The regular canons

Abstract

A central theme throughout monastic history has been an appeal to the apostolic life, the vita apostolica . Men and women have looked to the Bible to discover how the apostles and early Christian community in Jerusalem lived; and they found one key text in the Acts of the Apostles , chapter 2, which described how ‘all who believed were together and had all things in common. And sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all men as every man had need’ (verses 44–5). The true apostolic life was, therefore, one lived in common where there was no private property or possessions. It was, one could argue, monasticism itself, and texts like these inspired early writers on the monastic life such as St Basil and St Jerome. The idea of the vita apostolica was, however, given wider significance by St Augustine, bishop of Hippo in north Africa between c. 396 and 430, who was to argue that all priests – not monks – should, after the pattern of the apostles, give up personal possessions and live in common; and he adopted this practice in his own cathedral church. Augustine did not write a rule as St Benedict had done, and only one of his surviving works, Letter 211, written for his sister, who was a nun, was specifically about the practice of the religious life. Some time afterwards this letter was adapted – not necessarily by Augustine – for a male community and became known as the Regula Tertia .