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In this article, Maria Teresa Guerra Medici introduces evidence to support the view that in Europe some of the earliest examples of the concept of the democratic election of a leader of a community can be found in the rules for choosing the heads of monastic institutions. The article examines the rules that evolved for the election of abbesses by their convent and gives examples of how these rules were applied in practice to ensure that the choices made would be acceptable to the ecclesiastical and lay authorities.
