of double monasteries along with double minsters. Although both institutions housed both sexes, a double minster served as a church, often founded by a royal or a magnate, with an attached community of priests, nuns, and monks, rather than an enclosed religious community, to carry out welfare and pastoral work in the local area. This distinction was exemplified in the dichotomy between sanctimoniala, a professed nun, and a canonica- a woman living under a religious rule, but without necessarily having taken personal religious vows, as in the case of Beguines and Beghards Double monasteries were not exclusively found in the West, however. During the 8th century, some cases of double monasteries were documented in the Byzantine Empire. These monasteries were not physically enclosed communities, and featured separate churches for nuns and monks. The most notable of these establishments is the monastery of Mantineion, founded by Anthusa of Constantinople during the reign of the patriarch Nicephorus. Mantineon featured a school for boys in the male monastery, and unlike its Gallic and Anglo-Saxon counterparts, the male and female sections of the monastery featured very different lifestyles. They did, however, rely upon each other, and established a centre of activity between the two churches that allowed both monks and nuns to exchange skills and goods. Like Western double monasteries, the establishment of medieval Byzantine double houses peaked by the mid-eighth century. Decline and revival By the end of the 8th century, the double monastery as an institution entered a steep decline. The most obvious doctrinal explanation for this shift lies in the twentieth canon of the seventh ecumenical synod declared at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. This canon reads, in part: “Double monasteries are henceforth forbidden. If a whole family wishes to renounce the world together, the men must go into convents for men, the female members of the family in convents for women. The double monasteries already existing may continue … but must observe the following ordinance: Monks and nuns may not reside in one building, for living together gives occasion for incontinence. No monk may enter the nun’s quarter, and no nun converse apart with a monk." By banning further establishment of double monasteries and limiting their applicant pool, the Second Council of Nicaea effectively ensured that double monasteries throughout both England and Gaul would not exist within a century. This ecclesiastical ordinance was not the only limit on