Augustinians: Who They Are and How the Order of Saint Augustine Began

From Tuscan Hermits to a Single Order

According to the website of the Augustinian province (augustinian.org), in 1244 various hermit communities scattered across Tuscany asked Pope Innocent IV to be brought together under one Rule and one superior general. The pope entrusted those communities with the Rule written centuries earlier by Augustine of Hippo and asked representatives of the individual houses, meeting in chapter, to elect a prior general — an elective mechanism quite different from the one that elects the pope in conclave. That is the order’s founding act: not a creation from nothing, but the union of groups that already existed.

The setting is thirteenth-century Italy, the age of city-states and the first mendicant orders: the Recap on the Middle Ages covers that context in more detail.

The Grand Union of 1256

Twelve years later, in 1256, the process widens. According to the 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia (New Advent), the bull “Licet Ecclesiae Catholicae” is the formal founding act of the Order of the Hermits of Saint Augustine: every hermit monastery involved sent two delegates to Rome, under the presidency of Cardinal Riccardo Annibaldi. Sources disagree on the bull’s exact day (4 May according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, 9 April according to other historical accounts): this Recap reports only the year, on which all sources agree. That meeting merged four distinct hermit branches, the Williamites, the Bonites (also called Giamboniti), the Hermits of the Holy Trinity and the Brittinians, into a single order. Other, smaller congregations, such as the Friars of the Penance of Christ, joined one of the larger branches before or during the process, though the source does not fix a precise year for these individual mergers.

Practical example: a novice entering one of the Brittinian monasteries before 1256 followed the customs of his own house. After the Grand Union, that same community answered to a shared prior general and to the Rule of Saint Augustine, now common to the Williamites and to the other newly united branches.

The Rule of Saint Augustine

The Rule, as EWTN tells it, opens by asking the community to share a single purpose and a single devotion, centered on God. It asks them to regard nothing as personal property, but to hold everything in common; it sets love for God, and immediately after, love for one’s neighbor, as the commandments on which community life rests. In fraternal correction it separates love for the person who errs from condemnation of the fault itself, a principle meant for everyday life among friars.

One passage of the Rule asks members to find a reason for pride in the company of their poor brothers, not in the rank of their own family of origin. The warning that follows is that pride creeps in quietly, and can undo even good deeds.

From Hermits to Mendicant Friars

The hermit imprint of the earliest groups gradually loosened, making room for a blend of contemplation and pastoral duties, once the Church called the order into the mendicant movement. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the shift was also prompted by the good example set by the Franciscans and Dominicans, already active in preaching; the source gives no precise year for this evolution.

A Century Later: 8,000 Friars

According to augustinian.org, within a century of the Grand Union of 1256, so by around 1356, the order already counted 8,000 friars across many countries. That growth came long after the death of Augustine of Hippo, the philosopher and bishop from whom the order takes its name and its Rule: readers looking for his biography and his thought can find the full picture in the Recap on Augustine of Hippo.

A Later Episode: Erfurt and the Reformation

Much later, the order faced an internal crisis of its own over reform: seven houses, including Erfurt, refused to obey a reform directive, in the context of events tied to Johann von Staupitz, vicar general of the reformed Augustinian congregation in Germany. It was Staupitz, who had come to know Martin Luther at Erfurt, who called him to Wittenberg in 1508. Even after 1517, the year of the 95 theses, Staupitz kept friendly feelings toward Luther: he read Luther’s initiatives as an attack on abuses within the Church, not as a break. Luther’s path from Augustinian friar to reformer is told in full in the Recap on Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation.