Our navigation bar is loading . . .

 


 

Jesus Christ Saves Ministries

Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997.  




 

JCSM's Top 1000 Christian Sites - Free Traffic Sharing Service!


Do you need volunteer, community service, work, military or court hours?

Click here and add this page to your favorites!

Return to the JCSM Study Center!

Encyclopedia Britannica



AUGUSTINIAN HERMITS, or FRIARS

This article appears in Volume V02, Page 911 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: AUD-BAI
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 mendicantsa 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
 
    See Also:
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 and Kongregationen, i. (1896), 61-65; Wetzer and Welte,
Kirchenlexicon (and ed.), art " Augustiner "; Herzog, Realencyklopadie (3rd ed.), art. " Augustiner." The
chief
  book on the subject is Th. Kolde, Die deutschen Augustiner-Kongregationen (1879). (E. C. B.)


End of Article: AUGUSTINIAN HERMITS, or FRIARS


If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
<a href="http://jcsm.org/StudyCenter/Encyclopedia/AUD_BAI/AUGUSTINIAN_HERMITS_or_FRIARS.html">
AUGUSTINIAN HERMITS, or FRIARS
</a>


(Previous)
AUGUSTINIAN CANONS
(Next)
AUGUSTINIANS



 
 


JCSM was founded in 1997 and exists to help the community and bring people into a life-changing and productive relationship with Jesus Christ. JCSM offers over 200,000 free web pages, including its weekly inspirational emails that were sent continuously for over a decade.

Jesus Christ Saves Ministries
P.O. Box 9297
San Diego, CA  92169
1-888-887-0417 or Email

JCSM is a 501(c)(3), non-profit organization. Copyright © 1997-2012.
 

 

Sponsored Advertisements

Online First Aid and CPR Certification  .  DHA Solutions  .  PB Happy Hour Specials  .  Improvising Made Easy For Guitar and Bass  .  The Skeptic's Annotated Bible: Corrected and Explained  .  Home Equity Loans  .  First Aid and CPR Online  .  San Diego Music Lessons  .  10,000 Wise Quotes and Spiritual Sayings  .  Blow Up Your Site (For Free!)  .  San Diego DUI Lawyers  .  Jason Gastrich  .  Jordan Faith Gastrich  .  Divorce Secrets Revealed  .  Post Your Ad Link Free  .  San Diego Soccer Training  .  JCSM  .  Download Sermons  .  Custom Religious Banners, Build A Sign  .  Christian Singles Dating  .  Christian T-Shirts  .  Healing Christian Prayer  .  Bumper Authority  .  Personalized Blogs and Email  .  San Diego Haircuts  .  The Do the Math Diet  .  Stop Twitter Spam  .  Christian Conservative Work at Home Network  .  The Website of the Lord