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"A. Wilkin, Fratres et Canonici. The Problem of the Dissolution of Communal Living by the Canons: The case of the Cathedral of St Lambert (Liege) in the Middle Ages. The process through which secular canons left communal life occurred differently according to area and religious institution. It is often not well known for want of reliable sources. Lexical evidence has been used to compensate for the absence of documentary evidence: The word frater would thus be evidence to the maintenance of communal life while canonicus would point to its termination. We consider this kind of evidence may be misleading, as shown by the example of what happened at Liege Cathedral: while communal life in its more exacting form was no longer practiced in the twelfth century; some of the canons owned their own houses, the word frater was still used in the thirteenth century. Words can therefore testify at best to the survival of an ideal, but cannot be used as reliable criteria to determine whether communal life was still practiced."