Spanish Augustinian, (now Saint) Alonso de Orozco O.S.A. was one of three Spanish Augustinians considered for a mission to England to attempt to regain Augustinian monasteries during the brief reign of the Catholic monarch and daughter of King Henry VIII, Queen Mary Tudor from 1553 to 1558.
Her spouse whom she wed in July 1555 was the son of King Charles V of Spain, and was later to become King Philip II of Spain. Alonso was considered for this role because he was known to the Spanish royal family as a preacher, and might have had influence on the Queen's husband; one of the other Augustinians was eventually selected, but failed to be granted permission to enter England.
Individual Irish Augustinians managed to get back into England and Scotland at different times in the 17th and 18th centuries, but were unable to re-establish any Augustinian communities.
Across the Irish Sea, the increasing English domination of Ireland gradually led to the same results there. By the year 1610, all Irish houses except Dunmore had been forced to close.
The Province of Ireland was thus established in 1620, largely to give official structure and encouragement to the members struggling in vain for survival in Ireland.
As well, it ended the official fiction that Ireland was a vice-province of the Province of England, a country in which no Augustinians had been able to serve since the suppression of its Augustinian houses by Henry VIII in 1539.
Dunmore became the first mother house of the new Province.
It too was dissolved about the year 1641, after two centuries of survival.
One Irish Augustinian, William Tirry O.S.A., was arrested while celebrating Mass at Clonmel, Ireland in 1654, and executed. He was one of the seventeen Irish persons that the Pope beatified (i.e., declared to be "Blessed") in the year 1992.
In 1596 the Order in Hungary lost its last foundation, after decades of civil war and occupation by the Turks. The Augustinian Province of Hungary ceased to exist.
Later there was an Augustinian Province of Austria-Hungary, which by about 1750 had 290 members in fourteen houses, including Hungarian centres such as Buda, and Pecs (Funfkirchen).
In the year 1790, however, Joseph II of Austria suppressed eleven of these fourteen houses, and the armies of Napoleon and France caused the destruction of the others in the years that followed.
Germany was in a necessary phase of rebuilding and recuperating after the effects of Martin Luther and the destabilisation of religious life and forced closures of religious houses caused by governments for decades afterwards.
Three of the four German Provinces survived the Reformation, and were small but flourishing in 1776.
In Malta, the Order of Saint Augustine arrived as early as 1386, while other historians say it was as late as 1413, or even 1460. They began their Priory (convento) at Mdina (now called Rabat) in 1555, and have been present there ever since.
With small numbers and few houses, the Province of Malta quietly continued during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
In summary, for the Augustinian Order in Europe, the period between 1648 and 1789 was a period of modest revival and modest growth after the physical and psychological effects of the Protestant Reformation.
For the Order in Latin America and Asia, it was a time for continued growth made possible because of the minimal direct impact of the Reformation upon the Order in Spain and Portugal, which supplied the majority Augustinians at these overseas outposts.
Photo Gallery
For the Augnet photo gallery of Augustinian ministry in Spain: Escorial (see photo above), click here.
For further reading
The European Augustinians in 1776. By John Gavigan O.S.A.. Rome: Analecta Augustiniana, Vol XXXVIII (1975), pp. 231-294.
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