Augustinians
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The Augustinians are several Catholic monastic orders and congregations
of both men and women living according to the so-called Augustinian rule.
It is true that St. Augustine composed no monastic rule, for the hortatory
letter to the nuns at Hippo Regius (Epist., ccxi, Benedictine ed.)
can not properly be considered such; nevertheless three sets have been
attributed to him (texts in Holstenius-Brockie, Codex regularum monasticarum,
ii, Augsburg, 1759, 121-127), the longest of which, a medieval compilation
from certain pseudo-Augustinian sermons in 45 chapters, is the one commonly
known as the regula Augustini, and served as the constitution of
the Regular Canons of St. Augustine and many societies imitating them,
as, for example, the Dominicans.
The Hermits of St. Augustine (who are generally meant by the name "Augustinians;"
known also as "Austin Friars;" the order to which Martin Luther belonged)
were the last of the four great mendicant orders which originated in the
thirteenth century. They owed their existence to no great personality as
founder, but to the policy of Pope Innocent IV (1241-54) and
Pope Alexander IV (1254-61), who wished to antagonize the too powerful Franciscans and
Dominicans by means of a similar order under direct papal authority and
devoted to papal interests.
Innocent IV by a bull issued Dec. 16, 1243,
united certain small hermit societies with Augustinian rule, especially
the Williamites, the John-Bonites, and the Brictinans.
Alexander IV (admonished, it was said, by an appearance of St. Augustine) called
a general assembly of the members of the new order under the presidency
of Cardinal Richard of St. Angeli at the monastery of Santa Maria del Popolo
in Rome in Mar., 1256, when the head of the John-Bonites, Lanfranc Septala,
of Milan, was chosen general prior of the united orders. Alexander's bull
Licet ecclesiae catholicae of Apr. 13, 1256, confirmed this choice. The
same pope afterward allowed the Williamites, who were dissatisfied with
the new arrangement, to withdraw, and they adopted the Benedictine rule.
The new order was thus finally constituted.
Several general chapters in
the thirteenth century (1287 and 1290) and toward the end of the sixteenth
(1575 and 1580), after the severe crisis occasioned by Luther's reformation,
developed the statutes to their present form (text in Holstenius-Brockie,
ut sup., iv, 227-357; cf. Kolde, 17-38), which was confirmed by
Pope Gregory XIII.
A bull of Pius V in 1567 had already assigned to the Hermits of St.
Augustine the place next to the last (between Carmelites and Servites)
among the five chief mendicant orders.
In its most flourishing state the
order had forty-two provinces (besides the two vicariates of India and
Moravia) with 2,000 monasteries and about 30,000 members. The German branch,
which until 1299 was counted as one province, was divided in that year
into four provinces: a Rheno-Swabian, Bavarian, Cologne-Flemish, and Thuringo-Saxon.
To the last belonged the most famous German Augustinian theologians before
Luther: Andreas Proles (d. 1503), the founder of the Union or Congregation
of the Observant Augustinian Hermits, organized after strict principles;
Johann von Paltz, the famous Erfurt professor and pulpit-orator (d. 1511);
Johann Staupitz, Luther's monastic superior and Wittenberg colleague (d.
1524).
Reforms were also introduced into the extra-German branches of the order,
but a long time after Proles's reform and in connection with the Counter Reformation[?]
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The most important of these
later observant congregations are the Spanish Augustinian tertiary nuns,
founded in 1545 by Archbishop Thomas of Villanova at Valencia; the "reformed"
Augustinian nuns who originated under the influence of St. Theresa after
the end of the sixteenth century at Madrid, Alcoy, and in Portugal; and
the barefooted Augustinians (Augustinian Recollects; in France Augustins
dechausses) founded about 1560 by Thomas a Jesu (d. 1582).
Initial text from Schaff-Herzog Encyc of Religion