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This chapter analyses the textual traditions of the Sermones ad fratres in eremo, two of the earliest collections of which are found in Jordan of Quedlinburg’s Collectanea Sancti Augustini and in the Collectorium Sermonum Sancti Augustini of the mid-fourteenth century Chancellor of Paris, Robert de Bardis. While the original forger may never be discovered, the collections of these sermons of Jordan and de Bardis give strong evidence of an original collection of 22 or 23 sermons, which later grew to include 76 sermons, as printed in the PL. These sermons, in part, give textual evidence of the priority of the Hermits in their controversy with the Canons over Augustine’s first monastic order, and became a subject of debate throughout the later Middle Ages and beyond.

This chapter analyses the anonymous treatise Initium Ordinis Sancti Augustini, together with the works of Henry of Friemar, Nicolas of Alessandria, and Jordan of Quedlinburg to bring to light the recreation of Augustine’s biography in the context of the religio-politics of the Order of Hermits of St Augustine (OESA). These four authors were the architects of what can be called the ‘Myth of Augustine’, Augustine as the founding father of the OESA. Such an image of Augustine was needed in the Hermit’s political battles for custody of Augustine’s relics in Pavia, in which the Hermits argued for their priority over the Augustinian Canons as Augustine’s true sons and heirs.

This chapter focuses on English Historian William of Newburgh, who was born in 1136 near Bridlington in Yorkshire and received early education at Newburgh Priory, one of the numerous houses established by the Augustinian Canons in twelfth-century England. It looks at William's activities or movements during the first decades of his religious life and describes how he played an active role in the spiritual and academic formation of young entrants to the Priory school. It also mentions William's five books of The History of English Affairs that were written in a relatively short period between 1196 and 1198. The chapter explains how he devoted the greater part of Book I to the reign of Stephen, Books II and III to the extensive rule of Henry II, and Books IV and V to the years of Richard 1. It recounts William's intention to complete his history with the death of Richard in April 1199, since each of the first four books concludes at such a significant juncture with appropriate closing remarks.