AUGUSTINE, RULE OF ST
. From about the 12th century onward, some religious communities in the West took as
their guide the Rule of St. Augustine. This document has a complicated history, analyzed
by Luc Verheijen. In its generally received form, the Rule was composed of two major
elements: the Ordo monasterii, probably sketched out by Augustine’s friend Alypius and
given final form by Augustine, and the so-called Praeceptum, a set of rules for the
organization and discipline of a community, written by Augustine. In the medieval
period, the received text of the Rule reduced the Ordo monasterii to the first sentence of
that text. In the manuscript tradition, the Praeceptum also appears in a form with
feminine, not masculine, pronouns and is often attached to Augustine’s Letter 211, an
admonitory epistle sent to a group of female ascetics. Both sections of the Rule, but
especially the Praeceptum, had provisions for liturgy, food, clothing, manual labor, and
the like, but these were frequently set aside in favor of local customaries developed in
light of specific Benedictine or Cistercian practices that were more suited to the situation
in northern Europe.
However complicated and obscure the pre-12th-century history of the Rule of St.
Augustine may be, the influence of that text on medieval religious life was profound.
Most orders of regular canons, as at Prémontré or Saint-Victor, followed the Rule, and
when St. Dominic found it necessary to choose from an existing rule for the Order of
Preachers (Dominicans), he turned to the Augustinian rule. The Praeceptum was first set
out in the context of Augustine’s own concern with the formation of a community of
priests living a life dedicated to poverty and a fully common life in his episcopal
household in Hippo. Thus, the later history of the Rule as a guide for communities of
priests was a faithful echo of its origin in the creative days of the formation of the ascetic-
monastic ideal in the West, even before the time of St. Benedict and his own immensely
influential Rule.
Grover A.Zinn
[See also: AUGUSTINIAN FRIARS/HERMITS; DOMINICAN ORDER;
MONASTIC RULES AND CUSTOMARIES; PRÉMONTRÉ; REGULAR CANONS;
SAINT-VICTOR, ABBEY AND SCHOOL OF]
Verheijen, Luc. La règle de saint Augustin. 2 vols. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1967.
Zumkeller, Adolar. Augustine’s Ideal of the Religious Life, trans. Edmund Colledge. New York:
Fordham University Press, 1986. [With English translations of the Ordo monasterii,
Praeceptum, and Letter 211].
AUGUSTINIAN CANONS
. See REGULAR CANONS
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 152