CONGREGATION is also used for a company or society of religious canonized out of this or that order; and making, as it were, an inferior order, or a subdivision of the order itself. Such are the congregations of the oratory, and those of Cluny, &c. among the Benedictines.
The word is also used for assemblies of pious persons in manner of fraternities, frequent among the Jesuits in honour of the Virgin, &c. It is likewise applied to the audience in a church, particularly as consisting of the inhabitants of the same parish.