Augustinians, the name given to several religious bodies in the Roman Catholic Church. Whether St Augustine ever framed any formal rule of monastic life, is uncertain; but one was deduced from his writings, and was adopted by as many as thirty monastic fraternities, of which the chief were the Canons Regular of St Augustine, the Begging Hermits or Austin Friars, the Friars Preachers or Dominicans (q.v.), and the Premonstratensians (q.v.). The Canons Regular of St Augustine, or Austin Canons, appear to have been founded or remodelled about the middle of the 11th century. Their discipline was less severe than that of monks properly so called, but more rigid than that of the secular or parochial clergy. They lived under one roof, having a common dormitory and refectory. Their habit was a long cassock, with a white rochet over it, all covered by a black cloak or hood, whence they were often called Black Canons. Probably founded at Avignon about 1061, they had their first seat in England at Colchester (circa 1105); and at the Reformation their houses somewhat exceeded 200 in number. Of some 25 houses in Scotland, the earliest was that of Scone (1114), and the others of most note were at Inchcolm in the Firth of Forth, St Andrews, Holyrood, Cambuskenneth, and Inchaffray.
The Begging Hermits, Hermits of St Augustine, or Austin Friars, were a much more austere order, renouncing all property, and vowing to live by the voluntary alms of the faithful. They are believed to have sprung from certain societies of recluses who, in the 11th and 12th centuries, existed especially in Italy without any regulative constitution. At the instigation, as is alleged, of the rival fraternities of Dominicans and Franciscans, Pope Innocent IV., about the middle of the 13th century, imposed on them the rule of St Augustine, whom they claimed as their founder. In 1256 Pope Alexander IV. placed them under the control of a superior or president called a 'general.' In 1287 a code of rules or constitutions was compiled, by which the order long continued to be governed. About 1570 Friar Thomas of Jesus, a Portuguese brother of the order, introduced a more austere rule, the disciples of which were forbidden to wear shoes, whence they were called discalceati, or 'bare-footed friars.'
The degeneracy of the order in the 14th century, called into existence new or reformed Augustinian societies, among which was that Saxon one to which Luther belonged. But in his day, even these had fallen victims to the general corruption of monasticism, and were not undeserving of his unsparing denunciations. After the French Revolution, the order was wholly suppressed in France, Spain, and Portugal, and partly in Italy and Southern Germany. It was diminished even in Austria and Naples. It is most powerful in America, its colleges in the New World having been founded by Augustinians from the Irish province, and at present it possesses about a dozen houses in Ireland and one in London.
The name of Augustines was given also to an order of nuns who claimed descent from a convent founded by St Augustine at Hippo, and of which his sister was the first abbess. They were vowed to the care of the sick and the service of hospitals. The Hôtel-Dieu at Paris is still served by them.