Augustinians - Canons Regular

Canons Regular

The Canons Regular follow the more ancient form of Augustinian religious life, which developed toward the end of the first millennium, and thus predates the founding of the friars. They represent a clerical adaptation of monastic life, as it grew out of an attempt to organize communities of clerics to a more dedicated way of life, as St. Augustine himself had done. Historically it paralleled the lay movement of monasticism or the eremetical life from which the friars were later to develop. In their tradition, the canons added the commitment of religious vows to their primary vocation of pastoral care. As the canons became independent of the diocesan structures, they came to form their own monastic communities. The official name of the Order is the Canons Regular of St. Augustine (C.R.S.A.).

Like the Benedictines, they do not form one legal body, but are a union of various independent religious congregations. Though they also follow the Rule of St. Augustine, they differ from the friars in not committing themselves to corporate poverty, which is a defining element of the mendicant orders. Unlike the friars and like monks, the canon are generally organized as one large community to which they are attached for life with a vow of stability. Their houses are given the title of an abbey, from which the canons then serve various surrounding towns and villages for spiritual services. The religious superior of their major houses is titled an abbot. Smaller communities are headed by a prior or provost.

The distinctive habit of the canon regular is the rochet, worn over a cassock or tunic, which is indicative of their clerical origins. This has evolved in various way among different congregations, from wearing the full rochet to the wearing of a white tunic and scapular. The Austrian congregation, as an example, wears a sarozium, a narrow band of white cloth—a vestige of the scapular—which hangs down both front and back over a cassock for their weekday wear. For more solemn occasions, they wear the rochet under a purple mozzetta.

Communities of canons served the poor and the sick throughout Europe, through both nursing and education. They include the canons of the Hospice at the Great St. Bernard Pass in the Alps on the border of Switzerland, where they have served travelers since the mid-11th century. This community is the one which developed the familiar canine breed of St. Bernard to assist the canons in their ability to find travelers buried by avalanches.

The Canons Regular of the New Jerusalem are a newly founded Tridentine rite congregation.