F. A. Gasquet’s English Monastic Life). The first foundation was Holy Trinity, Aldgate, by Queen Maud, in 1108; Carlisle was an English cathedral of Augustinian canons. In Ireland the order was even more numerous, Christ Church, Dublin, being one of their houses. Three houses of the Lateran canons were established in England towards the close of the 19th century. Most of the congregations of Augustinian canons had convents of nuns, called canonesses; many such exist to this day.
See the works of Amort and Du Molinet, mentioned under Canon. Vol. ii. of Helyot’s Hist. des ordres religieux (1792) is devoted to canons regular of all kinds. The information is epitomized by Max Heimbucher, Orden und Kongregationen, i. (1896), §§ 54-60, where copious references to the literature of the subject are supplied. See also Otto Zöckler, Askese und Mönchtum, ii. (1897), p. 422; and Wetzer und Welte, Kirchenlexicon (2nd ed.), art. “Canonici Regulares” and “Canonissae.” For England see J. W. Clark, Observances in use at the Augustinian Priory at Barnwell (1897); and an article in Journal of Theological Studies (v.) by Scott Holmes. (E. C. B.)
AUGUSTINIAN HERMITS, or Friars, a religious order in the Roman Catholic Church, sometimes called (but improperly) Black Friars (see Friars). In the first half of the 13th century there were in central Italy various small congregations of hermits living according to different rules. The need of co-ordinating and organizing these hermits induced the popes towards 1250 to unite into one body a number of these congregations, so as to form a single religious order, living according to the Rule of St Augustine, and called the Order of Augustinian Hermits, or simply the Augustinian Order. Special constitutions were drawn up for its government, on the same lines as the Dominicans and other mendicants—a general elected by chapter, provincials to rule in the different countries, with assistants, definitors and visitors. For this reason, and because almost from the beginning the term “hermits” became a misnomer (for they abandoned the deserts and lived conventually in towns), they ranked among the friars, and became the fourth of the mendicant orders. The observance and manner of life was, relatively to those times, mild, meat being allowed four days in the week. The habit is black. The institute spread rapidly all over western Europe, so that it eventually came to have forty provinces and 2000 friaries with some 30,000 members. In England there were not more than about 30 houses (see Tables in F. A. Gasquet’s English Monastic Life). The reaction against the inevitable tendencies towards mitigation and relaxation led to a number of reforms that produced upwards of twenty different congregations within the order, each governed by a vicar-general, who was subject to the general of the order. Some of these congregations went in the matter of austerity beyond the original idea of the institute; and so in the 16th century there arose in Spain, Italy and France, Discalced or Barefooted Hermits of St Augustine, who provided in each province one house wherein a strictly eremitical life might be led by such as desired it.
About 1500 a great attempt at a reform of this kind was set on foot among the Augustinian Hermits of northern Germany, and they were formed into a separate congregation independent of the general. It was from this congregation that Luther went forth, and great numbers of the German Augustinian Hermits, among them Wenceslaus Link the provincial, followed him and embraced the Reformation, so that the congregation was dissolved in 1526.
The Reformation and later revolutions have destroyed most of the houses of Augustinian Hermits, so that now only about a hundred exist in various parts of Europe and America; in Ireland they are relatively numerous, having survived the penal times. The Augustinian school of theology (Noris, Berti) was formed among the Hermits. There have been many convents of Augustinian Hermitesses, chiefly in the Barefooted congregations; such convents exist still in Europe and North America, devoted to education and hospital work. There have also been numerous congregations of Augustinian Tertiaries, both men and women, connected with the order and engaged on charitable works of every kind (see Tertiaries).
See Helyot, Hist. des ordres religieux (1792), iii.; Max Heimbucher, Orden und Kongregationen, i. (1896), § 61-65; Wetzer und Welte, Kirchenlexicon (2nd ed.), art. “Augustiner”; Herzog, Realencyklopädie (3rd ed.), art. “Augustiner.” The chief book on the subject is Th. Kolde, Die deutschen Augustiner-Kongregationen (1879). (E. C. B.)
AUGUSTINIANS, in the Roman Catholic Church, a generic name for religious orders that follow the so-called “Rule of St Augustine.” The chief of these orders are:—Augustinian Canons (q.v.), Augustinian Hermits (q.v.) or Friars, Premonstratensians (q.v.), Trinitarians (q.v.), Gilbertines (see Gilbert of Sempringham, St). The following orders, though not called Augustinians, also have St Augustine’s Rule as the basis of their life: Dominicans, Servites, Our Lady of Ransom, Hieronymites, Assumptionsts and many others; also orders of women: Brigittines, Ursulines, Visitation nuns and a vast number of congregations of women, spread over the Old and New Worlds, devoted to education and charitable works of all kinds.
See Helyot, Ordres religieux (1792), vols. ii., iii., iv.; Max Heimbucher, Orden und Kongregationen, i. (1896), § 66-85; Wetzer und Welte, Kirchenlexicon, i., 1665–1667.
St Augustine never wrote a Rule, properly so called; but Ep. 211 (al. 109) is a long letter of practical advice to a community of nuns, on their daily life; and Serm. 355, 356 describe the common life he led along with his clerics in Hippo. When in the second half of the 11th century the clergy of a great number of collegiate churches were undertaking to live a substantially monastic form of life (see Canon), it was natural that they should look back to this classical model for clerics living in community. And so attention was directed to St Augustine’s writings on community life; and out of them, and spurious writings attributed to him, were compiled towards the close of the 11th century three Rules, the “First” and “Second” being mere fragments, but the “Third” a substantive rule of life in 45 sections, often grouped in twelve chapters. This Third Rule is the one known as “the Rule of St Augustine.” Being confined to fundamental principles without entering into details, it has proved itself admirably suited to form the foundation of the religious life of the most varied orders and congregations, and since the 12th century it has proved more prolific than the Benedictine Rule. In an uncritical age it was attributed to St Augustine himself, and Augustinians, especially the canons, put forward fantastic claims to antiquity, asserting unbroken continuity, not merely from St Augustine, but from Christ and the Apostles.
The three Rules are printed in Dugdale, Monasticon (ed. 1846), vi. 42; and in Holsten-Brockie, Codex Regularum, ii. 121. For the literature see Otto Zöckler, Askese und Mönchtum (1897), pp. 347, 354. (E. C. B.)
AUGUSTOWO, a city of Russian Poland, in the government of Suwalki, 20 m. S. of the town of that name, on a canal (65 m.) connecting the Vistula with the Niemen. It was founded in 1557 by Sigismund II. (Augustus), and is laid out in a very regular manner, with a spacious market-place. It carries on a large trade in cattle and horses, and manufactures linen and huckaback. Pop. (1897) 12,746.
AUGUSTUS (a name[1] derived from Lat. augeo, increase, i.e. venerable, majestic, Gr. Σεβαστός), the title given by the Roman senate, on the 17th of January 27 B.C., to Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (63 B.C.–A.D. 14), or as he was originally designated, Gaius Octavius, in recognition of his eminent services to the state (Mon. Anc. 34), and borne by him as the first of the Roman emperors. The title was adopted by all the succeeding Caesars or emperors of Rome long after they had ceased to be connected by blood with the first Augustus.
Gaius Octavius was born in Rome on the 23rd of September 63 B.C., the year of Cicero’s consulship and of Catiline’s conspiracy. He came of a family of good standing, long settled at Velitrae (Velletri), but his father was the first of the family to obtain a curule magistracy at Rome and senatorial dignity. His mother, however, was Atia, daughter of Julia, the wife of M. Atius Balbus, and sister of Julius Caesar, and it was this connexion with the great dictator which determined his career. In his fifth year (58 B.C.) his father died; about a year later his mother
- ↑ On the name see Neumann, in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie f. cl. alterth., s.v. 2374.
