Mother house
The term mother house is a structural term mainly used for church organizations. It is the loan translation from Latin domus materna or Italian casa madre . The house, grammatically feminine in Latin and Italian, which is the center and often the place of origin of the community, is figuratively referred to as the mother of the other houses.
The mother house is in religious or religious-like communities
- the parent company
- the founding house for non-monastic women's orders
- for monastic orders the mother monastery of a dependent priory , see filiation
- in the case of a Protestant community, for example, the deaconess mother house