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Understanding Religious Orders and Nuns

This quiz tests knowledge on various aspects of nuns and religious orders, including vows, traditions, and historical representations.

#religious studies #nuns #vows #Buddhism #Catholicism #Anglicanism #art #photography

1 The "Poor Clares" (a ________ order) and those Dominican nuns who lived a cloistered life take the three-fold vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

2 In ________, a country which never had a tradition of fully-ordained nuns (bhikkhuni), there developed a separate order of non-ordained female renunciates called Mae Ji.

3 What does the following picture show?  Nuns at Work in the Cloister, by Henriette Browne   Nuns in traditional habit singing Gregorian chant   Saint Sophia of Suzdal, wearing the full monastic habit of a Schemanun   Princess Praskovya Yusupova before becoming a nun Nikolai Nevrev, 1886

4 The type of vows that are taken are dependent on the Constitutions and/or rule of each community, which are submitted for approval to the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, a body of the ________.

5 Fully ordained Buddhist nuns (bhikkhunis) have more ________-rules than the monks (bhikkhus).

6 Upāsaka, Upāsikā Gahattha, ________ Agārika, Agāriya

7 What does the following picture show?  Nun in cloister, 1930; photography by Doris Ulmann   Nuns at Work in the Cloister, by Henriette Browne   The Vale of Rest ; by John Everett Millais, 1848 (Tate Gallery, London)

8 What does the following picture show?  Nuns at Work in the Cloister, by Henriette Browne   The Vale of Rest ; by John Everett Millais, 1848 (Tate Gallery, London)   Nuns in traditional habit singing Gregorian chant

9 Anglican religious orders are organizations of laity and/or clergy in the ________ who live under a common rule.

10 What does the following picture show?  Buddhist nuns in Rangoon, Burma.   Saint Sophia of Suzdal, wearing the full monastic habit of a Schemanun   Nuns at Work in the Cloister, by Henriette Browne   The Vale of Rest ; by John Everett Millais, 1848 (Tate Gallery, London)

💡 Interesting Facts

  • the Cross in the Woods shrine (pictured) in Michigan contains the United States' largest collection of figurative dolls dressed as nuns.
  • the romantic epistles Letters of a Portuguese Nun were from a nun to her lover.
  • in 1298, Pope Boniface VIII decreed in Periculoso that nuns "ought henceforth to remain perpetually cloistered in their monasteries".
  • after surviving a dynamite attack in 1896, fraternity parties in the 1940s, and an earthquake in 1994, Stimson House (pictured) is now a convent for Catholic nuns.
  • the Governor's residence in Gibraltar (pictured) is supposedly haunted by the ghost of a nun who was bricked up alive into a chamber wall.
  • the cities of Viterbo and Narni fought a two-year battle over where the popular nun Lucia Brocadelli of Narni would reside.
  • when Canadian nun and midwife Rosalie Cadron-Jetté (pictured) founded the Hospice de Sainte-Pélagie in Montreal in 1845, it operated out of the attic of a house leased by her son.
  • under the Poughkeepsie plan, Catholic children attended public schools taught by nuns wearing religious habits.
  • the idea for the Red Scapular of the Passion (pictured) approved by Pope Pius IX is said to have been given to a French nun by visions of Jesus and Mary in 1846.
  • after a successful theatrical career spanning three decades, U.S. actress Tittell Brune joined the Order of St Francis, remaining a sister until her death, aged 99.
  • Reverend Mother Superior Dolores Hart is the only nun to be an Academy Award-voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
  • Grand Duchess Alexandra Petrovna left her unfaithful husband and became a nun.
  • British actress Stephanie Beacham played a nun on American sitcom Sister Kate after playing the glamorous Sable Colby on the drama Dynasty.
  • Canadian nun Eulalie Durocher has been associated with the recovery of a man declared dead and sudden changes in the course of two fires.
  • Louise-Magdeleine Horthemels created illustrations of the life of the nuns of the abbey of Port-Royal-des-Champs (pictured), shortly before it was closed on the orders of Pope Clement XI.
  • Maria Fortunata Viti, a Benedictine nun beatified by Pope Paul VI in 1967, remained illiterate her entire life.
  • Princess Louise-Marie of France, the youngest of the 10 children of Louis XV of France and his Queen consort Maria Leszczyńska, amazed the court when she asked her father to allow her to become a Carmelite nun in 1770.
  • Noella Marcellino, a Benedictine nun and modern connoisseur of cheese, was named the official cheesemaker of Connecticut's Abbey of Regina Laudis.
  • Morganna, the Kissing Bandit, originally wanted to be a nun but ran away from school at the age of 13 to become an exotic dancer and legendary kisser of baseball players.
  • Canadian nun Émilie Gamelin was one of only 226 women who sought to vote at the 1832 Montreal West by-election.
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