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TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
The quotations from Saint Augustin's Confessions are taken from Canon Bigg's scholarly version, which seems to me the best in English. But there are places where M. Bertrand's reading of the original text differs from Dr. Bigg's, and in such cases I have felt myself obliged to follow the author of this book. These differences never seriously affect the meaning of a passage; sometimes it is a mere matter of choice, as with the word collactaneum (i, 7) which Dr. Bigg translates "twin," and M. Bert
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SAINT AUGUSTIN PROLOGUE
SAINT AUGUSTIN PROLOGUE
Inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te. "Our heart finds no rest until it rests in Thee." Confessions , I, i. Saint Augustin is now little more than a celebrated name. Outside of learned or theological circles people no longer read him. Such is true renown: we admire the saints, as we do great men, on trust. Even his Confessions are generally spoken of only from hearsay. By this neglect, is he atoning for the renewal of glory in which he shone during the seventeenth century, when t
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THE FIRST PART
THE FIRST PART
Sed delectabat ludere. "Only, I liked to play." Confessions , I, 9....
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I
I
Little streets, quite white, which climb up to clay-formed hills deeply furrowed by the heavy winter rains; between the double row of houses, brilliant in the morning sun, glimpses of sky of a very tender blue; here and there, in the strip of deep shade which lies along the thresholds, white figures crouched upon rush-mats—indolent outlines, draped with bright colours, or muffled in rough and sombre wool-stuffs; a horseman who passes, bent almost in two in his saddle, the big hat of the South fl
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II
II
It was in this pleasant little town, shaded and beautified for many years now by the arts of Rome, that the parents of Augustin lived. His father, Patricius, affords us a good enough type of the Romanized African. He belonged to the order of Decuriones , to the "very brilliant urban council of Thagaste" ( splendidissimus ordo Thagastensis ), as an inscription at Souk-Ahras puts it. Although these strong epithets may be said to be part of the ordinary official phraseology, they indicate, just the
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III
III
Augustin came into this world the thirteenth of November of the year of Christ 354. It was just one little child more in this sensual and pleasure-loving Africa, land of sin and of carnal productiveness, where children are born and die like the leaves. But the son of Monnica and Patricius was predestined: he was not to die in the cradle like so many other tiny Africans. Even if he had not been intended for great things, if he had been only a head in the crowd, the arrival of this baby ought, all
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IV
IV
"I loved to play," Augustin says, in telling us of those far-off years. Is it surprising if this quick and supple intelligence, who mastered without effort, and as if by instinct, the encyclopædic knowledge of his age, who found himself at his ease amidst the deepest abstractions, did, at the beginning, take life as a game? The amusements of the little Africans of to-day are not very many, nor very various either. They have no inventive imagination. In this matter their French playfellows have t
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V
V
A new world opened before Augustin. It was perhaps the first time he had ever gone away from Thagaste. Of course, Madaura is not very far off; there are about thirty miles at most between the two towns. But there are no short journeys for children. This one lay along the military road which ran from Hippo to Theveste—a great Roman causeway paved with large flags on the outskirts of towns, and carefully pebbled over all the rest of the distance. Erect upon the high saddle of his horse, Augustin,
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VI
VI
In the city of Apuleius, the Christian Monnica's son became simply a pagan. He was near his sixteenth year: the awkward time of early virility was beginning for him. Prepared at Madaura, it suddenly burst out at Thagaste. Augustin came back to his parents, no doubt during the vacation. But this vacation lasted perhaps a whole year. He had come to the end of his juvenile studies. The grammarians at Madaura could teach him nothing more. To round off his acquirements, it would be necessary to atten
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THE SECOND PART
THE SECOND PART
Amare et amari. "To love and to be loved." Confessions , III, i....
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I
I
"I went to Carthage, where shameful loves bubbled round me like boiling oil." This cry of repentance, uttered by the converted Augustin twenty-five years later, does not altogether stifle his words of admiration for the old capital of his country. One can see this patriotic admiration stirring between the lines. Carthage made a very strong impression on him. He gave it his heart and remained faithful to the end. His enemies, the Donatists, called him "the Carthaginian arguer." After he became Bi
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II
II
Carthage did not offer only pleasures to Augustin; it was besides an extraordinary subject to think about for an understanding so alert and all-embracing as his. At Carthage he understood the Roman grandeur as he could not at Madaura and the Numidian towns. Here, as elsewhere, the Romans made a point of impressing the minds of conquered races by the display of their strength and magnificence. Above all, they aimed at the immense. The towns built by them offered the same decorative and monumental
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III
III
However strong were the attractions of the great city, Augustin well knew that he had not been sent there to amuse himself, or to trifle as an amateur with philosophy. He was poor, and he had to secure his future—make his fortune. His family counted on him. Neither was he ignorant of the difficult position of his parents and by what sacrifices they had supplied him with the means to finish his studies. Necessarily he was obliged to be a student who worked. With his extraordinary facility, he sto
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IV
IV
Augustin was nearly twenty. He had finished his studies in rhetoric within the required time. According to the notions of that age, a young man ought to have concluded his course by his twentieth year. If not, he was considered past mending and sent back there and then to his family. It may appear surprising that a gifted student like Augustin did not finish his rhetoric course sooner. But after his terms at Madaura, he had lost nearly a year at Thagaste. Besides, the life of Carthage had so man
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V
V
Augustin was going to live nine years at Carthage—nine years that he squandered in obscure tasks, in disputes sterile or unfortunate for himself and others—briefly, in an utter forgetfulness of his true vocation. "And during this time Thou wert silent, O my God!" he cries, in recalling only the faults of his early youth. Now, the silence of God lay heavy. And yet even in those years his tormented soul had not ceased to appeal. "Where wert Thou then, O my God, while I looked for Thee? Thou wert b
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THE THIRD PART
THE THIRD PART
Et ecce ibi es in corde eorum, in corde confitentium tibi, et projicientium se in te, et plorantium in sinu tuo, post vias suas difficiles. "And behold! Thou art there in their hearts, in the hearts of that confess to Thee, and cast themselves upon Thee, and sob upon Thy breast, after their weary ways." Confessions , V, 2....
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I
I
Augustin fell ill just after he got to Rome. It would seem that he arrived there towards the end of August or beginning of September, before the students reassembled, just at the time of heat and fevers, when all Romans who could leave the city fled to the summer resorts on the coast. Like all the great cosmopolitan centres at that time, Rome was unhealthy. The diseases of the whole earth, brought by the continual inflow of foreigners, flourished there. Accordingly, the inhabitants had a panic f
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II
II
'The new professor had managed to secure a certain number of pupils whom he gathered together in his rooms. He could make enough to live at Rome by himself, if he could not support there the woman and child he had left behind at Carthage. In this matter of finding work, his host and his Manichee friends had done him some very good turns. Although forced to conceal their beliefs since the edict of Theodosius, there were a good many Manichees in the city. They formed an occult Church, strongly org
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III
III
Before he left Rome, and during his journey to Milan, Augustin must have recalled more than once the verses of Terence which his friend Marcianus had quoted by way of encouragement and advice the night he set sail for Italy: "This day which brings to thee another life Demands that thou another man shalt be." He was thirty years old. The time of youthful wilfulness was over. Age, disappointments, the difficulties of life, had developed his character. He was now become a man of position, an em
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IV
IV
But even as he draws nearer the goal, Augustin would appear, on the contrary, to get farther away from it. Such are God's secret paces, Who snatches souls like a thief: He drops on them without warning. Till the very eve of the day when Christ shall come to take him, Augustin will be all taken up with the world and the care of making a good figure in it. Although Ambrose's sermons stimulated him to reflect upon the great historical reality which Christianity is, he had as yet but dim glimpses of
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V
V
"I was tired of devouring time and of being devoured by it." The whole moral crisis that Augustin is about to undergo might be summed up in these few words so concentrated and so strong. No more to scatter himself among the multitude of vain things, no more to let himself flow along with the minutes as they flowed; but to pull himself together, to escape from the rout so as to establish himself upon the incorruptible and eternal, to break the chains of the old slave he continues to be so as to b
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THE FOURTH PART
THE FOURTH PART
Fac me, Pater, quaerere te. "Cause me to seek Thee, O my Father." Soliloquies , I, i....
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I
I
Now that Augustin had been at last touched by grace, was he after all going to make a sensational conversion like his professional brother, the celebrated Victorinus? He knew well enough that there is a good example set by these noisy conversions which works on a vast number of people. And however "contrite and humble" his heart might be, he was quite aware that in Milan he was an important personage. What excitement, if he were to resign his professorship on the ground that he wished to spend t
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II
II
They stayed through the winter at Cassicium. However taken up he might be by the work of the estate and the care of his pupils, Augustin devoted himself chiefly to the great business of his salvation. The Soliloquies , which he wrote then, render even the passionate tone of the meditations which he perpetually gave way to during his watches and nights of insomnia. He searched for God, moaning: Fac me, Pater, quærere te —"Cause me to seek Thee, O my Father." But still, he sought Him more as a phi
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III
III
Almost a year went by before Augustin continued his journey. It is hard to account for this delay. Why should he thus put off his return to Africa, he who was so anxious to fly the world? It is likely that Monnica's illness, the arrangements about her funeral, and other matters to settle, kept him at Ostia till the beginning of winter. The weather became stormy, the sea dangerous. Navigation was regularly interrupted from November—sometimes even earlier, from the first days of October, if the te
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IV
IV
This halt did not last long. Soon was going to begin for Augustin the time of tribulation, that of his struggles and apostolic journeys. And first, he must mourn his son Adeodatus, that young man who seemed destined to such great things. It is indeed most probable that the young monk died at Thagaste during the three years that his father spent there. Augustin was deeply grieved; but, as in the case of his mother's death, he mastered his sorrow by all the force of his Christian hope. No doubt he
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THE FIFTH PART
THE FIFTH PART
Dic eis ista, ut plorent … et sic eos rape tecum ad Deum: quia de spiritu ejus haec dicis eis, si dicis ardens igne caritatis. "Tell them this, O my soul, that they may weep … and thus carry them up with thyself to God; because by His Spirit thou sayest these things, if Thou speakest burning with the flame of charity." Confessions , IV, 12....
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I
I
In his monastery, Augustin was still spied upon by the neighbouring Churches, who wanted him for their bishop. They would capture him on the first opportunity. The old Valerius, fearing his priest would be taken unawares, urged him to hide himself. But he knew by the very case of Augustin, forced into the priesthood in spite of himself, that the greatest precautions are useless against those determined to gain their ends by any means. It would be safest to anticipate the danger. He determined th
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II
II
Let us try to see Augustin in his pulpit and in his episcopal city. We cannot do much more than reconstruct them by analogy. Royal Hippo is utterly gone. Bona, which has taken its place, is about a mile and a half away, and the fragments which have been dug out of the soil of the dead city are very inadequate. But Africa is full of Christian ruins, and chiefly of basilicas. Rome has nothing equal to offer. And that is easily understood. The Roman basilicas, always living, have been changed in th
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III
III
Augustin is not only the most human of all the saints, he is also one of the most amiable in all the senses of that hackneyed word—amiable according to the world, amiable according to Christ. To be convinced of this, he should be observed in his dealings with his hearers, with his correspondents, even with those he attacks—with the bitterest enemies of the faith. Preaching, the administration of property, and sitting in judgment were but a part of that episcopal burthen, Sarcina episcopatus , un
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IV
IV
One day (this was soon after he became bishop) Augustin went to visit a Catholic farmer in the suburbs of Hippo, whose daughter had been lessoned by the Donatists, and had just enrolled herself among their consecrated virgins. The father at first had shouted at the deserter, and flogged her unmercifully by way of improving her state of mind. Augustin, when he heard of the affair, condemned the farmer's brutality and declared that he would never receive the girl back into the community unless she
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THE SIXTH PART
THE SIXTH PART
Et nunc veniant omnes quicumque amant Paradisum, locum quietis, locum securitatis, locum perpetuae felicitatis, locum in quo non pertimescas Barbarum. "And now let all those come who love Paradise, the place of quiet, the place of safety, the place of eternal happiness, the place where the Barbarian need be feared no more." Sermon upon the Barbarian Persecution , vii, 9....
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I
I
During June of the year 403, an astonishing event convulsed the former capital of the Empire. The youthful Honorius, attended by the regent Stilicho, came there to celebrate his triumph over Alaric and the Gothic army, defeated at Pollentia. The pageantry of a triumph was indeed a very astonishing sight for the Romans of that period. They had got so unused to them! And no less wonderful was the presence of the Emperor at the Palatine. Since Constantine's reign, the Imperial palaces had been dese
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II
II
For thirteen or fourteen years, through a thousand employments and a thousand cares, amid the panics and continual alarums which kept the Africans on the alert in those times, Augustin worked at his City of God , the most formidable machine of war ever directed against paganism, and also the arsenal fullest of proofs and refutations which the disputants and defenders of Catholicism have ever had at their disposal. It is not for us to examine the details of this immense work, for our sole aim is
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III
III
Augustin was seventy-two years old when he finished the City of God . This was in 426. That year, an event of much importance occurred at Hippo, and the report of it was inserted in the public acts of the community. "The sixth of the calends of October," The Acts set forth, "the very glorious Theodosius being consul for the twelfth time, and Valentinian Augustus for the second, Augustin the bishop, accompanied by Religianus and Martinianus, his fellow-bishops, having taken his place in the Basil
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