Order of Saint Augustine

The order has, in particular, spread internationally the veneration of the Virgin Mary under the title of Our Lady of Good Counsel (Mater boni consilii).Instructions for their guidance were found in several writings of Augustine, especially in De opere monachorum, mentioned in ancient codices of the eighth or ninth century as the "Rule of St.[4] In the thirteenth century, the various eremitical groups that composed the Augustinian Hermits faced the threat of suppression by the papacy based on their lack of antiquity.At this time there were a number of eremitical groups living in such diverse places as Tuscany, Latium, Umbria, Liguria, England, Switzerland, Germany, and France.Innocent IV issued the bull Incumbit Nobis on 16 December 1243, an essentially pastoral letter which exhorted these hermits to adopt "the Rule and way of life of the Blessed Augustine," and to elect a prior general.[6] On 15 July 1255, Pope Alexander IV issued the bull Cum quaedam salubria to command a number of religious groupings to gather for the purpose of being amalgamated into a new Order of Hermits of Saint Augustine.Those summoned included the Williamites; several unspecified houses of the Order of St. Augustine, established chiefly in Italy, including those in Tuscany, with Cardinal Annibaldi as protector; the Bonites, so called from their founder, Blessed John Buoni, a member of the Buonuomini family, and named after bishop John the Good; and the Brittinians (Brictinians), so called from their oldest foundation near Fano, in the Marche district of Ancona.[7] The presence of the Augustinian Order can be dated securely in Venetian Candia to the early fourteenth century when they rebuilt the convent of San Salvatore in Heraklion.[9] Many European Augustinian priories and foundations suffered serious setbacks (including suppression and destruction) from the various periods of anti-clericalism during the Reformation and other historical events.In 1331 Pope John XXII appointed the Augustinian Hermits guardians of the tomb of St. Augustine in the Church of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro at Pavia.In the fourteenth century, owing to various causes such as the mitigation of the rule—either by permission of the pope, or through a lessening of fervour, but chiefly because of the Plague and the Great Western Schism—discipline became relaxed in the Augustinian monasteries; and so reformers emerged who were anxious to restore it.[11] Johannes Zachariae, an Augustinian monk of Eschwege, Provincial of the Order from 1419 to 1427 and professor of theology at the University of Erfurt, began a reform in 1492.Their history in Mexico was not to be an easy one, given the civil strife of events like the Cristero War, periodic anti-clericalism and suppression of the church that was to follow.From 1892 the province of the United States had care of St. Augustine's College at Havana, Cuba, where there were 5 priests and 3 lay brothers in 1900 before they were expelled in 1961 by the government of Fidel Castro.In Central and South America, the Augustinians remain established as of 2000 in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, and Peru.After an extensive period of expansion in India from the 15th century[17] the Portuguese Augustinians had not only established the order but also provided sixteen Indian bishops between 1579 and 1840.The order subsequently disappeared in India, cut off from its usual governance after the suppression of Portuguese monasteries in 1838, and the friars were forced to become secular priests.Towards the close of the sixteenth century, Aleixo de Menezes, Count of Cantanheda (d. 1617), a member of the order, appointed Archbishop of Goa in 1595, and of Braga in 1612, Primate of the East Indies, and several times Viceroy of India, sent several Augustinians as missionaries to Iran (Persia) while he himself laboured for the reunion of the Thomas Christians, especially at the Synod of Diamper, in 1599, and for the conversion of the Muslims and the non-Christians of Malabar.Among other Canadian foundations, the order also established Marylake Shrine of Our Lady of Grace and St. Thomas of Villanova College in King City, Ontario, near Toronto.The Augustinians were re-established in England in the 1860s with the creation of the priory, school and Church of St Monica in Hoxton Square, London, N1 (architect: E. W. Pugin) built 1864–66.[32] In 1656, in response to the persecution at home, Pope Alexander VII established the Irish Augustinians in Rome in the church and priory of San Matteo in Merulana.At that time the prior general, Jerome Seripando O.S.A., separated the Polish Augustinians from the Province of Bavaria, which had suffered ill effects of the Protestant Reformation in Germany.The Novitiate of Our Mother of Good Counsel Priory in New Hamburg, New York was canonically established on July 23, 1925 on the 200 acre estate of Isaac Untermyer.[38] When four Sisters of St Rita, a community aggregated to the Augustines, completed their missionary assignment in Bolivia, they found they could not return to Germany due to the impending outbreak of World War II.Other parished were then established, as well as Cascia Hall Preparatory School in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1926 and Providence Catholic High Schoolin New Lenox, Illinois in 1962.[36] In 1962, Pope John XXIII asked for religious orders in the United States to send 10% of their members to evangelize Latin America.He later specifically invited the Augustinians of the Midwest Province of Our Mother of Good Counsel, headquartered near Chicago, to care for missionary territory in Northern Peru.[43] As of 2006 there were 148 active Augustinian priories in Europe, including Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Ireland, England, Scotland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Spain and Spanish houses in the Philippines.Agostino Ciasca (d. 1902), titular Archbishop of Larissa and cardinal, established a special faculty for Semitic languages at the Roman Seminary, published an Arabic translation of Tatian's "Diatessaron" and wrote "Bibliorum Fragmenta Copto-Sahidica".The history of education makes frequent mention of Augustinians who distinguished themselves particularly as professors of philosophy and theology at the great universities of Salamanca, Coimbra, Alcalá, Padua, Pisa, Naples, Oxford, Paris, Vienna, Prague, Würzburg, Erfurt, Heidelberg, and Wittenberg, amongst others.