An abbess governs an autonomous monastery of nuns with an authority closely paralleling an abbot's own governance of a monastery of monks, responsible for the community's spiritual formation, its temporal administration, and, within limits set by canon law and the monastery's own constitutions, its internal discipline; because an abbess, as a woman, cannot receive Holy Orders, her authority over her community is understood in Catholic canon law as a form of governing jurisdiction distinct in kind from a bishop's or abbot's own sacramental and juridical authority, even where its practical scope over the monastery's members is extensive.
Some historical abbesses held authority considerably broader than governance of their own convent alone: the abbess of certain great medieval double monasteries, houses combining communities of both monks and nuns under one superior, exercised authority over the monks as well, a genuinely unusual arrangement within a generally male-governed medieval church, and a small number of territorial abbesses held quasi-feudal lordship over surrounding lands and their inhabitants comparable to a territorial abbot's own exempt jurisdiction, though such arrangements have not survived into the modern period.