This book makes a contribution to knowledge of the history of the Augustinian canons in England through a case study of one particular house in the south-west of the country. Plympton Priory in Devon was founded in 1121 by a bishop of Exeter, and through episcopal and lay donations of temporal and spiritual sources of income became one of the wealthiest houses of Augustinian canons in England. Analysis of surviving records reveals the multiplicity of connections existing between the canons and the laity, the secular clergy, the episcopacy, and the Crown until the priory’s dissolution. The result is a multi-faceted study of the roles played by an Augustinian house in society and within the Church in the late Middle Ages.

This is the first of a series of volumes which have become recognised as one of the great monuments of English historical scholarship. The late Dom David Knowles began work on the subject in 1929; The Monastic Order in England appeared in 1948, 1955 and 1959. This volume begins the account of a whole way of Christian life and a unique element of English civilisation, from Anglo-Saxon times to the mid-sixteenth century. It opens with a survey of monastic life and activities of the old orders to 1340; goes on to record the impact of the Friars, and concludes with a general survey of the monasteries and their world.

Although the most numerous and widespread of all the religious orders in medieval Ireland, the regular canons and canonesses have been somewhat neglected in Irish historiography. This collection, the proceedings of the 2017 Glenstal History Conference, examines the role of the canonical movement (those who followed the rule of St Augustine) in Ireland from its emergence as an expression of the Vita Apostolica in the twelfth century, through the dissolution of the monasteries in the Tudor period until its eventual disappearance in the early nineteenth century. This volume combines the evidence for the archaeology, architecture and history of the movement with that relating to its cultural, economic, liturgical, intellectual and pastoral activities. Between them, the contributors provide fascinating insights on a neglected aspect of Irish monastic history while situating it in a broader European ecclesial context.

The history of the vexed relationship between clergy and warfare is traced through a careful examination of canon law.

This treatise was written about 400 A.D. Concerning it Aug. in Retract. Book II. c. xviii., says: I have written seven books on Baptism against the Donatists, who strive to defend themselves by the authority of the most blessed bishop and martyr Cyprian; in which I show that nothing is so effectual for the refutation of the Donatists, and for shutting their mouths directly from upholding their schism against the Catholic Church, as the letters and act of Cyprian. Aeterna Press