The Benedictines and their offshoots (Cistercians and Trappists among them), the Premonstratensians, and the military orders distinguish between conventual and simple or obedientiary priories. Conventual priories are those autonomous houses which have no abbots, either because the canonically required number of twelve monks has not yet been reached or for some other reason. At present the Benedictine Order has twenty-seven conventual priories. Simple or obedientiary priories are dependencies of abbeys. Their superior, who is subject to the abbot in everything, is called simple or obedientiary prior. These monasteries are satellites of the mother abbey.
