Was there equality between the sexes in Frankish monasticism? Historians today agree that monastic life was conceived of at its inception as non-gendered. The men and women who chose such a life all aspired toward the same ideal: living as perfect Christians. The paths that they followed in order to reach that ideal—the desert, peregrination, private life, or life within a community—varied, but the criterion of gender was not determinative in their decision-making. All shared a number of principles (asceticism, chastity, prayers, charity) drawing on an accepted canon of foundational texts (the Gospels, treatises, sermons, rules), which, though they might have been written with one sex or the other in mind, were used in an interchangeable manner. The charismatic role and the functions that these religious men and women performed for the lay community were as important, perhaps even more important in the case of consecrated virgins, whose angelic purity was believed to make their prayers more potent.