Canons Regular - Development

Development

This rule, which, in the words of Giraldus Cambrensis, happily joins the canonical and clerical life together, was soon adopted by many prelates, not only in Africa, but elsewhere also. After the death of the holy Doctor, it was carried into Italy and France by his disciples. One of them, Pope Gelasius, about the year 492, re-established the regular life in the Lateran Basilica. From St. John Lateran (the Mother and Mistress of all Churches) the reform spread till at length the Rule was universally adopted by almost all the canons regular. It was in the same Lateran Basilica, tradition tells us, that St. Patrick, the future Apostle of Ireland, professed the canonical institute which he afterwards introduced with the Christian faith, into his own country. At the voice of the great apostle the Irish nation not only embraced Christianity, but many also, following his example, embraced the canonical life.

On the authority of Sir James Ware, Canon Burke (Life and Labours of St. Augustine) asserts that "all the monasteries founded in Ireland by St. Patrick, were for canons regular." This opinion is also maintained by Allemande, who affirms (Histoire monastique de l'Irlande) that "the Regular Canons of St. Augustine were so early or considerable in Ireland before the general suppression of monasteries, that the number of houses they are said to have had seems incredible. They alone possessed, or had been master of, as many houses as all the other orders together, and almost all the chapters of the cathedral and collegiate churches in Ireland consisted of canons regular." To these authorities we might add that of the Rev. R. Butler, who, in his notes to the "Registrum Omnium Sanctorum", expressly affirms that the "old foundations in Ireland were exclusively for Canons."

We might also quote the words of Bishop Thomas De Burgo, who, in his "Hibernia Dominicana", does not hesitate to say that St. Patrick was a canon regular, and that, having preached the Christian faith in Ireland, he established there many monasteries of the canonical institute. After this no one will think that the same writer exaggerates when he appends to his work a catalogue of 231 monasteries which at some time or other belonged to canons and canonesses regular. The Irish clerics became the most learned scholars in Europe, Ireland's seats of learning, monasteries, nunneries and charitable institutions were unsurpassed in number or excellence by those of any other nation. The Abbots or Priors of Christ Church and All Hallows in Dublin, of Connell, Kells, Athessel, Killagh, Newton, and Raphoe had seats in Parliament.

There seems very little doubt that the canonical institute was introduced into Scotland by St. Columba. This saint, called "monasteriorum pater et fundator", in reference to the numerous churches and monasteries built either by him or by his disciples in Ireland and Scotland, was formed to the religious life in the monastery of St. Finnian. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, anno 565, relates that Columba, Masspreost (Mass-Priest), "came to the Picts to convert them to Christ", or, as another manuscript says: "This year, 565, Columba the Messa-preost, came from the parts of the Scots (Ireland) to the Britons to teach the Picts, and built a monastery in the island of Hy." To what order this monastery, founded by Columba, belonged, we may judge from other monasteries built by the saint in Ireland and Scotland. As we have already stated, St. Columba was the disciple of St. Finnian, who was a follower of St. Patrick; both then had learned and embraced the regular life which the great Apostle had established in Ireland.

Moreover, such writers as Ware, De Burgo, Mervyn Archdall, Cardinal Moran, Bower, expressly tell us that Columba built monasteries for canons regular in Ireland and Scotland. So, for instance, Ware, in his "Antiquitates Hiberniae", writing of Derry, says: "St. Columba built (this monastery) for Canons Regular in the year 545." This monastery was a filiation of the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul at Armagh—which, according to the same writer, had been founded by "St. Patrick for Canons Regular." Again, tradition places the first landing of the saint on leaving Ireland at Oronsay, and Fordun (Bower) notices the island as "Hornsey, ubi est monasterium nigrorum Canonicorum, quod fundavit S. Columba" (where is the monastery of Black Canons which St. Columba founded). Speaking of the very monastery built by the saint at Hy, the historian Gervase of Canterbury, in his "Mappa Mundi", informs us that the monastery belonged to the Black Canons.

Some writers think that the monasteries established by St. Columba in Scotland were for Culdees. Numerous opinions have been expressed concerning the origin and the institute of the Culdees, some calling them monks, some secular canons and hospitallers, and others going so far as to say that they were Independents, or Dissenters, or even the forefathers of the modern Freemasons. Others are of opinion that the Culdees originally, and some even to the very end, were nothing else but clerics living in common just as those St. Patrick had established in Ireland and St. Columba had introduced into Scotland.

At the time of the Reformation there were in Scotland at least thirty-four houses of canons regular and one of canonesses. These included six Premonstratensian houses, one Gilbertine, and one of the Order of St. Anthony. The others seem to have been chiefly of the Aroasian Congregation, first introduced into Scotland from Nostall Priory, in England. The chief houses were:

• St. Andrews, the Metropolitan of Scotland, founded by Angus, King of the Picts. The church was at first served by Culdees, but in 1144 Bishop Robert, who had been a canon regular at Scone, established here members of his own community. The prior was mitred and could pontificate. In Parliament he had precedence of all abbots and priors.
• Scone, founded by King Alexander I of Scotland. Here the Scottish kings were crowned. The stone on which the coronation took place was said to be that on which Jacob rested his head; it was at Westminster until 1996, having been removed by Edward I. Tradition says that the Culdees were at Scone before Alexander brought canons regular from Nostall Priory in 1115.

• Holyrood, of which King David was the founder, in 1128, for canons regular, in the "vail that lyis to the Eist frae the Castell, quhare now lyis the Cannongait, and which at that time was part of ane gret forest full of hartis, hyndis, toddis and sicklike manner of beistis", as Bellenden, the translator of Bower, expresses it. This famous abbey was burnt down at the instigation of John Knox in 1544, but some efforts were made to restore Divine service in the chapel as late as 1688, when Father G. Hay, a Scottish canon regular, of the French congregation, performed there a funeral as he says, "in his habit with surplice and aulmess after the rites of Rome." Next the abbey was the Royal Palace, and we are told that the Scottish kings often went Unto the saintly convent, with good monks to dine and quaff to organ music the pleasant cloister wine.

Many of the houses founded by St. Columba remained in possession of the canons till the Reformation. Oronsay and Crusay were of the number.

Information concerning many of the canonical houses may be found in Fordun's Scoti-Chronicon, written before 1384 (ed. Skene, Edinburgh, 1871–72). As Walter Bower, its continuator and annotator, was a canon regular, and abbot of Inchcolm, he no doubt derived all his materials at firs hand from the archives of the order, and thus many important particulars are related by him concerning the foundations of the houses, their inmates, and particular events.

There are not wanting writers who, on the authority of Jocelin of Soissons, William of Malmesbury, "Gesta Pontificum" and others, are of opinion that the canonical order was established in Britain by St. Patrick, on his return from Rome to Ireland. Be this as it may, the Saxon conquerors of the country extirpated not only the religious establishments, but almost the faith of Christ from the land. The faithful either were obliged to dwell in the fastnesses of Wales or were made slaves. It was in these circumstances that Pope Gregory the Great sent to England St. Augustine with forty clerics, who according to the Bull of Pope Eugenius IV (quoted by Lingard in his Anglo-Saxon Church, I, iv), by which, in 1446, he restored the Lateran Basilica to the Canons Regular, formed a Canonical Institute.

Speaking of the Order founded by the Apostle and reformed by the holy Bishop of Hippo, the pope says: "Blessed Gregory commanded St. Augustine, the Bishop of England, to establish it as a new plantation among the nation entrusted to his care and spread it to the utmost distant parts of the West." And William of Coventry, in his Chronicle, A.D. 620, tells us that "Paulinus with twelve clerics was sent by the Pope to help Augustine." In the North also the disciples of St. Columba were preaching the Gospel and establishing the canonical order among the nation they were converting to Christ.

The Roman and British clergy amalgamated, and were learn from English historians that most if not all the cathedral and large churches were served by regular clerics or Canons Regular till the tenth century, when they were replaced by Benedictine monks by royal authority, and sometimes by means even less lawful. Dr. Lingard clearly states that: 'in many of these religious establishments the inmates had been Canons Regular from the beginning. In many they had originally been monks and had converted themselves into Canon, but all considered themselves bound by their rule to reside within the precincts of their monasteries, to meet daily in the church for the performance of divine service, to take their meals in the same hall, and to sleep in the same dormitory.'

In fact, this same historian is of opinion that St. Augustine and his companions were clerics living in common. Writing of the clergy in Anglo-Saxon times, Dr. Lingard says: 'The chief resource of the Bishop lay in the Cathedral monastery, where the clergy were carefully instructed in their duties and trained in the exercise of their holy profession. They were distinguished by the name of Canons because the rule which they observed had been founded in accordance with the canons enacted in different councils.' and he adds this explanatory note from the Excerptiones of Egbert: Canonen dicimus regulas quas sancti Patres constiturerunt in quibus scriptum est quomodo canonici, id est clerici regulares, vivere debeant. (By the term canons we designate those rules which the holy Fathers have laid down, in which it has been written how canons (canonici), i.e. regular clerics, ought to live).

In the twelfth century many churches served by secular canons, like Plympton, Twynham, Taunton, Dunnow, Gisburn, were given to Canons Regular, who, it would seem, were the original owners. This view is confirmed by various historians. In his History of the Archbishops (ed. William Stubbs, Rolls Series, London, 1876), Ralph Diceto tells us that at Dunstan's suggestion King Edgar drove the clerics out of most of the churches of England and placed monks in their stead. In Liber de Hyda we find that canons had been introduced at Winchester by King Ethelred, and that Bishop Grimbald, a zealous reformer of the clergy, had established a community of clerics whose duty it was to perform the Divine Office. Speaking of Ælfric, a monk who had been elected Archbishop of Canterbury, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 995, remarks that when he came to his cathedral he was received by a community of clerics, when he would have preferred monks.

It would seem, then, that writers like Tanner, the modern editors of William Dugdale's Monasticon, and others, who think that the Canons Regular were introduced into England after the year 1100, or after the coming of William the Conqueror, may have been misled by the fact that it was only after the eleventh century that the canons regular were so styled generally; nevertheless these are the same ecclesiastics, until then commonly called religious or regular clerics. It is also true that, as elsewhere so in England, in the twelfth century there was a great revival in the canonical order on account of various congregations newly found in France, Italy and the Low countries, and it was some of these new canons that came with the Conqueror; but this does not prove that the canonical life was unknown before.

In England alone, from the Conquest to the death of Henry II Plantagenet, no fewer than fifty-four houses were founded where the canons regular were established. Colchester in 1096 was the first, followed ten years later by Holy Trinity in London. In 1100 Ralph Mortimer, by consent of Gerard, Bishop of Hereford, founded a canonical house at Wigmore, and in 1110 another house for Austin Canons was built at Haghmond. At Taunton a colony of secular priests became a monastery of canons regular. Secular canons were also replaced by canons regular at Twynham, Plympton, Waltham and other places. In the period mentioned there were, among others, the foundations of the Austin houses at Dunmow, Thremhall, Southampton, Gisburn, Newnham in Bedfordshire, Norton in Cheshire, Stone in Staffordshire, Anglesey and Barnwell in Cambridgeshire, Berden in Essex. This was a period of great prosperity for the canonical order in England, but soon evil days came.

There was first the Black Plague, and like every other ecclesiastical institution, the canons regular were fairly decimated, and we may say that they never quite recovered. To remedy the evil Cardinal Wolsey thought it expedient to introduce a general reform of the whole canonical order in England. In the capacity of papal delegate, on 19 March 1519, he issued the Statuta, which were to be observed by all the Austin Canons. These ordinances, as F. A. Gasquet observes, are evidence as to the state of the Augustinian Order at that time in England. The statutes provide for the union of all the Austin Canons; for the assembly of a general chapter every three years; for various matters concerning obedience, poverty, and the general discipline of the cloister. Special regulations are given for the daily recitation of the Divine Office and singing of Masses.

Directions are laid down for the reception and profession of novices, for uniformity in the religious habit, and sending young students to Oxford University. But troubled days soon came over the land, and these statutes, good though they were, could not keep off the evil times. The canonical houses were suppressed, and the religious dispersed, persecuted, little by little disappeared from the land altogether. Yet, in spite of the previous disasters, by Abbot Gasquet's computation ninety-one houses belonging to the canons regular wee suppressed or surrendered at the time of the Reformation between 1538 and 1540, with one thousand and eighty-three inmates—namely, Austin Canons, fifty-nine houses and seven hundred and seventy-three canons; Premonstratensians, nineteen houses and one hundred and fifty-one religious. This number of houses and religious does not include the lesser monasteries with an aggregate of one house and five hundred monks and canon, nor the nuns of the various orders estimated at one thousand five hundred and sixty.

Their best known canonical houses were at: Walsingham, Waltham, St. Mary's Overy, Bolton, St. Bartholomew's Smithfield, Nostall, Bridlington, Bristol, Carlisle, Newbury, Hexham, Lanercost, Bodmin, Colchester, Dunstable, Merton, Kertmele, Llanthony, Plympton, St. Frideswide's at Oxford and Osney.

At Walshingham there was a famous shrine of Our Lady, a model of the Holy House of Nazareth, founded two hundred years before the miraculous removal to Loretto. Erasmus, writing in the sixteenth century, gives a vivid description of the shrine and the canons, its custodians. At Bourne Abbey lived from 1300 to 1340 Robert de Brunne, a canon regular, who had been styled the "Father of the English language." In his monastic seclusion he welded together the diverse dialects, which then divided shire from shire, into the grammatical structure which the language has since retained. Bridlington Priory, where William de Newbridge and several other historians lived, was also sanctified by the life, virtues, and miracles of its holy prior, John de Tweng, the last English saint to be canonized prior to the Reformation. He died in 1379. In 1386 a mandate was issued to collect evidence with a view to canonization.

The body was translated in 1405 de mandato Domini papae, and Boniface IX by a Bull, the original of which was found in the Vatican Archives by J. A. Twemlow, formally canonized him. The holy prior was a very popular saint in the North of England. A rich shrine had been built over his tomb, from which the people begged Henry VIII Tudor to withhold his hand; but all in vain. Lest the people should be reduced in the offering of their money, the shrine was pulled down and destroyed. Sempringham saw the beginning by St. Gilbert, and the wonderful growth of the only pre-Reformation institute of distinctly English origin.

Here, too, Peter de Langtoft, the historian, lived and wrote his well-known works. Within the walls of Merton Abbey Thomas of Canterbury, when a youth, received his education and made his profession as a canon regular before he was consecrated archbishop. Chic Priory, whence came William de Corbeil, Archbishop of Canterbury, was renowned for the learning of its religious clerics: "clerical litteraturâ insignes." Thurgarton was the home of the spiritual writer Walter Hilton, who, about the year 1400, wrote the Scala perfectionis 'ladder of perfection', usually attributed to some Carthusian monk. St. Frideswide's, founded for canons regular at Castle Tower by Robert d'Oiley, and translated to Osney in 1149, became, as Cardinal Newman tells, "a nursery for secular students, subject to the Chancellor's jurisdiction." At Lilleshall Priory lived John Myrk, the author of Instructions for Parish Priests, a work written in irregular couplets, doubtless that they might be easily committed to memory; it was edited by the Early English Text Society. The following verses, where Myrk gives excellent and explicit directions for behaviour in church, are a fair sample of the author's style:

That when they do to Church fare,

Then bid them leave their many words,

Their idle speech and nice border {jests}

And put away all vanity

And say their Pater Noster and their Ave.

None in the church stand shall,

Nor lean to pillar not to wall,

But fair on knees they shall them set,

Kneeling down upon the flat,

And pray God with heart meek

To give them grace and mercey eke.

Suffer them to make no bere {noise}

But aye to be in their prayer.

Some twenty-five years ago the canons regular of the Lateran Congregation returned to this Cornish town where before the Reformation their brethren the Austin Canons had a beautiful priory in honour of St. Mary and St. Petrock. The new prior became the residence of the provincial, or visitor, the novitiate-house for England, and the centre from which several Missions—as Truro, St. Ives and Newquay—were served by canons regular.

When the English religious houses were dissolved, many Canons Regular gave up Catholicism. Others retained their faith: Of this number were W. Wold, Prior of Bridlington, the Sub-Prior of Walsingham, with sixteen canons, and Laurence Vaux.

The canonical order was in the early 20th century represented in England by Premonstratensians at Crowley, Manchester, Spalding and Storrington; the Canons Regular of the Lateran Congregation at Bodmin, Truro, St Ives, and Newquay, in Cornwall; at Spettisbury and Swanage, in Dorsetshire; at Stroud Green and Eltahm, in London. Besides the occupations of the regular life at home and the public recitation of the Divine Office in choir, they were chiefly employed in serving missions, preaching retreats, supplying for priests who ask their service, and hearing confessions, either as ordinary or extraordinary confessors to convents or other religious communities.

The canonical order must have been introduced into the New World soon after its 'discovery' by Columbus. In fact, tradition tells us that some Canons Regular from Spain were his companions in one or other of his voyages. Certain it is that at the general chapter of the Lateran Congregation held at Ravenna in 1558, at the request of many Spanish canons, Don Francis de Agala, a professed canon regular from Spain, who for some ten years had already laboured in the newly-discovered country, was created vicar-general in America, with powers to gather into communities all the members of the canonical institute who were then dispersed in those parts, and the obligation to report to the authorities of the order. There are canons regular of the Lateran Congregation in the Argentine, and in Canada the Canons of the Immaculate Conception serve different missions. The Premonstratensian Canons also are in different places in South America.