The Order of St. Augustine

The Order of Saint Augustine is a mendicant Order whose origins do not date back to the saint from Hippo, but rather to the union of several communities of hermits from Tuscia established in 1244 under Pope Innocent IV. In 1256 other religious families joined the newly minted Order, that within a few years had expanded to almost the entire north-central part of Italy. In the thirteenth century the Augustinians also spread to southern Italy and outside the confines of the peninsula (especially to current Germany). In the following century, in the face of a certain relaxation of monastic discipline, different congregations of observants sprung up which brought together the convents that decided to follow the Augustinian rule more closely. In one of these convents, in Erfurt in Saxony, Martin Luther, the founder of the Protestant Reformation received his training. In the Early Modern age, the Order devoted itself to missionary activity around the world, while within it there were congregations of Recollects, Discalced Augustinians and those of Centorbi. On the brink of extinction, at least in Europe, after the suppression of numerous monasteries and the confiscation of their property by the state at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Order was reorganized by Pope Leo XIII in the late nineteenth century.