In many territories, where the majority of the population adopted Lutheranism, the nunneries' function to provide sustenance for unmarried women wasn't to be given up. So it happened that the Prince-Archbishopric's former Roman Catholic nunneries of Himmelpforten, Lilienthal, Neuenwalde, and Osterholz with all their estates had turned into such Lutheran women's convents (German: das "Stift", more particular: "Damenstift", literally "ladies' foundation"), while the nunnery of Zeven was in the process of becoming one, with – among a majority of Catholic nuns – a number of "nuns" of Lutheran denomination, usually called conventuals. Other expressions like abbess, for the chairwoman, and prioress for conventuals of certain hierarchic function, were – and are partly – continued to be used in such Lutheran "Stifte".