NUNS, in the Roman Catholic Church, are female ascetics, who, like the monks of the other sex, retire from the world, form themselves into religious communities, and profess perpetual chastity. There are various orders of nuns; some devoting themselves entirely to private religious exercises, while others engage in the more active duties of Christian charity. The first nunnery is said to have been founded by one St. Synclética, a contemporary of St. Anthony, in the third century. (See MONACHISM.) The first institution of the kind in France was founded near Poitiers by St. Marcellina A.D. 360; and the first established in England owed its origin, according to Dugdale, to Edhald, king of Kent, who founded a nunnery at Folkestone A.D. 630.