page_title: Women in the Catholic Church
section_title: Contemplatives, mystics and theologians
hierarchical_section_title: Women in the Catholic Church / Roles of women / Contemplatives, mystics and theologians
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Hildegard von Bingen empfängt eine göttliche Inspiration und gibt sie an ihren Schreiber weiter.
context_page_description: In the history of the Catholic Church, women have played a variety of roles and the church has affected societal attitudes to women worldwide in significant ways. Women constitute the majority of members of consecrated life in the Catholic Church: in 2010, there were around 721,935 professed women religious.
context_section_description: Some religious institutes host communities who devote their lives to contemplation. Many Catholic women, both lay and in religious orders, have become influential mystics or theologians - with four women now recognised as Doctors of the Church: the Carmelites have produced two such women, the Spanish mystic Saint Teresa of Avila and French author Saint Therese of Lisieux; while Catherine of Siena was an Italian Dominican and Hildegard of Bingen was a German Benedictine.
  During the Middle Ages, monastic settlements were established throughout western Europe and convents and abbeys for women could become powerful institutions. Saint Dominic founded the Dominican movement in France in the 12th century and Dominican nuns have gathered in contemplative religious communities ever since.
caption: Illumination from the Liber Scivias showing Doctor of the Church Hildegard of Bingen receiving a vision and dictating to her scribe and secretary
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