Augustinian vs. Franciscan Rule

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Tis_Bearself

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I have a question mostly dealing with historical occurrences and I’m hoping somebody around here has the knowledge to provide a little insight. I am aware that sometimes in history there were quite heated debates over which Rules religious communities should follow, and that for example, St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross ran into a lot of opposition when they tried to “reform” the Carmelites into following a stricter rule. I can understand that, as sometimes people do not like to be made to follow a stricter regime.

However, I have recently been reading about St. Catherine of Bologna, who has been discussed by Pope Benedict in a letter that unfortunately did not provide the details to answer my query. It seems that St. Catherine initially entered some community of lay sisters that had been established by some rich, deceased patron who wished them to follow the Augustinian rule. Later on, St. Catherine and other sisters decided they wanted to be Poor Clares instead and follow the Franciscan rule, but came into opposition with the leader of their community who wanted to keep carrying out the patron’s wishes and have the community follow the Augustinian rule. Apparently this turned into a dispute that got so heated that Catherine and some other sisters were accused of apostasy (later cleared) and at one point the authority sent all the sisters to live at their own homes for a while. Catherine, who was a mystic, also reported seeing “demonic” visions, which she described as demons appearing in the persons of Jesus Christ and Mary who tried to get her to obey her superior rather than keep pushing for the Clarissan/ Franciscan rule.

Some accounts also state that this situation was complicated by there being three different people claiming to be Pope at the time (the early 1400s) so I take it that means there was not one authority to rule on disputes, and maybe different Popes saying different things. It’s all rather unclear.

From all I am reading, the superior does not sound like a bad person; she just thought that the community should follow the wishes of the original sponsor who said it should be Augustinian.

So in view of all this, I cannot understand why a dispute over “which rule to follow” would become something that rose to the level of seeing demons in the form of Jesus and Mary, who furthermore, don’t seem to be really advocating anything evil; just suggesting that St. Catherine obey her superior, which would have been the normal thing to do. It’s hard for me to see obedience to a religious superior as “demonic” when the superior doesn’t seem to be advocating anything immoral.

I also am having a hard time understanding why the Augustinian rule was perceived as so bad it had to be replaced by the Franciscan rule. St. Augustine is a saint, and a lot of communities follow his Rule even today.

What is the big deal here? What am I missing? is there some student of history or someone familiar with all the conflicts between the different rules who can fill me in? Pope Benedict seems to have skipped this entire business when he discussed St. Catherine of Bologna.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
this situation was complicated by there being three different people claiming to be Pope at the time (the early 1400s)
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In these particular circumstances, holiness lives on in the church as Christ would not abandon his church. Therefore, even at times when the papacy or the cardinals became corrupted the saints would continue sanctity being themselves the church.
Tis_Bearself said:
the superior does not sound like a bad person
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In these cases, when the will of Christ is revealed through private revelation, the decision is referred back to the church and the process of discernment usually takes some time. So, it is not a disobedience -the decision is left to proper church authorities- only the necessary patience to wait for the church to take decision. Other instances of these cases exist (I’ll include references latter, to allow myself time to go through the books and translating).
Tis_Bearself said:
why the Augustinian rule was perceived as so bad
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It was not perceived to be bad! Only, their specific vocation was to be another. The main difference between the two rules lies in the strict poverty of the Franciscans/Clarissans. I will give one example: Saint Anthony was ordained priest in the Augustinian order of Santa Cruz in Coimbra (at the time, they were perhaps the richest order in Portugal and also hosted the best library in the country). At one point, saint Anthony fells a calling to leave it all and join a hand full of friars living of Alms in a straw hut on the outskirts of town - part of a then almost unknown order whos founder was still alive and he’d go on to meet personally, called the Franciscans.
Tis_Bearself said:
when the superior doesn’t seem to be advocating anything immoral.
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He doesn’t, only his prudent council was contrary to the will of the Lord himself.
Tis_Bearself said:
What am I missing?
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As usual, not much esteemed Tis_Bear 🤣 (recurrent themes in hagiology)
 
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Thanks, this is more helpful than what I’ve been able to find on the web so far.
I did note there was a whole book on the conflicts between the orders in Spain, but it’s going to be next July before I have time to sit and read something like that.
 
I don’t think the Augustinian rule was replaced by the Franciscan one. Certain communities follow one, while others, the other.
Furthermore, within Franciscan Religious Life, there are different Rules. I do not know about Augustinian.
Poor Clares have one rule, Friars Minor, another, and we, Third Order Regular Franciscans, have another, for example.
At the time of St. Francis, there was a need for something new and different, not that the other was no longer valid or useful.

Sr. Christina, OSF

 
The Augustinian Order started in 1244 and the Franciscan Order started in 1209… The Augustinian Order was ‘founded’ by St. Augustine and The Franciscan Order was ‘founded’ by St. Francis. Yet both had somewhat different personal experiences in which the Order was structured around, maybe…

From what I can remember, St. Augustine had a very tempestuous battle with his sexual urges. I don’t know much about St. Francis.
 
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Actually saint Augustin of Hippo lived from 354 to 430. The order was founded based on his writings almost 800 years after his death (if I’m not mistaken).
 
what year would that be? What year might the order have been ‘founded’? well anyway… The politics verses the Religious… Same thing.
 
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daverod said:
what year would that be? What year might the order have been ‘founded’? well anyway… The politics verses the Religious… Same thing.
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The Rule of St. Augustine was written by him, during his lifetime. And there were several communities that tried to lifecaccording to his rule after that. The Order of St. Augustine, as we know it today, was founded through a series of amalgamations…combining several different communities all following the rule of St. Augustine. They use the date 1244 as the year of their founding/union, but there were other dates of union as well.
 
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daverod said:
The Augustinian Order started in 1244 and the Franciscan Order started in 1209… The Augustinian Order was ‘founded’ by St. Augustine and The Franciscan Order was ‘founded’ by St. Francis. Yet both had somewhat different personal experiences in which the Order was structured around, maybe…

From what I can remember, St. Augustine had a very tempestuous battle with his sexual urges. I don’t know much about St. Francis.
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In many ways, the early lives of both St. Francis and St. Augustine were not that different. While the Rules cannot be separated from the saints who wrote them, the ways in which they lived out their vocations were different, and that is what is reflected in their rules.

It’s been a while since I’ve read or studied St. Augustine’s rule, so someone may correct me on this, but if I remember, the rule was basically, taking the Apostles as examples, outlining how he felt a group of people could beat live in Christian Community together. I’m not entirely sure Augustine lived according to his own rule, to be honest. For that, I refer to someone else with more knowledge.

St Francis, of the other hand, lived his own life as he understood God to be calling him. This attracted people who wanted to live like him, and so, he had to developed his rule kind of as a way to show people how to live the way God was calling him to, but just as importantly, as to get their way of life approved by the Pope and church hierarchy.

So, the rules originated and were developed under different circumstances.

To hearken back to the original post…
St. Clare’s Rule was different. Similar, in that it was how she felt God was calling her, as a 13th Century woman, to live a Franciscan life. But, unlike Francis’ rule for the Friars, Clare’s Rule was more monastic, taking heavy influence from St. Francis but also some influence from the Benedictine nuns.

I don’t know much about St Catherine of Bologna, but, I’d say if you want to get a better understanding of why she wanted to become a Poor Clare, read both the Augustinian and Poor Clare rules. There is nothing wrong or bad with one or the other, but it might give you a sense of how she was called by God early on, and to what God was calling to her later. Or how her heart was being moved, as an Augustinian might put it.
 
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Papal Schism aside, what St. Catherine and her companions were doing happens more often than people think. The first thing that the superior and the authority had to do was make sure that Catherine and her companions were not being deceived. This is one reason for sending them to their homes. The modern counterpart of this action may be the “leave of absence”. Catherine would have known in her heart if she was being deceived, as the Clarissan rule would have made her feel alive and expanded her heart. Hence, her denouncing the visions of Jesus and Mary telling her to stay with the Augustinian community.

The superior wanted to stay Augustinian. Fine. St. Catherine and her companions wanted to become Poor Clares. Let’s test the spirits. Leaving a religious community back then was akin to damnation, hence the “apostate” designation. In other words, “troublemakers”. The balance of the base community was at stake, especially the workforce within.

So, it really doesn’t have anything to do with the rules, it has everything to do with a new community emerging from the base community. That didn’t happen as often then as it does today.

As an aside, the Augustinian Rule is based on Letter 211, which St. Augustine wrote for a group of women following his way of life. His way of life was the “Old Order” which had been in existence since the beginning of the church. They were the precursors to the Canons Regular, who are a separate branch of the Augustinian Family.

The Rule of St. Clare has a heavy Benedictine influence because St. Francis asked the local Benedictine nuns to host Clare for her founder’s novitiate. The Clarissan rule was also the first to be written by a woman, and received papal approval just days before her death.

The Augustinian and Benedictine Rules were just about the only rules out there until the age of the mendicants. For those following the Augustinian Rule, “constitutions” would be created. The Norbertines, Mercedarians, and Trinitarians are early examples. My organization hopes to restore the extinct Gilbertines. Their nuns followed the Benedictine Rule, while their canons followed the Augustinian. The “Institutes” were written by St. Gilbert of Sempringham, and he borrowed heavily from the Cistercians and the Norbertines.

Blessings,
Mrs Cloisters, OP
Lay Dominican
http://cloisters.tripod.com/
http://cloisters.tripod.com/charity/
 
Thanks so much for all these helpful replies. I guess the whole idea of leaving a religious community making you subject to damnation if you’re just leaving in order to live according to a different, probably more rigorous religious community “rule” is what seems a bit odd nowadays, when people seem to do this more easily or even just leave communities because they have decided to return to the secular world.

This could be an outsider’s perspective, but it seems like there were a lot of former nuns around in the 1970s and they weren’t being shunned or looked down on in any way - a lot of them taught in the Catholic schools as lay teachers, and one didn’t find out about their former status as a nun unless they chose to share it, or passed away and it was in their obituary. With so many leaving to not be religious sisters at all, it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around somebody being damned etc. just because they wanted to go follow another saint’s rule. However, i thought maybe the sin was that it was a violation of obedience to their superiors, but then we get the whole business of obedience being advocated by “demons” in the shapes of Jesus and Mary (which is creepy right there).

I understand the basic differences between the Franciscan rule and the Benedictine/ Augustinian rules. Can someone explain what is the difference between Benedictine and Augustinian rules? I cannot seem to find good information on the web about the special features of Augustinian rule. We do have some Norbertines in the area whose abbey I attend Mass at sometimes, but this past few months has been my first exposure to them.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
I understand the basic differences between the Franciscan rule and the Benedictine/ Augustinian rules. Can someone explain what is the difference between Benedictine and Augustinian rules? I cannot seem to find good information on the web about the special features of Augustinian rule. We do have some Norbertines in the area whose abbey I attend Mass at sometimes, but this past few months has been my first exposure to them.
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I don’t have the resources available at the moment to give a good comparison between the Augustinian and Benedictine Rules. But, as for special features of the Augustinian rule…what makes it significant, I think, is that it was the first such rule of life written. And as such, it really focus on living a good Christian life IN COMMUNITY, which makes it very “generic”. This is Important, because it is able to be followed by a a variety of different communal lifestyles…whether Monastic, Mendicant, or even lay. It’s highly adaptable. It was also the first to reference an “oratory” as part of communal life…a designated space for prayer within the living facility…this, I was told by an Augustinian, was where the idea of friaries, rectories, and monasteries having their own internal chapels, separate from the public chapels and churches came from.
 
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