ABSTRACT
In the majority of regular orders and congregations it was common for there to be a female branch parallel to the older, male institution. In 1358 Fr Napoleone Tiberti also founded the Hospitallers' hospital or hospice of Santa Caterina at Venice. Many elements in the organization of San Bevignate were conditioned by its act of foundation or by the papal bull of confirmation which integrated and rectified certain points previously agreed between the founder and the Hospital's officers. San Bevignate's foundation act fixed the number of sisters at 25 plus the abbess; that did not include the donats, conversi and famuli whom, like other ecclesiastical houses, it maintained. San Bevignate's major incomes and its principal items of daily consumption depended on the proper administration of its lands. The sixteenth century was a dark period for female monastic foundations in Italy, with many houses in which the observance of the rule was in decay and moral discipline far from satisfactory.
