CANONS
295
CANONS
cincture. They are governed by an abbot general,
vicars, and visitors.
The origin of the Congregation of the Holy Cross appears In lie uncertain, although all admit its great antiquity. It has been divided into four chief branches: the Italian, the Bohemian, the Belgian, and the .Spanish. Of this last very little is known. The branch once flourishing in Italy, after several at- tempts al reformation, was finally suppressed by Alexander VII in 1656. In Bohemia there are still some houses of Croisier Canons, as they are called, who. however, seem to be different from the well- known Belgian Canons of the Holy Cross, who trace their origin to the time of Innocent III and recognize for their Father Blessed Theodore de Celles, who founded their first house at Huy. near Liege. These Belgian Croisier Canons have a great affinity with the I >ominicans. They follow the Rule of St. Augustine, and their constitutions are mainly those compiled for the Dominican Order by St. Raymond of Pennafort. Besides the usual duties of canons in the church, they are engaged in preaching, administering the sacra- ments, and teaching. Formerly they had houses in Belgium, Holland. Germany, France, England, Ire- land, and Scotland. Till some years ago they served ■ us in North America. At present they have five monasteries in Belgium, of which St. Agatha is considered the mother-house. To these Croisier Can- ons belongs the privilege, granted to them by Leo X. and confirmed by Leo XIII, of blessing beads with an indulgence of 500 days. Their habit was formerly black, but is now a white soutane with a black scapu- lar and a cross, white and black, on the breast. In choir they wear in summer the rochet with a black almucc.
To St. Gilbert of Scmpringham is due the honour of founding the only religious order of distinctly Eng- Having completed his studies in England and in nance, he returned to the Diocese of Lincoln, where he began to labour with great zeal for the salva- tion of souls, becoming a canon regular in the monas- tery of Bridlington. But finding that the discipline of the order was not strictly observed, he conceived, in 1 1 IV the idea of introducing a reform in those regions. After much prayer, thought, and taking advice from holy men, he came to the conclusion that ry to establish a new congregation, com- posed of both men and women, who should live under the same roof, though of course separated. This idea he put into execution, giving the rule of St. Benedict to the women and that of canons regular to the men, with special and carefully elaborated constitutions for both. The Gilbertine Congregation spread espe- cially in the Xorth of England, and, as already stated, at the time of the general dissolution it had twenty houses and one hundred and fifty-one religious. At 1 Diversity of Stamford, Sempringham Hall, founded by Robert Lutrell in 1292, was espe- cially for the students of the. Gilbertine Congregation, canons regular, usually called monks, whom • at the Hospice on the Great St. Bernard, belong to the Congregation of St. Augustine, St. Bernard, and St. Nicholas, as it is officially called. They were established on this famous pass of the Alps by Bernard of Menthon, a canon regular of Aosta, about the year 969, according to some, or later, ac- cording to others. The religious institute in such a place was only meant by the founder for the con- venience of pilgrims and travellers who cross the Alps at a point always full of dangers. The hospice, the canons, their work are too well known to need more than a short mention here. Besides lay brothers and servants, there are always at the hospice about fifteen canons, who come from Martigny, their mother-house, where also resides the -uperior general of the congrega- tion. Some canons have charge of the hospice on the Simplon Pass, and a certain number of parishes in the
Canton Valais are served by canons of the same con-
gregation.
The origin of the Windesheim Congregation is due to Gerard Groot, a zealous preacher and reformer of the fourteenth century, at LVvcnter in the Low Coun- tries. Touched by his preaching and example, many poor clerical students gathered around him and, under his direction, "putting together whatever they earned week by week, began to live in common". Such was the beginning of the institute known as that of the " Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life". This insti- tution spread rapidly, and in a short time nearly every town in Holland and the adjacent count ries contained one or more houses of "The New Devotion", as it was then called. But difficulties were not wanting. The members of "The New Devotion" were not bound to- gether by any vows, and the institute had received no formal approval from the ecclesiastical authorities. Groot foresaw that the only safeguard for the con- tinuance of the new institute was to affiliate it in some way to some great religious order already approved by the Church, to the authority of which the "devout brethren and sisters" might look for guidance and protection. Having heard of the famous Blessed John Ruysbrock, prior of a house of canons regular at Groendael near Brussels, he went to visit and con- sult him. Deeply edified by what he saw and heard there, Gerard Groot resolved to place this new insti- tute under the spiritual guidance of the canons regu- lar. The execution of this resolve was left by Gerard Groot, at his death, to his beloved disciple, Florentius Radewyn. A beginning was soon made, and the foundation of the first house laid at Windesheim, near Zwolle. This became the mother-house of the famous congregation, which, only sixty years after the death of Groot, possessed in Belgium alone more than eighty well-organized monasteries, some of which, according to the chronicler John Buschius. who had visited them all, contained as many as a hundred, or even two hundred, inmates. The congregation continued in its primitive fervour until the devastations of the Reformers drove it from its native soil, and it was at last utterly destroyed during the French Revolution.. To this double institute the Church owes many pious and learned men — as Raymund Jordan, railed bliota, John Ruysbrock, Mauburn. Garetins. Latomus, and Erasmus. Some, like St. John Ostervick, canonized by Pius IX. shed their blood rather than deny their Faith. Chief among these learned and holy men stands Thomas a Kempis, who when still a youth joined the institute, and knew the saintly I lurentius and the first founders of the congregation.
Although the canonical order ]x>ssessed so many houses in Ireland before tin' dissolution by Henry VIII; yet, on account of the persecution, little by little it, appears to have languished, and by 1620 to have been nearly extinct; it somewhat revived, how- ever, for canons regular were once more to be found in the country not long after this. It is not improba- ble that at the outbreak of the persecution, like many members of other religious orders, some of the Irish canons may have retired to foreign monasteries and maintained a quasi-independent existenci . and have been joined by others of their compatriots who were desirous of entering the canonical institute. In 1645 Dom Thaddeus O'Conel was butchered at Sligo by the Scotch Puritans together with the VrchbishopofTuam, Malachy O'Queely. At th ment of 1646
the canons were sufficiently numerous to be formed by Innocent X into a separate congregation, that of St. Patrick, and this congregation, as the same pope declared, inherited all the rights, privileges, and pos- sessions of the old Irish canons. In the year 1608 the Irish Congregation, by a Bull of Innocent XII, was affiliated and aggregated to the Lateran Congrega- tion. From the moment the union was made the two congregations formed but one, and the members
