Regular clergy

Regular clergy, or just regulars, is applied in the Roman Catholic Church to clerics who follow a "rule" (Latin regula) in their life, those who are members of religious institutes. Formerly, it meant those who were members of Catholic religious orders, institutes in which at some least of the members made solemn profession. It contrasts with secular clergy.

The observance of the Rule of St. Benedict procured for Benedictine monks at an early period the name of "regulars". The Council of Verneuil (755) so refers to them in its third canon, and in its eleventh canon speaks of the "ordo regularis" as opposed to the "ordo canonicus", formed by the canons who lived under the bishop according to the canonical regulations.

There was question also of a "regula canonicorum", or "regula canonica", especially after the extension of the rule which Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz, had drawn up from the sacred canons (766). And when the canons were divided into two classes in the eleventh century, it was natural to call those who added religious poverty to their common life regulars, and those who gave up the common life, seculars. Before this we find mention of "sæculares canonici" in the Chronicle of St. Bertin (821) In fact as the monks were said to leave the world, sometimes those persons who were neither clerics nor monks were called seculars, as at times were clerics not bound by the rule.

Sometimes also the name "regulars" was applied to the canons regular to distinguish them from monks. Thus the collection of Gratian (about 1139) speaks of canons regular, who make canonical profession, and live in a regular canonicate, in opposition to monks who wear the monastic habit, and live in a monastery. But the Decretals of Gregory IX, promulgated 5 September 1234, use the word "regularis" in a more general sense, in book III, ch. xxxi, which is entitled "De regularibus et transeuntibus ad religionem". However in ch. xxxv "De statu monachorum et canonicorum regularium" the distinction returns, disappearing in the corresponding book and chapter of the Decretals of Boniface VIII (3 March 1298), which is entitled merely "De statu regularium" and reappearing in the collection of Clementines (25 Oct., 1317) but with the conjunction vel, which indicates the resemblance between them.

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