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Around 1200, Reginald, Somerled’s son, invited not only Benedictine monks but also Augustinian nuns to settle on Iona. Together these religious orders reinvigorated Columba’s ailing monastery. The Augustinians followed the teaching of St Augustine of Hippo, in Egypt, who died in 430. They were less rigidly organised than the Benedictines. |
| The first Scottish community, for men, was set up at Scone, near Perth, around 1120. Iona was one of only two Augustinian nunneries established in Scotland. The other was at Perth. The nuns wore black habits; the Gaelic word for nun is cailleach-dhubh, ‘the veiled and black-robed woman’. The locals on Iona called their nunnery an eaglais dhubh, ‘the black church’. Reginald installed his sister, Beathag (Beatrice), as the first prioress. The founding nuns probably came from Ireland, where such nunneries were common. The sisters lived off the income from the modest estates they were granted on Iona and adjacent islands. They augmented their funds by giving hospitality to female pilgrims to Iona. Their burial ground was also used to bury women of noble birth from far and wide. This tradition continued long after the nunnery ceased to exist at the Reformation in 1560. |
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A medieval painting of St Augustine