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 5th through 12th 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 2nd 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.
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