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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 charts the influence of the ‘new Augustine’ as created by the Augustinian Hermits in the iconography of the Later Middle Ages, as well as the relationship between the textual and graphic images. The textual preceded the graphic, yet both combined in the hermeneutical imagining of Augustine. The Metrum pro depingenda vita Sancti Augustini of Jordan of Quedlinburg is the earliest text we have that explicitly proposes a textual and graphic programme for representing Augustine’s life, thus making a significant contribution to late medieval knowledge technology. Eight life cycles of Augustine are treated to distinguish the specific portrayal of Augustine influenced by the ‘Myth of Augustine’ from the general late medieval reception of Augustine.

This chapter details the religious identity of the OESA, based on the imitation of Augustine and following the religio Augustini. It examines how the Hermits sought to embody Augustine as the rule and exemplar of their every action, thus giving evidence of the religionization process in the later Middle Ages. The works of Henry of Friemar and Jordan of Quedlinburg come to the fore, espeically Jordan’s Liber Vitasfratrum, which was intended to serve as a mirror for members of the OESA to determine the extent of their ‘being’ Augustinians. The new appropriation of Augustine evidenced in the 1320s and 1330s served not only as the catalyst for the Augustinian Renaissance, but also as the hermeneutical principle of the religio Augustini, which provided the historical referent for the term ‘Augustinianism’ in the later Middle Ages.

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.