In theCatholic Church, areligious institute is "a society in which members, according to proper law, pronounce publicvows, either perpetual or temporary which are to be renewed, however, when the period of time has elapsed, and lead a life of brothers or sisters in common."[1]
A religious institute is one of the two types ofinstitutes of consecrated life; the other is thesecular institute, where its members are "living in the world". Religious institutes come under the jurisdiction of theDicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.
A member of a religious institute lives in community with other members of the institute and observes the threeevangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience, which they bind themselves to observe by public vows.[2]
Since every religious institute has its own uniquecharism, it adheres to a particular way of religious living whethercontemplative orapostolic. Thus, the nuns of some contemplative orders are subject topapal enclosure.[3]
Other religious institutes have apostolates that wherein their members interact with the secular world, such as in teaching, healthcare, social work, while maintaining their distinctiveness incommunal living. Several founders required members of their institute not only to profess the threeevangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience, but also to vow or promise enclosure or loyalty.
Religious orders are discerned as:
In each instance, the term "regular" means those following a rule; either a pre-existing one such as theRule of Saint Augustine or theRule of St Basil, etc. or one composed by the founder, which generally incorporates aspects of earlier, traditional rules such as those mentioned or theRule of Saint Benedict.
In common parlance, all members of male religious institutes are often termedmonks and those of female religious institutesnuns, although in an accurate sense, a monk is one who lives in amonastery under a monastic rule such asthat of Saint Benedict. The termfriar properly refers to a male member of amendicant order.
The term nun was in the1917 Code of Canon Law reserved for members of a women's religious institute ofsolemn vows,[4] and is sometimes applied only to those who devote themselves wholly to the contemplative life and belong to one of theenclosed religious orders living and working within the and reciting theLiturgy of the Hours incommunity.[3]
Historically, what are now called religious institutes were distinguished as eitherreligious orders, whose members make solemn vows, orreligious congregations, whose members make simple vows. Since the1983 Code of Canon Law, only the termreligious institute is used,[5] while the distinction between solemn and simple vows is still maintained.[6]
Admittance to a religious institute is regulated by the requirements canon law states. Religious profession can be temporary or perpetual: "Temporary profession is to be made for the period defined by the institute's own law. This period may not be less than three years nor longer than six years."[7]
Broadly speaking, after a period spanningpostulancy, andnovitiate and while in temporaryvows to test theirvocation with a particular institute, members wishing to be admitted permanently are required to make public and perpetual vows.
A vow is classified as public if a legitimate superior accepts it in the name of the church, as happens when one joins a religious institute. In making their religious profession, the members are "incorporated into the institute, with the rights and duties defined by law", and "through the ministry of the Church they are consecrated to God."[8]
Typically, members of religious institutes either take vows of evangelical chastity, poverty, and obedience (the "Evangelical Counsels") to lead a life in imitation of Christ Jesus, or, those following the Rule of Saint Benedict, the vows of obedience, stability (that is, to remain with this particular community until death and not seek to move to another), and "conversion of life" which implicitly includes the counsels of chastity and evangelical poverty.[9] Some institutes take additional vows (a "fourth vow" is typical), specifying some particular work or defining condition of their way of life (e.g., the Jesuit vow to undertake any mission upon which they are sent by the pope; the Missionaries of Charity vow to serve always the poorest of the poor).
The traditional distinction between simple andsolemn vows no longer has any juridical effect. Solemn vows once meant those taken in what was called a religious order. "Today, in order to know when a vow is solemn it will be necessary to refer to the proper law of the institutes of consecrated life."[6]
Should the members want to leave the institute after perpetual vows, they would have to seek apapal indult of dispensation. The benefits of theprofession are of a spiritual nature.[10]
Daily living in religious institutes is regulated by canon law as well as the particular rule they have adopted and their own constitutions and customs. Their respective timetables ("horarium") allocate due time to communal prayer, private prayer, spiritual reading, work, meals, communal recreation, sleep, and fixes any hours during which stricter silence is to be observed, in accordance with their own institute'scharism.
Religious institutes generally follow one of the four great religious rules:Rule of St Basil,Rule of Saint Benedict,Rule of Saint Augustine, and theRule of Saint Francis.[11] The Rule of St Basil, one of the earliest rules for Christian religious life, is followed primarily by monastic communities ofByzantine tradition. Western monastics (Benedictines,Trappists,Cistercians, etc.) observe the Rule of Saint Benedict, a collection of precepts for what is called contemplative religious life. The Rule of Saint Augustine stresses self-denial, moderation, and care for those in need. Many canons regular follow the Rule of Saint Augustine.
Carmelites follow theRule of Saint Albert, which was written specifically for them in the early 1200s byAlbert of Vercelli and approved in slightly revised form byPope Innocent IV.[12]Jesuits follow what is called not a rule, but the constitutions composed by SaintIgnatius of Loyola, which laid aside traditional practices such as chanting theliturgy in favour of greater adaptability and mobility.[13]
Some institutes combine a rule with constitutions that give more precise indications for the life of the members. Thus theCapuchin Constitutions of 1536 are added to the Rule of Saint Francis.[14] In addition to the more fundamental provisions of the rule or constitutions, religious institutes have statutes that are more easily subject to change.[15]
Religious institutes normally begin as an association formed, with the consent of the diocesan bishop, for the purpose of becoming a religious institute. After time has provided proof of the rectitude, seriousness and durability of the new association, the bishop, having obtained permission of the Holy See, may formally set it up as a religious institute under his own jurisdiction.[16] Later, when it has grown in numbers, perhaps extending also into other dioceses, and further proved its worth, the Holy See may grant it formal approval, bringing it under the Holy See's responsibility, rather than that of the bishops of the dioceses where it is present.[17] For the good of such institutes and to provide for the needs of their apostolate, the Holy See may exempt them from the governance of the local bishops, bringing them entirely under the authority of the Holy See itself or of someone else.[18] In some respects, for example public liturgical practice, they always remain under the local bishop's supervision.
From the earliest times there were probably individualhermits who lived a life in isolation in imitation of Jesus' 40 days in thedesert. They have left no confirmed archaeological traces and only hints in the written record. Communities ofvirgins who had consecrated themselves to Christ are found at least as far back as the 2nd century.[19][page needed] There were also individual ascetics, known as the "devout", who usually lived not in the deserts but on the edge of inhabited places, still remaining in the world but practicing asceticism and striving for union with God, although extreme ascetism such asencratism was regarded as suspect by the Church.[20]
Paul of Thebes (fl. 3rd century), commemorated in the writings of StJerome, is regarded as the first Christian hermit inEgypt, his withdrawal into the desert apparently having been prompted by the persecution of the Christians at the time.Saint Anthony was the first to leave the world to live in the desert for specifically spiritual reasons; StAthanasius speaks of him as ananchorite. In upper Egypt, sometime around 323, SaintPachomius the Great decided to organize his disciples into a form of community in which they lived in individual huts or rooms (cellula inLatin), but worked, ate, and worshipped in shared space. Guidelines for daily life were drawn up (a monastic 'rule'); and several monasteries were founded, nine for men and two for women. This method of monastic organization is calledcenobitic or "community-based". Toward the end of his life Saint Pachomius was therefore not only theabbot of amonastery but also the head of a whole group of monasteries.[21]
The Greeks (e.g. StBasil the Great of Cappadocian Caesarea) and the Syriac-speaking east had their own monastic traditions (e.g. StEphrem of Nisibis and Edessa).
The earliest forms of monasticism in Western Europe involved figures such asMartin of Tours, who established a hermitage nearMilan. He then moved on toPoitiers, where a community gathered around his hermitage. In 372 he was called to becomeBishop of Tours, and established a monastery atMarmoutiers on the opposite bank of theLoire River. His monastery was laid out as a colony of hermits rather than as a single integrated community.
John Cassian began his monastic career at a monastery in Palestine around 385 to study monastic practice there. In Egypt he had been attracted to the isolated life of hermits, which he considered the highest form of monasticism, yet the monasteries he founded were all organized monastic communities. About 410 he established two monasteries nearMarseille, one for men, one for women. In time these attracted a total of 5,000 monks and nuns.Most significant for the future development of monasticism were Cassian'sInstitutes, which provided a guide for monastic life and hisConferences, a collection of spiritual reflections.[22]
Honoratus was a wealthyGallo-Roman aristocrat, who after a pilgrimage to Egypt, founded theMonastery of Lérins, on an island lying off the modern city ofCannes. Lérins became, in time, a center of monastic culture and learning, and many later monks and bishops would pass through Lérins in the early stages of their career.[23]
The anonymousRule of the Master (Regula magistri), was written somewhere south of Rome around 500. The rule adds administrative elements not found in earlier rules, defining the activities of the monastery, its officers, and their responsibilities in great detail. One of the writings that influenced the Master was SaintAugustine'sLetter 211, which was sent to a community of women in the city of Hippo governed by his sister. Augustine's writings were well known in the West in the sixth century (though unknown in the East until several centuries later) and his texts on religious or monastic life were considered standard.[24]
Benedict of Nursia was educated in Rome but soon sought the life of a hermit in a cave atSubiaco, outside the city. He then attracted followers with whom he founded the monastery ofMonte Cassino around 520, between Rome andNaples. HisRule is shorter than the Master's. It became by the 9th century the standard monastic rule in Western Europe.[25]
The earliest Monastic settlements in Ireland emerged at the end of the 5th century. The first identifiable founder of a monastery was SaintBrigid of Kildare, who ranked withSaint Patrick as a major figure of the Irish church. The monastery atKildare was a double monastery, with both men and women ruled by the Abbess, a pattern found in many other monastic foundations.[26]
Commonly, Irish monasteries were established by grants of land to an abbot or abbess, who came from a local noble family. The monastery became the spiritual focus of the tribe or kin group. Irish monastic rules specify a stern life of prayer and discipline in which prayer, poverty, and obedience are the central themes. However Irish monks read even secular Latin texts with an enthusiasm that their contemporaries on the continent lacked. By the end of the 7th century, Irishmonastic schools were attracting students fromEngland and from Europe.
Irish monasticism spread widely, first toScotland andNorthern England, and then to Gaul and Italy. SaintColumba and his followers established monasteries atBangor, on the northeastern coast of Ireland, atIona in Scotland, and atLindisfarne, inNorthumbria. SaintColumbanus, an abbot from a Leinster noble family, travelled to Gaul in the late 6th century with twelve companions. He and his followers spread the Irish model of monastic institutions established by noble families to the continent. A whole series of new rural monastic foundations on great rural estates under Irish influence sprang up, starting with St. Columbanus's foundations of Fontaines andLuxeuil, sponsored by the Frankish KingChildebert II. After Childebert's death St. Columbanus travelled east to Metz, where Theudebert II allowed him to establish a new monastery among the semi-paganAlemanni in what is nowSwitzerland. One of St. Columbanus's followers founded the monastery of St. Gall on the shores of Lake Constance, while St. Columbanus continued onward across theAlps to the kingdom of theLombards in Italy. There KingAgilulf and his wifeTheodolinda granted St. Columbanus land in the mountains betweenGenoa and Milan, where he established the monastery ofBobbio.[27]
A monastic revival already begun in the 10th century with theCluniac reform, which organized into anorder with common governance the monasteries following the Benedictine Rule that chose to join it or were founded by it,[28] continued with the foundation in 1084 of theCarthusian monasteries, which combined the hermit life with that of the cloister, each monk having his own hermitage, coming together only for theliturgy and an occasional meal, and having no contact with the outside world, and the foundation a few years later of theCistercians, a foundation that seemed destined to fail until in 1113 a band of 30 young men of the noblest families ofBurgundy arrived, led byBernard of Clairvaux, then 23 years old, who was to prove a dominating figure in the life of Western Europe for forty years. This was followed by the foundation in 1120 of theCanons Regular of Prémontré, not monks but clergy devoted to ascetism, study and pastoral care.[29] These aggregations of monasteries marked a departure from the previously existing arrangement whereby each monastery was totally independent and could decide what rule to follow. It also prepared the way for the quite different religious orders of the 13th century.[30]
The 13th century saw the founding and rapid spread of theDominicans in 1216 and theFranciscans in 1210, two of the principalmendicant orders, who supported themselves not, as the monasteries did, by rent on landed property, but by work and the charitable aid of others.[31] Both these institutes had vows of poverty but, while for the Franciscans poverty was an aim in itself, the Dominicans, treating poverty as a means or instrument, were allowed to own their churches and convents.[32] Similar institutes that appeared at about the same time were theAugustinians,Carmelites, andServites. While the monasteries had chosen situations in the remote countryside, these new institutes, which aimed at least as much at evangelizing others as at sanctifying their own members, had their houses in the cities and towns.[30]
By the constitutionInter cetera of 20 January 1521,Pope Leo X appointed a rule fortertiaries with simple vows. Under this rule,enclosure was optional, enabling non-enclosed followers of the rule to engage in various works of charity not allowed to enclosed religious.[11] In 1566 and 1568,Pope Pius V rejected this class of institute, but they continued to exist and even increased in number. After at first being merely tolerated, they afterward obtained approval,[11] finally gaining on 8 December 1900 recognition asreligious byPope Leo XIII.[33] Their lives were oriented not to the ancient monastic way of life, but more tosocial service and toevangelization, both inEurope and in mission areas. The number of these "congregations" (not "orders") increased further in the upheavals brought by theFrench Revolution and subsequentNapoleonic invasions of other Catholic countries, depriving thousands of monks and nuns of the income that their communities held because of inheritances and forcing them to find a new way of living their religious life. Examples of such institutes are theClaretians,La Salle Brothers,Passionists,Redemptorists, andVincentians.
A special case happened in 1540.Ignatius of Loyola obtained authorization for the members of theSociety of Jesus to be divided into professed with solemn vows and coadjutors with dispensable simple vows.[34] The novelty was found in the nature of these simple vows, since they constituted the Jesuit coadjutors as religious in the true and proper sense of the word, with the consequent privileges and exemption of regulars, including them being a diriment impediment to matrimony, etc.[35] In theory, the recognition as religious for simple vows had universal validity, but in practice, the Roman Curia considered it an exclusive privilege to the Society of Jesus.[36]
The1917 Code of Canon Law reserved the name "religiousorder" for institutes in which the vows were solemn, and used the term "religiouscongregation" or simply "congregation" for those with simple vows. The members of a religiousorder for men were called "regulars", those belonging to a religiouscongregation were simply "religious", a term that applied also to regulars. For women, those with simple vows were simply "sisters", with the term "nun" reserved in canon law for those who belonged to an institute of solemn vows, even if in some localities they were allowed to take simple vows instead.[4]
The same Code also abolished the distinction according to which solemn vows, unlike simple vows, were indissoluble. It recognized no totally indispensable religious vows and thereby abrogated for theLatin Church the special consecration that distinguished "orders" (institutes with solemn vows) from "congregations" (institutes with simple vows), while keeping some juridical distinctions between the two classes. Even these remaining juridical distinctions were abolished by the 1983 Code of Canon Law, which distinguishes solemn from simple vows but does not divide religious into categories on that basis.
By then a new form ofinstitutes of consecrated life had emerged alongside that of religious institutes: in 1947Pope Pius XII recognizedsecular institutes as a form in which Christians profess the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience while living in the world.[37]
In 1972, the FrenchJesuit Raymond Hostie published his studyVie et mort des ordres religieux (Paris. Desclée de Brouwer), an English translation of which appeared in 1983 asThe Life and Death of Religious Orders (Washington: CARA). Hostie argued that the life of a religious institute passes through successive stages: 10–20 years ofgestation, 20–40 years of consolidation, a century or so of expansion, another century or so of stabilization, 50–100 years of decline, followed by death, even if death is not officially declared until later. In this view, a religious institute lasts 250–350 years before being replaced by another religious institute with a similar life-span. Hostie recognized that there are exceptions:Benedictines,Franciscans,Dominicans,Augustinians, and some others have lasted longer, either because they transformed from what they were originally or because of the prestige of their founders. In 2015, Giancarlo Rocca suggested that attention should be given not so much to the life-span of individual religious institutes, as to the duration of what Rocca called "religious institutions", corresponding to the juridical categories of monastics, canons, mendicant orders, clerks regular, priestly societies, religious congregations, and secular institutes. The religious institutes that have disappeared since 1960 have mostly beencongregations. This class of institutes with simple vows and a strong emphasis on apostolate arose shortly before theFrench Revolution. They modernized the Church, the State, and religious life itself. Older institutes adopted some of their features, especially in the fields of education and health care, areas, however, that the State has now almost entirely taken over. This suggests that the life-span of a religious institute is largely determined by the point at which it comes into being within the life cycle of the "religious institution" to which it belongs. "Religious institutions" themselves do not necessarily disappear altogether with time, but they lose importance, as happened tomonasticism, which is no longer the force it was in theMiddle Ages before themendicant orders eclipsed it.[38]
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain.| History Timeline Ecclesiastical Legal |
| ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Theology Bible Tradition Catechism |
| ||||||||||||
| Philosophy | |||||||||||||
| Saints | |||||||||||||
| Organisation Hierarchy Canon law Laity Precedence By country |
| ||||||||||||
| Culture | |||||||||||||
| Media | |||||||||||||
| Religious orders, institutes,societies |
| ||||||||||||
| Associations of the faithful | |||||||||||||
| Charities | |||||||||||||
