AUGUSTINIAN NUNS. — Their origin is traced back to St. Augustine. In the 4th century, there already existed in Africa consecrated virgins who received the sacred veil from the bishop but lived in their own homes. St. Augustine gathered them into monasteries, subjecting them to common life, a rule, and a superior. Some of his nieces lived in one of these monasteries, and for many years his sister was superior there; in another, St. Melania the Younger (v.), the benefactress of Alypius and Augustine, took the habit. The Vandal persecution under Huneric, and later, in 700, that of the Saracens, brought martyrdom to many Augustinian virgins and completely suppressed the monasteries that Augustine, at his death, had left to the Church “full of virgins,” according to the testimony of Possidius, and those that his disciple bishops had erected throughout Africa following his example.
That many monasteries of Augustinian nuns also arose in Europe at a later time is evidenced by numerous codices prior to 1400 containing the Rule of St. Augustine adapted for nuns. All these monasteries were under the jurisdiction of the bishops, and it was only in 1401 that Boniface IX granted the Augustinian Hermits the faculty to establish communities of nuns with the habit, rule, and privileges of their order, as had already been granted to the Friars Minor and the Preachers. In the constitutions of the Augustinian Hermits, published by the Prior General Taddeo Perusino in 1581, a section appears for the first time titled: *De cura ac regimine Monialium Nostri Sacri Ordinis*, to provide a certain uniformity of life for the nuns and apply to them the new provisions of the Council of Trent. This demonstrates that in the 16th century there existed monasteries of nuns founded by Augustinian religious or transferred from the jurisdiction of the bishops to that of the Order of St. Augustine.
Today, after various suppressions, of the once-numerous cloistered monasteries of Augustinian nuns only 134 remain: all under the jurisdiction of the bishops, except that of St. Rita in Cascia.
Among the famous Augustinian nuns are St. Clare of Montefalco (v.), St. Rita of Cascia (v.), and the Blessed Juliana of Liège or of Mont Cornillon, who died in 1258 and promoted the institution of the Feast of Corpus Christi.