Note 50 — V THE MONASTERY-BISHOPRICS OF CORNWALL

The statement is based upon the assumption that the decrees of Pope Leo III were as inoperative in Cornwall as they were in Wales and Ireland. It should be needless to warn the reader against confounding Augustine of Canterbury with the bishop of Hippo. The latter is said to have sanctioned certain regulations for the religious life which subsequently became known as the rule of St. Augustine. In the beginning of the ninth century Pope Leo III made this rule obligatory upon all the clergy who had not embraced some other rule. Had the monks of St. Petrock been in outward communion with western Christendom they would probably have become canons, regular or secular, of St. Augustine and, in that case and in that sense only, Sir John Maclean’s statement might have been excusable. But in that sense the words had no meaning in the sixth century when St. Petrock founded the Cornish community. Augustine of Canterbury was a Benedictine monk and the canons regular introduced by Bishop Warelwast, known as Black Canons, belonged to one of the three great orders which sprang from the rule attributed to his great namesake the bishop of Hippo.