GRANDMONTINES  , a religious

order founded by St Stephen of Thiers in Auvergne towards the end of the lrth century . St Stephen was so impressed by the lives of the hermits whom he saw in Calabria that he desired to introduce the same manner of life into his native country . He was ordained, and in 1073 obtained the pope's permission to establish an order . He betook himself to Auvergne, and in the desert of Muret, near Limoges, he made himself a hut of branches of trees and lived there for some time in complete solitude . A few disciples gathered round him, and a community was formed . The rule was not reduced to writing until after Stephen's death, 1124 . The life was eremitical and very severe in regard to silence, diet and bodily austerities; it was modelled after the rule of the Camaldolese, but various regulations were adopted from the Augustinian canons . The superior was called the "Corrector." About 1150 the hermits, being compelled to leave Muret, settled in the neighbouring desert of Grandmont, whence the order derived its name . Louis VII. founded a house at Vincennes near Paris, and the order had a great vogue in France, as many as sixty houses being established by 1170, but it seems never to have found favour out of France; it had, however, a couple of cells in England up to the middle of the 15th century . The system of lay brothers was introduced on a large scale, and the management of the temporals was in great measure left in their hands; the arrangement did not work well, and the quarrels between the lay brothers and the choir monks were a constant source of weakness . Later centuries witnessed mitigations and reforms in the life, and at last the order came to an end just before the French Revolution . There were two or three convents of Grandmontine nuns .

The order played no great

part in history . See Helyot, Hist. des ordres religieux (1714), vii . CC . 54, 55; Max Heimbucher, Orden and Kongregationen (1896), i . § 31; and the art. in Wetzer and Welte, Kirchenlexicon (ed . 2), and in Herzog, Realencyklopadie (ed . 3) . (E . C .