Rule of St. Augustine

The Rule of St. Augustine is a religious rule developed by St. Augustine (354–430), which came into use on a wide scale from the twelfth century onwards, and continues to be employed today by a large number of orders, including the Dominicans, Servites, Mercederians, Norbertines, and Augustinians.

Saint Augustine of Hippo

Overview

The Rule of St. Augustine, written about the year 400, is a brief document divided into eight chapters and serves as an outline for religious life lived in community.[1] The Rule governs chastity, poverty, obedience, detachment from the world, the apportionment of labour, the inferiors, fraternal charity, prayer in common, fasting and abstinence proportionate to the strength of the individual, care of the sick, silence and reading during meals.

Origins

The title, Rule of Saint Augustine, has been applied to each of the following documents:

Letter 211

The letter written by St. Augustine in 423 to the nuns at Hippo in a monastery that had been governed by his sister and in which his cousin and niece lived. His object in writing it was merely to quiet troubles, incident to the nomination of a new superior, and meanwhile he took occasion to expatiate upon some of the virtues and practices essential to religious life as it was understood by him. He dwells upon charity, poverty, obedience, detachment from the world, the apportionment of labour, the mutual duties of superiors and inferiors, fraternal charity, prayer in common, fasting and abstinence proportionate to the strength of the individual, care of the sick, silence, reading during meals, etc.[2] This document contains no such clear, minute prescriptions as are found in later monastic Rules, such as that of St. Pachomius or the anonymous document known as the Rule of the Master. Nevertheless, the Bishop of Hippo was a law-giver and his letter was to be read weekly, that the nuns might guard against or repent any infringement of it. He considers poverty the foundation of the monastic life, but attaches no less importance to fraternal charity, which consists in living in peace and concord. The superior, in particular, is recommended to practice this virtue although not, of course, to the extreme of omitting to chastise the guilty.

The superior shares the duties of her office with certain members of her community, one of whom has charge of the sick, another of the cellar, another of the wardrobe, while still another is the guardian of the books which she is authorized to distribute among the sisters. The nuns make their habits which consist of a dress, a cincture and a veil. Prayer, in common, occupies an important place in their life, being said in the chapel at stated hours and according to the prescribed forms, and comprising hymns, psalms and readings. Certain prayers are simply recited while others, especially indicated, are chanted, but as St. Augustine enters into no minute details, it is to be supposed that each monastery conformed to the liturgy of the diocese in which it is situated. Those sisters desiring to lead a more contemplative life are allowed to follow special devotions in private.

Fasting and abstinence are recommended only in proportion to the physical strength of the individual, and when the saint speaks of obligatory fasting he specifies that such as are unable to wait for the evening or ninth hour meal may eat at noon. The nuns partook of very frugal fare and, in all probability, abstained from meat. The sick and infirm are objects of the most tender care and solicitude, and certain concessions are made in favor of those who, before entering religion, led a life of luxury. During meals some instructive matter is to be read aloud to the nuns. Although the Rule of St. Augustine contains but a few precepts, it dwells at great length upon religious virtues and the ascetic life, this being characteristic of all primitive Rules.

De vitā et moribus clericorum suorum

In his sermons 355 and 356 the saint discourses on the monastic observance of the vow of poverty. Augustine sought to dispel suspicions harboured by the faithful of Hippo against the clergy leading a monastic life with him in his episcopal residence. The perusal of these sermons discloses the fact that the bishop and his priests observed strict poverty and conformed to the example of the Apostles and early Christians by using their money in common. This was called the Apostolic Rule.[2]

De opere monachorum

Aurelius, Bishop of Carthage, was greatly disturbed by the conduct of monks who indulged in idleness under pretext of contemplation, and at his request St. Augustine published a treatise entitled De opere monachorum wherein he proves by the authority of the Bible, the example of the Apostles, and even the exigencies of life, that the monk is obliged to devote himself to serious labour. In several of his letters and sermons is found a useful complement to his teaching on the monastic life and duties it imposes. In his treatise, De opere monachorum, he inculcates the necessity of labour, without, however, subjecting it to any rule, the gaining of one's livelihood rendering it indispensable. Monks of course, devoted to the ecclesiastical ministry observe, ipso facto, the precept of labour, from which observance the infirm are legitimately dispensed.

These, then, are the most important monastic prescriptions found in the rule of and writings of St. Augustine.

De vitā eremiticā ad sororem liber

"De vitâ eremiticâ ad sororem liber" is a treatise on eremitical life by St. Ælred, Abbot of Rievaulx, England, who died in 1166.

Monastic life of St. Augustine

Augustine was a monk; this fact stands out unmistakably in the reading of his life and works. Although a priest and bishop, he knew how to combine the practices of the religious life with the duties of his office, and his episcopal house in Hippo was for himself and some of his clergy, a veritable monastery. Several of his friends and disciples elevated to the episcopacy imitated his example, among them Alypius at Tagaste, Possidius at Calama, Profuturus and Fortunatus at Cirta, Evodius at Uzalis, and Boniface at Carthage. There were still other monks who were priests and who exercised the ministry outside of the episcopal. The religious life of the Bishop of Hippo was, for a long time, a matter of dispute between the Canons Regular and the Hermits of St. Augustine, each of these two families claiming him exclusively as its own. It was not so much the establishing of an historical fact as the settling of a claim of precedence that caused the trouble, and as both sides could not in the right, the quarrel would have continued indefinitely had not the Pope Sixtus IV put an end by his Bull "Summum Silentium" (1484). The silence was imposed, however, was not perpetual, and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were resumed between the Canons and the Hermits but all to no avail. Pierre de Saint-Trond, Prior of the Canons Regular of St. Martin of Louvain, tells the story of these quarrels in the Preface to his "Examen Testamenti S. Augustini" (Louvain, 1564). Gabriel Pennot, Nicolas Desnos and Le Large uphold the thesis of the Canons; Gandolfo, Lupus, Giles of the Presentation, and Noris sustain that of the Hermits. The Bollandists withhold their opinion. St. Augustine followed the monastic or religious life as it was known to his contemporaries and neither he nor they even thought of establishing among those who had embraced it any distinction whatever as to congregations or orders. This idea was conceived in a subsequent epoch, hence St. Augustine cannot be said to have belonged to any particular order. He made laws for the monks and nuns of Roman Africa, it is true, and he helped to increase their numbers, while they, in turn, revered him as their father, but they cannot be classed as members of any special monastic family.

Early medieval influence

When we consider Augustine's great prestige, it is easy to understand why his writings should have so influenced the development of Western monasticism. His Letter 211 was read and re-read by St. Benedict, who borrowed several important texts from it for insertion in his own rule. St. Benedict's chapter on the labour of monks is manifestly inspired by the treatise De opere monachorum, that has done so much towards furnishing an accurate statement of the doctrine commonly accepted in religious orders. The teaching concerning religious poverty is clearly formulated in the sermons "De vitâ et moribus clericoreun suorum" and the authorship of these two works is sufficient to earn for the Bishop of Hippo the title of Patriarch of monks and religious. The influence of Augustine, however, was nowhere stronger than in southern Gaul in the fifth and sixth centuries. Lérins and the monks of that school were familiar with Augustine's monastic writings, which, together with those of Cassianus, were the mine from which the principal elements of their rules were drawn. St. Caesarius, Archbishop of Arles, the great organizer of religious life in that section chose a some of the most interesting articles of his rule for monks from St. Augustine, and in his rule for nuns quoted at length from Letter 211. Sts. Augustine and Caesarius were animated by the same spirit which passed from the Archbishop of Arles to St. Aurelian, one of his successors, and, like him, a monastic Iawgiver. Augustine's influence also extended to women's monasteries in Gaul, where the Rule of Caesarius was adopted either wholly or in part, as, for example, at Sainte-Croix of Poitiers, Juxamontier of Besançon, and Chamalières near Clermont.

But it was not always enough merely to adopt the teachings of Augustine and to quote him; the author of the regula Tarnatensis (an unknown monastery in the Rhone valley) introduced into his work the entire text of the letter addressed to the nuns, having previously adapted it to a community of men by making slight modifications. This adaptation was surely made in other monasteries in the sixth or seventh centuries, and in his "Codex regularum" St. Benedict of Aniane published a text similarly modified.

For want of exact information we cannot say in which monasteries this was done, and whether they were numerous. Letter 211, which has thus become the Rule of St. Augustine, certainly constituted a part of the collections known under the general name of "Rules of the Fathers" and used by the founders of monasteries as a basis for the practices of the religious life. It does not seem to have been adopted by the regular communities of canons or of clerks which began to be organized in the eighth and ninth centuries. The rule given them by St. Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz (742-766), is almost entirely drawn from that of St. Benedict, and no more decided traces of Augustinian influence are to be found in it than in the decisions of the Synods of Aachen (816–819), which may be considered the real constitutions of the canons Regular. For this influence we must await the foundation of the clerical or canonical communities established in the eleventh century for the effective counteracting of simony and clerical concubinage.

Medieval adoption

By the eleventh century, various monks felt that the Rule of St Benedict (which had been the standard model for monastic life for the last five centuries) no longer satisfied the demands of a rapidly changing society, with its increasing urbanisation, growing literacy, and shifts in distribution of wealth and power. While in some cases this resulted in reforms aimed at restoring observance of the Bendictine Rule to its original purity, trimming away later additions, there also developed groups of clerics (or 'canons') living in community in a more rigorously ascetic lifestyle than that followed by the Rule of St Benedict, following the set of ancient texts known as the 'Rule of St Augustine'. These clerics were widely known as Canons Regular (in order to distinguish them from the traditional 'secular' canons who followed the older, Carolingian 'rule of Aachen'.[3]), 'Augustinian canons', 'canons of St Augustine', 'Austin canons' or 'Black canons', Observance of this Rule was approved for members of the clergy by the Council of Lateran (1059) and another council held at Rome four years later.

Adoption of the Rule of St Augustine subsequently spread rapidly through Western Europe. The early Victorine Canons embraced the Rule of St Augustine in 1113. In the year 1120, Norbert of Xanten chose the Rule of St Augustine as he founded the Premonstratensian Order. It was adopted by John of Matha in 1198 in founding the Trinitarian Order. At the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) it was accepted as one of the approved rules of the church. It was then adopted by the Order of Preachers in 1216 when their order received papal recognition.[4] It was also adopted by the Order of St Augustine in 1256. It was also adopted by the Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit and the Order of Mercy. By the fifteenth century there were over 4500 houses in Europe following the Rule.[5] Over 150 communities follow it today.[6]

References

  1. ↑ "Rule of St. Augustine", Midwest Augustinians
  2. 1 2 3 Besse, Jean. "Rule of Saint Augustine." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907. 3 May 2014
  3. ↑ Walter Simons, 'Religious Life in Medieval Western Europe', in Amy Hollywood, ed, The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism, (Cambridge: CUP, 2012), p84
  4. ↑ "The rule of St. Augustine", EWTN
  5. ↑ 'Augustinian Canons', in Richard P McBrien, ed, The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism, (1995), p112
  6. ↑ 'Augustine, Rule of St', in Richard P McBrien, ed, The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism, (1995), p112

External links

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