Order of Canons Lateran

The Canons Regular of the Lateran (abbreviated as C.R.L.), formally titled Canons Regular of St. Augustine of the Congregation of the Most Holy Savior at the Lateran is an international congregation of an order of canons regular, comprising priests and Brothers in the Catholic Church.

These canons regular trace their origins to the reforms in the 4th century of St. Martin of Tours in France and St. Eusebius of Vercelli in Italy of the clergy. These and other bishops sought to model the accepted lifestyles of their clergy in a domestic model, based on the communal pattern followed by the first Christians, as depicted in the Acts of the Apostles. The premier example of this effort was the life and work of the great figure St. Augustine of Hippo, who himself lived as a monk before being called to take up the office of bishop for his North African city. He later wrote a small Rule to guide a community of women who wanted to live the monastic ideal. This document became the official guide for the earliest of the religious communities to emerge in the Church in later centuries, in parallel to that of the Rule of St. Benedict. From this comes the title 'regular,' meaning one following a Rule (Latin: Regula).

Under the guidance of Cardinal Hildebrand (later to become Pope Gregory VII), the Lateran Synod of 1059 organized and recognized these developing communities and recommended them as the preferred pattern of clerical life, at a time when mandatory celibacy was being made a universal requirement for the clergy of the Roman Church.

The Lateran Canons are descended from the Canons Regular of Santa Maria in Portu, on the isle of Corizo near Ravenna, which is first mentioned in 1103. By the 15th Century, the moribund community nearly slipped into extinction on account of the absence of leadership and direction that was a direct result of the practice of commendatory abbots, until finally in 1419 the community dwindled to just two: the prior and one canon. However, a pious aristocrat from Ravenna, Obizone, arranged a union between Santa Maria in Portu and the newly founded Canons Regular of Fregionaia.

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