A papal bull of 1577 transferred the monastery from Irish hands to abbots from Scotland. The Scottish monks were predominantly from lowland Scotland, and thus were generally not Gaels. The effect of the bull was therefore a complete break in the continuity of the abbey's tradition. In part it may have been motivated by the fact that the word "Scotti" had by this time come to mean 'Scots' in the modern sense, allowing the new abbots to claim that the Irish possession had always been illegitimate. It was also partly because the Irish community in Regensburg was in any case in terminal decline: the last Irish abbot had just died leaving a single monk and one novice.