Augustinians

Background

The Augustinians are a Catholic religious order that looks to Augustine (354–430), Bishop of Hippo, as its spiritual father. The order follows the monastic rule he left behind, a text setting out the principles of common life. After becoming a priest, Augustine formed a community with his companions in which they held their property in common and prayed together, and the order regards this tradition as its root. This community, however, did not develop directly into a single institutional order.

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, groups of hermits were scattered throughout Italy. Hermits are religious who withdraw from the world to live a life of prayer in remote places. At the time, the papacy was actively supporting mendicant orders such as the Franciscans and the Dominicans, and it also sought to unite the scattered hermits. Mendicant orders are religious orders that hold no property, live on the support of the faithful, and devote themselves to preaching and pastoral ministry.

Development

• 1244, the Little Union: With papal approval and under the direction of Cardinal Riccardo Annibaldi, the hermit groups of Tuscany were united into a single body.
• 1256, the Grand Union: In 1255 Pope Alexander IV summoned various hermit communities by a bull, an official papal document. In March 1256 their representatives gathered in Rome and resolved to unite. In addition to the Tuscan hermits, the Hermits of John the Good, the Hermits of Brettino, the Williamites, and others joined. That same year the papal bull Licet Ecclesiae catholicae approved the union, and the order regards this document as the most important in its history. The order's official name was the Order of Hermits of Saint Augustine. Its first prior general was Lanfranco Settala of Milan. Thereafter, as a mendicant order, it spread by founding houses in towns and cities.
• 1327: Pope John XXII entrusted to the order the building beside the tomb of Augustine in Pavia, Italy.
• Germany, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: By the early sixteenth century the order had more than one hundred houses in Germany. Among them, the Saxon Reformed Congregation, a union of houses observing strict discipline, was established in 1493 and from 1503 was led by Johann von Staupitz as vicar general (the regional superior). Martin Luther entered the congregation's house at Erfurt in July 1505. He took his vows the following year and was ordained a priest in 1507. Staupitz heard Luther's confessions and served as his spiritual director. At Staupitz's urging Luther also traveled to Rome, and he was later sent to the University of Wittenberg. After receiving his doctorate in theology in 1512, Luther succeeded Staupitz in the chair of biblical theology.

Outcome and Influence

When Luther posted the Ninety-five Theses and the Reformation began, he was an Augustinian friar and a professor at the University of Wittenberg. Staupitz did not follow Luther. He resigned as vicar general in 1520 and in 1522 transferred to the Benedictines, becoming abbot of St. Peter's Abbey in Salzburg. The Erfurt monastery where Luther began his religious life is used today as a Protestant monastery and is preserved as a Luther memorial site.

The order has continued within the Catholic Church, engaging in pastoral ministry, preaching, education, and missions. Within a century of the Grand Union, its membership is said to have reached about eight thousand. In 1969 it changed its name to the Order of Saint Augustine, and its abbreviation changed from O.E.S.A. to O.S.A. Today it is reported to have about 2,800 members active in forty-seven countries. Pope Leo XIV, elected in 2025, is the first member of the order to become pope.

Assessment

In Protestant, and especially Lutheran, tradition, the Augustinian order is remembered as part of the background of the Reformation. The church historian Philip Schaff called the Erfurt monastery the cradle of the Lutheran Reformation. He held that the strict discipline of monastic life there prepared Luther for his later discovery of the freedom of the gospel. Luther himself, however, later became a critic of monastic life.

In the Catholic Church, the Augustinians are understood as a mendicant order that has carried on Augustine's spirit of community. In presenting itself, the order emphasizes its centuries of pastoral, scholarly, and missionary work rather than its connection with Luther.