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| The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of
Religious Knowledge, Philip Schaff Vol. I |
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AUGUSTINE
OF HIPPO (354–430)
Greatest of the Latin church fathers
I. Life.
Augustine, bishop of
Hippo (Lat. Augustinus; the pr~enomen Aurelius given by Orosius, Prosper, and
others, has no evidence in his own writings, or in letters addressed to him),
is not only the most important of the Fathers of the early Church, but at the
same time the one best known through a variety of specially full and useful
sources. He was one of the most fertile writers of the early period, and the
multiplication of his manuscripts has allowed his works to come down relatively
complete in number. Among these, the Confessiones and the Retractationes have a
unique value for the history of primitive church life, while others are full of
biographical details. Moreover, a countryman of his, Possidius, Bishop of
Calama, who was in close relations with him for forty years and present at his
death, has given us a life which deserves a place of honor in early
hagiography. We have thus remarkably satisfactory sources both as to
Augustine's life and as to his literary work. He himself, in his Confessiones
(written between 397 and 400), has described the events of his first
thirty-three years; and for the rest of his life we have both the treatises and
letters, which begin about the time when the Confessiones stop, as well as the
biography by Possidius. For the historical understanding of his works, as well
as for their dates and criticism, Augustine himself has left in the
Retractationes (completed at the end of 427) a unique guide. In this review he
has taken up each one of his writings, except the letters and sermons, in
chronological order, with the purpose of explaining things which might be
misconstrued or of restating them in a better way; and Possidius has given us
also a comprehensive and systematic list of all the writings, as an appendix to
his biography.
Augustine
is the first ecclesiastical author the whole course of whose development can be
clearly traced, as well as the first in whose case we are able to determine the
exact period covered by his career, to the very day. He informs us himself that
he was born at Thagaste (Tagaste; now Suk Arras), in proconsular Numidia, Nov.
13, 354; he died at Hippo Regius (just south of the modern Bona) Aug. 28, 430.
[Both Suk Arras and Bona are in the present Algeria, the first 60 m. w. by s.
and the second 65 m. w. of Tunis, the ancient Carthage.] His father Patricius,
as a member of the council, belonged to the influential classes of the place;
he was, however, in straitened circumstances, and seems to have had nothing
remarkable either in mental equipment or in character, but to have been a
lively, sensual, hot-tempered person, entirely taken up with his worldly
concerns, and unfriendly to Christianity until the close of his life; he became
a catechumen shortly before Augustine reached his sixteenth year (369-370). To
his mother Monnica (so the manuscripts write her name, not Monica; b. 331, d.
387) Augustine later believed that he owed what he became. But though she was
evidently an honorable, loving, self-sacrificing, and able woman, she was not
always the ideal of a Christian mother that tradition has made her appear. Her
religion in earlier life has traces of formality and worldliness about it; her
ambition for her son seems at first to have had little moral earnestness and
she regretted his Manicheanism more than she did his early sensuality. It seems
to have been through Ambrose and Augustine that she attained the mature
personal piety with which she left the world. Of Augustine as a boy his parents
were intensely proud. He received his first education at Thagaste, learning to
read and write, as well as the rudiments of Greek and Latin literature, from
teachers who followed the old traditional pagan methods. He seems to have had
no systematic instruction in the Christian faith at this period, and though
enrolled among the catechumens, apparently was near baptism only when an
illness and his own boyish desire made it temporarily probable.
His father,
delighted with his son's progress in his studies, sent him first to the
neighboring Madaura, and then to Carthage, some two days' journey away. A
year's enforced idleness, while the means for this more expensive schooling
were being accumulated, proved a time of moral deterioration; but we must be on
our guard against forming our conception of Augustine's vicious living from the
Confessiones alone. To speak, as Mommsen does, of" frantic dissipation" is to
attach too much weight to his own penitent expressions of self-reproach.
Looking back as a bishop, he naturally regarded his whole life up to the"
conversion" which led to his baptism as a period of wandering from the right
way; but not long after this conversion, he judged differently, and found, from
one point of view, the turning point of his career in his taking up philosophy
in his nineteenth year. This view of his early life, which may be traced also
in the Confessiones, is probably nearer the truth than the popular conception
of a youth sunk in all kinds of immorality. When he began the study of rhetoric
at Carthage, it is true that (in company with comrades whose ideas of pleasure
were probably much more gross than his) he drank of the cup of sensual
pleasure. But his ambition prevented him from allowing his dissipations to
interfere with his studies. His son Adeodatus was born in the summer of 372,
and it was probably the mother of this child whose charms enthralled him soon
after his arrival at Carthage about the end of 370. But he remained faithful to
her until about 385, and the grief which he felt at parting from her shows what
the relation had been. In the view of the civilization of that period, such a
monogamous union was distinguished from a formal marriage only by certain legal
restrictions, in addition to the informality of its beginning and the
possibility of a voluntary dissolution. Even the Church was slow to condemn
such unions absolutely, and Monnica seems to have received the child and his
mother publicly at Thagaste. In any case Augustine was known to Carthage not as
a roysterer but as a quiet honorable student. He was, however, internally
dissatisfied with his life. The Hortensius of Cicero, now lost with the
exception of a few fragments, made a deep impression on him. To know the truth
was henceforth his deepest wish. About the time when the contrast between his
ideals and his actual life became intolerable, he learned to conceive of
Christianity as the one religion which could lead him to the attainment of his
ideal. But his pride of intellect held him back from embracing it earnestly;
the Scriptures could not bear comparison with Cicero; he sought for wisdom, not
for humble submission to authority.
In this
frame of mind he was ready to be affected by the Manichean propaganda which was
then actively carried on in Africa, without apparently being much hindered by
the imperial edict against assemblies of the sect. Two things especially
attracted him to the Manicheans: they felt at liberty to criticize the
Scriptures, particularly the Old Testament, with perfect freedom; and they held
chastity and self denial in honor. The former fitted in with the impression
which the Bible had made on Augustine himself; the latter corresponded closely
to his mood at the time. The prayer which he tells us he had in his heart then,
"Lord, give me chastity and temperance, but not now," may be taken as the
formula which represents the attitude of many of the Manichean auditores. Among
these Augustine was classed during his nineteenth year; but he went no further,
though he held firmly to Manicheanism for nine years, during which he
endeavored to convert all his friends, scorned the sacraments of the Church,
and held frequent disputations with catholic believers.
Having finished his
studies, he returned to Thagaste and began to teach grammar, living in the
house of Romanianus, a prominent citizen who had been of much service to him
since his father's death, and whom he converted to Manicheanism. Monnica deeply
grieved at her son's heresy, forbade him her house, until reassured by a vision
that promised his restoration. She comforted herself also by the word of a
certain bishop (probably of Thagaste) that "the child of so many tears could
not be lost." He seems to have spent little more than a year in Thagaste, when
the desire for a wider field, together with the death of a dear friend, moved
him to return to Carthage as a teacher of rhetoric.
The next period was a time of diligent study, and produced (about
the end of 380) the treatise, long since lost, De pulchro et apto. Meanwhile
the hold of Manicheanism on him was loosening. Its feeble cosmology and
metaphysics had long since failed to satisfy him, and the astrological
superstitions springing from the credulity of its disciples offended his
reason. The members of the sect, unwilling to lose him, had great hopes from a
meeting with their leader Faustus of Mileve; but when he came to Carthage in
the autumn of 382, he too proved disappointing, and Augustine ceased to be at
heart a Manichean. He was not yet, however, prepared to put anything in the
place of the doctrine he had held, and remained in outward communion with his
former associates while he pursued his search for truth. Soon after his
Manichean convictions had broken down, he left Carthage for Rome, partly, it
would seem, to escape the preponderating influence of his mother on a mind
which craved perfect freedom of investigation. Here he was brought more than
ever, by obligations of friendship and gratitude, into close association with
Manicheans, of whom there were many in Rome, not merely auditores but perfecti
or fully initiated members. This did not last long, however, for the prefect
Symmachus sent him to Milan, certainly before the beginning of 385, in answer
to a request for a professor of rhetoric.
The change
of residence completed Augustine's separation from Manicheanism. He listened to
the preaching of Ambrose and by it was made acquainted with the allegorical
interpretation of the Scriptures and the weakness of the Manichean Biblical
criticism, but he was not yet ready to accept catholic Christianity. His mind
was still under the influence of the skeptical philosophy of the later Academy.
This was the least satisfactory stage in his mental development, though his
external circumstances were increasingly favorable. He had his mother again
with him now, and shared a house and garden with her and his devoted friends
Alypius and Nebridius, who had followed him to Milan; his assured social
position is shown also by the fact that, in deference to his mother's
entreaties, he was formally betrothed to a woman of suitable station. As a
catechumen of the Church, he listened regularly to the sermons of Ambrose. The
bishop, though as yet he knew nothing of Augustine's internal struggles, had
welcomed him in the friendliest manner both for his own and for Monnica's sake.
Yet Augustine was attracted only by Ambrose's eloquence, not by his faith; now
he agreed, and now he questioned. Morally his life was perhaps at its lowest
point. On his betrothal, he had put away the mother of his son; but neither the
grief which he felt at this parting nor regard for his future wife, who was as
yet too young for marriage, prevented him from taking a new concubine for the
two intervening years. Sensuality, however, began to pall upon him, little as
he cared to struggle against it. His idealism was by no means dead; he told
Romanian, who came to Milan at this time on business, that he wished he could
live altogether in accordance with the dictates of philosophy; and a plan was
even made for the foundation of a community retired from the world, which
should live entirely for the pursuit of truth. With this project his intention
of marriage and his ambition interfered, and Augustine was further off than
ever from peace of mind.
In his
thirty-first year he was strongly attracted to Neoplatonism by the logic of his
development. The idealistic character of this philosophy awoke unbounded
enthusiasm, and he was attracted to it also by its exposition of pure
intellectual being and of the origin of evil. These doctrines brought him
closer to the Church,. though he did not yet grasp the full significance of its
central doctrine of the personality of Jesus Christ. In his earlier writings he
names this acquaintance with the Neoplatonic teaching and its relation to
Christianity as the turning-point of his life, though in the Confessiones it
appears only as a stage on the long road of error. The truth, as it may be
established by a careful comparison of his earlier and later writings, is that
his idealism had been distinctly strengthened by Neoplatonism, which had at the
same time revealed his own will, and not a natura altera in him, as the subject
of his baser desires. This made the conflict between ideal and actual in his
life more unbearable than ever. Yet his sensual desires were still so strong
that it seemed impossible for him to break away from them.
Help came in
a curious way. A countryman of his, Pontitianus, visited him and told him
things which he had never heard about the monastic life and the wonderful
conquests over self which had been won under its inspiration. Augustine's pride
was touched; that the unlearned should take the kingdom of heaven by violence,
while he with all his learning, was still held captive by the flesh, seemed
unworthy of him. When Pontitianus had gone, with a few vehement words to
Alypius, he went hastily with him into the garden to fight out this new
problem. Then followed the scene so often described. Overcome by his
conflicting emotions he left Alypius and threw himself down under a fig-tree in
tears. From a neighboring house came a child's voice repeating again and again
the simple words Tolle, lege, "Take up and read." It seemed to him a heavenly
indication; he picked up the copy of St. Paul's epistles which he had left
where he and Alypius had been sitting, and opened at Romans xiii. When he came
to the words, "Let us walk honestly as in the day; not in rioting and
drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness," it seemed to him that a
decisive message had been sent to his own soul, and his resolve was taken.
Alypius found a word for himself a few lines further, "Him that is weak in the
faith receive ye;" and together they went into the house to bring the good news
to Monnica. This was at the end of the summer of 386.
Augustine, intent on breaking wholly with his old life, gave up
his position, and wrote to Ambrose to ask for baptism. The months which
intervened between that summer and the Easter of the following year, at which,
according to the early custom, he intended to receive the sacrament, were spent
in delightful calm at a country-house, put at his disposal by one of his
friends, at Cassisiacum (Casciago, 47 m. n. by w. of Milan). Here Monnica,
Alypius, Adeodatus, and some of his pupils kept him company, and he still
lectured on Vergil to them and held philosophic discussions. The whole party
returned to Milan before Easter (387), and Augustine, with Alypius and
Adeodatus, was baptized. Plans were then made for returning to Africa; but
these were upset by the death of Monnica, which took place at Ostia as they
were preparing to cross the sea, and has been described by her devoted son in
one of the most tender and beautiful passages of the Confessiones. Augustine
remained at least another year in Italy, apparently in Rome, living the same
quiet life which he had led at Cassisiacum, studying and writing, in company
with his countryman Evodius, later bishop of Uzalis. Here, where he had been
most closely associated with the Manicheans, his literary warfare with them
naturally began; and he was also writing on free will, though this book was
only finished at Hippo in 391. In the autumn of 388, passing through Carthage,
he returned to Thagaste, a far different man from the Augustine who had left it
five years before. Alypius was still with him, and also Adeodatus, who died
young, we do not know when or where. Here Augustine and his friends again took
up a quiet, though not yet in any sense a monastic, life in common, and pursued
their favorite studies. About the beginning of 391, having found a friend in
Hippo to help in the foundation of what he calls a monastery, he sold his
inheritance, and was ordained presbyter in response to a general demand, though
not without misgivings on his own part.
The years which
he spent in the presbyterate (39 1-395) are the last of his formative period.
The very earliest works which fall within the time of his episcopate show us
the fully developed theologian of whose special teaching we think when we speak
of Augustinianism. There is little externally noteworthy in these four years.
He took up active work not later than the Easter of 391, when we find him
preaching to the candidates for baptism. The plans for a monastic community
which had brought him to Hippo were now realized. In a garden given for the
purpose by the bishop, Valerius, he founded his monastery, which seems to have
been the first in Africa, and is of especial significance because it maintained
a clerical school and thus made a connecting link between monasticism and the
secular clergy. Other details of this period are that he appealed to Aurelius,
bishop of Carthage, to suppress the custom of holding banquets and
entertainments in the churches, and by 395 had succeeded, through his
courageous eloquence, in abolishing it in Hippo; that in 392 a public
disputation took place between him and a Manichean presbyter of Hippo,
Fortunatus; that his treatise DejIde et symbolo was prepared to be read before
the council held at Hippo October 8, 393; and that after that he was in
Carthage for a while, perhaps in connection with the synod held there in 394.
The
intellectual interests of these four years are more easily determined,
principally concerned as they are with the Manichean controversy, and producing
the treatises De utilitate credendi (391), De duabus animabus contra Manichceos
(first half of 392), and Contra Adimantum (394 or 395). His activity against
the Donatists also begins in this period, but he is still more occupied with
the Manicheans, both from the recollections of his own past, and from his
increasing knowledge of Scripture, which appears, together with a stronger hold
on the Church's teaching, in the works just named, and even more in others of
this period, such as his expositions of the Sermon on the Mount and of the
Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians. Full as the writings of this epoch
are, however, of Biblical phrases and terms,-grace and the law, predestination,
vocation, justification, regeneration-a reader who is thoroughly acquainted
with Neoplatonism will detect Augustine's old love of it in a Christian dress
in not a few places. He has entered so far into St. Paul's teaching that
humanity as a whole appears to him a massapeccati orpeccatorum, which, if left
to itself, that is, without the grace of God, must inevitably perish. However
much we are here reminded of the later Augustine, it is clear that he still
held the belief that the free will of man could decide his own destiny. He knew
some who saw in Romans ix an unconditional predestination which took away the
freedom of the will; but he was still convinced that this was not the Church's
teaching. His opinion on this point did not change till after he was a bishop.
2. Work as Bishop.
The more
widely known Augustine became, the more Valerius, the bishop of Hippo, was
afraid of losing him on the first vacancy of some neighboring see, and desired
to fix him permanently in Hippo by making him coadjutor-bishop,--a desire in
which the people ardently concurred. Augustine was strongly opposed to the
project, though possibly neither he nor Valerius knew that it might be held to
be a violation of the eighth canon of Nicaea, which forbade in its last clause
"two bishops in one city" (Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, i, 407 sqq., Eng.
transl., i, 409-4 10); and the primate of Numidia, Megalius of Calama, seems to
have raised difficulties which sprang at least partly from a personal lack of
confidence. But Valerius carried his plan through, and not long before
Christmas, 395, Augustine was consecrated by Megalius. It is not known when
Valerius died; but it makes little difference, since for the rest of his life
he left the administration more and more in the hands of his assistant.
A complete narration of Augustine's doings during the
thirty-five years in which he was the glory of the little diocese would require
a history of the African, almost of the whole Western, Church. Here we can do
no more than briefly discuss some things which constitute his importance to
later Christianity, and mention a few important biographical facts. Further
details will be found in the articles Donatism, Pelagius, Semipelagianism,
Monasticism, North African Church. The life of Augustine by his friend
Possidius shows that its author was possessed by the desire to erect a suitable
memorial to a man who was destined to have a lasting importance in the history
of the Church; it is much more than a mere product of hagiography. He considers
Augustine first as an author who has left so many works in refutation of heresy
and encouragement of piety that few even of diligent students can master them
all; and he feels himself therefore bound to include a brief account of his
subject's literary activity. Then he deals with the services which Augustine
rendered to the peace and unity of the Church by his labors against the
Donatists; and finally he attributes to Augustine's encouragement of
monasticism much of its growth, together with an actual regeneration of the
clerical life. His view on the two latter points, if colored a little by the
local point of view, is still the respectable opinion of a contemporary; but it
does not altogether agree with the deliberate historical judgment of posterity.
The Vandal invasion, which came like a spring frost upon the young life of the
African Church, and the Mohammedan conquests, both prevented Augustine's labors
from having their full effect in Africa. Leaving aside for the moment the
influence of his writings, one may really say that the condemnation of
Pelagianism was the only permanant result of his work.
But
his writings have continued to exert such an influence, by no means confined to
the time of the early Church nor to African soil, as no other Father before or
since has ever attained. If we look to the posthumous effects they have had, we
may agree with the verdict of Possidius, and carry it further than was possible
to a contemporary. Augustine is practically the father of all western
Christianity after his time. It is true that Catholicism has never officially
accepted his doctrine of grace in its entirety; but this fact is of relatively
slight importance when we think of the colossal influence which his writings
have had upon the gradual shaping of the Church's doctrine as a whole-there is
scarcely a single Roman Catholic dogma which is historically intelligible
without reference to his teaching. And it is not only the dogmas of the Western
Church over which he has exerted an unparalleled influence; its hierarchical
and its scientific development both derive from him. The great struggle between
the rival chiefs of medieval Christendom, the pope and the emperor, is
explicable in its deepest meaning, intelligible in its course, only from his De
civitate Dei; when medieval theology was most active, then it was most under
his influence, and the scholastic movement was determined, not only in its
speculations but in its very method, by him. From him, again, medieval
mysticism, in both its authorized and its heretical forms, received its most
decisive impulse; Augustinian influences must be taken into account in the
study of all the so-called precursors of the Reformation. When, however, we
have called him the father of medieval Catholicism, we have not yet said all.
The effect of his teaching in the East has been, to be sure, slight and
indirect; but the Reformers made an ally of him. The characteristic notes of
what are specifically called the Reformed Churches, in contradistinction to the
Lutheran, are especially founded upon Augustinian tradition. In the history of
philosophy, too, he has been a force far beyond the Middle Ages; in both
Descartes and Spinoza his voice may be distinctly heard.
Space forbids
any attempt to trace all the causes of these abiding effects; and in what
remains to be said, biographical interest must be largely our guide. We know a
considerable number of events in Augustine's episcopal life which can be surely
placed the so-called third and eighth synods of Carthage in 397 and 403, at
which, as at those still to be mentioned, he was certainly present; the
disputation with the Manichean Felix at Hippo in 404; the eleventh synod of
Carthage in 407; the conference with the Donatists in Carthage, 411; the synod
of Mileve, 416; the African general council at Carthage, 418; the journey to
C~esarea in Mauretania and the disputation with the Donatist bishop there, 418;
another general council in Carthage, 419; and finally the consecration of
Eraclius as his assistant in 426. None of these events, however, marks a
decisive epoch in his life, which flowed on quietly and evenly during the whole
time of his episcopate, except the last few months. Thus it will require
careful study to determine the epochs in his intellectual development during
this period.
II. Theology.
His special and
direct opposition to Manicheanism did not last a great while after his
consecration. About 397 he wrote a tractate Contra epistolam [Manichcei] quam
vocantfundamenti; in the De agone christiano, written about the same time, and
in the Confessiones, a little later, numerous anti-Manichean expressions occur.
After this, however, he only attacked the Manicheans on some special occasion,
as when, about 400, on the request of his "brethren," he wrote a detailed
rejoinder to Faustus, a Manichean bishop, or made the treatise De natura boni
out of his discussions with Felix; a little later, also, the letter of the
Manichean Secundinus gave him occasion to write Contra Secundinum, which, in
spite of its comparative brevity, he regarded as the best of his writings on
this subject. In the succeeding period, he was much more occupied with
anti-Donatist polemics, which in their turn were forced to take second place by
the emergence of the Pelagian controversy.
It has been thought
that Augustine's anti-Pelagian teaching grew out of his conception of the
Church and its sacraments as a means of salvation; and attention was called to
the fact that before the Pelagian controversy this aspect of the Church had,
through the struggle with the Donatists, assumed special importance in his
mind. But this conception should be denied. It is quite true that in 395
Augustine's views on sin and grace, freedom and predestination, were not what
they afterward came to be. But the new trend was given to them before the time
of his anti-Donatist activity, and so before he could have heard anything of
Pelagius. What we call Augustinianism was not a reaction against Pelagianism;
it would be much truer to say that the latter was a reaction against
Augustine's views. He himself names the beginning of his episcopate as the
turning-point. Accordingly, in the first thing which he wrote after his
consecration, the De diversis qucestionibus ad Simplicianum (396 or 397), we
come already upon the new conception. In no other of his writings do we see as
plainly the gradual attainment of conviction on any point; as he himself says
in the Retractiones, he was laboring for the free choice of the will of man,
but the grace of God won the day. So completely was it won, that we might set
forth the specifically Augustinian teaching on grace, as against the Pelagians
and the Massilians, by a series of quotations taken wholly from this treatise.
It is true that much of his later teaching is still undeveloped here; the
question of Predestination (though the word is used) does not really come up;
he is not clear as to the term" election" ; and nothing is said of the "gift of
perseverance." But what we get on these points later is nothing but the logical
consequence of that which is expressed here, and so we have the actual genesis
of Augustine's predestinarian teaching under our eyes. It is determined by no
reference to the question of infant baptism-still less by any considerations
connected with the conception of the Church. The impulse comes directly from
Scripture, with the help, it is true, of those exegetical thoughts which he
mentioned earlier as those of others and not his own. To be sure, Paul alone
can not explain this doctrine of grace; this is evident from the fact that the
very definition of grace is non-Pauline. Grace is for Augustine, both now and
later, not the misericordiapeccata condonans of the Reformers, as justification
is not the alteration of the relation to God accomplished by means of the
accipere remissionem. Grace is rather the misericordia which displays itself in
the divine inspiratio, and justification is justum or pium fleri as a result of
this. We may even say that this grace is an interna illuminatio such as a study
of Augustine's Neoplatonism enables us easily to understand, which restores the
connection with the divine bonum esse. He had long been convinced that " not
only the greatest but also the smallest good things can not be, except from him
from whom are all good things, that is, from God;" and it might well seem to
him to follow from this that faith, which is certainly a good thing, could
proceed from the operation of God alone. This explains the idea that grace
works like a law of nature, drawing the human will to God with a divine
omnipotence. Of course this Neoplatonic coloring must not be exaggerated; it is
more consistent with itself in his earlier writings than in the later, and he
would never have arrived at his predestinarian teaching without the New
Testament. With this knowledge, we are in a position to estimate the force of a
difficulty which now confronted Augustine for the first time, but never
afterward left him, and which has been present in the Roman Catholic teaching
even down to the Councils of Trent and the Vatican. If faith depends upon an
action of our own, solicited but not caused by vocation, it can only save a man
when, per JIdem gratiam accipiens, he becomes one who not merely believes in
God but loves him also. But if faith has been already inspired by grace, and
if, while the Scripture speaks of justification by faith, it is held (in
accordance with the definition of grace) that justification follows upon the
infusio caritatis,-then either the conception of the faith which is
God-inspired must pass its fluctuating boundaries and approach nearer to that
of caritas, or the conception of faith which is unconnected with caritas will
render the fact of its inspiration unintelligible and justification by faith
impossible. Augustine's anti-Pelagian writings set forth this doctrine of grace
more clearly in some points, such as the terms " election," predestination,"
"the gift of perseverance," and also more logically; but space forbids us to
show this here, as the part taken in this controversy by Augustine is so fully
detailed elsewhere (see Pelagius; Semipelagianism). An enumeration of his
contributions to this subject must suffice.
They are as
follows: Depeccatorum meritis et remissione (412); De spiritu et litera (412);
De natura et gratia contra Pelagium (415); De perfectionejustitice hominis
(about 415); De gestis Pelagii (417); De gratia Christi et de peccato originali
(418); De nuptiis et concupiscentia (419 and 420); De anima et ejus origine
(about 419), which does not bear directly on Pelagianism, but answers a
Pelagianizing critic of Augustine's reserve on the question of traducianism and
creationism; Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum ad Bon~fatium, romance
ecciesice episcopum (about 420); Contra Julianum (about 421); De gratia et
libero arbitrio (426 or 427); De correptione et gratia (426 or 427); De
prcedestinatione sanctorum (428 or 429); De dono perseverantice (428 or 429);
and the opus imperfectum written in the last years of his life, Contra secundam
Juliani responsionem.
In order to
arrive at a decision as to what influence the Donatist controversy had upon
Augustine's intellectual development, it is necessary to see how long and how
intensely he was concerned with it. We have seen that even before he was a
bishop he was defending the catholic Church against the Donatists; and after
his consecration he took part directly or indirectly in all the important
discussions of the matter, some of which have been already mentioned, and
defended the cause of the Church in letters and sermons as well as in his more
formal polemical writings. The first of these which belongs to the period of
his episcopate, Contra partem Donati, has been lost; about 400 he wrote the two
cognate treatises Contra epistulam Parmeniani (the Donatist bishop of Carthage)
and De baptismo contra Donatistas. He was considered by the schismatics as
their chief antagonist, and was obliged to defend himself against a libelous
attack on their part in a rejoinder now lost. From the years 401 and 402 we
have the reply to the Donatist bishop of Cirta, Contra epistulam Petiliani, and
also the Epistula ad catholicos de unitate ecciesice. The conflict was now
reaching its most acute stage. After the Carthaginian synod of 403 had made
preparations for a decisive debate with the Donatists, and the latter had
declined to fall in with the plan, the bitterness on both sides increased.
Another synod at Carthage the following year decided that the emperor should be
asked for penal laws against the Donatists. Honorius granted the request; but
the employment of force in matters of belief brought up a new point of discord
between the two sides. When these laws were abrogated (409), the plan of a
joint conference was tried once more in June, 411, under imperial authority,
nearly 300 bishops being present from each side, with Augustine and Aurelius of
Carthage as the chief representatives of the catholic cause. In the following
year, the Donatists proving insubordinate, Honorius issued a new and severer
edict against them, which proved the beginning of the end for the schism. For
these years from 405 to 412 we have twenty-one extant letters of Augustine's
bearing on the controversy, and there were eight formal treatises, but four of
these are lost. Those which we still have are: Contra Cresconium grammaticum
(about 406); De unico baptismo (about 410 or 411), in answer to a work of the
same name by Petilian; the brief report of the conference (end of 411); and the
Liber contra Donatistas post collationem (probably 412). After this date,
though he occasionally touched on the question in letters and sermons, he
produced practically no more literary polemics in regard to it; we know of one
lost anti-Donatist treatise of about 416, and still possess one written for a
special occasion Contra Gaudentium, Donatistarum episcopum, about 420; but
these are all.
The earliest of
the extant works against the Donatists present the same views of the Church and
its sacraments which Augustine developed later. The principles which he
represented in this conflict are merely those which, in a simpler form, had
either appeared in the anti-Donatist polemics before his time or had been part
of his own earlier belief. What he did was to formulate them with more dogmatic
precision, and to permeate the ordinary controversial theses with his own deep
thoughts on unitas, caritas, and inspiratio gratice in the Church, thoughts
which again trace their origin back to his Neoplatonic foundations. In the
course of the conflict he changed his opinion about the methods to be employed;
he had at first been opposed to the employment of force, but later came to the
"Compel them to come in" point of view. It may well be doubted, however, if the
practical struggle with the schismatics had as much to do with Augustine's
development as has been supposed. Far more weight must be attached to the fact
that Augustine had become a presbyter and a bishop of the catholic Church, and
as such worked continually deeper into the ecclesiastical habit of thought.
This was not hard for the son of Monnica and the reverent admirer of Ambrose.
His position as a bishop may fairly be said to be the only determining factor
in his later views besides his Neoplatonist foundation, his earnest study of
the Scripture, and the predestinarian conception of grace which he got from
this. Everything else is merely secondary. Thus we find Augustine practically
complete by the beginning of his episcopate-about the time when he wrote the
Confessiones. It would be too much to say that his development stood still
after that; the Biblical and ecclesiastical coloring of his thoughts becomes
more and more visible and even vivid; but such development as this is no more
significant than the effect of the years seen upon a strong face; in fact, it
is even less observable here-for while the characteristic features of his
spiritual mind stand out more sharply as time goes on with Augustine, his
mental force shows scarcely a sign of age at seventy. His health was uncertain
after 386, and his body aged before the time; on Sept. 26, 426, he solemnly
designated Eraclius (or Heraclius) as his successor, though without
consecrating him bishop, and transferred to him such a portion of his duties as
was possible. But his intellectual vigor remained unabated to the end. We see
him, as Prosper depicts him in his chronicle, " answering the books of Julian
in the very end of his days, while the on-rushing Vandals were at the gates,
and gloriously persevering in the defense of Christian grace." In the third
month of the siege of Hippo by the barbarian invaders, he fell ill of a fever,
and, after lingering more than ten days, died Aug. 28, 430. He was able to read
on his sick-bed; he had the Penitential Psalms placed upon the wall of his room
where he could see them. Meditating upon them, he fulfilled what he had often
said before, that even Christians revered for the sanctity of their lives, even
presbyters, ought not to leave the world without fitting thoughts of penitence.
He left no property
behind him but the books which he had procured for the library of the church,
among which, according to Possidius, corrected copies of his own works were
some of the most valuable. They constitute, in fact, Augustine's legacy to the
Church at large. Certain parts of it which have not been enumerated above may
be mentioned here. He himself divided his writings into three classes: the 232
treatises (libri) discussed in the Retractiones; the letters; and the "popular
tractates, which the Greeks call homilies" (he calls them sermones adpopulum in
another place). He had intended to review the two latter classes as he did with
the libri in the Retractiones, but death prevented him. In so far, therefore,
as the index of Possidius fails us-and this is often the case, owing to the
uncertainty of titles and the great number of letters and sermons-a critical
study of these classes of writings is much more difficult to make than of the
libri. The edition published by the Benedictines of St. Maur (Paris, 1679-1700)
in eleven folio volumes affords a useful working basis; it includes 217
letters, though the classification is not always justified, and a few more have
come to light since. The sermons comprise a much larger number. Augustine must
be considered, although his preaching did not please himself, as the greatest
Western preacher of the early Church. He did not memorize his sermons, but
after saturating himself with his subject, spoke from the inspiration of the
moment; some of them he himself dictated for preservation after preaching them,
while others were taken down by his hearers. Among those for which he is
responsible are the series on the Gospel of John, dogmatically among his most
interesting works (about 416), and the comments on the Psalms, partly preached
(between 410 and 420).
Of works not yet
mentioned, those written after 395 and named in the Retractiones, may be
classified under three heads-exegetical works; minor dogmatic, polemical, and
practical treatises; and a separate class containing four more extensive works
of special importance. The earliest of the minor treatises is De catechizandis
rudibus (about 400), interesting for its connection with the history of
catechetical instruction and for many other reasons. A brief enumeration of the
others will suffice; they are: De opera monachorum (about 400); De bono
conjugali and De sancta virginitate (about 401), both directed against
Jovinian's depreciation of virginity; De divinatione dcemonum (between 406 and
411); DejIde et operibus (413), a completion of the argument in the De spiritu
et litera, useful for a study of the difference between the Augustinian and the
Lutheran doctrines of grace; De cura pro mortuis, interesting as showing his
attitude toward superstition within the Church; and a few others of less
interest. We come now to the four works which have deserved placing in a
special category. One is the De doctrina christiana (begun about 397, finished
426), important as giving his theory of scriptural interpretation and
homiletics; another is the Enchiridion dejIde, spe, et caritate (about 421),
noteworthy as an attempt at a systematic collocation of his thoughts. There
remain the two doctrinal masterpieces, the De trinitate (probably begun about
400 and finished about 416) and the De civitate Dei (begun about 413, finished
about 426). The last-named, beginning with an apologetic purpose, takes on
later the form of a history of the City of God from its beginnings, before the
world was, to the time when it looks upward, beyond the world, to its heavenly
goal. The closing years of his life, after the completion of the Retractationes
in 426-427, were busy ones. Besides works already named, he wrote four others
in these years: three against heresies, and the Speculum de scriptura sacra, a
collection of the ethical teaching of the Scripture for popular use. We can not
now tell whether the last paragraph of the Opus imperfectum or the latest of
the letters were the last words he wrote; but the close of the letter is
eminently characteristic of him: "That we may have a quiet and tranquil life in
all piety and love, let this be your prayer for us (as it is ours for you),
wherever you are; for, wherever we are, there is no place where he is not whose
we are." |
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