordinary routine of daily
life in a nunnery corresponded to that of a monastery. Hour by hour,
there was the same periodical rotation of work and religious service,
with short intervals at fixed times for rest or food. The usual
occupation in the earliest times had to do with the carding and
spinning of wool, and Saint Jerome, with his characteristic
earnestness, advises the nuns to have the wool ever in their hands.
Saint Augustine gives us the picture of a party of nuns standing at the
door of their convent and handing out the woollen garments which they
have made for the old monks who are standing there waiting to receive
them, with food to give to the nuns in exchange. The simplicity of this
scene recalls the epitaph which is said to have been written in honor of
a Roman housewife who lived in the simple days of the Republic: "She
stayed at home and spun wool!" Somewhat later the nuns were called upon
to furnish the elegantly embroidered altar cloths which were used in the
churches, and, still later, in some places girls' schools were
established in the convents.

In the eleventh century, the successful struggle which had been made by
Gregory VII., with the aid of the Countess Matilda, for the principle of
papal supremacy exerted a marked influence upon the religious life of
the time and gave an undoubted impetus to the idea of conventual life
for women, as during this period many new cloisters were established. It
will be readily understood that the deeds of the illustrious Tuscan
countess had been held up more than once to the gaze of the people of
Italy as worthy of their emulation, and many women were unquestionably
induced in this way to give their lives to the Church. In the Cistercian
order alone there were more than six thousand cloisters for women by the
middle of the twelfth century.

It was during this same eleventh century, when a woman had helped to
strengthen the power of the Church, that the influence of the
Madonna--of Mary, the mother of Christ--beg