The Order of St. Stephen

In 1076, St. Étienne of Muret founded a own hermitage in the wasteland that was Muret, France. He gathered a following, which relocated to a new location in 1150, set up a proper priory, and became known as the Grandmontines after it. It was like nothing else at the time - and after 1185, when for the first time (but not the last) its members overthrow their prior, it more or less ran out of steam and got supplanted by the rise of 13th-century mendicancy. The Grandmontines puttered along, tiny and marginal, until the French Revolution finally put them out of their misery and ended their unique spiritual tradition forever.

IRL, anyways. In Andalusada, their name's changed - they are the Order of Saint Stephen (O.S.S., Ordo sancti Stephani), or Stephanines for short. And I have some very lofty plans for that ascetic movement from northern France - because a movement whose founding document baldly states "Our rule is the Gospel of Christ" is too good to pass up.

Grandmontine Stephanine spirituality 101

Let's start with the most basic thing: the Stephanines have their own rule. The Rule of St. Stephen, written down by the fourth head of the Order in 1124. In Andalusada the words will understandably be somewhat different, but in spirit with the original (excerpted from here):

• Prologue: "The one primary and fundamental Rule of Rules for our salvation and all others derive from [the Gospel]. We are all Christians, living the Rule of the Gospel, which is the root of all Rules."
• Ch. 39: "We forbid you absolutely to receive women into your observance."
• Ch. 54: "The better part which the Lord praised so highly in Mary, we impose upon the clercs [sic] alone.... [w]e entrust the temporal care of the monastery to the convers alone; in matters worldly and all other business, they are to command the other brethen, both clercs and convers..."

After that my sources (namely Wikipedia and Philip Sheldrake) give me very conflicting details about the Order, which is fine with me. There were arguments over whether the IRL Grandmontines were more Benedictine or Augustinian in their rule (it varied with time, apparently...), because they didn't see themselves as monks or hermits or canons regular, but as all three. (What tore them apart IRL was probably differing takes on how to actually be that.)

The other thing to note about the Stephanines is the fact that they had a mind-bogglingly democratic structure from the outset. Traditionally both the monks and the conversi (lay brothers) were counted as absolutely equal, and would share common living quarters. (Traditionally, the lay brothers were supposed to outnumber the monks by 2:1; that probably influenced the power struggles too.) It took papal intervention to organize them into a more normal monastic hierarchy.

Introducing St. Matilda

Saint Matilda exists because Saint Dominic doesn't. Per Rule of Canny, Andalusada needs someone to fill his shoes, an that someone is Saint Gonzalo of Lerida - but he's an original character, which means that I have both free room and a lot of details to fill in. And back before his page took on its current form, one of my earliest notes about Gonzalo was something I wanted in his story: "a Gonzalan St. Clare."

For the longest time, this has sat unattended, because the only reason I introduced Gonzalo was because John George wasn't an Augustinian, and I honestly hadn't had any interesting thoughts about it. Last night, though, while trying to rename Catholic orders to fit into my arbitrary naming conventions, I discovered some really cool things, which brought this back to mind - and I'm gonna make the most of it.