e come next to another great monastic family which is included under the generic name of Augustinians. The Augustinians claim the great St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, as their founder, and relate that he established the monastic communities in Africa, and gave them a rule. That he did patronise monachism in Africa we gather from his writings, but it is not clear that he founded any distinct order; nor was any order called after his name until the middle of the ninth century. About that time all the various denominations of clergy who had not entered the ranks of monachism—priests, canons, clerks, &c.—were incorporated by a decree of Pope Leo III. and the Emperor Lothaire into one great order, and were enjoined to observe the rule which was then known under the name of St. Augustine, but which is said to have been really compiled by Ivo de Chartres from the writings of St. Augustine. It was a much milder rule than the Benedictine. The Augustinians were divided into Canons Secular and Canons Regular.
The Canons Secular of St. Augustine were in fact the clergy of cathedral and collegiate churches, who lived in community on the monastic model; their habit was a long black cassock (the parochial clergy did not then universally wear black); over which, during divine service, they wore a surplice and a fur tippet, called an almuce, and a four-square black cap, called a baret; and at other times a black cloak and hood with a leather girdle. According to their rule they might wear their beards, but from the thirteenth century downwards we find them usually shaven. In the Canon’s Yeoman’s tale, from which the following extract is taken, Chaucer gives us a pen-and-ink sketch of a canon, from which it would seem that even on a journey he wore the surplice and fur hood under the black cloak:—
“Ere we had ridden fully five mile,
At Brighton under Blee us gan atake [overtake]
A man that clothed was in clothes blake,
And underneath he wered a surplice.
*****
And in my hearte wondren I began
What that he was, till that I understood
How that his cloak was sewed to his hood,[7]
For which when I had long avised me,
I deemed him some chanon for to be.
His hat hung at his back down by a lace.”
The hat which hung behind may have been like that of the abbot in a subsequent woodcut; but he wore his hood; and Chaucer, with his usual humour and life-like portraiture, tells us how he had put a burdock leaf under his hood because of the heat:—
“A clote-leaf he had laid under his hood
For sweat, and for to keep his head from heat.”
Chaucer rightly classes the canons rather with priests than monks:—
“All be he monk or frere,
Priest or chanon, or any other wight.”
The canon whom we give in the wood-cut over-leaf, from one of Hollar’s plates, is in ordinary costume. An engraving of a semi-choir of canons in their furred tippets from the MS. Domitian xvii, will be found in a subsequent chapter on the Secular Clergy.
There are numerous existing monumental brasses in which the effigies of canons are represented in choir costume, viz., surplice and amice, and often with a cope over all; they are all bareheaded and shaven. We may mention specially that of William Tannere, first master of Cobham College (died 1418 A.D.), in Cobham Church, Kent, in which the almuce, with its fringe of bell-shaped ornaments, over the surplice, is very distinctly shown; it is fastened at the throat with a jewel. The effigy of Sir John Stodeley, canon, in Over Winchendon Church, Bucks (died 1505), is in ordinary costume, an under garment reaching to the heels, over that a shorter black cassock, girded with a leather girdle, and over all a long cloak and hood.