Augustinian friars

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Augustinian friars (the order of Hermits of St Augustine), a religious order that established eleven houses in Ireland between 1282 and 1341. Founded from England, they initially gravitated towards Anglo‐Norman settlements. At first they were directly governed by the English provincial as one of the five ‘limits’ of the English province, but from 1394, following agitation by the Anglo‐Irish friars, they were granted increasing powers of self‐government.

A second phase of expansion saw nine new friaries (eight in Connacht) founded between c.1380 and 1500. In 1457 the Connacht houses were given autonomy by the prior‐general, who allowed the appointment of a rector with the same powers as the vicar provincial. The Observant reform movement within the order emerged at Banada, Co. Sligo, in 1423 and eventually spread to seven other houses. In 1479 Callan, Co. Kilkenny, was made the head of an Observant congregation which was directly subject to the prior general of the order.

Government of the Irish limit had passed to the Gaelic friars by 1518 with the appointment of Richard Nangle as vicar provincial. He held the post again in 1539 but accepted the Reformation and became, on account of his skill at preaching in Irish, the first Anglican bishop of Clonfert. The twelve houses in the Pale, Munster, and Leinster were suppressed by 1539–40, but the houses in Gaelic areas survived into the reign of Elizabeth. A revival of the friars began in 1613 and continued throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1750 there were 128 friars in Ireland but, like the other mendicants, the Augustinians went into decline with the closure of their Irish novitiates by Propaganda Fide in 1751 (see religious orders).

Colmán N. Ó Clabaigh

Augustinian friars (or Austin friars) were founded by Pope Alexander IV in 1256 from a number of small hermit communities in Italy. They were given the rule of St Augustine of Hippo (see Augustinian canons) which the Dominicans, whose constitution they largely followed, also observed. Though they were a mendicant order they continued some eremetical observances and their first foundations were located away from towns. Soon, however, they established themselves in urban areas and in England, where their first community was founded in 1248–9 at Clare, by the dissolution they were found in nearly 40 places, usually substantial towns or ports, such as Grimsby, Hull, and King's Lynn, as well as Oxford and Cambridge. The Cambridge house was a centre of the early Reformation in England, and Luther was an Augustinian friar at Erfurt.

Brian Golding