Convent. This name is only given to houses inhabited by religious men or women who are authorized to form a community there; for the other buildings belonging to religious, such as country houses and smallholdings, even those where they have hospices, are not convents .

There needs to be a certain number of religious in a monastery in order for it to even be properly called conventual; this number is larger or smaller according to the statutes of each order or congregation.

In the Order of Cluny there are priories composed of four or five religious which are not conventual but are called social priories . See Priories and Monasteries.

No convent can be founded without an approval from the diocesan bishop, authorized by letters patent from the King, duly registered in Parlement. See the Edict of the month of August 1749 .

Judges, police officers, and tax officials have the right to inspect convents when they deem it appropriate.

A secular judge cannot force nuns to receive a girl or a widow into their convent without the permission of the ordinary. Augeard, volume II. chapters xxii and xxxviii . [1]

Neither can a wife under her husband’s authority retire to a convent without the consent of her husband or without the authorization of the courts.

The little convent refers to property that is not part of the first foundation of the monastery; thus one calls the property which has been acquired by the religious, or which has been given to them as alms or for particular foundations, the property of the little convent .

When it is a question of dividing property between the abbot or commendatory prior and the religious, one determines whether the property was donated before or after the introduction of the commendam; that which was given beforehand is divided only if the commendatory agrees to pay the religious the fees for masses, requiems, and other foundations that are carried out in the monastery. See the Mémoires du clergé , edict of 1716, volume IV, col. 1226 , at the word Partage .

1. Matthieu Augeard (1673-1751), Arrêts notables des différens tribunaux du royaume sur plusieurs questions importantes de droit civil, de coutume, de discipline ecclésiastique et de droit public, 3 vols. (Paris, 1710-1718). Note, however, that the reference to chapter xxii seems to be incorrect.