Bernardynki warszawskie (1496-1818)

Abstract

The Bernardine sisters in Warsaw were a female members of Third Order of St. Francis of Assisi and they had monasteries placed in proximity of Bernardine friers’churches. Theirs religious homes was erected following the exemple of the first italian nunnery under the name of blessed Angelina of Marscianis (†1435) in Foligno. The first religious home of Bernardine nuns in Poland was bilt in Cracow in the fifties of XV century, it was mentioned in documental (1514) as the monasteiy with full rights and its Mother Superior was Elisabeth Golińska. The first sisters was recruited from the nobility and the townpeople and they was depended on Bernardine friers’ provincial. They was visited and reformed by provincial B. Gąsiorek at the last years of XVI century. They accepted then monastic enclosure (1595), but there were a few of nuns, who didn’t accept the enclosure and inhabited in theirs own home as secular women under the name “the noble descent widows and virgins”. The Bernardine reformed sisters had instead own church under the title of St. Clara founded by Stanisław Warszewicki (1617). The community of Bernardine nuns in Warsaw existed only until year 1818, when theirs monastery and church were dissolved.