AUGUSTINIAN NUNS. - They trace their origin to St. Augustine. In the 4th century, there already existed in Africa virgins consecrated to God who received the sacred veil from the bishop, but each lived in her own home. St. Augustine wished them gathered into monasteries, subject to the common life and placed under a rule and a superior. In one of these monasteries some of his nieces lived, and for many years his sister was superior; in another, the benefactress of Alypius and of Augustine, St. Melania (v.) the Younger, took the habit. The Vandal persecution under Huneric, and later, in the 8th century, 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, following his example, throughout Africa.
That many monasteries of A. also arose in Europe in a later period is proved by many manuscripts earlier than 1400 that contain the rule of St. Augustine adapted for nuns. All these monasteries were subject to the jurisdiction of the bishops, and only in 1401 did Boniface IX grant to the Hermits of St. Augustine the faculty of establishing communities of nuns with the habit, the rule and the privileges of their order, as had already been granted to the Friars Minor and the Preachers. In the constitutions of the eremitical order of St. Augustine, published by the prior general Taddeo Perusino in 1581, there appears for the first time a part entitled: De cura ac regimine Monialium Nostri Sacri Ordinis, to give a certain uniformity of life to the nuns and to apply to them the new provisions of the Council of Trent. This shows that in the 16th century there existed monasteries of nuns, founded by the Augustinian religious, or transferred from the jurisdiction of the bishops to that of the order of St. Augustine.
Today, after the various suppressions, of the very numerous cloistered monasteries of Augustinian nuns only 134 remain: all under the jurisdiction of the bishops, except that of St. Rita in Cascia.
Celebrated among the Augustinian nuns are St. Clare of Montefalco (v.), St. Rita of Cascia (v.) and Blessed Juliana of Liège or of Mont-Cornillon, who died in 1258, promoter of the institution of the feast of Corpus Domini.
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Mariano Rodriguez