CONVENT. - A designation often used, in a vulgar and improper sense, to mean generally a religious house (v. CASA RELIGIOSA). In a strict and specific sense it indicates the house or religious community of a regular Order, that is, of a religion with solemn vows, not monastic. It refers in a special way to the houses or religious communities of the Mendicant Orders.
Originally the term was used in the sense of an assembly (conventus) of monks. It then came to indicate, in canonical sources, both the college of religious constituted as a moral body (c. 2, X, 3, 10; c. 6, X, 3, 35; c. 6, III, 14, in VI; c. 1, III, 10, in Clem., etc.), and, later, the place or building (Conventualis locus) destined as a dwelling for the same (c. 2, X, 3, 35; c. unic., V, 6, in VI; c. 3, V, 8, in Clem., etc.).
It sometimes passes as a synonym for monastery and cenobium, from which however it differs in that these terms correspond more properly to houses or communities of monks and nuns.
The convent, thus conceived, is always a domus formata, but not always vice versa. Beyond the concept of domus formata, in fact, the convent, in order to be strictly such, requires in addition a specific canonical erection in that regard and the full force, in act, of regular observance, especially of the choral office, and of common life: requirements which may also not exist in a community even if otherwise, by the number of its members, it proves to be a domus formata. Such is the concept that, from the ancient monastic statutes (e.g., those of the Cluniacs) through especially the legislation of the Mendicant Orders, has characterized the term conventus or conventualis locus.
As for the juridical personality, which every canonically erected convent enjoys (can. 556 § 1), it is disputed whether it is a matter of collegial moral personality (corporation) or non-collegial (foundation): perhaps in this case a mixed or complex personality is to be recognized, given that the community of religious constitutes a collegial moral person in itself, being able to subsist outside of and independently from the summa bonorum.
Bibliography3 works
Zaccaria da San Mauro