Canons Regular of the Order of the Holy Cross
Encyclopedia
The Canons Regular of the Order of the Holy Cross, commonly called Crosiers, are a Roman Catholic religious order
.
, and began a way of life more in keeping with their ideals. This settlement of the five at Huy was the beginning of their Order, and the house and small church dedicated to Saint Theobald that they established there became the Order's motherhouse. Pope Innocent III
verbally approved their Order on the feast of the Finding of the Holy Cross, May 3, 1210, and Pope Innocent IV granted them full and final approval in 1248.
This traditional story is, however, rife with difficulties, largely of the Crosiers' own making. In 1410, the Crosiers' general chapter (see below) ordered the destruction of its records and decisions from the time of its foundation. The reason for this radical act is recorded to have been a thorough reformation of some sort, but it left the Order's modern historians with only fragments and clues to the their Order's first two centuries, and the tradition summarized above. That the Crosiers' origins lie in the crusades seems fairly certain. Their own sources, and mention of them in non-Crosier sources, usually call them "the Brethren of the Holy Cross," and the French and English words used for them, Croisiers and Crosiers, are derived from the French "croisé," one of the words used for a crusader and meaning "marked with a cross." But the only one of their five founders for whom they have a name is the group's leader, and that only in its Latin form, Theodorus de Cellis, which first appears in a short history of the Order published in 1636. The name "Theodore," however, was not used in western Europe in the 12th century, and no one by that name appears either in the records of the diocese of Liege nor in the records of the family de Celles, of which he was always assumed to have been a member. Finally, there is no record of the presence of the Crosiers at Huy until the 1240s, and only in 1322 did Clairlieu become the site of a magnificent church dedicated to the Holy Cross instead of the small chapel of St. Theobald.
However the Crosiers came into existence, their new order soon spread from its Belgian birthplace into France
, the Netherlands
, Germany
and England
. Because they were established in the early 13th century, were contemporaries of the Dominicans and Franciscans, and were usually referred to as "Brethren of the Holy Cross," they were frequently misidentified as friars and were often confused with other religious orders who identified themselves with the Cross. So, for example, there was a very old tradition that Bishop Albert of Prague took several Crosiers with him to Livonia
, but these were in fact members of a Bohemian order of the Holy Cross. In England, too, they and an Italian order of the Holy Cross were both identified as Crutched Friars
, and so the location of their houses and their activities are often mistaken for each other. Some of the traditions about the Belgian Crosiers, however, have at least some connection with fact. One such tradition, for example, claims that Theodorus de Cellis assisted St. Dominic in his preaching to the Albigenses of southern France; a Crosier presence in that area is reliably recorded from early in their history. A similar tradition places Crosiers in the train of the French king St. Louis IX of France in 1248 during his crusade; he did enable the Crosiers to build their Paris monastery in 1254.
The Order flourished in the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, and at its greatest extent had about ninety houses scattered across northern Europe. But those in England and in parts of the Netherlands and Germany were suppressed during the Protestant Reformation
, and almost all of those that survived, notably in France and Belgium, including the ancient motherhouse at Huy, were suppressed in the closure of monasteries and convents after the French Revolution. By 1840, only two Crosier houses remained, both in the Netherlands (that of St. Agatha, outside of Cuijk, and that in Uden, both in North Brabant), and they seemed likewise doomed to extinction by the decree of King William I of the Netherlands, which forbade religious houses in his realm to admit novices. When King William II lifted his father's ban on September 14, 1840, only four elderly Crosiers remained: the youngest around sixty and the oldest, Father William Kantor, the only Crosier able to remember his Order as it had been before the Revolution. Thereafter the Order slowly began to recover. In second half of the 19th century, the Crosiers returned to their Belgian birthplace, and even made an effort to transplant the Order outside of Europe to the United States when their Master General
sent some members to Bay Settlement, Wisconsin, in 1857. That attempt failed, however, and it was not until the first decades of the 20th century that the Crosiers were able to establish themselves outside of Europe, in the U.S., Brazil, Indonesia, and the Congo. There are still Crosiers in all these places, and the Order presently numbers about four hundred men. In the United States today, the Crosiers have priories in Phoenix, Arizona and Onamia, Minnesota.
Crosier Father Tom Enneking was elected June 13 as the new prior provincial
of the Crosiers in the United States. He is set to be installed for a six-year term in a June 16 liturgy
in Onamia, Minnesota
.
The Crosier habit is also canonical in form. They wear a white soutane or tunic, and over it a black pendant sash, a black scapular
and an elbow-length black cape called a mozzetta
. Unlike the mozzetta worn by diocesan canons, that of the Crosiers is left unbuttoned to reveal the cross on their scapular, which has the form of a Maltese cross with a red upright and white crosspiece.
The members of the Order usually reside in houses called priories, so called because they are under the governance and direction of a prior
whom the members elect. The Order is divided into districts called provinces, which are under the governance and direction of a prior provincial, who is elected by the provincial chapter, the formal assembly of delegates from the priories in the province who have been elected by the members of these houses. At the time of this writing, the Order has provinces in Europe, the U.S., Indonesia, and Brazil. Two other parts of the Order, in the Congo and Irian Jaya (formerly the western part of the island of New Guinea) hold the status of "regions," i.e., have a certain independence from the provinces that supervise them, but have not yet achieved the status of provinces. The entire Order is under the governance and direction of its Master General, who is elected by the general chapter, the formal assembly of delegates from the Order's provinces and regions who have been elected by their members. Priors, priors provincial, and masters general of the Order are all elected for specific terms.
Catholic men who wish to enter the Order undergo a period of consideration and review, after which they may be accepted for a year of novitiate. Upon conclusion of his novitiate, a Crosier is admitted to a three-year period of temporary vows. Thereafter, a second period of temporary vows may follow or immediate admission to solemn profession, viz., vows taken for life.
The Crosiers venerate Odilia of Cologne
, one of the martyr companions of St. Ursula, as their patroness. She is said to have appeared to a lay brother of the Order, John Novelan, in the Paris house in 1287 and to have instructed him to go to Cologne
and exhume her relics from under a pear tree in the garden of one Arnulf, a prominent burger of that city. After some disbelief and resistance on the part of his superiors, Brother John fulfilled the saint's directions and brought her relics to the motherhouse at Huy on July 18. The saint soon acquired a reputation as a miracle-worker, and continues to enjoy the veneration of both Crosiers and those outside the Order. There are always a number of pilgrims who come to various houses and churches of the Order on her feast day to ask for intercession, especially against blindness and diseases of the eyes. In response to requests, the Crosiers send small vials of water blessed with her relics all over the world. The National Shrine of Saint Odilia is located in Onamia, Minnesota.
In 2010, the Crosiers celebrated 800 years since their founding with Jubilee celebrations at St. Agatha Monastery near Cuijk, the Netherlands, where the Crosiers have lived continuously since 1371, as well as in the United States, Rome, Indonesia and the Congo.
Roman Catholic religious order
Catholic religious orders are, historically, a category of Catholic religious institutes.Subcategories are canons regular ; monastics ; mendicants Catholic religious orders are, historically, a category of Catholic religious institutes.Subcategories are canons regular (canons and canonesses regular...
.
History
According to their own tradition, the Crosiers were founded by five men attached to the household of the prince-bishop of Liege, Radulf von Zähringen, who accompanied the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa on the Third Crusade (1189–1191). Upon their return, the five, led by Theodorus de Cellis (1166-1236), sought a new way of life, and shortly before his death, their bishop appointed them to be canons of his Cathedral of St. Lambert in Liège. After efforts to renew the life and practice of the college of canons to which they belonged, the five withdrew from Liege and moved up the Meuse river to a place called Clairlieu, outside the city of HuyHuy
Huy is a municipality of Belgium. It lies in the country's Walloon Region and Province of Liege. Huy lies along the river Meuse, at the mouth of the small river Hoyoux. It is in the sillon industriel, the former industrial backbone of Wallonia, home to about two-thirds of the Walloon population...
, and began a way of life more in keeping with their ideals. This settlement of the five at Huy was the beginning of their Order, and the house and small church dedicated to Saint Theobald that they established there became the Order's motherhouse. Pope Innocent III
Pope Innocent III
Pope Innocent III was Pope from 8 January 1198 until his death. His birth name was Lotario dei Conti di Segni, sometimes anglicised to Lothar of Segni....
verbally approved their Order on the feast of the Finding of the Holy Cross, May 3, 1210, and Pope Innocent IV granted them full and final approval in 1248.
This traditional story is, however, rife with difficulties, largely of the Crosiers' own making. In 1410, the Crosiers' general chapter (see below) ordered the destruction of its records and decisions from the time of its foundation. The reason for this radical act is recorded to have been a thorough reformation of some sort, but it left the Order's modern historians with only fragments and clues to the their Order's first two centuries, and the tradition summarized above. That the Crosiers' origins lie in the crusades seems fairly certain. Their own sources, and mention of them in non-Crosier sources, usually call them "the Brethren of the Holy Cross," and the French and English words used for them, Croisiers and Crosiers, are derived from the French "croisé," one of the words used for a crusader and meaning "marked with a cross." But the only one of their five founders for whom they have a name is the group's leader, and that only in its Latin form, Theodorus de Cellis, which first appears in a short history of the Order published in 1636. The name "Theodore," however, was not used in western Europe in the 12th century, and no one by that name appears either in the records of the diocese of Liege nor in the records of the family de Celles, of which he was always assumed to have been a member. Finally, there is no record of the presence of the Crosiers at Huy until the 1240s, and only in 1322 did Clairlieu become the site of a magnificent church dedicated to the Holy Cross instead of the small chapel of St. Theobald.
However the Crosiers came into existence, their new order soon spread from its Belgian birthplace into France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. Because they were established in the early 13th century, were contemporaries of the Dominicans and Franciscans, and were usually referred to as "Brethren of the Holy Cross," they were frequently misidentified as friars and were often confused with other religious orders who identified themselves with the Cross. So, for example, there was a very old tradition that Bishop Albert of Prague took several Crosiers with him to Livonia
Livonia
Livonia is a historic region along the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. It was once the land of the Finnic Livonians inhabiting the principal ancient Livonian County Metsepole with its center at Turaida...
, but these were in fact members of a Bohemian order of the Holy Cross. In England, too, they and an Italian order of the Holy Cross were both identified as Crutched Friars
Crutched Friars
The Crutched Friars or Crossed Friars were a Roman Catholic religious order of Augustinian canons who went to England in the 13th century from Italy, where they existed for some time, and where they were called Fratres Cruciferi.-History:...
, and so the location of their houses and their activities are often mistaken for each other. Some of the traditions about the Belgian Crosiers, however, have at least some connection with fact. One such tradition, for example, claims that Theodorus de Cellis assisted St. Dominic in his preaching to the Albigenses of southern France; a Crosier presence in that area is reliably recorded from early in their history. A similar tradition places Crosiers in the train of the French king St. Louis IX of France in 1248 during his crusade; he did enable the Crosiers to build their Paris monastery in 1254.
The Order flourished in the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, and at its greatest extent had about ninety houses scattered across northern Europe. But those in England and in parts of the Netherlands and Germany were suppressed during the Protestant Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
, and almost all of those that survived, notably in France and Belgium, including the ancient motherhouse at Huy, were suppressed in the closure of monasteries and convents after the French Revolution. By 1840, only two Crosier houses remained, both in the Netherlands (that of St. Agatha, outside of Cuijk, and that in Uden, both in North Brabant), and they seemed likewise doomed to extinction by the decree of King William I of the Netherlands, which forbade religious houses in his realm to admit novices. When King William II lifted his father's ban on September 14, 1840, only four elderly Crosiers remained: the youngest around sixty and the oldest, Father William Kantor, the only Crosier able to remember his Order as it had been before the Revolution. Thereafter the Order slowly began to recover. In second half of the 19th century, the Crosiers returned to their Belgian birthplace, and even made an effort to transplant the Order outside of Europe to the United States when their Master General
Master general
Master general or Master-general can refer to:* the Superior general of certain orders and congregations, such as**the Crosiers**the Dominicans **the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy...
sent some members to Bay Settlement, Wisconsin, in 1857. That attempt failed, however, and it was not until the first decades of the 20th century that the Crosiers were able to establish themselves outside of Europe, in the U.S., Brazil, Indonesia, and the Congo. There are still Crosiers in all these places, and the Order presently numbers about four hundred men. In the United States today, the Crosiers have priories in Phoenix, Arizona and Onamia, Minnesota.
Crosier Father Tom Enneking was elected June 13 as the new prior provincial
Prior
Prior is an ecclesiastical title, derived from the Latin adjective for 'earlier, first', with several notable uses.-Monastic superiors:A Prior is a monastic superior, usually lower in rank than an Abbot. In the Rule of St...
of the Crosiers in the United States. He is set to be installed for a six-year term in a June 16 liturgy
Christian liturgy
A liturgy is a set form of ceremony or pattern of worship. Christian liturgy is a pattern for worship used by a Christian congregation or denomination on a regular basis....
in Onamia, Minnesota
Onamia, Minnesota
As of the census of 2000, there were 847 people, 318 households, and 171 families residing in the city. The population density was 938.3 people per square mile . There were 355 housing units at an average density of 393.3 per square mile...
.
Philosophy
The Crosiers are an order of Canons Regular. The membership consists of priests and brothers, all of whom live together according to the Rule of St. Augustine. Their way of life consists of three parts: life in a community setting, daily communal celebration of the Church's liturgy, and some form of active ministry. This ministry takes the form of preaching, directing retreats, parish work, education, prison ministry, immigration services and spiritual direction. The Crosier spirituality of the cross is rooted in the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus (the Paschal Mystery). Crosiers believe the resurrection of Jesus guarantees that in our suffering and pain, there is hope and healing. Because of this, Crosiers emphasize the glorious, or triumphant, cross.The Crosier habit is also canonical in form. They wear a white soutane or tunic, and over it a black pendant sash, a black scapular
Scapular
The term scapular as used today refers to two specific, yet related, Christian Sacramentals, namely the monastic and devotional scapulars, although both forms may simply be referred to as "scapular"....
and an elbow-length black cape called a mozzetta
Mozzetta
The mozzetta is a short elbow-length cape that covers the shoulders and is buttoned over the breast. It is worn over the rochet or cotta as part of choir dress by some of the clergy of the Catholic Church, among them the Pope, cardinals, bishops, abbots, canons and religious superiors...
. Unlike the mozzetta worn by diocesan canons, that of the Crosiers is left unbuttoned to reveal the cross on their scapular, which has the form of a Maltese cross with a red upright and white crosspiece.
The members of the Order usually reside in houses called priories, so called because they are under the governance and direction of a prior
Prior
Prior is an ecclesiastical title, derived from the Latin adjective for 'earlier, first', with several notable uses.-Monastic superiors:A Prior is a monastic superior, usually lower in rank than an Abbot. In the Rule of St...
whom the members elect. The Order is divided into districts called provinces, which are under the governance and direction of a prior provincial, who is elected by the provincial chapter, the formal assembly of delegates from the priories in the province who have been elected by the members of these houses. At the time of this writing, the Order has provinces in Europe, the U.S., Indonesia, and Brazil. Two other parts of the Order, in the Congo and Irian Jaya (formerly the western part of the island of New Guinea) hold the status of "regions," i.e., have a certain independence from the provinces that supervise them, but have not yet achieved the status of provinces. The entire Order is under the governance and direction of its Master General, who is elected by the general chapter, the formal assembly of delegates from the Order's provinces and regions who have been elected by their members. Priors, priors provincial, and masters general of the Order are all elected for specific terms.
Catholic men who wish to enter the Order undergo a period of consideration and review, after which they may be accepted for a year of novitiate. Upon conclusion of his novitiate, a Crosier is admitted to a three-year period of temporary vows. Thereafter, a second period of temporary vows may follow or immediate admission to solemn profession, viz., vows taken for life.
The Crosiers venerate Odilia of Cologne
Odilia of Cologne
Saint Odilia is a saint venerated in the Roman Catholic Church, although according to the current liturgical calendar her feastday is not officially commemorated. She is a patroness of good eyesight....
, one of the martyr companions of St. Ursula, as their patroness. She is said to have appeared to a lay brother of the Order, John Novelan, in the Paris house in 1287 and to have instructed him to go to Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
and exhume her relics from under a pear tree in the garden of one Arnulf, a prominent burger of that city. After some disbelief and resistance on the part of his superiors, Brother John fulfilled the saint's directions and brought her relics to the motherhouse at Huy on July 18. The saint soon acquired a reputation as a miracle-worker, and continues to enjoy the veneration of both Crosiers and those outside the Order. There are always a number of pilgrims who come to various houses and churches of the Order on her feast day to ask for intercession, especially against blindness and diseases of the eyes. In response to requests, the Crosiers send small vials of water blessed with her relics all over the world. The National Shrine of Saint Odilia is located in Onamia, Minnesota.
In 2010, the Crosiers celebrated 800 years since their founding with Jubilee celebrations at St. Agatha Monastery near Cuijk, the Netherlands, where the Crosiers have lived continuously since 1371, as well as in the United States, Rome, Indonesia and the Congo.
External links
- Crosier Fathers & Brothers official website