abbess
Noun
Meaning
A female superior or governess of a nunnery, or convent of nuns, having the same authority over the nuns which the abbots have over the monks. See Abbey.
Source: Webster's dictionarySynonyms
Antonyms
Show all antonymsHypernyms
Hyponyms
Related terms
Phrases with the word
Examples
Anna Silvas (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), pp. 52-55 and 69; and John Van Engen, "Abbess: 'Mother and Teacher', in Barbara Newman, ed., Voice of the Living Light (California: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 30-51, at pp. 32-33.
Also in 1157, on the death of patriarch Fulcher, Melisende, her half-sister Sibylla of Flanders, and Ioveta the Abbess of Bethany, had Amalric of Nesle appointed as patriarch of Jerusalem.
Having been eased out of a Benedictine convent, where she had been placed at the age of seven, she built her own convent, over which she ruled as Abbess.
Her sisters, the countess of Tripoli and abbess of Bethany, came to nurse her before she died on 11 September 1161.
At the abbey, Maria says that she is ready to take her monastic vows ; but the Mother Abbess realizes that she is running away from her feelings.
Even in the late 18th century the Abbess of Burtscheid was prevented from building a road linking her territory to the neighbouring estates of the duke of Jülich ; the city of Aachen even deployed its handful of soldiers to chase away the road-diggers.