summarily suppressed because of their independent life.

Had this Order continued to exist it might have gained an educational
ascendency throughout Europe which even the strong wave of the
Reformation would have found it hard to overcome. But the convents and
monasteries generally suffered at this time from the abuses which had
crept into the Church, and the rage for power which possessed its
prelates.

The influence was mischievous also from a social and domestic point
of view; from the sanctity and superiority attached to those who
ignored natural ties and duties, thus lowering the social and domestic
standard, and setting the nun's habit above the woman, the wife and
the mother. Yet nature had asserted itself even in the convent. The
motherhood in the monastic woman made her the mother, the caretaker,
the nurse, the teacher, and the helper of all those who needed
maternal care, while condemning and ignoring its common aspects and
place in everyday life.

This absence of domestic ties was not, however, obligatory upon all
sisterhoods. An interesting story of the "First Council of Women,"
told by Madame Lendier at the Congress of Women in Paris in 1889,
bears upon this point.

The monastic school out of which the Council grew, was founded in the
early part of the seventh century, by Iduberge, wife of Pepin, mayor
under the Frankish kings.

Iduberge cleared a space in the forest, and built a house for the
education and religious consecration (if they desired it) of the