Canon regular


The Canons Regular are Catholic priests and religious brothers who live in community under a rule and are generally organised into religious orders, differing from both secular canons and other forms of religious life, such as clerics regular, designated by a partly similar terminology. As religious communities, they have lay brothers as part of the community. Canons regular generally follow the Rule of Saint Augustine.
At times, the life of canons regular has been very popular. In 12th-century England, there were more houses of canons than monasteries of monks.

Preliminary distinctions

All canons regular are to be distinguished from secular canons who belong to a resident group of priests but who do not take public vows and are not governed in whatever elements of life they lead in common by a historical rule. One obvious place where such groups of priests are required is at a cathedral, where there were many Masses to celebrate and the Divine Office to be prayed together in community. Other groups were established at other churches which at some period in their history had been considered major churches, and also in smaller centres.
As a norm, canons regular live together in communities that take public vows. Their early communities took vows of common property and stability. As a later development, they now usually take the three public vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, although some orders or congregations of canons regular have retained the vow of stability.
By 1125 hundreds of communities of canons had sprung up in Western Europe. Usually, they were quite independent of one another and varied in their ministries. For example, the Arrouaisians had restrained lifestyles along Cistercian lines, while the Premonstratensians were more austere.
File:Memorial Tablet by the Master of the Spes Notra before the 2006 restoration.jpg|thumb|200px|Visitation memento mori, painter unknown, c.1500, juxtaposing pregnancy and death, with four Augustinan canons regular of the Chapter of Sion. Left, with little lion, is Jerome; right, holding a heart, is Augustine. Rijksmuseum
Especially from the 11th century, among the canons regular, various groupings called congregations were formed, which partly resembled religious orders in the general modern sense. This movement parallelled in some respects the kind of bonds established between houses of monks. Among these congregations of canons regular, most adopted the Rule of St. Augustine, hence taking their name from St. Augustine, the great Doctor of the Church, "for he realized in an ideal way the common life of the Clergy". They became known as Augustinian Canons, and sometimes in English as Austin Canons. Where it was the case, they have also been known as Black Canons, from their black habits. There have always been canons regular who have not adopted the Rule of St. Augustine: all Augustinian Canons are canons regular, but not all canons regular are Augustinian Canons.
In Latin, terms such as Canonici Regulares Ordinis S. Augustini were used, whereby the term order referred more to a form of life or a stratum of society, reminiscent of the usage of the equestrian order or senatorial order of Roman society, rather than to a religious order in the modern sense of a closely organized body. Furthermore, among the Augustinian Canons, some groups acquired a greater degree of distinctiveness in their style of life and organization, to the point of being in law or in effect autonomous religious orders. Examples include the Premonstratensian or Norbertine Order, sometimes known in English as White Canons, from their white habits. Yet another such order is that of the Crosiers. Encouraged by the general policies of the Holy See, especially from the late nineteenth century, some of these separate orders and congregations of Augustinian Canons have subsequently combined in some form of federation or confederation.
All the different varieties of canons regular are to be distinguished not only from secular canons but also from:
  • Monks, who in the Western tradition are members of monastic religious orders such as the various branches of Benedictines, or the Carthusians, whose members in their history have often been laymen, not priests.
Writing at a time before the foundation of the mendicant orders, Pope Urban II, said there were two forms of religious life: the monastic and the canonical. He likened the monks to the role of Mary, and the canons to that of her sister, Martha.
  • The Friars of Saint Augustine, sometimes called simply Augustinians or in English Augustinian friars or Austin friars, who are one of the mendicant orders. The mendicants are called "friars", not "monks" nor "canons" and were originally itinerant preachers like the Franciscans or Dominicans, living on what the people gave them in food and alms. The Augustinian friars were a galaxy of dispersed religious groups, many of them hermits who in the 13th century were formed by the popes and church councils into a religious order with structures that followed the model of the mendicant orders. The Augustinian friars drew their inspiration from the ancient and flexible Rule of St. Augustine, hence their name. However, they did not combine this with the structures or manner of life of the canons regular.
  • Clerks regular are for the greater part priests who take religious vows and have an active apostolic life. While they live in communities, they belong to the order as such rather than to a particular house and their prime focus is on pastoral work rather than a choral office. In the modern sense they are a category of priests of male religious orders constituted from the 16th century, examples being the Theatines or the Barnabites.

    Background

According to St. Thomas Aquinas, a canon regular is essentially a religious cleric. "The Order of Canons Regular is necessarily constituted by religious clerics, because they are essentially destined to those works which relate to the Divine Mysteries, whereas it is not so with the Monastic Orders." This is what constitutes a canon regular and what distinguishes him from a monk. The clerical state is essential to the Order of Canons Regular, whereas it is only accidental to the Monastic Order. Erasmus, himself a canon regular, declared that the canons regular are a "median point" between the monks and the secular clergy. The outer appearance and observances of the canons regular can seem very similar to those of the monks. This is because the various reforms borrowed certain practices from the monks for the use of the canons.
According to St. Augustine, a canon regular professes two things, "sanctitatem et clericatum". He lives in community, he leads the life of a religious, he sings the praises of God by the daily recitation of the Divine Office in choir; but at the same time, at the bidding of his superiors, he is prepared to follow the example of the Apostles by preaching, teaching, and the administration of the sacraments, or by giving hospitality to pilgrims and travellers, and tending the sick. In fact, traditionally canons regular have not confined themselves exclusively to the functions of the canonical life. They have also given hospitality to pilgrims and travelers on the Great St. Bernard and on the Simplon, and in former times the hospitals of St. Bartholomew's Smithfield, in London, of Santo Spirito, in Rome, of Lochleven, Monymusk and St. Andrew's, in Scotland, and others like them, were all served by canons regular. Many houses of canons worked among the poor, the lepers, and the infirm. The clerics established by St. Patrick in Ireland had accommodation for pilgrims and the sick whom they tended by day and by night. And the rule given by Chrodegang to his canons enjoined that there should be a hospital near their house for this purpose.

History

Ordo Antiquus

Augustine of Hippo, also known as Saint Augustine, did not found the canons regular, not even those who are called Augustinian Canons. Although Augustine of Hippo is regarded by the canons as their founder, Vincent of Beauvais, Sigebert, and Peter of Cluny all state that the canonical order traces back its origin to the earliest ages of the Church. In the first centuries after Christ, priests lived with the bishop and carried out the liturgy and sacraments in the cathedral church. While each could own his own property, they lived together and shared common meals and a common dormitory.
From the 4th to the middle of the 11th century, communities of canons were established exclusively by bishops. The oldest form of canonical life was known as "Ordo Antiquus". In Italy, among the first to successfully unite the clerical state with the common life was St Eusebius, Bishop of Vercelli and St Zeno, Bishop of Verona and St Ambrose of Milan did similarly.

Saint Augustine

It was under St Augustine that the "canonical life" reached its apotheosis. None of the Fathers of the Church were as enthusiastic about the community life of the Apostolic Church of Jerusalem or as enthralled by it as St. Augustine. To live this out in the midst of like-minded brethren was the goal of his monastic foundations in Thagaste, in the "Garden Monastery" at Hippo and at his bishop's house. The "rules" of St. Augustine intended to help put the vita apostolica into effect for the circumstances of his time and the community of his day.
From the time of his elevation to be Bishop of Hippo in 395 AD, he transformed his episcopal residence into a monastery for clerics and established the essential characteristics-the common life with renunciation of private property, chastity, obedience, the liturgical life and the care of souls: to these can be added two other typically Augustinian characteristics —a close bond of brotherly affection and a wise moderation in all things. This spirit permeates the whole of the so-called Rule of St. Augustine and at least in substance can be attributed to Augustine personally.
The invasion of Africa by the Vandals destroyed Augustine's foundation, which likely took refuge in Gaul. The prescriptions which St. Augustine had given to the clerics who lived with him soon spread and were adopted by other communities of canons regular not only in Africa, but in Italy, in France and elsewhere. Pope Gelasius, about the year 492, re-established the regular life in the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran. From there the reform spread till at length the rule was universally adopted by almost all the canons regular.