Canons Regular
Canons regular are the members of certain religious orders in the Roman Catholic Church (not to be confused with clerics regular), composed of priests and some choir canons who live in community, together in the past with lay brothers. There are a variety of congregations of canons, some of whom are part of the Confederation of Canons Regular of St. Augustine.
- Canons Regular of the Lateran or St. Saviour, who seem to date back to Pope Alexander II (1063)
- Order of the Canons Regular of Premontre; Norbertines founded by St. Norbert (1120)
- Order of the Holy Cross (Canons Regular) founded in Portugal in 1131 and re-founded in 1977
- Canons Regular of the Order of the Holy Cross (the Crosiers), founded at Clair-lieu, near Huy, in Belgium, in 1211
- Swiss Congregation of Canons Regular of Saint Maurice of Agaune
- Gilbertine Order, a solely English order of canons regular, which became extinct under King Henry VIII
- Canons Regular of the Immaculate Conception, a congregation of Canons Regular founded in France in 1871
Many bishops endeavoured to imitate St. Augustine and St. Eusebius, and to live a common life with the clergy of their church. Rules taken from the sacred canons were even drawn up for their use, of which the most celebrated is that of St. Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz (766). In the tenth century, this institution declined; the canons, as the clergy attached to a church and living a common life were called, began to live separately; some of them, however, resisted this relaxation of discipline, and even added poverty to their common life. This is the origin of the canons regular. Pope Benedict XII by his constitution Ad decorem (15 May 1339) prescribed a general reform of the canons regular. The canons regular ex professo united Holy Orders with religious life, and being attached to a church, devoted themselves to promoting the dignity of divine worship. With monks, Holy Orders are incidental and secondary, and are superadded to the religious life. With canons as with the clerks regular, Holy Orders are the principal thing, and the religious life is superadded to the Holy Orders.
Read more about this topic: Canon (priest)
Famous quotes containing the words canons and/or regular:
“Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.”
—Leslie Fiedler (b. 1917)
“My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a good deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)