§ 66. AUGUSTINIANS, CAKTHUSIANS, CARMELITES. 359
as their model. We know that Augustine had living with him a group of clerics. We also know that he commended his sister for associating herself with other women and withdrawing from the world, and gave her some advice. But so far as is known Augustine prescribed no definite code such as Benedict afterwards drew up, either for his own household or for any other community.
About 750 Chrodegang, bishop of Metz, drew up a code for his cathedral chapter, whom he enjoined to live together in common,1 and here and there in Germany isolated com munities of this kind were formed.
In the twelfth century we find many groups of clerics who adopted what began to be known as the rule of St. Augustine.2 Under Innocent I'll, organizations were formed by William Langlois of the Paris University, and others under the name canons regular to live distinctly under this code. Innocent IV.3 and Alexander IV., 1256, definitely recognized the rule.
The Augustinian rule established a community of goods. Even gifts went into the common fund. The clerics ate to gether and slept in one dormitory. They wore a common dress, and no one on returning his suit to the clothing room retained any peculiar right to it. The papal attempts to unite these groups into a close organization proved to be in vain.4 In England the Augustinian canons had charge of Carlisle cathedral.
1 Chrodegang provided a common table for the clergy of his chapter, and a common dormitory. The Roman synods of 1059, 1003, recommended priests to have their revenues in common.
2 The tradition runs that this rule was prescribed by Innocent II., 1139, for all canons regular. Helyot, II. 21.
3 In a bull, Dec. 16, 1243, Innocent speaks of the regula 8. Augnstini et ordo. See Potthast, p. 954. The most distinguished convent of regular canons in France was the convent of St. Victor.
4 The cathedral of Bristol is built up from the old abbey of St. Augustine. The Augustinian, or Austin, canons were also called the Black Canons in Eng land. They were very popular there. St. Botolph's, Colchester, their first English house, was established about 1100. At the suppression of the mon-
THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1204.
The Augustinian hermits, or Austin friars, as they were called in England, were monastics in the true sense. They arose after the canons regular,1 adopted the rule of St. Augustine, and were mendicants. In the closing period of the Middle Ages they were addicted to preaching. To this order John of Staupitz and Luther belonged.2
The rule of St. Augustine was also adopted with modifica tion by the Premonstrants, the Gilbertines of England,3 and other orders, and was made the basis by Dominic of his first rule.
2. The Premonstrants adopted the Augustinian rule, were called from their dress White Canons, and grew with great rapidity.4 They had houses from Livland to Palestine, and from Great Britain to Spain. Their founder, Norbert, born about 1080 in Xantes, on the Lower Rhine, was a great preacher and one of the most influential men of his age. Thrown from his horse during a storm, he determined to de vote himself in earnest to religion. He gave up his position in the Cologne Cathedral and entered the Benedictine Con vent of Sigeberg. Norbert then travelled about in Germany and France as a preacher of repentance,5 calling the people
asteries there were one hundred and seventy houses in England, and a much larger number in Ireland. Gasquet, p. 225. See W. G. D. Fletcher, The Blackfriars in Oxford. 1 See Hurter, III. 238.
2 In England they had thirty-two friaries at the time of the dissolution. Gasquet, 241.
8 The Gilbertines, founded by St. Gilbert, rector of Sandringham, about 1140, were confined to England. There were twenty -six houses at the time of the suppression of the monasteries. The convents for men and women used a common church.
4 Norbert's Works and Life are given in Migne, vol. 170, and his Life in Mon. Ger. XII., 670 sqq.; Germ, trans, by Hertel, in Geschichtschreiber der deutschen Vorzeit, Leipzig, 1881. See also Hauck, IV. 350-66; J. von Walter, Die ersten Wanderprediger Frankreichs, vol. II. Leipzig, 1906, pp. 119- 129, and the art. Prcemonstratenser, X. 267 sqq., and Norbert, IX. 448 sqq., in Wetzer-Welte, and Prcemonstratenser, in Herzog, XV. 606 sqq.» and the literature there given ; and Gasquet, The Engl. Prcemonstratensians, in transactions of the Royal Hist. Soc., vol. XVII. London, 1903.
5 Walter puts Norbert in the group of the itinerant preachers of the age.