Note 80 — Chapter II · THE MONASTIC CHURCH IN IRELAND.
Reading edition
They appear to have excluded not only women but laymen generally from the monasteries. Jonas tells us, in his Life of Columbanus, who belongs to this order of saints, that Theodoric, king of Burgundy, came to Luxeuil and demanded of Columbanus why he did not allow all Christians to have access to the more secret enclosures of the monastery; to which he replied that it was not the custom to open the habitations of God’s servants to secular men and strangers to religion, and that he had fit and proper places for the purpose of receiving guests.—Vit. S. Col. cxviii.