Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages / Third Edition

by Edward Lewes Cutts

The Canons Regular of St. Augustine were perhaps the least ascetic of the monastic orders. Enyol de Provins, a minstrel (and afterwards a monk) of the thirteenth century, says of them: “Among them one is well shod, well clothed, and well fed. They go out when they like, mix with the world, and talk at table.” They were little known till the tenth or eleventh century, and the general opinion is, that they were first introduced into England, at Colchester, in the reign of Henry I., where the ruins of their church, of Norman style, built of Roman bricks, still remain. Their habit was like that of the secular canons—a long black cassock, cloak and hood, and leather girdle, and four-square cap; they are distinguished from the secular canons by not wearing the beard. According to Tanner, they had one hundred and seventy-four houses in England—one hundred and fifty-eight for monks, and sixteen for nuns; but the editors of the last edition of the “Monasticon” have recovered the names of additional small houses, which make up a total of two hundred and sixteen houses of the order.

Canon of St. Augustine.

The Augustinian order branches out into a number of denominations; indeed, it is considered as the parent rule of all the monastic orders and religious communities which are not included under the Benedictine order; and retrospectively it is made to include all the distinguished recluses and clerics before the institution of St. Benedict, from the fourth to the sixth century.

The most important branch of the Regular Canons is the Premonstratensian, founded by St. Norbert, a German nobleman, who died in 1134 A.D.; his first house, in a barren spot in the valley of Coucy, in Picardy, called Pré-montre, gave its name to the order. The rule was that of Augustine, with a severe discipline superadded; the habit was a coarse black cassock, with a white woollen cloak and a white four-square cap. Their abbots were not to use any episcopal insignia. The Premonstratensian nuns were not to sing in choir or church, and to pray in silence. They had only thirty-six houses in England, of which Welbeck was the chief; but the order was very popular on the Continent, and at length numbered one thousand abbeys and five hundred nunneries.

Under this rule are also included the Gilbertines, who were founded by a Lincolnshire priest, Gilbert of Sempringham, in the year 1139 A.D. There were twenty-six houses of the order, most of them in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire; they were all priories dependent upon the house of Sempringham, whose head, as prior-general, appointed the priors of the other houses, and ruled absolutely the whole order. All the houses of this order were double houses, that is, monks and nuns lived in the same enclosure, though with a rigid separation between their two divisions. The monks followed the Augustinian rule; the nuns followed the rule of the Cistercian nuns. The habit was a black cassock, a white cloak, and hood lined with lambskin. The “Monasticon” gives very effective representations (after Hollar) of the Gilbertine monk and nun.

The Nuns of Fontevraud was another female order of Augustinians, of which little is known. It was founded at Fontevraud in France, and three houses of the order were established in England in the time of Henry II.; they had monks and nuns within the same enclosure, and all subject to the rule of an abbess.

The Bonhommes were another small order of the Augustinian rule, of little repute in England; they had only two houses here, which, however, were reckoned among the greater abbeys, viz., Esserug in Bucks, and Edindon in Wilts.

The female Order of our Saviour, or, as they are usually called, the Brigittines, were founded by St. Bridget of Sweden, in 1363 A.D. They were introduced into England by Henry V., who built for them the once glorious nunnery of Sion House. At the dissolution, the nuns fled to Lisbon, where their successors still exist. Some of the relics and vestments which they carried from Sion House have been carefully preserved ever since, and are now in the possession of the Earl of Shrewsbury.[8] Their habit was like that of the Benedictine nuns—a black tunic, white wimple and veil, but is distinguished by a black band on the veil across the forehead.

Other small offshoots of the great Augustinian tree were those which observed the rule of St. Austin according to the regulations of St. Nicholas of Arroasia, which had four houses here; and those which observed the order of St. Victor, which had three houses.