Iona Island's Abbey and "Nunnery"

The island of Iona in Scotland shone with so much wonder for us on a sunny spring day.  

There we found information that may shed light on a topic that is rarely discussed:  sanctuaries for women.  

 

Iona’s past is significant in that both an abbey and nunnery were built by a duke on Iona, and that the abbey is fully intact while the nunnery in ruins.  Let me just add here one observation that from the 5^th through 12^th centuries abbeys were largely founded by women and were turned men-only when Christians conquered.

 

Why would women need to be protected?  I know the answer from the youngest daughter who of our Slovenian family who survived 2 world wars in Europe.  She told how they had been sent to Germany in box cars during the 2^nd World war and couldn’t come back until the end of the war.  While they were in Germany, her older sisters always remained hidden because soldiers could come bursting through the door at any time.  She remembers being strictly taught never to show where her sisters were, which was very hard for a little 3-year-old. 

 

Repeatedly - from Julius Caesar to today in Ukraine - a common war tactic has been to rape and kill women and children. The story of Boudica in Britain sounds like a heroic epic similar to Kremhilde in the Rhineland.  Boudica is said to have mounted an army to fight the Romans after her daughters were raped in front of her.  During the occupation of Roman soldiers in the medieval feudal church state, massive numbers of women were killed as heretics – that’s well established. Less attention is given to what measures were taken to keep women from harm.

 

How could anyone protect their females?  The stakes were high - executions were public spectacles in the Middle Ages and slaves were the commodity most heavily traded from north to south for centuries.  Where could women live in safety?

 

Let’s start by looking at place names since Europe’s pre-Christian Celts notoriously named descriptively.  We search for names like Frauenstein, Fraueninsel, Frauenberg, Frauenau, Baume-les-Dames, La Ville-aux-Dames, Chemin des Dames, Vanault-les-Dames, Abbaye aux Dames.  Beyond the places set aside for women, we have come upon many secret hiding places within homes, as well as refuge castles, manor houses and villas.  

 

So, let’s look at Iona’s abbey with that backdrop.  Two aspects stand out: a duke reputedly granted land to a man to found an abbey, and this man also founded a nunnery on that land.  Let’s look at this in the context of what we know about the Christianization of Europe.  

 

We know that Christians imposed religion on European inhabitants, and Europe’s history has been written by Christian victors.  As part of this Christianization, it is very likely that the Christians overtook both the abbey and the institution for women at Iona.  It is also likely that both had been secular – non-Christian - before the Christian conquerors took them over.

 

Let’s add another bit of background here.  DNA studies tell us that Galls had been moving to the British Isles from 1300 to 800 BCE.  By the Iron Age – around 850 years BCE - roughly half the population of the British Isles in the Iron Age is said to have been Gallic.

 

Archeology also helps here by showing that people have typically sought refuge on islands.  The island of Iona has been inhabited for more than 4000 years, since the Bronze Age.  It is small wonder that by year 1200 when abbeys were springing up all over Europe, that there would have been common threads between communities on the continent and the British Isles. 

 

The massive enslavements and killings of women in the Middle Ages obviously gave rise to European efforts to protect females.  Iona would have been a very likely place for a secular refuge for women seeking to escape religious persecution.  The fact that a duke had given the land for the abbey and refuge for women also fits into pre-Christian European Celtic tradition of duchies, namely that women were treated as partners and not possessions.  This is evident in the way Celtic women warriors were widely acknowledged, even by Julius Caesar.

 

Point of clarification - Are the Galls and Celts the same?  Here’s what appears to be the case –Galls are an ancient European family and part of the Celtic culture that characterized Europe before the Roman Empire and Roman Christian Conquest.  Celtic culture wherever it happened to be – whether on the continent or islands - centered on nature and family.  So being Gallic relates to DNA whereas being Celtic relates to culture.

 

My conclusion is that the ruins of the nunnery near the abbey in Iona started out as a secular refuge for women and was made religious as part of the Christian conquest.  

 

A couple more comments – One is that Anglesey Island in Wales (Pays des Galls) links with Iona as a Gallic refuge, albeit in an earlier era.  Another refuge island, Samothrace, is home to the famous beheaded statue, the Winged Victory of Samothrace featured prominently in the Louvre Museum.  Again, like the Iona nunnery, depictions of women remain vandalized.

 

I have not looked into when these defacements and beheadings might have occurred.  Records and tributes to women appear to have been largely Christianized, i.e. erased.  The extraordinary beauty of the natural features of Iona and its exquisite buildings speak to the outstanding capabilities of ancestral Europe; the abbey and  “nunnery” are very much in keeping with abbeys and refuges for women that we have seen all over Europe.  

 

The refuge for women on Iona also links arms historically with the béguinage in Belgium, and maybe even with Sheele na gig in Ireland, I would suspect.   We’ll leave that for now.

 Mary, an early hydrology hero?

 

Mary Abbey, Stična Abbey, Knights Templar, Cistercians, cisterns, the French, Irish and Slovenians, Troyes, Dublin – they all came together for us on our first 2 days in Dublin!

The day after we arrived, we found ourselves sitting in the gathering hall of Mary’s Abbey in Dublin listening to a stunning presentation.  I am excited to share with you what we have heard and seen.

 

That wonderfully detailed account of Mary Abbey history gave us invaluable information: the Mary Abbey had been founded in Dublin and it was reputedly the wealthiest abbey in Europe at the time.  Abbey grounds and operations stretched all the way from north of the River Liffey River in Dublin to the port of Malahide, some 32 miles away.  This abbey had been associated with the Cistercians.

 

Our ears perked up because we had encountered Cistercian history when we researched the Champagne book.  One of our most salient discoveries in those days was a secular past associated with the abbey in Troyes, that also included the secular name, loup, meaning wolf.  Let me just say here that the current regions of Champagne and Burgundy in France share many commonalities, not only in the history of vineyards but in abbeys and hydrology as well.

 

Here’s where it gets really fascinating.  The name Mary relates to the marble cistern that was developed in 1308, and that cistern system gave Dublin its first public water supply.  

 

What is a cistern?  Simply put, a cistern is a waterproof tank used for storing water.

 

But the Slovenia connection?  When I researched my Finding Slovenia book, I had come upon Stična Abbey, south of Novo Mesto, and that abbey had been built in 1132 by Cistercians.  Like the abbey in Troyes, the Cistercian Abbey at Stična had been founded by Burgundians.  Who could have guessed these ties between Burgundy, Dublin and Slovenia!  

 

I was so surprised to find a Cistercian stronghold like Stična in Dublin!  Let me add here as an aside that at one time Stična’s library was bigger than Vienna’s, and also that the books in the library were burned, probably during the Christian conquest. This had been the usual modus operandi of Christian conquerors, from Egypt to the Philippines to the Americas.

 

Let’s think about the name “Cistercian,” that stands out among names of other Roman Catholic orders -  like Benedictines, Jesuits, Dominicans, Augustinians, apparently named after religious notables like Benedict, Jesus, Dominick and Augustus.  Cistercian, by contrast, sounds secular.  Even without the “n” at the end of cistern in Cistercian, the pronunciation still sounds like Cisterncian.  

 

This is despite the usual conjecture that “Cistercian” derives from “Citeaux”, the mother abbey in Burgundy.  The story of the Cistercians involves Robert of Molesme, an Englishman whose abbey in Burgundy developed waterways for mills.  This stands out in my mind because we visited Robert of Molesme’s abbey and from the hillside looked down on an extensive system of mill races that fed into mill at the corner of the property below.  The innovations in hydrology and milling that we saw seems to link to the Knights Templar too – also with Burgundy associations.  The Knights Templar are known to have run mills not only in Burgundy, but across Europe, from Bodrum to Dublin.  The Temple Bar, Knights Templar.

 

That brings us to another name associated with Cistercians and Knights Templar, namely Bernard de Clairvaux, whose abbey is in today’s Champagne Region.  One factoid that I remember from when we visited the walled abbey years ago is that everyone in the abbey, whether man, woman or child, was under orders to drink only wine because the water was contaminated.  Since that time, I have heard that a common way of poisoning water supplies was to put dead animals into streams or wells.  It’s easy to imagine that if you’re holed up in a fortification for years, having a cistern system would have been crucial.

 

Let’s think more broadly about the Cistercians.  The way that Cistercian abbeys spread so quickly and so broadly from their beginnings in Burgundy in the 1200s suggest to me that abbey founders may have been on a mission.  And that mission was likely public water systems of cisterns.

 

Let’s put this into the larger context of the Crusades, which began in Europe sometime around the 10^th century.  At least three areas were decimated by the Crusades: the Rhineland in about 1096; the Baltic form 1147-1410, and southern France Crusade from 1209–1229.  With water supplies threatened by Rome’s warrior monks who besieged places like the castle of Carcassonne for some 13 years, a clean water supply would have made the difference between life and death. Remnants of abbeys, castles and towns from this era are all heavily walled and gated, evidencing the enormous threats that must have plagued medieval Europe.

 

Where did it spread?  From Burgundy to Slovenia and Ireland, but also to Italy, Poland, Austria, Wales, Scotland, England, Spain, Sardinia and Sweden.  What propelled the expansion?  My supposition is the share-the-wealth mentality that I see driving the Celts generally.  Who were the Celts?  That was the name Roman conquerors gave to non-Roman Europeans, likely because of their technology and trade in salt.

 

Conclusions

The metallurgy know-how of Europe’s residential populations spread astonishingly quickly some 3000 years ago in the Iron Age.  It’s likely that an important innovation like public water supply would have been shared as readily some 2000 years later.

 

There’s reason to believe that Cistercian abbeys began as secular and were repurposed as religious by the Christian conquest.  

 

One last observation.  The name Mary is very likely prevalent because of this enormous contribution.  Typically, the name of the hero was attached to a heroic accomplishment that benefited the public. When the Christian conquest took place, it took over local customs and put "saint" in front of everyone's name - even as it killed and destroyed local people and culture.  That's why you get the name "Mary" associated with Christian all-male abbeys - It seems to me that Mary Abbey existed before St. Mary’s Abbey and was concerned with secular matters as opposed to religious.

 

 

Here’s a rough timeline to put things into perspective:

 

1132 - Stična Abbey was established by the Cistercians in Slovenia.

 

1139 – Mary’s Abbey was said to have been founded in Dublin. Reputedly it changed to Cistercian around 1147 or 1148.

 

1260 – Damascus sacked by Mongolians

 

1306 - The major, defining expulsion of Jews from the Champagne region occurred, particularly Troyes

 

1307 - The Knights Templar were arrested and their persecution began on Friday, October 13, black Friday. 

 

1308  - a marble cistern was erected in Cornmarket to provide the citizens of Dublin with their first public water supply.  The Lucky Stone was set up beside the cistern so that all who drank the water might have luck.

 

1312 – properties of the Knights Templar were given to the Knights Hospitaller. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Genghis Khan himself never sacked Damascus. The city was captured and occupied by Mongol forces led by general Kitbuqa, under the command of Hulagu Khan (Genghis Khan's grandson), in March 1260. The city surrendered voluntarily during the broader Mongol invasion of the Middle East, shortly after the fall of Baghdad

 

The major, defining expulsion of Jews from the Champagne region occurred in 1306, ordered by King Philip IV (the Fair). While Jews were unaffected by the 1182 French expulsion, the 1306 decree led to imprisonment and seizure of assets. Further restrictions and smaller local removals occurred in 1283 and 1291 (from rural areas) and in 1311

 

 

Dubious - The Knights Templar in Dublin were a powerful monastic military order operating in Ireland following the 1169 Norman invasion, establishing key sites like Clontarf Castle and Clontarf before their abrupt suppression. They functioned as wealthy bankers and landowners in Dublin until being imprisoned in Dublin Castle and tried at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1310, eventually dissolved in 1312, with their properties passing to the Knights Hospitaller. [1, 2, 3]