Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/66

50 A Short History of Nursing fourth and the twelfth centuries. A remarkable development of that period was the double monas- tery under a woman's rule, when an abbess directed two related houses, one of monks, the other of nuns. Such institutions often divided the hospital nursing, the monks taking the men's, the nuns the women's wards. Famous heads of double monas- teries were Queen Radegunde at Poitiers, Hilda of Whitby, Hersende of Fontevrault. The last named monastery had three thousand members. The social position of the mediasval abbess was the highest and most respected and dignified. As the feudal system arose, she was politically the equal of men who held fiefs, and there are instances of abbesses ranking as peers and casting their vote in religious and political meetings. There were many commanding figures of women in the monastic life of the early Middle Ages. Among them were Hrotswitha, who knew the Latin classics and wrote dramas, Lisba, Walburga, and Berthgythe who went from Ireland and England to help evangelize Germany, and Hildegarde, "Sybil of the Rhine, " whose medical knowledge and poli- tical insight were alike remarkable. Such leaders as these trained the women who, amidst other duties, carried on hospital nursing and much medi- cal work during eight centuries.