The Rule of Saint Augustine

The Rule of St. Augustine is a religious rule developed by Saint Augustine (354–430), which came into use on a wide scale from the twelfth century onwards, and continues to be employed today by a large number of orders, including the Dominicans, Servites, Mercederians, Norbertines, and Augustinians.

The Rule of St. Augustine, written about the year 400, is a brief document divided into eight chapters and serves as an outline for religious life lived in community. The Rule governs chastity, poverty, obedience, detachment from the world, the apportionment of labour, the inferiors, fraternal charity, prayer in common, fasting and abstinence proportionate to the strength of the individual, care of the sick, silence and reading during meals.

The title, Rule of Saint Augustine, has been applied to each of the following documents:

Saint Augustine wrote this letter in 423 to the nuns in a monastery at Hippo that had been governed by his sister and in which his cousin and niece lived. Though he wrote chiefly to quiet troubles incident to the nomination of a new superior, Augustine took the opportunity to discuss some of the virtues and practices essential to religious life as he understood it: he emphasized such considerations as charity, poverty, obedience, detachment from the world, the apportionment of labour, the mutual duties of superiors and inferiors, fraternal charity, prayer in common, fasting and abstinence proportionate to the strength of the individual, care of the sick, silence, and reading during meals. This letter contains no such clear, minute prescriptions as are found in later monastic rules, such as that of Saint Pachomius or the anonymous document known as "the Rule of the Master". Nevertheless, the Bishop of Hippo was a law-giver and his letter was to be read weekly, that the nuns might guard against or repent of any infringement of it. He considered poverty the foundation of the monastic life but attached no less importance to fraternal charity, which consists in living in peace and concord. The superior, in particular, was recommended to practice this virtue (though not, of course, to the extreme of omitting to chastise the guilty).

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