CHRISTIAN MONASTIC ORDERS

The ORDER of SAINT AUGUSTINE

On December 16 of the year 1243, Pope Innocent IV issued the bull Incumbit nobis calling on several eremitical communities in Tuscany to unite themselves into a single religious order with the Rule and way of life of St. Augustine. The following March, 1244, the hermits held a founding chapter in Rome under the guidance of Cardinal Richard Annibald and put the union effect. Thus began the history of the Order of St. Augustine.

The pope directed the Tuscan hermits to elect for themselves a prior general and to draw up a set of constitutions. From then on they became known as the hermits of the Order of St. Augustine.

SAINT AUGUSTINES MONASTICISM

The monastic tradition embraced by the hermits in 1244 has its earliest traces soon after St. Augustine's conversion in Milan, when he and some friends returned to his native Thagaste, gave away their possessions and began a life of prayer and study as "servants of God.

You, Lord, make men of one mind to dwell in one house ... We kept together with the intention of dwelling together in our holy resolution. We made our investigations as to what place would be best suited for your service and together we were returning to Africa.

Ordained a priest in 391, Augustine obtained the use of a garden at Hippo to build a monastery for his lay community. He later wrote a Rule for his brothers, inspired by the Christian community in Jerusalem:

Before all else, live together in harmony, being of one soul and one heart seeking God.

When he became bishop of Hippo he chose to reside in his episcopal house but continued to live a community life with his clergy. Later a monastery of women was established within the city, bringing to light three forms of Augustinian religious life: masculine, both lay and clerical, and feminine.

Augustine's ideal spread to other parts of Africa. Several of the brothers were ordained bishops and brought their previous monasticism to other local churches. In fifth century Africa Augustinian inspired monasteries numbered approximately thirty-five.

Between the years 430 and 570 this life-style was carried to Europe by monks and clergy fleeing the persecution of the Vandals. Around 440 Quodvultdeus of Carthage brought it to Italy near Naples. In 502 St. Fulgentius of Ruspe arrived in Sardinia. Donatus and seventy monks brought it to southern Spain about 570, and some monks may have even reached France.

The abundance of ancient manuscripts of the Rule of St. Augustine shows a constant interest in it during the middle ages. Nevertheless, it was overshadowed by other rules for more than three centuries particularly the Rule of St. Benedict. Augustine's Rule appears again in practice in eleventh century Europe as a basis for the reform of monasteries and cathedral chapters. It was adopted by the canons regular of the Abbey of St. Victor in Paris, the Premonstratensians and the Lateran Canons.

The Grand Union Of 1256

Further development took place on 9 April 1256 with the bull Licet Ecclesiae catholicae of Pope Alexander IV. The pope confirmed the integration of the Hermits of John the Good (Rule of St. Augustine, 1225), the Hermits of St. William (Rule of St. Benedict), the Hermits of Brettino (Rule of St. Augustine, 1228), the Hermits of Monte Favale (Rule of St. Benedict), and other smaller congregations with the Tuscan Hermits into "the one profession and regular observance of the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine.

The Grand Union was made at the Tuscan hermits' foundation of Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome, again under the direction of Cardinal Annibaldi, with delegates coming from each hermitage. Lanfranc Septala of Milan, previous superior of the Hermits of John the Good, became the prior general of the Order comprising 180 religious houses in Italy, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, France, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Bohemia and England.

The union of 1256 was an important step in the Church's reform of the religious life. By it the pope intended to end the confusion arising from the excessive number of small religious groups and to channel their spiritual forces into an apostolate of preaching and pastoral care in the rising cities of Europe. The Augustinians thus took their place as mendicant friars alongside the Dominicans, the Franciscans, and, soon after, the Carmelites.

The Mendicant Movement of the thirteenth century was a revolutionary response to a revolutionary situation. The Church's unity was being threatened anew by heresy. Fresh challenges were evolving out of economic and intellectual changes in society. The friars were sent directly into the developing commercial centers to preach to the growing educated classes and to bring the spirituality of the Gospel to the people.

Thus the spiritual identity of the Order had two foundations. The first was the person of St. Augustine from whom it received its concept of religious life, in particular the importance of the interior search for God and community life. The second was the Mendicant Movement by which the Order of St. Augustine became an apostolic fraternity.

The ORDER of SAINT BENEDICT

The Order of St. Benedict (O. S. B.) is the oldest order of monks in the West. There are both Roman Catholic and Anglican Benedictines, men and women who base their way of life on the rule written by St. BENEDICT.

Unlike other religious orders, the Benedictines are not a centralized organization. Each monastery is independent. A large monastery is an Abbey headed by an Abbot or an abbess. A small monastery is a priory headed by a Prior or a prioress. Individual Benedictine houses are joined with others to form a congregation. The various congregations together form a confederation at the head of which is the abbot primate, first among equals of the various abbots. A few houses belong to no congregation and are directly subject to the abbot primate.

The Benedictine life is led within a community in the context of personal recollection and work, interspersed with the public recitation or singing of the DIVINE OFFICE. Public worship is performed with solemnity and beauty. Work is essential; it can be manual, intellectual, or service-oriented. Each monastery may vary in its stress on prayer and its type of work without changing the basic orientation. The Benedictine habit is generally black, composed of tunic, belt, scapular, and hood, and a large flowing garment called the cowl for public worship. During the Middle Ages, the Benedictines were called the Black Monks.

Until the end of the 11th century, the Benedictines were the only monastic order in the West. They played important roles in apostolic activity, in education, and in the arts. Peter ABELARD, the Venerable BEDE, and Pope GREGORY VII were Benedictines

The ORDER of SAINT SCHOLASTICA

St. Scholastica (whose feast day is February 10) and her twin brother St. Benedict set the standard for monastic and convent life in the West by reacting against the way religious life was practiced in the East.

Throughout the desert regions of the Middle East and North Africa lived bands of hermits and loosely organized communities of monks who hoped to become holy by practicing extreme penances. They deprived themselves of food, water, sleep, even clothes, to the point that many became physical wrecks and some went mad.

In response to these excesses, Scholastica and Benedict designed an orderly, sane, yet spiritually concentrated way of life for men and women seeking God. The Benedictines ate healthy meals that included bread, fresh fruit and vegetables, meat and fish, even a little wine or beer. They wore religious habits suitable to the local climate. They divided their days into regular periods of work, study, prayer and recreation.

Brother and sister both founded communities on the slopes of Monte Cassino south of Rome. Since men were not permitted in Scholastica's convent and women could not enter Benedict's monastery, to visit each other the twin saints met at a small house halfway between their two establishments. On one such visit Scholastica brought a few of her nuns and Benedict came accompanied by a few monks; they all spent the afternoon in pleasant conversation, dined together, and were chatting so happily after dinner they forgot the time.

Realizing the late hour Benedict rose to go, but Scholastica begged him to stay and talk with her until morning. Benedict refused. His own rule forbade his monks from staying away from the monastery all night. As the men headed out the door, Scholastica bowed her head and began to pray. Immediately a violent storm broke over the mountain, with tornado-force winds and torrential rain. Benedict and his monks retreated back into the house.

"What have you done?" Benedict asked his sister.

"I asked you to grant me a favor and you refused. So I asked the same favor of God and He heard my prayer. Go back to your monastery, if you can."

So Benedict stayed and brother and sister talked until dawn, when the storm stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

Three days later Benedict was gazing out his window when he saw his sister's soul ascending to Heaven in the shape of a white dove. Today St. Scholastica and St. Benedict lie together in the crypt beneath the great abbey church at Monte Cassino. As for the rule of life they created together, it has become the basis for the rule of every religious order of nuns and monks in the Catholic world.