Page "Celestines" Paragraph 1

This happened about the year 1254.

A new religious community was formed, and Peter of Morone gave them a rule formulated in accordance with his own practices.

In 1264 the new institution was approved by Urban IV.

The founder, having heard that it was probable that Pope Gregory X, then holding a council at Lyon, would suppress all such new orders as had been founded since the Lateran Council, having commanded that such institutions should not be further multiplied, went to Lyon.

There he succeeded in persuading Gregory to approve his new order, making it a branch of the Benedictines and following the rule of Saint Benedict, but adding to it additional severities and privations.

Gregory took it under the Papal protection, assured to it the possession of all property it might acquire, and endowed it with exemption from the authority of the ordinary.

Nothing more was needed to ensure the rapid spread of the new association and Peter the hermit of Morone lived to see himself " Superior-General " to thirty-six monasteries and more than six hundred monks.

Peter, however, cannot be accused of ambition or the lust of power when a monastic superior, any more than when he insisted on divesting himself of the Papacy, to which he was subsequently raised.