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Document that outlines religious life of oldest monastic rule in the Western Church

The Rule of Saint Augustine, written in about the year 400, is a brief document divided into eight chapters and serves as an outline for religious life lived in community. It is the oldest monastic rule in the Western Church. Augustine followed the monastic or religious life as it was known to his contemporaries, drafting rules for the monks and nuns of Roman Africa. Like St. Basil, Augustine's view diverged from that of the earlier eremitical approach of strict physical austerities. In The Ways of the Catholic Church, Augustine observed contemporary criticisms of the methods of the Eastern hermits in the Egyptian desert. It was said that their extreme isolation and excessive asceticism "were no longer productive" for the church or society. In response to this, "Augustine promoted poverty of spirit and continence of the heart while living in the milieu of a town such as Hippo." In Hippo, the members of his monastic house lived in community while yet keeping to their pastoral obligations. For Augustine, 'the love of neighbour was simply another expression of the love of God." Profuturus and Fortunatus at Cirta, Evodius at Uzalis, and Boniface at Carthage.

Saint Augustine wrote this letter in 423 to the nuns in a monastery at Hippo that had been governed by his sister and in which his cousin and niece lived. Though he wrote chiefly to quiet troubles incident to the nomination of a new superior, Augustine took the opportunity to discuss some of the virtues and practices essential to religious life as he understood it: he emphasised such considerations as charity, poverty, obedience, detachment from the world, the apportionment of labour, the mutual duties of superiors and inferiors, fraternal charity, prayer in common, fasting and abstinence proportionate to the strength of the individual, care of the sick, silence, and reading during meals.

Bishop Aurelius of Carthage was greatly disturbed by the conduct of monks who indulged in idleness under pretext of contemplation, and at his request St. Augustine published a treatise entitled De opere monachorum wherein he proves by the authority of the Bible, the example of the Apostles, and even the exigencies of life, that the monk is obliged to devote himself to serious labour. In several of his letters and sermons is found a useful complement to his teaching on the monastic life and duties it imposes. In his treatise, De opere monachorum, he inculcates the necessity of labour, without, however, subjecting it to any rule, the gaining of one's livelihood rendering it indispensable. Monks of course, devoted to the ecclesiastical ministry observe, ipso facto, the precept of labour, from which observance the infirm are legitimately dispensed. These, then, are the most important monastic prescriptions found in the rule of and writings of Saint Augustine.

"De vitâ eremiticâ ad sororem liber" is a treatise on eremitical life by St. Ælred, Abbot of Rievaulx, England, who died in 1166.

Between 430 and 570 Augustine's rule was carried to Europe by monks and clergy fleeing the persecution of the Vandals, and was used by small groups of hermit monks and nuns, as well as by diocesan priests living in cathedral communities with their bishop. and in his rule for nuns quoted at length from Letter 211. Saints Augustine and Caesarius were animated by the same spirit which passed from the Archbishop of Arles to Saint Aurelian, one of his successors, and, like him, a monastic Iawgiver. Augustine's influence also extended to women's monasteries in Gaul, where the Rule of Caesarius was adopted either wholly or in part, as, for example, at Sainte Croix of Poitiers, Juxamontier of Besançon, and Chamalières near Clermont. But it was not always enough merely to adopt the teachings of Augustine and to quote him; the author of the regula Tarnatensis (an unknown monastery in the Rhone valley) introduced into his work the entire text of the letter addressed to the nuns, having previously adapted it to a community of men by making slight modifications. This adaptation was surely made in other monasteries in the sixth or seventh centuries, and in his "Codex regularum" Saint Benedict of Aniane published a text similarly modified. For want of exact information we cannot say in which monasteries this was done, and whether they were numerous. Letter 211, which has thus become the Rule of Saint Augustine, certainly constituted a part of the collections known under the general name of "Rules of the Fathers" and used by the founders of monasteries as a basis for the practices of the religious life. It does not seem to have been adopted by the regular communities of canons or of clerks which began to be organised in the eighth and ninth centuries. The rule given them by Saint Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz (742 766), is almost entirely drawn from that of Saint Benedict, and no more decided traces of Augustinian influence are to be found in it than in the decisions of the Synods of Aachen (816–819), which may be considered the real constitutions of the canons Regular. For this influence we must await the foundation of the clerical or canonical communities established in the eleventh century for the effective counteracting of simony and clerical concubinage. The religious life of the Bishop of Hippo was, for a long time, a matter of dispute between the Canons Regular and the Hermits of St. Augustine, each of these two families claiming him exclusively as its own. It was not so much the establishing of an historical fact as the settling of a claim of precedence that caused the trouble, and as both sides could not in the right, the quarrel would have continued indefinitely had not the Pope Sixtus IV put an end by his Bull "Summum Silentium" (1484).

By the eleventh century, various monks felt that the Rule of Saint Benedict (which had been the standard model for monastic life for the last five centuries) no longer satisfied the demands of a rapidly changing society, with its increasing urbanisation, growing literacy, and shifts in distribution of wealth and power. While in some cases this resulted in reforms aimed at restoring observance of the Benedictine Rule to its original purity, trimming away later additions, there also developed groups of clerics (or 'canons') living in community in a more rigorously ascetic lifestyle than that followed by the Rule of Saint Benedict, following the set of ancient texts known as the 'Rule of Saint Augustine'. These clerics were widely known as Canons Regular (in order to distinguish them from the traditional 'secular' canons who followed the older, Carolingian 'rule of Aachen'. ), 'Augustinian canons', 'canons of St Augustine', 'Austin canons' or 'Black canons', Observance of this rule was approved for members of the clergy by the Council of Lateran (1059) and another council held at Rome four years later. Adoption of the Rule of St Augustine subsequently spread rapidly through Western Europe. The early Victorine Canons embraced the Rule of St Augustine in 1113. In the year 1120, Norbert of Xanten chose the Rule of St Augustine as he founded the Premonstratensian Order. It was adopted by John of Matha in 1198 in founding the Trinitarian Order. At the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) it was accepted as one of the approved rules of the church. It was then adopted by the Order of Preachers in 1216 when their order received papal recognition. It was also adopted by the Order of St Augustine in 1256, by the Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit in 1308 and by the Order of Mercy. By the fifteenth century there were over 4500 houses in Europe following the rule. Over 150 communities follow it today.