Other new orders started on a different purpose. Various hospital orders, which laid special stress on the care of the sick and suffering, were set up for those who sought salvation in good works for the world, rather than in isolation from human intercourse. But the great contribution of the twelfth century towards bridging over the great gulf between clerk and monk was the institution of the so-called Austin Canons, or Canons Regular. [Sidenote: The Canons Regular.] It was agreed that the higher life was the monastic life, and that the secular priest, possessing private property, living in his own house and immersed in worldly affairs, stood on a lower plane than the regular, but the cure of souls was left to the secular clergy, and it was no part of the Hildebrandine ideal to neglect the pastoral work of the Church. Hence came a movement for reforming the secular clergy by making them live the life of a monk, while they carried on the duties of a clerk. It was impossible to enforce monastic life on the isolated and ignorant parish clergy, among whom it was hard work enough to enforce the new obligation of celibacy. The great colleges and cathedrals, served by many priests, offered an easier and more fruitful field for reform.
In the fifth century St. Augustine of Hippo had sought to establish a ‘monastery of clerks in the bishop’s household.’ In the days of the Carolingian reformation, Bishop Chrodegang of Metz had, in the spirit of the great African father, set up a rule of life, by which canons of a cathedral should live in common along with their bishops. In Hildebrand’s days Peter Damiani appealed to the example of St. Augustine as the ideal pattern for the cathedral clergy. Many chapters were reformed, and from the twelfth century onwards a sharp distinction was drawn between ‘regular canons,’ subject to a rule of life, and ‘secular canons’ of the old-fashioned sort. The great property and the political influence of the cathedral chapters made it hard to keep out of them members of the great territorial families, who looked on their prebends as sources of income, and who soon found a regular life too austere, so that few cathedrals became permanently served by them. But new churches of Regular Canons, where there were no secular traditions to interfere with the strictness of their rule, began to rise up all over Christendom. The general name of ‘Austin Canons’ suggested that the whole of the class strove to realise the old ideal of St. Augustine.