Orders

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

RELIGIOUS, associations, the members of which band themselves to lead strict and devotional lives, and to live separate formation there were only the hermits or anchorites (see MONASTERY). The entry into religious orders from their foundation to the present time, is preceded by the taking of the monastic vow, which enjoins residence in a monastery, celibacy, renunciation of worldly pleasures, the duty of prayer, fasting, and other austerities, and unconditional obedience to superiors. The first properly constituted religious order was founded in the 4th century by St. Basil, now chiefly confined to the Greek Church in the East. In the time of Justinian (530), St. Benedict established a new order, the Benedictines, under a set of rules based principally on those of St. Basil, and for some 600 years after the greatest number of European monks followed his statutes. According to some authorities as many as 23 orders sprang from this one. About 1220 the Dominicans and Franciscans originated by taking amended rules from their leaders. These rules, especially those of the Dominicans, were more austere, including perpetual silence, total abstinence from flesh, and the wearing of woolen only, and they were not allowed to receive money, and had to subsist on alms, being thus "mendicant" orders. Modified orders of the Benedictines are, for instance, the Camaldulians or Camaldolites, the Carthusians, the Celestines, the Cistercians, the Bernardines, Feuillants, Recollets, the nuns of Port Royal, and the Trappists. In the 8th century the monks began to be viewed as members of the clerical order, and in the 10th, by receiving permission to assume the tonsure, they were formally declared clergymen. The Præmonstratenses, Servites, Augustines, Hieronymites or Jeronymites, Jesuits, and Carmelites are regular orders, according to the rules of Augustine. Suborders of the Franciscans are the Minorites M, Conventuals, servatines, Fraticelli, Cordeliers, Capuchins, Minims, etc. As the secluded of the monks, soon after the origin monasteries, had given rise to similar sociations of pious females, so nuns monly banded together as new orders of ing mass. monks arose, and formed societies under similar names and regulations. there were Benedictine, Camaldulian Carthusian, Cistercian, Augustine, monstratensian, Carmelite, Trinitarian Dominican, Franciscan nuns, and many other orders of regular canonesses There were also congregations of nuns Church. who united with certain orders of monks without adopting their names. The Ursuline and Hospitaller Hospitaller nuns, or Sisters of Mercy, are female orders existing independently of any male orders, and living according to the rules of St. Augustine. The orders first established governed themselves in an aristocraticorepublican manner. The Benedictine monasteries were long independent of one another. The Cistercians obeyed a high council made up of the superior, and other abbots and counsellors, and these were again responsible to the general chapters. The four mendicant orders the Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustines, and Carmelites, at their very commencement placed themselves in a much more intimate connection with the Popes. ORDERS IN COUNCIL, orders by the ruling sovereign with the advice of the privy council. See PRIVY COUNCIL.