A double monastery (also dual monastery or double house) is a monastery combining separate communities of monks and of nuns, joined in one institution to share one church and other facilities. The practice is believed to have started in the East at the dawn of monasticism. It is considered more common in the monasticism of Eastern Christianity, where it is traceable to the 4th century. In the West the establishment of double monasteries became popular after Columbanus and sprang up in Gaul and in Anglo-Saxon England. Double monasteries were forbidden by the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, though it took many years for the decree to be enforced. Double monasteries were revived again after the 12th century in a significantly different way when a number of religious houses were established on this pattern among Benedictines and possibly the Dominicans. The 14th-century Bridgittines were purposely founded using this form of community. In the Roman church, monks and nuns would live in separate buildings but were usually united under an Abbess as head of the entire household. Examples include the original Coldingham Priory in Scotland, Barking Abbey in London, and Einsiedeln Abbey and Fahr Convent in separate cantons of Switzerland, controlled by the male abbot of Einsiedeln without a converse arrangement for the prioress of Fahr whereas more commonly a female abbess ruled over the two communities. In most English and many Continental instances the abbess tended to be a princess or widowed queen. A more recent Eastern Orthodox example emerged in England at Tolleshunt Knights in Essex where the Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist was established in 1959. Origins The double monasteries of the 7th and 8th centuries had their roots in early Christian religious communities. The trend of early female monasticism, while not as well-documented as that of its male counterpart, began in the fifth century with the founding of a convent in Marseille by John Cassian in 410, which preceded several convents in Rome. St. Basil and Pachomius both established female religious communities in close proximity to those of men in the East. In 512, Bishop Caesarius of Arles founded the convent of St. John the Baptist for his sister and her religious community of women. It is this latter convent and its Rule which Caesarius had established that served as the framework for the evolution of the double monastery. According to Caesarius, women should