ance of the church services. Thus the canons were not monks,
but secular clergy living in community, without taking the monastic vows
or resigning their private means--a form of life somewhat resembling
that of the fathers of the London or Birmingham Oratory in our day. The
bishop was expected to lead the common life along with his clergy.

The canonical life as regulated by the synod of Aix, subsisted in the
9th and 10th centuries; but the maintenance of this intermediate form
of life was of extreme difficulty. There was a constant tendency to
relax the bonds of the common life, and attempts in various directions
to restore it. In England, by the middle of the 10th century, the
prescriptions of the canonical life seem to have fallen into desuetude,
and in nine cathedrals the canons were replaced by communities of
Benedictines. In the 11th century the Rule of Chrodegang was introduced
into certain of the English cathedrals, and an Anglo-Saxon translation
of it was made under Leofric for his church of Exeter. The turning point
came in 1059, when a reforming synod, held at the Lateran, exhorted the
clergy of all cathedral and collegiate churches to live in community, to
hold all property and money in common, and to "lead the life of the
Apostles" (cf. Acts ii. 44, 45). The clergy of numerous churches
throughout Western Europe (that of the Lateran Basilica among them) set
themselves to carry out these exhortations, and out of this movement
grew the religious order of Canons Regular or Augustinian Canons (q.v.).
The opposite tendency also ran its course and produced the institute of
secular canons. The revenues of the cathedral were divided into two
parts, that of the bishop and that of the clergy; this latter was again
divided among the clergy themselves, so that each member received his
own separate income, and the persons so sharing, whatever their clerical
grade, were the canons of the cathedral church. Naturally all attempt at
leading any kind of common life was frankly abandoned. In England the
final establishment of this order of things was due to St Osmund (1090).
The nature and functions of the institute of secular canons are
described in the article CATHEDRAL.

See Du Cange, _Glossarium_, under "Canonicus"; Amort, _Vetus
Disciplina Canonicorum_ (1747), to be used with caution for the
earlier period; C. du Molinet, _Reflexions historiques et curieuses
sur les antiquites des chanoines tant seculiers que regu