Canoness

CANONESS: A member of a company of women under the rule of an abbess and bound by vows of celibacy and obedience, but not by one of poverty. Some canonesses were "secular," and the houses they lived in were homes for ladies of the nobility; but others were "religious" and lived in nunneries of the Benedictine or Augustinian order. Few of these establishments survived the Reformation, and their inmates generally became Protestants. Some of the houses became Protestant homes fur noble ladies, as those at Gandersheim, Herford, and Quedlinburg in Germany.