Who were the Sisters of the Common Life?
These were women associated with the Devotio Moderna (Modern Devotion), a religious reform movement that focused on a renewal of Christian community and personal piety in the late medieval and early modern periods (14th-16th centuries).
The Sisters of the Common Life can be considered a “second wave” of semi-religious, semi-lay women in the Low Countries, the first being the “Beguines” who developed as a movement in the 13th century.
The Sisters of the Common Life and the Beguines experimented with a sort of “semi-monastic” lifestyle in which the women did not take official monastic vows but still strove to live according to the virtues of poverty, chastity, and obedience within a communal setting together.
Unlike the Beguines, who could retain personal property, Sisters of the Common Life would share their property in “common.” However, both communities of women led lives that combined prayer and spiritual practices with practical work. Much of the work done by the women was textile work.
Image of Beguines at textile work, taken from Wikimedia Commons.