CELESTINI, ORDER of. — Founded by St. Pier Celestino (Pope Celestino V) around 1240, in the solitude of Mount Maiella. On 1 June 1263, Urban IV gave the new institute the Rule of St. Benedict; it thereby came to form the Congregation of the C. (initially called the friars of Pietro Morrone) of the Benedictine Order, confirmed by Gregory X on 22 March 1274.
They observed the Rule of St. Benedict in its rigor, with particular statutes, of which a first draft, together with the privileges, is found in the bull Etsi cunctos of Celestino V (L’Aquila, 27 September 1294). The monks were also granted the faculty of hearing confessions and preaching, which brought them closer to the mendicant orders. At the head of the Order stood the abbot of S. Spirito near Sulmona, elected for a three-year term by the General Chapter. The outgoing abbots were called coabbates. All the other monasteries were governed by priors until 1616, when Paul V divided the monasteries into abbeys (with at least 12 monks and servants) and priories (with 6 monks and servants). The habit consisted of a white tunic and black hood and, for the choir, the black cowl. The emblem of the Order was a cross whose lower shaft bore an S, sometimes, especially in France, flanked by two fleurs-de-lis. At the time of its greatest flourishing the Order numbered approximately 150 monasteries, most of them (nearly a hundred) in Italy. In France, where the Order was introduced by Filippo IV il Bello (1300), it achieved a certain prosperity with 21 monasteries, but the authority of the general abbot there was supplanted by that of the provincial, introduced toward the end of the Western Schism. Many disputes arose between the two branches, especially because the French had succeeded in occupying the monasteries of S. Benedetto at Norcia and S. Maria di Collemaggio at L’Aquila.
In 1368 the Order was introduced by Carlo IV into Bohemia, at Oybin, whence it spread to Königstein. In England there was one house, as there was in Spain (Barcelona) and Belgium (Heverlés near Louvain). There was no shortage of men distinguished for learning and even for holiness.
The suppression began in France through the work of the Commission of Regulars. At that time (1768) there were 19 houses with 165 religious. Clement XIV tried in vain to save them through a reform (1 March 1773). Pius VI suppressed them in France between 1776 and 1789. No monastery survived the French Revolution. In the Kingdom of Naples, the C. were largely deprived of their revenues in 1798 and suppressed by the government in 1807; in the rest of Italy they were suppressed by Napoleon in 1810 and never recovered. They nevertheless still had three bishops: F. M. Cipriani of Veroli (1814–43); F. S. Durini dei Marsi (1818–23), then of Aversa (1823–44); L. Zannini of Veroli (1834–1857), who died around 1861.
An attempt to revive the C. in France, undertaken by d. Giovanni Aurélien and authorized by the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars through a rescript of 9 March 1872, failed. The C. must be carefully distinguished from the “Poor Hermits of Pope Celestino,” Franciscan Spirituals authorized by Celestino V in 1294 and suppressed by Boniface VIII in 1302.
The oldest constitutions are unpublished. Among those that have been published are: Constitutiones Coelestinorum O. S. B., Roma 1620, reproduced by L. Holstenius-M. Brockie, Codex Regularum, IV, Augusta 1759, pp. 497–506; Constitutiones Fratrum Coelestinorum provinciae franco-gallicanae, Parigi 1670. Livario Oliger