In the early days of the Christian Church in Europe the Augustinians were a loose collection of free wheeling and independent Hermits similar to the Carmelites. The Carmelites were originally from Mount Carmel in Palestine, the Augustinian Order of Friars were originally from the hills of Tuscany in Italy. Like the Carmelites, in the eleventh or twelfth or maybe the thirteenth century the Augustinians found it necessary to curry favor with the fellas in the Christian Church who had the money and political contacts, and who were led by an elected official called The Pope who still humbly bears the job title of God's Representative Here on Earth. For a bunch of religious nuts from Tuscany to be taken seriously by the business side of Western Christianity they needed to demonstrate their provenance. In the Augustinian ranks there was a folk memory of a Saint Augustine of Hippo, who certainly did not make a virtue out of poverty and had admitted to God in several letters that he found it very difficult to take a vow of chastity seriously, but who in around 400 had written a book called the Rule of Augustine on how a religious community should manage itself. The Pope still had a copy of this book, and was interested. Tuscany's Augustinians pulled out all the stops, called in favors and forged documentary evidence that they weren't some fly by night bunch of mountain bandits, their order went all the way back almost a thousand years to the North African Saint Augustine who was of Berber and Roman origin and in fact their order had been founded by the great man but they'd been forced to leave North Africa following the Sack Of Hippo by the Vandals in 431.
