The Late (Wild) Augustine (Augustinus - Werk Und Wirkung) 3506704761, 9783506704764

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
1. The Late (Wild) Augustine—an Introduction
2. Rewilding Augustine: Codex Ecology, the Speculum, and the (Late) De doctrina christiana
3. Body and Soul as a Leading Theme in the Retractationes
4. Augustine’s De haeresibus and Competitive Heresiology
5. Augustine’s Marginalia Contra Julianum
6. The Late Augustine against Julian on Inherited Guilt
7. “Dutifully They Were Crucified”: The Moral and Legal Redemption of the Sabine Women in Augustine’s City of God
8. The Council of Hippo in 427: The Donatists are Still Keeping Augustine Busy in the 420s
9. Rewilding the Late Augustine in Fifth-Century Gaul: Gennadius of Marseilles’s De uiris illustribus
Abbreviations
Bibliography
General Index
Notes on Contributors

Citation preview

The Late (Wild) Augustine

Augustinus – Werk und Wirkung Herausgegeben von Johannes Brachtendorf Volker Henning Drecoll

BAND 11

Susanna Elm, Christopher M. Blunda (eds.)

The Late (Wild) Augustine

Umschlagabbildung: Aurelius Augustinus, Holzschnitt 1489

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Dieses Werk sowie einzelne Teile desselben sind urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung in anderen als den gesetzlich zugelassenen Fällen ist ohne vorherige schriftliche Zustimmung des Verlags nicht zulässig. © 2021 Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, ein Imprint der Brill-Gruppe (Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, Niederlande; Brill USA Inc., Boston MA, USA; Brill Asia Pte Ltd, Singapore; Brill Deutschland GmbH, Paderborn, Deutschland) www.schoeningh.de Einbandgestaltung: Anna Braungart, Tübingen Herstellung: Brill Deutschland GmbH, Paderborn ISSN 2629-883X ISBN 978-3-506-70476-4 (paperback) ISBN 978-3-657-70476-7 (e-book)

CY TWOMBLY, Untitled, 1967. Oil based house paint and wax crayon on canvas, 127 × 170.2 cm (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Hannelore B. und Rudolph B. Schulhof Collection, bequest of Hannelore B. Schulhof, 2012.97) © Cy Twombly Foundation

Table of Contents 1. The Late (Wild) Augustine—an Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Susanna Elm 2. Rewilding Augustine: Codex Ecology, the Speculum, and the (Late) De doctrina christiana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Mark Vessey 3. Body and Soul as a Leading Theme in the Retractationes . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Johannes Brachtendorf 4. Augustine’s De haeresibus and Competitive Heresiology . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Richard Flower 5. Augustine’s Marginalia Contra Julianum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Catherine Conybeare 6. The Late Augustine against Julian on Inherited Guilt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 J. Patout Burns 7. “Dutifully They Were Crucified”: The Moral and Legal Redemption of the Sabine Women in Augustine’s City of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 Darcy Tuttle 8. The Council of Hippo in 427: The Donatists are Still Keeping Augustine Busy in the 420s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Erika T. Hermanowicz 9. Rewilding the Late Augustine in Fifth-Century Gaul: Gennadius of Marseilles’s De uiris illustribus  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Christopher M. Blunda Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 General Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 Notes on Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

The Late (Wild) Augustine—an Introduction Susanna Elm Aurelius Augustinus was born in 354 in Thagaste in the Roman province Numidia, modern Souk Ahras in Algeria, barely a year after Constantius II had become the sole ruler of the Roman empire and six years before bishops he had assembled issued a formula that permitted most Christian leaders of the realm to agree for a brief moment that the relation between father and son was (more or less) similar with regard to their essence. Augustine died of a fever on August 28, 430 in Hippo Regius, modern Annaba in Algeria, the second most important port city of North Africa. He had been bishop of Hippo since 395, ordained under a cloud of controversy in the year in which the emperor Theodosius I died and left the empire formally divided between his young sons Honorius and Arcadius. Thirty-five years later, in Augustine’s final months, Hippo was under siege by Vandal troops. These troops had crossed the Strait of Gibraltar from Spain in 429 on the invitation of the Roman general Boniface, engaged in an internecine fight with his competitor Aetius, had then turned against Boniface, proceeded to sack Hippo in 431, and captured Carthage in 439, perhaps the vital turning point in the history of the Western Roman empire in late antiquity.1 Augustine, in other words, was born in one late Roman empire and died in quite a different one.2 During his life, two Roman emperors had perished 1 *The editors would like to express their thanks and appreciation to Mark Vessey for the inspiration and help with the introduction, to Samuel Stubblefield for his help with the volume, and to Johannes Brachtendorf and Volker Drecoll for its acceptance in their series. In what follows, the Latin citations in the main text have been standardized following the convention of the Augustinus-Lexikon, whereas the citations in the footnotes follow the conventions of the authors. Hydatius 84, The Chronicle of Hydatius and the Consularia Constantinopolitana: Two Contemporary Accounts of the Final Years of the Roman Empire, ed. and trans. R.W.  Burgess, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 94; Prosperi Tironis Epitoma Chronicon 1294, Chronica Minora vol. 1, ed. Theodor Mommsen (Berlin: Weidmann, 1892–98), 341–499; Meaghan  A.  McEvoy, Child Emperor Rule in the Late Roman West, AD 367–455 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 187–204, 223–50, 261–62; Jonathan Conant, Staying Roman: Conquest and Identity in Africa and the Mediterranean, 439–700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 1–66; David Coulon, Aetius (Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du septentrion, 2003), 29–43, 96–7, 113–18. 2 Christopher M. Kelly, “Bureaucracy and Government,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine, ed. Noel Lenski  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 183–204, at 191; though as Kelly rightly emphasizes, “Political History: The Later Roman Empire,” in A Companion to Augustine, ed. Mark Vessey (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2012), 9–23, at 21–22,

© Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2021 | doi:10.30965/9783657704767_002

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in battle, Julian in Persia and Valens in a disastrous defeat at Adrianople, one of several events that eventually led to the sack of Rome in 410, which in turn prompted Augustine to compose his magnum opus, the De ciuitate dei or City of God completed in 426/427. Augustine had spent the majority of his adult life in Roman Africa, a region that prospered economically and remained buffered from many of the challenges that affected the remainder of the empire, at least until the Vandals had crossed the Strait.3 Still, buffered does not equal remaining immune. Imperial decisions, whether made by seasoned military men such as Theodosius or by his young sons and their feuding advisors affected African bishops as well.4 Refugees from a sacked Rome were among Augustine’s audience and Vandal advances through Spain forced shifts in trade routes that brought rivers of slaves to Hippo Regius in ways not seen before.5 Despite the emperor Theodosius’s best efforts, doctrinal unity proved stubbornly elusive as made evident by the consternation the teachings of a certain Pelagius elicited when they became known in Carthage in 411, whilst African bishops remained embroiled in the long-drawn out controversies between those who considered themselves Catholic and those who thought of themselves as “the bishops of truth,” aka the Donatists, which came to a head in a spectacularly well-documented court case, also in 411.6

change need not mean decline; R. Malcolm Errington, Roman Imperial Policy from Julian to Theodosius (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 80–87. 3 Claude Lepelley,  Les cités de l’Afrique romaine au Bas‐Empire, 2 vols.  (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1979–1981); id., “Africa: Présentation générale,” AugLex  1 (1994): 179–205; Peter, Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 388–9; Erika T. Hermanowicz, “African Ecclesiastical Wealth,” in Colorful Lives and Living in Roman North Africa: Essays in Memory of Maureen A. Tilley, ed. Zachery Smith and Elizabeth Clark (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming); William E. Klingshirn, “Roman North Africa,” in A Companion to Augustine, ed. Mark Vessey (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2012), 24–40, at 37–39; Anna Leone, The End of the Pagan City: Religion, Economy, and Urbanism in Late Antique North Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 4 McEvoy, Child Emperor, 136–220. 5 Aug. epp. 10* and 24*; Neil B. McLynn, “Augustine’s Roman Empire,” AugStud 30 (1999): 29–44, at 34; Kyle Harper, Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275–425 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 393–423; Susanna Elm, “Sold to Sin through origo: Augustine of Hippo on Slavery and Freedom,” Studia Patristica 98 (2017): 1–21. 6 Erika  T.  Hermanowicz, The 411 Conference: A Translation and Historical Commentary (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, forthcoming); for the self-designation as bishops of truth, Day 2; Brent D. Shaw, Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 544–64; Brown, Eye, 326–32.

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We know much of the African side of this history thanks to the copious writings of Augustine.7 Augustine wrote a significant number of these works after 411 and indeed after 418 and 419, two years that witnessed the condemnation and expulsion from Rome of Pelagius, saw the rise of his most prominent defender Julian of Eclanum and, in Africa, yet another council addressing some of the ramifications of the decisions of 411/412, culminating in the dramatic threat of the Donatist bishop Gaudentius to burn himself and his basilica at Thamugadi when forced to hand it over to the catholic church by the imperial tribune and notary Dulcitius.8 This period, between 418/419 and 429/430, is considered, for the sake of this volume, that of the late (wild) Augustine.9 Until he was co-opted as a presbyter of the church at Hippo in 391, and for a while after that, Augustine wrote or spoke exclusively on themes and occasions of his own choosing. It was not only in his Soliloquia that he carried on a conversation with himself. Rarely blessed with interlocutors who were his intellectual equals, he more often found straw men for thought-experiments that interested him anyway. As he later said, by God’s mercy he was someone who learnt as he wrote (proficienter me existimo deo miserante scripsisse).10 For that reason perhaps, he did a lot of writing. As a presbyter, and one of the most visibly talented noui homines of the African church, he began to find himself tasked with ecclesiastical business, including preaching. Some of his thoughtexperiments became more public, in intent as well as expression. Even so, the record of his writerly activity in the early 390s would still consist largely of personal projects begun and then abandoned without any visible consequence. However, late in that decade, around the time of the  Confessions (a work entwined with the unfinished De doctrina christiana), he set about two major, programmatic works (De trinitate, De Genesi ad litteram) that would run their full course only in the decade after the defeat of the Donatists.11 Both answered in the first instance to his own exploratory instincts, his curiosity. That they took him so long to finish was partly attributable to their being interrupted by the business of arguing and agitating against the Donatists. The decade 7

The alphabetical list of his works in the Augustinus-Lexikon is arranged in two columns and covers over sixteen single-spaced pages, a corpus quite unusual for the premodern period in its extent; Augustinus-Lexikon, vol. IV, ed. Robert Dodaro, Cornelius Mayer, Christof Müller, et al. (Basel: Schwabe, 2018), 9–25. 8 Aug. c. Gaud. 1.1 (CSEL 53:201); cf. retr. 2.59.86 (CCL 57:137); Shaw, Sacred Violence, 732–40. 9 Following more or less Peter Brown, Augustine, 380, who selected 421 as the beginning of Part V, Augustine’s old age. 10 Aug. perseu. 21.55; cf. retr. prol. 3. 11 Augustinus De Genesi ad litteram: Ein kooperativer Kommentar, ed. Johannes Brachtendorf and Volker Drecoll, Augustinus—Werk und Wirkung (Paderborn: Brill/Ferdinand Schöningh, forthcoming).

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that opened in 411 was also, not fortuitously, the one in which the third great work, the De ciuitate dei, was begun. It was in 412 that Augustine announced the scheme of his (future) Retractationes to Marcellinus, the dedicatee of De ciuitate, the booklet in which he would critically review his entire past production as a publishing Christian author.12 As he approached his sixtieth year, Augustine thus found himself looking back at all the writings to have left his hand (or been taken from his dictation) since his conversion in 386, and—so we may infer—saw them already forming a single sequence, irrespective of whether they had been completed or not, or whether they had been written in the service of the church or primarily in an attempt to settle questions of pressing concern to him at the time. Thus, the sexagenarian Augustine was able to contemplate his written output as a whole whose coherence or incoherence might be consequential for others in the longer run. The experience of the Pelagian controversy (411–419) and its immediate sequels, during which the authority of texts attributable to non-biblical Christian writers, including Augustine, became an issue in a way that was quite new in the West, would only confirm him in that perception.13 The “late” Augustine, the man then in his seventies, provides us with a spectacle of a writer laboring under—but also at times rejoicing in—a sense that  his writing could have powers that were beyond his control, even (miserante deo) wildly so.14 Chief among those late writings exploring the full extent of the powers of Augustine the writer are five that form the center of what follows, writings not by coincidence composed, reworked, completed, or left incomplete in the final years of his life between 426 and 430: the De doctrina Christiana, the Retractationes, De haeresibus, the Opus Imperfectum against Julian, and the Speculum. In addition, Augustine reacted to the astonishment his teachings on grace and predestination caused among fellow ascetics and monks in North Africa and Southern Gaul.15 Also on his mind were captivity, ransom and redemption, and the human condition more fundamentally, especially the relation between body and soul he no longer considered as starkly separated as he once had. Perhaps it is too facile an assumption, but old age, mortality, 12 Aug. ep. 143.2–4. 13 Éric Rebillard, “A New Style of Argument in Christian Polemic: Augustine and the Use of Patristic Citations,” JECS 8 (2000): 559–78; Mark Vessey, “Opus Imperfectum: Augustine and His Readers, 426–435 A.D.,” Vigiliae Christianae 52 (1998): 264–85; Jean-Marie Salamito, Les virtuoses et la multitude: Aspects sociaux de la controverse entre Augustin et les pélagiens (Grenoble: Editions Jérôme Millon, 2005), 30. 14 e.g. retr. 2.6. 15 De correptione et gratia, De praedestinatione sanctorum and De dono perseuerantiae, also composed between 426 and 429; Vessey, “Opus Imperfectum,” 264–85.

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might have made the deep interconnection between body and soul more present than it had been for the younger man.16 In the 420s the septuagenarian Augustine knew that his life was nearing its end, that he was reaching the outer edges of life expectancy at his time.17 Death as punishment for the sin of the one man, Adam, and the consequences for the condition of man and his flesh, now mortal, combined with the fervent hope that God’s grace will offer deliverance from this body of death as Paul had so anxiously wished for (Rom. 7:24) are themes that take on a new urgency. It is an urgency that is suffused with fearlessness and it is that fearlessness that made me first think of the late Augustine as wild.18 Here is a man, conscious of the powers of his writings, fearless in his contemplation of mortality, in full control of his formidable intellect, and ready to push concepts that had excited his curiosity and that he had contemplated, rejected, fought for, pushed and pushed against, to their limits, to the edge of the conceivable.19 It is an Augustine who labors for and rejoices in unpredictability and an astounding creativity, not least with regard to genre, itself a vital tool in ordering knowledge.20 Thus, I was immensely relieved and enormously grateful that Mark Vessey encouraged and shared that wild idea, hatched in the rather non-wild surroundings of a café in Queen’s Lane in Oxford in 2015, which led to the conference in Berkeley in 2018 out of which this volume emerged.21 16 Aug. De cura pro mortuis gerenda; Éric Rebillard, In hora mortis: Évolution de la pastorale chrétienne de la mort aux IVe et Ve siècles dans l’Occident latin (Rome: École française de Rome, 1994). 17 Dorothee Elm von der Osten, et  al., “Einleitung der Herausgeber,” in Alterstopoi: Das Wissen von den Lebensaltern in Literatur, Kunst und Theologie, ed. Dorothee Elm von der Osten, Thorsten Fitzon, Kathrin Liess, and Sandra Linden (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), 1–18. 18 See also Catherine Conybeare, “Augustine’s Marginalia Contra Julianum,” in this volume, 94. 19 Virginia Burrus, “Carnal Excess: Flesh at the Limits of Imagination,” JECS 17 (2009): 247– 65; David Hunter, “Augustine on the Body,” in Vessey, Companion, 353–64; David Hunter, “Books XXI–XXII: Heaven, Hell, and the End of the Body,” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine’s City of God, ed. David Vincent Meconi, SJ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). 20 Gunhild Berg, “Literarische Gattungen als Wissenstexturen: Zur Einleitung und zur Konzeption des Bandes,” in Wissenstexturen: Literarische Gattungen als Organisations­ formen von Wissen (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2014), 1–23, at 1; Marco Formisano, “Eine andere Antike: Für ein ästhetisches Paradigma der Spätantike,” in Wissensästhetik: Wissen über die Antike in ästhetischer Vermittlung, vol. 6, ed. Ernst Osterkamp (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008), 41–58. 21 https://bcsr.berkeley.edu/events/the-late-wild-augustine-day-1/. The editors would like to thank the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion and the Department of History for their support in arranging this conference. We would also like to express our thanks and great appreciation to the colleagues who participated in the conference but who are not

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The second aspect that gave the first wild glint in the eye back in that summer a bit more gravitas as befitting a scholarly endeavor was the impression that this late Augustine has not received nearly as much scholarly attention as his younger self. To cite James O’Donnell, “the last hundred pages of Augustine’s writing against Julian have probably been read less often than any of his other words. … They make wearying and dispiriting reading … Augustine has the worst of the argument … because of the unrealistic extremes to which he took his suspicion of marriage, sexuality, and the human body.” No wonder, since, as O’Donnell continues, “Augustine’s obsession with Pelagius and then Julian was just unintelligible and bizarre… . Augustine responded with a stinging, vindictive polemic,” and “while even Augustine’s most severe modern critics find something attractive or fascinating about the man and his work … the anti-Julian works resolutely deter [any such attraction and] … even respect.”22 This is a far cry from the charming, fascinating, attractive Augustine of De uera religione and De libero arbitrio, the Augustine of the Confessions, who so deeply moved and influenced Petrarch and after him, or perhaps following him, the vast majority of scholars and intellectuals, from Husserl and Gadamer to Wittgenstein and Hannah Arendt.23 The Augustine of the Confessions is easy to love and hence to immerse oneself into, a writer whose words crackle with beauty, wit, and charm: Augustine the lover (of God) in dialogue with God as a lover who reciprocates.24 Already the Augustine of the young Luther, the antiPelagian Augustine of the 410’s and early 420’s, was far less charming, as was the Augustine of Calvin, another admirer of the late Augustine, providing solace in troubled times.25 But it might have been Cornelius Jansen, who died in Brussels in 1638 and appears to have been as obsessed with Augustine as the latter had been with Pelagius, who “did Augustine the unkindness of taking his present in this volume: Sarah Byers, Anthony Dupont, Ulrich Eigler, Carol Harrison, and Éric Rebillard. 22 James J. O’Donnell, Augustine: A New Biography (New York: Harper Collins, 2005), 282–83. 23 Eric  L.  Saak, “Augustine in the Western Middle Ages to the Reformation,” in Vessey, Companion, 465–77, at 475; Johannes Brachtendorf, “The Reception of Augustine in Modern Philosophy,” in Vessey, Companion, 478–91. 24 Augustine, Confessions, trans. Sarah Ruden (New York: Modern Library, 2017); Peter Brown, “Dialogue with God,” The New York Review of Books, October 26, 2017; Catherine Conybeare, ed., The Routledge Guidebook to Augustine’s Confessions, (New York: Routledge, 2016); Robin Lane Fox, Augustine: Conversions and Confessions (London: Penguin, 2015); Augustine, Confessions: Books V–IX, ed. Peter White, Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). 25 Saak, “Western Middle Ages,” 475–76; Heiko Oberman, “Europa Afflicta: The Reformation of the Refugees,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 83 (1992): 91–111; Jon Balserak,  John Calvin as Sixteenth-Century Prophet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

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last arguments as seriously as he wished them to be taken and left him forever marked by them … To take this late Augustine seriously is to expose him to criticism that he is finally unable to sustain, and his partisans and opponents are of one party in this.”26 Perhaps. Much in the late Augustine’s work is vindictive, obsessive, harsh, garrulous, and grumpy. Nevertheless, the chapters that follow demonstrate that to deny the late Augustine the seriousness with which he wished to be taken is equally unkind. Once taken seriously with even a modicum of the interest lavished on the Augustine of the Confessions, the late Augustine emerges as rather formidable. For example, when read together, the five works composed simultaneously in the late 420s, speak to and enhance each other in ways not evident when read in isolation. Augustine’s seventeenth-century Benedictine editors, who placed the Retractationes next to and ahead of the Confessions, may well have had an inkling of the integrated nature of these later works. Further, recent scholarship on many aspects of Augustine’s thought has brought about a real redirection of the ways in which to approach the concerns of the late Augustine.27 New translations and editions sharpen our understanding of these texts;28 the African-ness of Augustine is beginning to emerge more distinctly and consequentially;29 and the scholarly appreciation of late Roman North Africa and its economy as a whole is experiencing revisions from 26 Jansen claimed to have read all of Augustine’s work more than ten times; O’Donnell, Augustine, 285. 27 Anthony Dupont, Gratia in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum during the Pelagian Controversy: Do Different Contexts Furnish Different Insights? (Leiden: Brill, 2012); “Augustine’s Conversion from Traditional Free Choice to ‘Non-Free Free Will’: A Comprehensive Methodology,” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 114 (2019): 848–50; Mathijs Lamberigts, “The Italian Julian of Æclanum about the African Augustine of Hippo,” in Augustinus Afer: Saint Augustin, africanité et universalité, ed. Pierre-Yves Fux, et  al. (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 2003), 83–94; Josef Lössl, “Intellect and Grace in Augustine of Hippo,” Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture 7 (2013): 15–25; Ali Bonner, The Myth of Pelagianism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 281; David G. Hunter and Virginia Burrus’ reassessments of Augustine’s concept of the body and notions of marriage (supra, n. 19); Jason D. BeDuhn, Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma, vol. 1,  Conversion and Apostasy, 373–388 C.E.  (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010); id., Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma, vol. 2, Making a “Catholic” Self, 388–401 C.E. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010); Johannes van Oort, “Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma in Context.”  Vigiliae Christianae  65  (2011): 543–67; Sarah Byers, “Augustine on the ‘Divided Self’: Platonist or Stoic?” AugStud 38 (2007): 105–18. 28 Brachtendorf and Drecoll, De Genesi ad litteram (supra n. 11). 29 Catherine Conybeare, “Augustini Hipponensis Africitas,” in The Journal of Medieval Latin 25 (2015): 111–30; Josephine Crawley Quinn, Neil  B.  McLynn, Robert  M.  Kerr, and Daniel Hadas, “Augustine’s Canaanites,” Papers of the British School at Rome 82 (2014): 175–97.

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multiple perspectives.30 Added to this are new ways of thinking about religious life in Africa;31 about Augustine as legal expert and administrator32 and as preacher;33 and thus different ways of thinking about his audience and about some of the quintessential Augustinian concepts.34 This goes hand in hand with new ways of thinking about emotions and the senses, and the cognitive impact of language, music, and the visual.35 One point appears to me to be particularly relevant in recent scholarship: the reinsertion of Augustine into his late Roman context.36 A rigorous and unflinching immersion of the man into his context thus might reveal the 30 Shaw, Sacred Violence; id., Bringing in the Sheaves: Economy and Metaphor in the Roman World (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013); id., “Who Were the Circumcellions?” In Vandals, Romans, and Berbers: New Perspectives on Late Antique North Africa, ed. A. H. Merrills (London: Routledge, 2016), 227–58; Eva Elm, Die Macht der Weisheit: Das Bild des Bischofs in der Vita Augustins des Possidius und anderen spätantiken und frühmittelalterlichen Bischofsviten (Leiden: Brill, 2003); Erika T. Hermanowicz, Possidius of Calama: A Study of the North African Episcopate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Leslie Dossey, Peasant and Empire in Christian North Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010); Cam Grey, Constructing Communities in the Late Roman Countryside (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Noel Lenski, “Peasant and Slave in Late Antique North Africa, c. 100–600 CE,” in Late Antiquity in Contemporary Debate, ed. Rita Lizzi Testa (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), 113–55; Boudewijn Sirks, “Reconsidering the Roman Colonate,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Romanistische Abteilung 110 (1993): 331–69; Gilles Bransbourg, “Reddite quae sunt Caesaris, Caeari: The Late Roman Empire and the Dream of Fair Taxation,” in Testa, Contemporary Debate, 80–112. 31 Éric Rebillard, Christians and their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa, 200–450 CE (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012); Transformations of Religious Practices in Late Antiquity, Variorum Collected Studies (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014). 32 Caroline Humfress, “Controversialist: Augustine in Combat,” in Vessey, Companion, 323–35; Neil B. McLynn, “Administrator: Augustine in His Diocese,” in Vessey, Companion, 310–22. 33 Dupont, Gratia. 34 Anthony Dupont, Preacher of Grace: A Critical Reappraisal of Augustine’s Doctrine of Grace in His Sermones ad populum on Liturgical Feasts and during the Donatist Controversy (Leiden: Brill, 2014); Miles Hollingworth, Saint Augustine of Hippo: An Intellectual Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 35 Carol Harrison, On Music, Sense, Affect, and Voice, Reading Augustine (New York: T&T Clark, 2019); Adam Trettel, Desires in Paradise: An Interpretative Study of Augustine’s City of God 14. Augustinus—Werk und Wirkung 8 (Leiden: Brill/Ferdinand Schöningh, 2019); Glenn Peers, “Object Relations: Theorizing the Late Antique Viewer,” in The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, ed. Scott Fitzgerald Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 970–93. 36 One example for the full(er) restauration of Augustine to his context is Sarah Ruden’s translation of dominus as lord, as the master of his household, with slaves to whip, anger to manage, sick to tend and children to love, even if such love on occasion required the

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wildest Augustine yet; a stranger because no longer the Augustine we expect, post Renaissance—gorgeous though that one may be.37 This Augustine as a late Roman man we might want to take most serious of them all, even in his old age, because he may turn out to be less vindictive and far better equipped to withstand criticism than one might have thought. The volume opens with the vivid description of the dying Augustine on his sick-bed, surrounded by quires, or quaterniones, placed against the wall of his room, on which were written David’s psalms of penance the dying man read over and over again in tears. This vivid evocation of Augustine’s final days is essential to Mark Vessey’s contribution, “Rewilding Augustine: Codex Ecology, the Speculum, and the (Late) De doctrina christiana,” which lays out many of the central threads woven through the subsequent chapters. Vessey’s chapter, like those of Flower, Brachtendorf, and Conybeare, focuses on the works Augustine written and composed simultaneously between 427 and his death, by which he meant that he worked on one of them during the day and on the other at night: the Speculum, De haeresibus, the Retractationes, the Opus Imperfectum against Julian of Eclanum, and the fourth and concluding book of the De doctrina christiana.38 How does the image of Augustine looking at and reading the psalms of David leaning against the walls while he lay dying relate to these works, above all the Speculum, a collection of excerpts from “God’s commands and prohibitions for the conduct of life from both the divine testaments” in a single codex, useful for all, so that anyone could read it to “perceive how obedient and disobedient they were?”39 In Vessey’s remarkable reading, in every way: Possidius represented Augustine as the master of the codex, open faced as the quaterniones surrounding him, as the man who had invented the notion of Scripture as the mirror of Christian life and the Speculum as a genre, wildly popular in the Middle Ages, that afforded him nothing less than “the total enterprise of text-based instruction.”40 The Speculum, read even more rarely than the correction of the whip. This master is the Dominus of Augustine, a God who was present and real in all his harshness and tenderness. 37 As depicted for example by Sandro Botticelli in the Chiesa di San Salvatore di Ognissanti, Florence. 38 Aug. ep. 224.2; Richard Flower, “Augustine’s De haeresibus and Competitive Heresiology,” in this volume, 70; for the encyclopedic habitus and its aesthetics in late Antiquity more generally see Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, Literary Territories: Cartographical Thinking in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 39 Possidius, Vita Augustini, 28.3, in Vita di Cipriano, Vita di Ambrogio, Vita di Agostino, ed. A. A. R. Bastiaensen (Milan: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 1975), 127–241. 40 Almut Mutzenbecher, “Der Nachtrag zu den Retraktationen mit Augustins letzten Werken,” RÉAug 30 (1984): 60–83, at 66; Vessey, “Rewilding Augustine,” 38–9.

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Retractationes and the De haeresibus, proves to be a surprisingly efficient medium employed by the immensely media savvy late Augustine to further the goal of all his teaching: “endless face time with God, for himself and his fellow-human beings—the community of the ciuitas dei,” by creating a “new kind of textual community, composed of readers and non-readers alike, their eyes fixed on texts,” selected and ordered by Augustine to show the members of that community, as in a mirror, what kinds of Christians they could be— in ways that affected these (future) readers materially and thus cognitively through the opened codex such that they would mold themselves toward a future state where “they would read only the face of God.”41 In other words, through the methodological and hermeneutical key of Vessey’s reading of the Speculum and the late De Doctrina Christiana in the context of codex ecology, the trinity of late Augustinian works so often sidelined as “mere” lists or collections or at best revisionary attempts to smooth earlier works into a more unified “Augustinian” presentation to posterity, emerges as a far more ambitious and radical undertaking. It showcases the deliberate invention of new or newly conceived genres aimed to order knowledge thus that both the form and content of each work, in concert with each other, contributed to the creation of the textual community they guided and instructed.42 Once read together in the synchronicity of their actual composition, the Speculum, Retractationes, De Haeresibus, the Opus Imperfectum and the last book of De Doctrina complement each other and mutually reinforce each other’s message as if in a chorus. Each voice sings on its own, but together they reveal their true range or scope: to shape the cognition, behavior, and the self-understanding of all future readers, because “I have been able to discuss, with such ability as I have, not the sort of person that I am—for I have many failings—but the sort of person that those who apply themselves to sound teaching, in other words to Christian teaching, on behalf of others as well as themselves, ought to be.”43 41

Vessey, “Rewilding Augustine,” 37; Gérard Genette, Seuils (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1987), trans. Jane  E.  Lewin as  Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 42 Theo Stammen and Wolfgang  E.  J.  Weber, “Zur Einführung,” in Wissenssicherung, Wissensordnung und Wissensverarbeitung: Das europäische Modell der Enzyklopädien, ed. Th eo Stammen and Wolfgang E. J. Weber (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004), 9–15; Harmut Böhme, Lutz Bergemann, Martin Dönike, et  al., eds., Transformation: Ein Konzept zur Erforschung kulturellen Wandels (Paderborn: Fink, 2011). 43 Aug. doctr. chr. 4.31.64: … non qualis ego essem, cui multa desunt, sed qualis esse debeat, qui in doctrina sana, id est christiana, non solum sibi, sed aliis etiam laborare studet, quantulacumque potui facultate disserui; translation in De Doctrina Christiana, trans. R. P. H. Green (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).

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Johannes Brachtendorf’s chapter, “Body and Soul as a Leading Theme in the Retractationes,” at first glance addresses an entirely different set of concerns than Vessey’s, yet it complements his readings of the Speculum as expressions of Augustine’s faith that the “meaning and presentation might work together to transform the reception of a text” to a surprising degree.44 Brachtendorf demonstrates that Augustine’s Retractationes, his critical revision or literary self-criticism and, when called for, defense of all of his previous works, also addressed two central theological questions. The first, concerning grace, has been addressed in the recently increasing scholarship on the Retractationes, but the second far less so, namely the relation between body and soul.45 Brachtendorf sharpens and nuances the doctrinal component of the Retractationes by delineating how Augustine is at pains to stress and reiterate throughout the entire work a harmony and peace between body and soul he had denied in his earlier works. Now, he emphasizes the centrality of the conjoined nature of body and soul, on earth as well as in the hereafter, because only the sensory capacities of the body together with the soul will allow the perfected body as “carnal body” to touch and see the other in the hereafter and, thus, to see Christ face to face.46 In other words, the materiality, the form and content of the codex and hence its cognitive capacities, or affordances, correlate to the late Augustine’s anthropology, according to which the “materiality” even of the perfected body, its sensory affordances, are crucial to truly see God.47 In Brachtendorf’s words, “in transcendent life, we will not only see, with bodily eyes, the life in the other; we will also perceive God in the other. All humans will behold God with their eyes in every other human and in themselves,” a point Augustine then makes manifest through the actual reordering of knowledge in his own “catalogue raisonné,” yet again creating a new genre in the process.48 44 Jason Scott-Warren, “Reading Graffiti in the Early Modern Book,” Huntington Library Quarterly 73, no. 3 (September 2010): 363–81, at 364; cited in Conybeare, “Marginalia,” in this volume, 90n18. 45 Goulven Madec, Introduction aux “Révisions” et à la lecture des œuvres de saint Augustine (Paris: Études Augustiennes, 1996); Hildegund Müller, “Retractationes,” in AugLex 4:1180–99. 46 Johannes Brachtendorf, “Body and Soul as a Leading Theme in the Retractationes,” in this volume, 55. 47 For the meaning of affordances in a literary context see Terence Cave, Thinking with Literature: Towards a Cognitive Criticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 47–52; Vessey, “Rewilding Augustine,” 26. 48 Brachtendorf, “Body and Soul,” 60–1; Hildegund Müller, “Augustine’s Retractationes in the Context of his Letter Corpus: On the Genesis and Function of an Uncommon Genre,” RÉAug 62 (2016): 95–120.

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A similarly surprising synergy emerges between the subsequent two chapters, Richard Flower’s “Augustine’s De haeresibus and Competitive Heresiology,” and Catherine Conybeare’s “Augustine’s Marginalia Contra Julianum.”49 “One of his final and least-appreciated works,” De haeresibus is currently receiving greater attention as part of renewed interest in ancient encyclopedic and technical collections in general and heresiological works in particular.50 As Flower points out, De haeresibus is far more than a rather mechanical enumeration of the eighty-eight heresies that had emerged from the Incarnation to Augustine’s day based on earlier efforts to do the same, especially by Filastrius of Brescia and Epiphanius of Salamis. Placing the text into the rhetorical and methodological context of ancient technical and scientific writings and in particular encyclopedic writings such as the list of philosophers compiled by a certain Celsus and Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, Flower demonstrates the degree to which Augustine used their instrumentarium, including proofs of extraordinary “care and diligence,” declarations that one was laboring day and night, and carefully calibrated demonstrations of comprehensiveness.51 Recourse to such rhetorical strategies, as Flower highlights, allowed Augustine to best his precursors such as Filastrius and Epiphanius in a competitive display that show-cased him as the greater authority in matters heresiological. Even more, however, it allowed Augustine to present himself as directly competing with men such as Pliny the Elder and Galen, in short, the most vaunted representatives of ancient technical writing. In the process, Augustine developed a new form of heresiology with one centrally important insight. As he was keen to stress, what Quodvultdeus had so cavalierly requested was in fact an undertaking of enormous magnitude because when collecting heresies comprehensiveness was the goal, but it was a goal destined to remain unattainable.52 Perhaps he might have deepened the reasons for such unattainability had he been able to complete his planned disquisition on what makes a heretic. As it stands, Augustine conceded, contrary to his precursors, that in 49 Aug. ep. 224.2. 50 Quote by Richard Flower, “Augustine’s De haeresibus and Competitive Heresiology,” in this volume, 64; Todd  S.  Berzon, Classifying Christians: Ethnography, Heresiology, and the Limits of Knowledge in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016), 218–45. See also, James E. G. Zetzel, Critics, Compilers, and Commentators: An Introduction to Roman PhiloloGY, 200 BCE–800 CE. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 51 Aug ep. 223.2; for Augustine’s use of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History see also Susanna Elm, “Bodies, Books, Histories: Augustine of Hippo and the Extra-ordinary (Aug. Civ. Dei 16.8 and Pliny the Elder, NH 5),” in Constructing Christians: Rhetoric and Religious Identity in Late Antiquity, ed. Richard Flower and Morwenna Ludlow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 83–98. 52 Pace Berzon, Classifying Christians, 245.

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the case of heresy comprehensiveness was illusory, while making sure that his novel technical conceptualization of heresiological literature was “the most accurate and useful ever written.”53 The contours of these two aspects, namely the attainability of completeness when cataloguing and hence rebutting heresies and the questions of what makes a heretic, gain further sharpness when reading Catherine Conybeare’s chapter, “Augustine’s Marginalia Contra Julianum.” Again, Augustine composed his last and incomplete rebuttal of Julian of Eclanum while also working on the De haeresibus and reading Flower’s and Conybeare’s chapters in sequence reveals the extent to which Augustine grappled with these aspects in that work as well;54 that is, once read in tandem, the degree to which both work to illuminate each other become sufficiently evident to call for further investigation. Conybeare takes her inspiration from the work by Cy Twombly that also illustrates the first page of this volume, to argue that Augustine’s Opus Imperfectum against Julian is best understood as yet another innovative genre or innovative use of a sub-genre, that of marginalia.55 As Conybeare points out, at first glance the Opus Imperfectum reads as if it were a controversial dialogue between Julian and Augustine, with frequent insertions of phrases such as “dic” (“tell me”). However, already in 419, in his last work against a Donatist, Augustine had made it clear that he responded to writings in writing to prevent accusations of lying if he wrote as if he was engaging in an actual, “live” dialogue.56 Hence Conybeare’s utterly persuasive introduction of marginalia as the best description of what it is Augustine is doing here: he cites Julian’s written text and responds with his own written word not as a commentary (which would privilege the original text commented on), but as extensive, confrontational, opinionated marginalia inserted into a text in urgent need of correction. Here, Conybeare’s reconstruction of the actual creation of this composite text is further illuminating. In her estimation, Augustine would have read out Julian’s text to his scribe and then dictated his own response—exactly the method introduced at the council of 411 and utilized again in 419 and 427 to combine existing canons with new ones, as analyzed by Erika Hermanowicz in her chapter in this volume. However, Conybeare’s observations regarding the Opus Imperfectum as marginalia further transcend the already significant question of genre. One purpose of marginalia is “to amplify the thought,” but 53 54 55 56

Flower, “De Haeresibus,” 66. Conybeare, “Marginalia,” 86. Cy Twombley, Untitled 1967; Conybeare, “Marginalia,” 90–1. Aug. c. Gaud. 1.1.1.

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Augustine could never sufficiently improve and correct Julian’s utterly faulty thinking. In Conybeare’s words, “it could never have become the opus perfectum however long Augustine would have lived. In the very striving for completeness, it becomes more and more apparent how incomplete the responses must be … [There was solely] the perfect completeness of the divine word, not the … limited array of words with which humans have to make do;” including those that (foolishly) attempt to attain a complete list of other faulty thoughts, other heresies.57 J.  Patout  Burns’s chapter, “Augustine against Julian on Inherited Guilt,” addresses one of the most central errors of Julian’s thought and most pressingly in need of correction. What was the condition of human beings at birth? What concerned Augustine a great deal during the last years of his life was the question whether humans were born already guilty of sin and if so, why and how guilt was inherited. Burns’s chapter begins with a brief discussion of Augustine’s thought on the matter prior to his encounter with Caelestius, the follower of Pelagius who came to Carthage in 411, and outlines the solutions formulated by Augustine in response to these men, to focus on how Augustine elaborated his prior thinking in his last decade in response to the challenges posed by Julian of Eclanum through a set of topics elaborated during this period. Here, Augustine’s key argument was that guilt was indeed inherited, and not passed on in some form of transmission or imitation via theories regarding the origin of the soul, but through sexual generation. Divine justice, he stressed vehemently (against Julian), thus followed the lines of generation, permitting the punishment of children for sins they had thus inherited. That is, much as Paul had stated in Romans 7:14–25, the sinful defect and the condition of guilt in which he found himself had been imposed upon him prior to and irrespective of any personal decision of his own. This condition of sinfulness, so Augustine, was present already in Paul as a child—in all humans as newborns, albeit in a mute fashion to become operative solely throughout their later life. It was inherited from Adam through defective sexual generation and while baptism removed the guilt, the defect itself would only be removed in the hereafter. Darcy Tuttle’s chapter reveals how Augustine employed the principle of inherited sinfulness and guilt in the City of God as prefigured in the— surprisingly rarely discussed—rape of the Sabine women. Though Augustine addressed the rape of the Sabine women in the earlier books 3 and 5 of the City of God, completed in 426/427, the topics he addressed through them as exempla were far reaching and occupied him for the rest of his life, namely 57

Conybeare, “Marginalia,” 94.

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captivity, redemption, and the origo and hence condicio of human beings.58 In Tuttle’s incisive reading, it becomes clear that Augustine uses contemporary Roman legal concepts of abduction marriage to reshape Livy’s Sabine women into proto-Christian exemplars of appropriate female behavior (in contrast to Lucretia’s suicide that Augustine condemned, not least under the impact of Donatist resistance).59 The Sabine women, according to Augustine, were dutifully crucified (pie cruciabantur) because they refused to consent to the marriage proposal of their captors, the Romans, out of filial duty (pietas) to their fathers and brothers.60 The implications of Augustine’s subtle reframing of Livy are striking: because of the Sabine women’s refusal to consent to their (de facto) marriage, their union with the victorious Romans was technically not a marriage but captivity. Because, as Augustine states, a freeborn person captured by barbarians is a slave during such captivity, the Sabine women had in fact been slaves of the (barbarian) Romans.61 Though freeborn and joined to their husbands in what appeared to be a lawful marriage, the mothers of all Romans were in fact the captive slaves of their husbands. If this was so, then all subsequent Romans had inherited the same free yet bound condition. Indeed, as Paul had said in his letter to the Romans (as Augustine read it), everyone, though free to withhold consent, was enslaved through the sin and guilt inherited from their forefathers and -mothers, the Roman sons of the Sabine women included. Tuttle reads Augustine’s recasting of Livy’s version of the abduction of the Sabine women though the lens of literary analysis as well as that of social history, specifically of the changing marriage legislation post Constantine, to illustrate further the inherited nature of sin discussed by Burns, but also their prefiguration of man’s potential, ultimate redemption in the city of God. Erika Hermanowicz’ chapter, “The Council of 427: The Donatists are Still Keeping Augustine Busy in the 420s,” uses careful analysis of the ten canons of the Council of 427, called by Augustine, to demonstrate four interrelated points. First, she explicates how the African bishops and their scribes used existing canonical collections to frame and thus incorporate new ones, especially in two sessions in May 419, by reading out loud the earlier ones and then adding new canons to form a new whole through this act of composition, 58

Susanna Elm, “The Human Condition: Condicio and origo in Augustine (Letters 10*, 20*, and 24*),” in Making Sense of the Oath, ed. Stephan Esders (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming); Noel Lenski, “Captivity among the Barbarians and Its Impact on the Fate of the Roman Empire,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Attila, ed. Michael Maas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 230–46. 59 Shaw, Sacred Violence, 729. 60 Aug. ciu. 3.13. 61 Aug. serm. 134.3.

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reminiscent of the marginalia. Second, she shows that several of the existing canons thus incorporated into African collections (especially the canones in causa Apiarii) came from the Greek East and hence served to showcase the self-perception of the African bishops—in the main Augustine, Alypius, and Possidius—as “international” players in tension with Rome.62 By analyzing further which of the canons from 419 were carried forward to the council of 427, Hermanowicz then explains why the aging Augustine felt such urgency to assemble this meeting: the hastily and ill-conceived arrangements made at the Council of 411 regarding the mechanics of restituting church property to Donatists who agreed to the union with the Catholics had entirely unanticipated ramifications, most importantly attempts by Donatist and Catholic clerics and bishops alike to hide real property (through liquidation, transfers, gifts, sales and acquisitions) before it was united with that of a different bishop or cleric. Though by 427 many of the problems resulting from 411 and 419 had been addressed, the flood of complaints, acts of intimidation, and attempts to undermine the process had become such that procedures had to be imposed to prevent a collapse of the system of clerical adjudication; that is what the canons of 427 sought to accomplish. In other words, by 427 the aftereffects of the Donatist question that Augustine had last addressed theologically in 419 (or so) against Gaudentius, continued to reverberate on a near daily basis. Christopher Blunda’s chapter, “Rewilding the Late Augustine in Fifth-Century Gaul: Gennadius of Marseilles’s De uiris illustribus,” which concludes the volume, addresses the afterlife of the late Augustine through the lens of another important component part of his late life, the controversies regarding his late theological thoughts among fifth-century monks in southern Gaul. Blunda offers a detailed analysis of yet another collection upon which scholarship has bestowed benign neglect, Gennadius of Marseilles’s De uiris illustribus.63 Blunda’s careful analysis of Gennadius’s De uiris illustribus reveals him to be a highly skillful author, who—much like Augustine—does far more in his seemingly straightforward collection than provide another list of famous Christians. By associating Augustine in a number of rather subtle yet unmistakable ways with Origen, Gennadius deftly lifts the mantle of unalloyed orthodoxy and hence authority from Augustine and those who represent his views such as Prosper of Aquitaine and bestows it instead on Marseilles (and himself). Among the “weapons” Gennadius employs in this endeavor is the insistence that Augustine broke with traditional Scriptural readings regarding grace and free will when writing to Simplicianus. Gennadius strove to highlight rupture, 62 63

For the Council of 419 and the affair of Apiarius see also Shaw, Sacred Violence, 404–408. Vessey, “Opus Imperfectum,” 281–84.

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implying that Augustine traded in novelty—a watchword for (potential) heresy. A second rhetorical move, gesturing toward the same goal, was Gennadius’s insistence that Augustine had been too prolific. When read in conjunction with Flower’s chapter on technical and encyclopedic writings, it is evident that writing too much was not a good thing; it showed a lack of diligence and care and furthermore made verification impossible. It is clear where Blunda’s analysis is pointing, and the result is a little wild. Though short of calling him one outright, Gennadius used a few well-placed words to move Augustine dangerously close to an actual heretic, with all the implicit and explicit consequences for his authority in matters of grace, free will, and the monastic life. Perhaps, Cornelius Jansen’s Augustine was in fact the Augustine of Gennadius; at any rate, the consequences of a careful analysis of Gennadius’s De uiris illustribus for the reception of Augustine are well worth further exploration. Thus the late (wild) Augustine of our volume: an invitation to revisit the Augustine of the 420s with, we hope, greater sympathy than he has often been afforded. This Augustine was a man whose thoughts and writings had taken on (fairly wild) powers and a life of their own, but also a man who lived in an empire that had lost some of its age-old certainties and had become distinctly wilder. This was an Augustine with an enhanced sense of urgency, fearlessness, and wildness, perhaps caused not only by aging, but also by the more tenuous nature of the saeculum in which he found himself and that might have brought the possibility of danger and death (for himself and his society) more starkly to the forefront of his mind. As the saeculum destabilized, Augustine found stability elsewhere: in God’s providence and an increasingly providentially determined vision of God’s relationship with a fragile humanity.64 Works Cited I. Primary Sources

Augustine of Hippo. Confessions, translated by Sarah Ruden. New York: Modern Library, 2017. —. Confessions: Books V–IX, edited by Peter White. Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

64 The volume was completed in the Spring of 2020 during shelter-in-place orders in California, which included the closing of all libraries as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic; a fact that might have brought the possibility of destabilization, danger, and death more starkly to the forefront of our minds.

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—. De doctrina christiana, translated by R. P. H. Green. Oxford Early Christian Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. —. De Genesi ad litteram: Ein kooperativer Kommentar, edited by Johannes Brachtendorf and Volker Drecoll. Augustinus—Werk und Wirkung. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, forthcoming. Chronica minora saec. IV., V., VI., VII. Vol. 1, edited by Theodor Mommsen. Monumenta Germaniae historica. Auctores antiquissimi 9. Berlin: Weidmann, 1892–1898. Collatio Carthaginensis anni 411, translated by Erika  T.  Hermanowicz as The 411 Conference: A Translation and Historical Commentary. Translated Texts for Historians. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, forthcoming. Hydatius. The Chronicle of Hydatius and the Consularia Constantinopolitana: Two Contemporary Accounts of the Final Years of the Roman Empire, edited and translated by Richard W. Burgess. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Possidius of Calama. Vita Augustini. In Vita di Cipriano, Vita di Ambrogio, Vita di Agostino, translated and edited by A. A. R. Bastiaensen, 127–241. Milan: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 1975. Prosper of Aquitaine. Prosperi Tironis epitoma chronicon. In Chronica minora. Vol.  1, edited by Theodor Mommsen, 341–499. Berlin: Weidmann, 1892–1898.

II.

Secondary Sources

Balserak, Jon. John Calvin as Sixteenth-Century Prophet. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. BeDuhn, Jason D. Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma. Vol. 1, Conversion and Apostasy, 373–388 C.E. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. —. Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma. Vol.  2, Making a “Catholic” Self, 388–401 C.E. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. Berg, Gundhild. “Literarische Gattungen als Wissenstexturen: Zur Einleitung und zur Konzeption des Bandes.” In Wissenstexturen: Literarische Gattungen als Organisationsformen von Wissen, 1–23. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2014. Berzon, Todd  S. Classifying Christians: Ethnography, Heresiology, and the Limits of Knowledge in Late Antiquity. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016. Böhme, Harmut, Lutz Bergemann, Martin Dönike, et al. Transformation: Ein Konzept zur Erforschung kulturellen Wandels. Paderborn: Fink, 2011. Bonner, Ali. The Myth of Pelagianism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Brachtendorf, Johannes. “The Reception of Augustine in Modern Philosophy.” In Vessey, Companion, 478–91. Bransbourg, Gilles. “Reddite quae sunt Caesaris, Caeari: The Late Roman Empire and the Dream of Fair Taxation.” In Testa, Contemporary Debate, 80–112. Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. New ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

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—. “Dialogue with God.” Review of Confessions, by Augustine of Hippo, translated by Sarah Ruden. The New York Review of Books, October 26, 2017. —. Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. Burrus, Virginia. “Carnal Excess: Flesh at the Limits of Imagination.” JECS 17 (2009): 247–65. Byers, Sarah. “Augustine on the ‘Divided Self’: Platonist or Stoic?”  AugStud  38 (2007): 105–18. Cave, Terence. Thinking with Literature: Towards a Cognitive Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Conant, Jonathan  P. Staying Roman: Conquest and Identity in Africa and the Mediterranean, 439–700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Conybeare, Catherine. “Augustini Hipponensis Africitas.” The Journal of Medieval Latin 25 (2015): 111–30. —, ed. The Routledge Guidebook to Augustine’s Confessions. London: Routledge, 2016. Coulon, David. Aetius. Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2003. Dossey, Leslie. Peasant and Empire in Christian North Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Dupont, Anthony. “Augustine’s Conversion from Traditional Free Choice to ‘Non-Free Free Will’: A Comprehensive Methodology.” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 114 (2019): 848–50. —. Gratia in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum during the Pelagian Controversy: Do Different Contexts Furnish Different Insights? Leiden: Brill, 2012. —. Preacher of Grace: A Critical Reappraisal of Augustine’s Doctrine of Grace in His Sermones ad populum on Liturgical Feasts and during the Donatist Controversy. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Elm, Eva. Die Macht der Weisheit: Das Bild des Bischofs in der Vita Augustins des Possidius und anderen spätantiken und frühmittelalterlichen Bischofsviten. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Elm, Susanna. “Bodies, Books, Histories: Augustine of Hippo and the Extra-ordinary (Aug. Civ. Dei 16.8 and Pliny the Elder, NH 5).” In Flower and Ludlow, Constructing Christians, 83–98. —. “The Human Condition: Condicio and origo in Augustine (Letters  10*, 20*, and 24*).” In Making Sense of the Oath, edited by Stephen Esders. Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming. —. “Sold to Sin through origo: Augustine of Hippo on Slavery and Freedom.” Studia Patristica 98 (2017): 1–21. Elm von der Osten, Dorothee, et al. “Einleitung der Herausgeber.” In Alterstopoi: Das Wissen von den Lebensaltern in Literatur, Kunst und Theologie, edited by Dorothee Elm von der Osten, Thorsten Fitzon, Kathrin Liess, and Sandra Linden, 1–18. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009.

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Errington, R. Malcolm. Roman Imperial Policy from Julian to Theodosius. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Flower, Richard and Morwenna Ludlow, eds. Constructing Christians: Rhetoric and Religious Identity in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Formisano, Marco. “Eine andere Antike: Für ein ästhetisches Paradigma der Spätantike.” In Wissensästhetik: Wissen über die Antike in ästhetischer Vermittlung, edited by Ernst Osterkamp, 41–58. Transformationen der Antike  6. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008. Genette, Gérard. Seuils. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1987. Translated by Jane E. Lewin as Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Grey, Cam. Constructing Communities in the Late Roman Countryside. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Harper, Kyle. Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275–425. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Harrison, Carol. On Music, Sense, Affect, and Voice. Reading Augustine. New York: T&T Clark, 2019. Hermanowicz, Erika  T. “African Ecclesiastical Wealth.” In Colorful Lives and Living in Roman North Africa: Essays in Memory of Maureen A. Tilley, edited by Zachery Smith and Elizabeth Clark. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming. —. Possidius of Calama: A Study of the North African Episcopate at the Time of Augustine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Hollingworth, Miles. Saint Augustine of Hippo: An Intellectual Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Humfress, Caroline. “Controversialist: Augustine in Combat.” In Vessey, Companion, 310–22. Hunter, David G. “Augustine on the Body.” In Vessey, Companion, 353–64. —. “Books XXI–XXII: Heaven, Hell, and the End of the Body.” In  The Cambridge Companion to Augustine’s City of God, edited by David Vincent Meconi, SJ. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming. Johnson, Scott Fitzgerald. Literary Territories: Cartographical Thinking in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. —, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Kelly, Christopher M. “Bureaucracy and Government.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine, edited by Noel Lenski, 183–204. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. —. “Political History: The Later Roman Empire.” In Vessey, Companion, 9–23. Klingshirn, William E. “Roman North Africa.” In Vessey, Companion, 24–40.

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Lamberigts, Mathijs. “The Italian Julian of Æclanum about the African Augustine of Hippo.” In Augustinus Afer: Saint Augustin, africanité et universalité. Actes du colloque international Alger-Annaba, 1–7 avril 2001, edited by Pierre-Yves Fux, Jean-Michel Roessli, Otto Wermelinger, et al., 83–94. Paradosis 45. Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 2003. Lane Fox, Robin. Augustine: Conversions and Confessions. London: Penguin, 2015. Lenski, Noel. “Captivity among the Barbarians and Its Impact on the Fate of the Roman Empire.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Attila, edited by Michael Maas, 230–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. —. “Peasant and Slave in Late Antique North Africa, c. 100–600 CE.” In Testa, Contemporary Debate, 113–55. Leone, Anna. The End of the Pagan City: Religion, Economy, and Urbanism in Late Antique North Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Lepelley, Claude. “Africa: Présentation générale.” AugLex 1:179–205. Basel: Schwabe, 1994. —. Les cités de l’Afrique romaine au Bas‐Empire. 2 vols. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1979–1981. Lössl, Josef. “Intellect and Grace in Augustine of Hippo.” Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture 7 (2013): 15–25. Madec, Goulven. Introduction aux “Révisions” et à la lecture des oeuvres de saint Augustin. Collection des études augustiniennes: Série antiquité 150. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1996. McEvoy, Meaghan A. Child Emperor Rule in the Late Roman West, AD 367–455. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. McLynn, Neil  B. “Administrator: Augustine in His Diocese.” In Vessey, Companion, 310–22. —. “Augustine’s Roman Empire.” AugStud 30 (1999): 29–44. Müller, Hildegund. “Augustine’s Retractationes in the Context of his Letter Corpus: On the Genesis and Function of an Uncommon Genre.” RÉAug 62 (2016): 95–120. —. “Retractationes.” AugLex 4:1180–99. Basel: Schwabe, 2018. Mutzenbecher, Almut. “Der Nachtrag zu den Retraktationen mit Augustins letzten Werken.” RÉAug 30 (1984): 60–83. Oberman, Heiko. “Europa Afflicta: The Reformation of the Refugees.” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 83 (1992): 91–111. O’Donnell, James J. Augustine: A New Biography. New York: Harper Collins, 2005. Oort, Johannes van. “Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma in Context.”  Vigiliae Christianae 65, no. 5 (January 2011): 543–67. Peers, Glenn. “Object Relations: Theorizing the Late Antique Viewer.” In Johnson, Late Antiquity, 970–93.

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Quinn, Josephine Crawley, Neil  B.  McLynn, Robert  M.  Kerr, and Daniel Hadas. “Augustine’s Canaanites.” Papers of the British School at Rome 82 (2014): 175–97. Rebillard, Éric. Christians and their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa, 200– 450 CE. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012. —. In hora mortis: Évolution de la pastorale chrétienne de la mort aux IV e et Ve siècles dans l’Occident latin. Bibliothèque des Ecoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 283. Rome: École française de Rome, 1994. —. “A New Style of Argument in Christian Polemic: Augustine and the Use of Patristic Citations.” JECS 8 (2000): 559–78. —. Transformations of Religious Practices in Late Antiquity. Variorum Collected Studies. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. Saak, Eric L. “Augustine in the Western Middle Ages to the Reformation.” In Vessey, Companion, 465–77. Salamito, Jean-Marie. Les virtuoses et la multitude: Aspects sociaux de la controverse entre Augustin et les pélagiens. Grenoble: Editions Jérôme Millon, 2005. Scott-Warren, Jason. “Reading Graffiti in the Early Modern Book.” Huntington Library Quarterly 73, no. 3 (September 2010): 363–81. Shaw, Brent  D. Bringing in the Sheaves: Economy and Metaphor in the Roman World. Robson Classical Lectures. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. —. Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. —. “Who Were the Circumcellions?” In Vandals, Romans, and Berbers: New Perspectives on Late Antique North Africa, edited by A. H. Merrills, 227–58. London: Routledge, 2016. Sirks, Boudewijn. “Reconsidering the Roman Colonate.” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Romanistische Abteilung 110 (1993): 331–69. Stammen, Theo, and Wolfgang  E.  J.  Weber. “Zur Einführung.” In Wissenssicherung, Wissensordnung und Wissensverarbeitung: Das europäische Modell der Enzyklopädien, edited by Theo Stammen and Wolfgang E. J. Weber, 9–15. Colloquia Augustana 18. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004. Testa, Rita Lizzi, ed. Late Antiquity in Contemporary Debate. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017. Trettel, Adam. Desires in Paradise: An Interpretative Study of Augustine’s  City of God  14.  Augustinus—Werk und Wirkung  8. Leiden: Brill/Ferdinand Schöningh, 2019. Vessey, Mark. “Opus Imperfectum: Augustine and His Readers, 426–435 A.D.” Vigiliae Christianae 52 (1998): 264–85. —, ed. A Companion to Augustine. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Zetzel, James  E.  G. Critics, Compilers, and Commentators: An Introduction to Roman Philology, 200 BCE–800 CE. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Rewilding Augustine: Codex Ecology, the Speculum, and the (Late) De doctrina christiana Mark Vessey For Jim O’Donnell I.

Opening: Augustine’s Mise en Livre

Augustine tells us that he died to his old life through the opening of a codex of the Apostle (Conf. 8.12.29), to be reborn from the waters of the baptistery at Milan on Easter Day in 387. Forty-three years later, having made work in the interim for relays of shorthand-writers and copyists, he prepared for a second death by exfoliating the Psalmist. According to Possidius, his contemporary biographer, “he had David’s psalms on penance, of which there are not many, written out. And as he lay in bed during the days of his sickness, he gazed upon the quires (quaterniones) placed against the wall, reading them over, and weeping without check or cease.”1 At first glance there is something unaccountable, even a bit wild, about this final scene of the Vita Augustini. Augustine had been reading, reciting, singing and expounding the Psalms of David since his conversion. It is hard to imagine him of all people needing a penitential autocue in hora mortis.2 Why, then, those wall-mounted quaterniones, a detail that would return to torment the imaginations of latterday illustrators of the Life of Augustine?3 1 Possidius, Vita Augustini, ed. Bastiaensen, in Vita di Cipriano, Vita di Ambrogio, Vita di Agostini, ed. Christine Mohrmann and A. A. R. Bastiaensen = vol. 1 of Vite dei Santi (Milan: Mondadori / Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 1975), 31.2: sibi iusserat psalmos Daviticos, qui sunt paucissimi, de paenitentia scribi, ipsosque quaterniones iacens in lecto contra parietem positos diebus suae infirmitatis intuebatur et legebat, et ubertim ac iugiter flebat. Translations mine unless credited. 2 I owe this point to Catherine Conybeare. 3 For a selection of more or less desperate solutions between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Jeanne Courcelle and Pierre Courcelle, Iconographie de saint Augustin, 5 vols. (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1965–1991), vol. 1, pl. XCVIII (a monk at Augustine’s bed-side with a codex open at Psalm 6:2); vol. 2, pl. XXXII (a scroll showing Psalm 6:1 floating in an illdefined space over the bishop’s bed); vol. 3, pls. XXVI.9 (a single quarternion propped open on a bedside table), XXX (two men standing at the foot of the bed, holding up a placard), XLVIII–XLIX (a large-lettered codex attached to a bed curtain, in successive scenes displaying Psalms 37:2–3 and 50:3), LXXV (a single sheet attached to a bed curtain, showing in large

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Quaternio meant something that came in fours. Its use in the sense of a quire or gathering of folded sheets in a codex is a “late” development, like the mainstreaming of the codex or spine-hinged book in Roman society. Souter in his Glossary of Later Latin to 600 A.D. defined quaternio in the new, codicological meaning of the word as a gathering “of four oblong sheets folded once and sewn together (= 16 pp.)” and dated its use in that sense from the late fourth century. A scan of the Patrologia Latina database bears out his chronology.4 Yet even if Augustine and Possidius were familiar with so technically precise a sense of the term, there is little reason to think that they consistently used it in that way themselves. When Augustine referred in a late letter to the twenty-two books (libri) of his work De ciuitate dei as forming that many quaterniones— the only place in his extant oeuvre where the word appears—he obviously did not have in mind twenty-two equal gatherings of four folded sheets or sixteen pages each.5 It is possible that he had in mind twenty-two unequal quires, more likely that he was using the term quaternio without regard to the extent of the sections in question, to denote sub-units of a bibliological whole, the sub-units being physically equivalent in this case to “books” in the ordinary (non-codicological) sense of libri in a title such as Sancti Augustini de ciuitate dei libri XXII.6 For hands-on artisans of books at Hippo, Carthage or elsewhere, letters the first three words of Psalm 50: Miserere mei, Deus), CI (two monks at the bedside staring at an open codex bearing words common to Psalms 30:2 and 70:1, a second codex open in the foreground showing the first words of Psalm 50); vol. 4, pl. LXXVI (a sheet or board hung on a peg on the wall, inscribed Psalmi Poenitentiales); vol. 5 pl. XCII (horizontal oblong sheets affixed to the wall, each with a few lines of writing running full across the sheet, with verses from Psalm 50). 4 There are no pre-Cassiodorian appearances of the word in the sense of “quire” outside conciliar/canonical documentary contexts and the cases under consideration here. 5 Augustine, Ep. 1A*.1: Libros de civitate dei … misi … Quaterniones Sunt XXII quos in unum corpus redigere multum est. (“I have sent the books of the City of God … There are twenty-two quaternions, which is a lot to make fit into a single body [i.e. codex].”) In Greek, soma was regularly used for a collected “body” of work, as already by Cicero, Ep. ad Atticum 2.1.3, referring to a collection of his speeches, though without any possible correlation there with a book form as capacious as the codex(es) envisaged by Augustine as containers for his opus magnum. See Eric  G.  Turner, The Typology of the Early Codex (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977), 83–84; Müller, “Augustine’s Retractationes” (cited below, n23), 109–15. 6 Possidius in the Indiculum X3.15 (= Operum s. Augustini elenchus, ed. André Wilmart, in Miscellanea Agostiniana: Testi e Studi pubblicati a cura dell’ Ordine Eremitano di S. Agostino nel XV centenario dalla morte del santo Dottore [Rome: Tipografia Vaticana, 1930–1931], vol. 2, 179) lists a Quaternio unus quem propria manu sanctus episcopus initiavit, which Berthold Altaner, “Beiträge zur Kenntnis des schriftstellerischen Schaffens Augustinus,” in his Kleine patristische Schriften, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur  83 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1967), 3–56, at 42n1 took to be a rare draft in the author’s own

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a term like quaternio might already have had a precise and stable technical sense. For relatively hands-off members of local literate elites like Augustine and Possidius, operating at one remove from the physical manufacture of books, the same word could have functioned as a semi-technical term, reflecting the simple reality that codex-form books were made by interleaving folded sheets of papyrus or parchment, sewing them through the fold to create quires or gatherings, and then, for works conceived on—or collections growing to—a larger scale than a single quire of any size would comfortably hold, by stacking several units of this kind and sewing them up together in a book block.7 This was a process so unlike the one used in the fabrication of roll-form books (uolumina) as to be likely, sooner or later, to trigger additions to the stock vocabulary of tabellae, schedae, chartulae, libelli, etc. that Latinophone readers and writers had been using for centuries to designate the material supports or products of their activity. At the limit, we may suppose, quaternio could have signified a single folded sheet or bifolium (= 4 pp.), which is perhaps the easiest sense to give it in Possidius’s narrative of Augustine’s last days, since no selection of penitential psalms was likely to result in a multi-quired book anyway. Such an interpretation allows us to entertain a vision of these customized quaterniones as papyrus or parchment sheets, written on one side only, hung like posters or wallpaper around the room, as if to wrap the dying bishop in a bespoke model of the book-roll that biblical prophets saw being furled again at the end of time (see Conf. 13.15.16) or that old-style Roman “men of the muses” were sometimes found holding symbolically unfurled ad umbilicum usque on the front panels of their sarcophagi.8 Yet neither analogy is ultimately apposite. For the one strictly non-negotiable feature of the book-imaging of this final scene of the Vita Augustini is signalled by the semi-technical term quaterniones: each of the sheets in question, we are given to imagine, was a two-page spread or opening with a vertical fold-line down the middle. Even as Augustine’s eyes scrolled hand. There is no way of knowing the extent either of the draft text or of the quaternio containing it. 7 Georgios Boudalis, The Codex and Crafts in Late Antiquity (New York: Bard Graduate Center, 2018); Bernhard Bischoff, Latin Paleography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. Dáibhí Ó Cróinín and David Ganz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 20–31. Curiously, in the section of his Etymologiae devoted to such matters, Isidore of Seville makes no mention of quaterniones, instead speaking of foliae … cuius partes paginae dicuntur, eo quod sibi invicem conpingantur (6.14.6), as if describing quires. For interpretation of the passage, see Paul Lehmann, “Blätter, Seiten, Spalten, Zeilen,” in his Erforschung des Mittelalters: Ausgewählte Abhandlungen und Aufsätze, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1959–1962), vol. 3, 1–59, at 3, 5, 7. 8 Henri-Irénée Marrou, Mousikos aner: Étude sur les scènes de la vie intellectuelle figurant sur les monuments funéraires romain (Grenoble: Didier & Richard, 1938).

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from page to page, his last livre de chevet remained unmistakably an exfoliated codex, a book that under normal circumstances could be flipped open and snapped shut. In his painting of this scene, as in other respects, Possidius showed himself alert to his mentor’s responsiveness to the special potentials or affordances of the spine-hinged book.9 Augustine is an exceptional witness to a Roman social, cognitive and physical ecology of the material book that we can now begin to map.10 In his famous description of the garden-scene in Milan, we recall, his character puts his finger or some other marker (nescio quo alio signo) in the book of Paul’s Epistles, shuts it, then with serene countenance (tranquillo iam uultu) and by means otherwise unspecified signs or motions to Alypius: Alypio indicaui, the text says, without any direct object for the verb indicare, unless it is the book in hand (Conf. 8.12.29). Translators almost invariably give the characters extra words to speak here. In his own scripting of this critical face-to-face, heart-to-heart moment the only sign that Augustine gives is the one of himself in action with a book. Alypius evidently interprets the Augustinian sign and, if we do not strain the Latin, reciprocates by making an intelligible sign of himself in the same gestural fashion (sic indicauit) before his friend re-opens the 9 For the italicized term, now widely used in book- and media-historical studies and increasingly applied in more specifically literary-historical contexts as well, see Terence Cave, Thinking with Literature: Towards a Cognitive Criticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 47–52, who follows James J. Gibson, the psychologist who coined the term, in definining affordances as “the potential uses an object or feature of the environment offers to a living creature” (48), before expanding the scope of cognitive affordances, in the human case, to cover “the complete set of both inherited cultural and cognitive equipment that humans can bring to bear at a particular time and in a particular context” (52). 10 After Altaner, “Beiträge zur Kenntnis des schriftstellerischen Schaffens Augustinus,” 41–56, and Jürgen Scheele, “Buch und Bibliothek bei Augustinus,” Bibliothek und Wissenschaft 12 (1978): 14–114, see Eligius Dekkers, “Saint Augustin éditeur,” in Troisième centenaire de l’édition mauriste de saint Augustin, Communications présentés au colloque des 19 et 20 avril 1990 (Paris: Études Augustiniennes / Institut Catholique, 1990), 235–44, and esp. Pierre Petitmengin, art. “Codex” in Augustinus-Lexikon 1, cols. 1022–37, and “Recherches sur Augustin et le livre antique,” in La Tradition vive: Mélanges d’histoire des textes en l’honneur de Louis Holtz, ed. Pierre Lardet, Bibliologia 20 (Paris-Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 3–14. Eric Jager, The Book of the Heart (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), ch. 2, breaks fresh ground. Additional perspectives in Vessey, “The History of the Book: Augustine’s City of God and Post-Roman Cultural Memory,” in Augustine’s City of God: A Critical Guide, ed. James Wetzel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 14–32, at 27–32, and Christian Tornau, “Medium und Text: Buch, Buchproduktion und Buchkomposition bei Augustinus,” in Peter Gemeinhardt and Sebastian Günther, Von Rom nach Bagdad: Bildung und Religion von römischen Kaiserzeit bis zum klassischen Islam (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 189–218. See also the studies of the Augustinian/ Possidian Indiculum cited below, n21.

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codex between them to show him a passage from the Epistle to the Romans (8.12.30). The scene unfolds very fast. But if we let it happen in the “real” time of Augustine’s text, rather than taking it frame-by-frame as I just have here, or exegetically helping things along as most translators do, the transaction narrated is a highly kinetic, indeed kinesic one, wherein book-object mediates interactively between the signifying and interpreting organs of human bodies: hands, faces, hearts and, as soon as anyone speaks or reads aloud, voices too.11 For all its domesticity (uocem de uicina domo and so on), Augustine’s Milanese garden is cognitively and codicologically—codicoecologically?—wild.12 The loss of some of the wildness of that earlier scene in modern retellings may be partly attributable to the mesmerizing effects on late-twentieth-century commentators of the figuration of a certain solitary, silent, self-possessed reader at Conf. 6.3.3. Bishop Ambrose, reader and preacher, has his place in Augustine’s story. Read to the end, however, the Confessions amounts to more than the formula for text-assisted, Christocentric introspection that it undoubtedly is even on shorter readings. It is also a summons or concertation to a new style of “textual community”13 in action and in via—and, as such, theoretically and practically indispensable to the (wildly) ambitious program of teaching, preaching, writing and publishing that Augustine undertook in the mid-390s, having at length reconciled himself to a public career as an official of the Christian church.14 11 See Cave, Thinking with Literature, 36, who defines kinesis in this context as “the transmission (usually from one body to another) of motor activation which the observer of some salient action or physical sensation feels as a neural readiness to perform the same action.” A mention two pages earlier of Book  2 of De doctrina christiana confirms the underlying continuity between Cave’s and Augustine’s approaches to (“literary”) texts, even if Cave is less interested than (as I argue) Augustine was in the socio-material realities of textual production and exchange. 12 See further Vessey, “Reading (in) the Confessions,” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine’s Confessions, ed. Tarmo Toom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 317–34, esp. 320–1. 13 The indispensable term is Brian Stock’s: see, e.g., “Textual Communities: Judaism, Christianity, and the Definitional Problem,” in his Listening for the Text: On the Uses of the Past (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 140–48, and Augustine the Reader: Mediation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of Intepretation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 190–206, on Augustine’s De doctrina christiana; Jane Heath, “‘Textual Communities’: Brian Stock’s Concept and Recent Scholarship on Antiquity,” in Scriptural Interpretation at the Interface between Education and Religion: In Memory of Hans Conzelman, ed. Florian Wilk (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 5–35. 14 For another turn around that protracted moment in Augustine’s life, thought and career, see my “Face Book of the Common Reader? Prosopography and Self-Recognition in Augustine’s Confessions,” in _Fide Non Ficta: Essays in Honor of Paul B. Harvey, Jr._, ed.

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Already on his return to Africa from Italy, as Possidius recalls, Augustine would “meditate day and night on the law of the Lord” (Ps 1:2), and then “whatever God disclosed to his intelligence as he thought and prayed, he taught to those present in speech (sermonibus) and to those absent in books (libris).”15 Possidius did not yet know Augustine at that point in his life, but the evidence lay before him in writings from the period. And he knew what picture he was going to paint. Over the course of the Vita Augustini, he would lay out something like a flow-chart of the intellectual and material operations linking Augustine’s study of biblical texts to the production of public discourse and published books, each stage of the process marked by a verb or verbs that can be understood in a fairly precise, technical or semi-technical sense. Thus: cogitare (et orare) : intellegere / inuenire : docere (sermonibus) / disputare : dictare : excipere [take down by shorthand] : emendare : transcribere / conscribere / edere [publish in writing or book form].16 There is nothing startling about any of the elements in this program, the whole of which could be inferred from Augustine’s texts without Possidius’s help. The routines and terminology are those of the time, well attested in other sources. All that is unusual about Possidius’s account is the density and consistency of his reference to the axis of textual production, which in turn reflect the steadiness of Augustine’s proceeding. Every biography builds to a death scene. None before this one had built so inexorably to a death scene with books. The young Augustine may have needed an afternoon at the baths in Ostia before he could weep for the loss of his mother (Conf. 9.12.32). The old man needed no visible script to help him bewail his sins at the last. The tableau mort of his penitential reading is as publicly staged as any of the closet scenes in the Confessions. Walls may not make Christians, but they have their uses or affordances.17 There are thresholds to be crossed in life and at life’s end. Bishops are the appointed supervisors of threshold-crossings. In case his narrative device was not patent enough, Possidius clues us in to it by adding (out of chronological sequence, between the description of the bishop on his deathbed and the John D. Muccigrosso and Celia E. Schultz, Biblioteca di Athenaeum 64 (Bari: Edipuglia, 2020), 91–113. 15 Possidius, Vita Augustini (ed. Bastiaensen), 3.2. 16 Possidius, Vita Augustini (ed. Bastiaensen), 5.2–3, 7, and esp. 18.9–10. 17 With Conf. 8.2.4 (parietes faciunt christianos?) compare Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 103, sermo 1.9 (CCL 40, 1482): In omnibus scripturis supereminentissimam viam, supereminentissimum locum caritas obtinet; non ad eam adspirant nisi boni, hanc nobiscum non communicant mali; possunt communicare baptismum, possunt communicare cetera sacramenta, possunt communicare orationem, possunt communicare istos parietes, et istam coniunctionem: caritatem nobiscum non communicant.

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account of his passing) that “until his final illness [Augustine] never stopped preaching the word of God in church, energetically and forcefully, with a clear mind and good judgment.”18 Nor in fact, as we have already heard, did he cease even then. No longer able to preach in church, Augustine kept on preaching from his bedroom. Silenced as an orator (as once before, in 386), physically immobilized, he went on dictating or indicating with his whole body from inside a walled enclosure of pages excerpted from a set of texts that he had already expounded, either viva voce in church or by dictation, from beginning to end. No-one apart from his physicians was allowed into the room to see him. Yet all eyes were again on Augustine the bishop, who again had his eyes fixed on pages of the Psalmist. Instead of the propulsive first-person perfects of that earlier, Pauline, life-changing moment in Conf. 8.12.29 (arripui [codicem], aperui et legi in silentio), the rallentando third-person imperfects of an end-of-life reflection in full sight of posterity: ipsos quaterniones … intuebatur et legebat, et ubertim ac iugiter flebat. The time and tempo have changed, the figure remains the same: Augustine, making an affective and intelligible sign of himself with a book; Augustine pointing to himself, to a book, beyond both. The Augustinian index. He died, says Possidius, “with all the members of his body intact, and with his sight and hearing unimpaired.”19 In the same sentence, he reports the bishop’s burial. Then what? Having no possessions, Augustine made no personal bequests. He did, however, leave instructions that the “library of the church [at Hippo] and all its books (omnesque codices) should be carefully preserved for those coming after.”20 A threshold had been crossed, a line drawn. Augustine and his books were henceforth physically separate. The rest of the epilogue of the Vita Augustini plays variations on that theme. Two book-lists are already to the fore: Augustine’s (incomplete) review of his published output, cited by Possidius under the title De recensione librorum, and the differently structured catalogue or Indiculum or check-list of his monographs, sermons and letters, which would now be appended to the Vita Augustini as an aid to readers seeking copies from the library at Hippo or wherever else they might be found.21 The book-list 18 19 20 21

Possidius, Vita Augustini (ed. Bastiaensen), 31.4. Possidius, Vita Augustini (ed. Bastiaensen), 31.5. Possidius, Vita Augustini (ed. Bastiaensen), 31.6. Possidius, Vita Augustini (ed. Bastiaensen), 18.10: statui … in huius opusculi finem etiam eorumden librorum, tractatuum et epistularum indiculum adiungere, etc. Goulven Madec, “Possidius de Calama et les listes des oeuvres d’Augustin,” in Titres et articulations du texte dans les oeuvres antiques, ed. Jean-Claude Fredouille et al., Actes du Colloque International de Chantilly  13–15 décembre 1994 (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1997), 427–45; Volker Henning Drecoll, “Etiam posteris aliquid profuturum: Zur Selbstilisierung bei Augustin

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added to the Life in the codex designed by Possidius was a paratext to the Works, in the sense of the term “paratext” put into circulation by Genette in 1987 in a book called Seuils (“Sills” or “Thresholds”) and now current coin in literary and book-historical studies.22 Explicit uita sancti Augustini. Incipit librorum omnium et tractatuum uel epistolarum sancti Augustini indiculum. The posthumous reception and reproduction of “Augustine” as body-of-work began from that chiasmus—or would have done, had not Augustine so often crossed the line beforehand in his own still-living person. For, as students of his Retractationum libri need no reminding, Augustine started early to provide for the day when he would no longer be personally accountable to any human reader or authority for what he had signed bodily with books—for the day, that is, when all those book-signings of his would acquire superadded potential to go wild in ways that he might or might not have contemplated.23 *** There were (at least) two possibilities for expanding the title of the conference that led to the present volume, depending on whether one closed or opened the parenthesis. It would be possible for us to represent to ourselves a late Augustine, anxiously writing any wild Augustine out of the picture, selfcensoring, doubling down, trying to dictate the course of his own literary and doctrinal afterlife. Or we could read the parenthesis as a nudge from our hosts to discover more of the wild Augustine in the late years than (perhaps) previous scholarship had registered. Faced preposthumously with the closure of the canon of his work, another prolific author once imagined Augustine trying by force of love to “make something happen” to God in the writing of the Confessions.24 For Augustine himself, it was an article of faith that God the author of all things would keep und der Beeinflussung der eigenen Wirkungsgeschichte durch Bücher und Bibliothek,” RÉAug 47 (2002): 313–35; Clemens Weidmann, “Augustine’s Works in Circulation,” in A Companion to Augustine, ed. Mark Vessey (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 431–49. 22 Gérard Genette, Seuils (Paris: Seuil, 1987); trans. Jane E. Lewin, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 23 From a burgeoning recent scholarship on the Retractationes, see in particular Goulven Madec, Introduction aux “Révisions” et à la lecture des oeuvres de saint Augustin (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1996); and Hildegund Müller, “Augustine’s Retractationes in the Context of His Letter Corpus: On the Genesis and Function of an Uncommon Genre,” RÉAug 62 (2016): 95–120. 24 Jacques Derrida in Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida, trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 18.

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making things happen to Augustine in and by writing and other media.25 It is not only in the garden scene of Conf. 8 or Possidius’s account of his last days that we sense a certain unboundedness of Augustine’s own affective-cognitive being with respect to the bound or unbound bodies of books—a willingness, we could say, to compound the natural and cultural affordances of those signifying objects with the affordances of his own being (body, mind, life, works). Augustine knew as well as the next man where his own flesh ended and the parchment of a codex began; more often than not, the gap between the two was occupied by one or more of his fellow human beings (readers, stenographers, librarii). That did not prevent him from imagining himself as or from turning into a human paratext. There are many different ways of living with books, not all equally consequential. Has any vanished library of the ancient Mediterranean world, in proportion to its size, attracted more attention in recent times than Augustine’s at Hippo? By self-signing with books to the very moment of his death, Augustine became singularly subject to the chances and mischances of the processes by which books and the texts that they contain are produced, preserved, transmitted and received. There is a story of what Augustine did with his books, tellable in part from the Retractationes Augustini and still being retold, where the genitive in that title-phrase is subjective. Indissociable from it is the wilder story of what those books did with and to Augustine or “Augustine,” of his mise (and remise) en livre. Late as it is now, it is not too soon to begin tying those two stories together. II.

The Speculum

Possidius mentions only one more book by Augustine after the Retractationes (or De recensione librorum, as he calls it) and he names it in the very next sentence, before announcing the onset of the Vandal invasion: Because he wanted to be useful to everyone, both those who are able to read many books and those who are not, he excerpted God’s commands and prohibitions for the conduct of life from both the divine testaments, old and new, adding a preface, and made a single codex of the whole (ex his unum codicem fecit), so that anyone who wanted could read it, and perceive by it how obedient or disobedient they were; and he wished this work to be called the Speculum (“Mirror”).26 25 His classic statement of the general principle is in Sermo 12.4: Multi autem modi sunt, quibus nobiscum loquitur deus. Loquitur aliquando per aliquod instrumentum, sicut per codicem divinarum scripturarum, etc. 26 Possidius, Vita Augustini (ed. Bastiaensen), 28.3.

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The genre of the Speculum or mirror-book would go viral in the western Middle Ages. Augustine appears to have invented it.27 As Possidius’s description already intimates, most of the words in Augustine’s Speculum were lifted straight off the page of the Latin bible codexes that he was using, his own substantive contribution being restricted to a preface and a few paragraphs of further procedural explanation between Genesis and Revelation. Along the way, the découpage of the biblical text is punctuated with rudimentary signals to readers who might want to keep or find their place in the original (et alio loco … et post aliquot versus). Those markers were presumably inserted by the assistant or assistants who compiled the codex on Augustine’s instructions, either in the course of his dictation or else from marks made by him beforehand in the biblical exemplars. Either way, Augustine’s chosen role was chiefly to point out text-portions for copying, so as to provide the end-user—hypothetically, one who had space and time only for this book in their life as a Christian—with a single-codex “bible” laying down God’s law. That he should have thought to do this a year or two at most before the emperor Theodosius II, in March 429, gave orders for the compilation of a reference-work of imperial laws since the time of Constantine, conceived as part of a larger process of juristic synthesis that would issue in “a manual of the law which would be a true guide to life, magisterium uitae,”28 is a reminder that most kinds of textual activity in the Roman world at this time were part of a common ecology of the codex. To speak of Augustine as the “author” of the Speculum makes about as much sense as to attribute authorship of the Theodosian Code to Theodosius’s commissioners. Yet Augustine’s hand is visible, like theirs, on every page. With the contemporary Retractationes, the Speculum is a superlative instance of Augustine’s bodily paratexting—of his actually and/or virtually hands-on organization of texts in or as books and of his signalization of those texts to other readers.29 Because at some point, early on, an unknown copyist-editor of the Speculum replaced Augustine’s Old Latin text of the Bible with the Vulgate, doubts were 27 Almut Mutzenbecher, “Der Nachtrag zu den Retraktationen mit Augustins letzten Werken,” RÉAug 30 (1984): 60–83, at 66. 28 John  F.  Matthews, Laying Down the Law: A Study of the Theodosian Code (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 10, quoting the imperial proclamation (CTh 1.1.5) read to the Roman senate in December 438 when the Code was promulgated. 29 See also in this connection Clemens Weidmann, “Augustinus als Organisator von Texten,” in Augustin philosophe et prédicateur: Hommage à Goulven Madec, ed. Isabelle Bochet, Actes du colloque international organisé à Paris les 8 et 9 septembre 2011 (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 2012), 507–22; Laurence Dalmon, Un dossier de l’Épistolaire augustinien: la correspondence entre l’Afrique et Rome à propos de l’affaire pélagienne (416–418): traduction, commentaire et annotations, Studia Patristica Supplement 3 (Leuven: Peeters, 2015), esp. ch. 3: “Littérature de chancellerie.”

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for a long time entertained about the (Augustinian) authenticity of the work as a whole.30 That so wilful a wilding or redomestication by some later hand should have been possible at all is of course further confirmation of the essentially paratextual nature of Augustine’s agency in the first place. If we say, borrowing a phrase now from Roland Barthes, that in the Speculum Augustine approached a degré zéro of authorship, we must also see that in doing so he reached the very top of his game as a human index. No-one conversant with Augustine’s other works who reads the preface and longer interpolations in the Speculum can doubt that its conception and execution were his. The compilation was designed, he says, so that a Christian believer can examine themself here and consider how far they have advanced in good behaviour and works, and how far they still fall short. This way, they can give thanks for what they have got, and, regarding what they have not got, set about doing what they need to do in order to get it, taking care and offering up prayers of devout faith that they may preserve the former and obtain the latter.31

Unemphatic at this point, the language of self-scrutiny (ut hic se inspiciat) is sufficient to make sense of the title.32 The metaphysical conceit of the biblical text as mirror of the Christian soul appears to be original to Augustine.33 It is especially prominent in his Psalter exegesis, and not only in the homilies and other expositions of that book to which Erasmus tendentiously assigned the title of Enarrationes in Psalmos.34 Soon after the garden-scene in Book 8 of the Confessions, we find Augustine at Cassiciacum, fired up by the Psalms of David and wishing that, unbeknownst to him, the Manichees could see the look on his 30 Anne-Marie la Bonnardière, “Le Speculum quis ignorat,” in Saint Augustin et la Bible (Paris: Beauchesne, 1986), 401–09. 31 CSEL  12, 5, lines 15–22: ut hic se inspiciat  … quantumque in bonis moribus operibusque profecerit et quantum sibi desit, adtendat. Sic enim potest et de his quae habet gratias agere et de his quae non habet, ut habeat, satis agere ac proper illa servanda, propter haec adipiscenda curam precesque fidelis pietatis adhibere. 32 See also CSEL 12, 49, line 24–50, line 2, prefacing the Book of Proverbs: … in hoc Speculo, ubi se illi inspiciant quibus iam persuasum est bene ac laudabiliter vivere, sed, ut hoc faciant, quae sibi optanda atque observanda sint quaerunt. 33 Anne-Marie la Bonnardière, Biblia Augustiniana, Livre de la Sagesse (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1970), 231–35: “L’Écriture sainte, miroir du chrétien d’après saint Augustin.”. 34 Michael Fiedrowicz, Psalmus Vox Totius Christi: Studien in Augustins “Enarrationes in psalmos” (Freiburg: Herder, 1997), 22; summarized in his introduction to Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 1–32, trans. Maria Boulding OSB (New York: New City Press, 2000), 37–43 (“The Psalms as a Mirror and Remedy of Salvation for the Soul”) and Augustinus-Lexikon 2, cols. 846–48.

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face and hear the tone of his voice as he sang one (ut intuerentur faciem meam et audirent uoces meas, 9.4.8). The Confessions can be seen fulfilling that wish for an expanded constituency, as Augustine deployed the Psalms and other biblical texts to stage a lively image of himself—of his progress and shortcomings in the Christian life, revealed in the mirror of Scripture—to readers who might be expected to learn by his example how better to attend to themselves. The staging of his last scene at Hippo, as related by Possidius, would be on the same model: Augustine pointing (to himself) with books, beckoning other Christians into the light of Scripture. The section excerpted from the Psalms is the equal second longest in the Speculum (with the Epistle to the Romans, after Ecclesiasticus) and one of very few to elicit authorial comment. Having come to the end of Psalm 150, Augustine interjects: These are the passages that we have gathered from the Book of Psalms, in the light of which anyone who aspires to make progress should examine their own life. And here we advise the reader, that they should read the extracts that we have chosen from the Psalms as if they connectedly made up one psalm, passing over in silence the words that we have inserted so that anyone who wishes can look where a passage that we have chosen is written, i.e. in which psalm or where in a given psalm. A person who leaves out those elements and who, in a continuous reading, examines only the words of the Psalms will be more joyfully and hence more usefully affected by the divine utterances.35

The statement is immediately striking for its almost fussy precision and for the casual infelicity—or felicity?—with which Augustine uses the verb inspicio (“look at,” “examine”) three times in as many sentences, first for a reader’s selfexamination in the confected psalm-text of the Speculum, then for a reader’s reference back to the full text of the Psalter, and finally for a reader’s scrutiny of the confected psalm-text itself qua text. No amount of trouble, it seems, is too much to take when it comes to getting a human life, whether one’s own or someone else’s, into sharp focus in the divine speculum. It is tempting to assimilate this styling by Augustine of his Psalter epitome or Mirror for Everyman to his pondering in City of God 20.14 of the nature of the (singular) “other book” seen by John of Patmos (Revelation 20:12) as being opened at the Day of Judgment 35 CSEL  12, 48, lines 14–23: Haec de libro Psalmorum collegimus, in quibus suam quisque vitam, si proficere affectat, inspiciat. Ubi lectorem admonemus, ut ea quae de Psalmis posui tamquam unum psalmum contextim legat, tacitis verbis meis, quae ad hoc interposui, ut si voluerit inspiciat, ubi sit scriptum quod posui, id est quoto vel in quo loco eiusdem psalmi. His enim praetermissis qui lectione continuata inspexerat sola verba Psalmorum multo iucundius et ob hoc utilius ex divinis afficietur eloquiis.

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alongside the (plural) books that Augustine takes for the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. In the biblical text that he was following at this point in the wake of his fellow-countryman Tyconius, the single book appeared as liber qui est uitae uniuscuiusque or the book of every individual’s life. Augustine does not call that book a codex, rejects the idea that any single, usable book could possibly contain the life records of all human beings who ever lived, and concludes that the word liber should in this instance be taken as a metaphor for a certain divine power (quaedam uis diuina) that would instantaneously cause every individual’s conscience to be presented with a full accounting of their deeds and misdeeds.36 That he could affirm this so matter-of-factly when pressing on to the end of the City of God in the mid-420s may have owed something to his longstanding habit of ascribing a similar power of quasi-forensic self-accounting to the actual books of Scripture. Observing the terms of Augustine’s summons to his reader in the preface to the Speculum (ut hic se inspiciat … et … adtendat), we might also associate his instructions for the continuous reading of a composite psalm-text with the analysis in Book 11 of the Confessions of the form of attentio (11.28.37, 38) required for the recitation from memory of just such a text. “And what is the case for the whole psalm (et quod in toto cantico  … fit),” he writes there, “is likewise the case for every little part of it, and every syllable of it; it is true of the longer drawn-out performance (actio) of which that psalm may be a little part, of the whole life of a human being of which all those person’s performances are little parts, and of the whole time-span (toto saeculo) of ‘the sons of men,’ of which all human lives are parts” (11.28.38). God’s knowledge of his creation, he goes on to say, should not be compared with human knowledge of a psalm, strained as the latter always is in action between memory and expectation. He nonetheless makes the comparison, before ending Book 11 with a double citation of the In principio of Genesis  1:1, announcing an exegesis of the opening narrative of the Bible that, in the course of Books 12 and 13, will allegorically encompass the whole temporal dispensation of the saeculum. Only once in those books does the word codex appear, and then figuratively, to denote the supernal reading matter of the angels, which the Bible calls “the face of God” (13.15.18). One could doubt on such evidence whether Augustine’s specular-scriptural textology was ever more than incidentally or intermittently correlated with any codicological instincts that he may have had. It is worth 36 For the Tyconian conditioning of this exegesis, see Anne-Marie la Bonnardière, ‘L’Apocalypse, Augustin et Tyconius,’ in Saint Augustin et la Bible, 369–86, at 384; Roger Gryson, ed., Tyconii Afri Expositio Apocalypseos, CCL 107A (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 221–22.

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remembering, however, that every copy of a book or books of the Christian Bible that Augustine saw or knew anything about, or even thought he knew something about (such as books of the Hebrew Scriptures kept by Jews), was spine-hinged, and that he used the terms codex/codices and liber/libri interchangeably when referring to them.37 And while he may never have seen “a Bible,” in the sense of a singular physical object containing texts from Genesis to Revelation, when it came to making his final dispositions for such of his fellows as could not read many books—in the Speculum—he took what he needed from those texts and, in Possidius’s words, “made one codex of them.” Before moving out of the sightlines of Augustine’s Speculum we should pause, finally, over his assertion that one who followed his instructions for reading the Psalter epitome confected by him in that work stood to be influenced more joyfully (iucundius) and usefully (utilius) by it. There is a partly parallel passage in a sermon that he preached on Psalm 123. The psalm is one of celebration and to be understood, Augustine suggests, as spoken or sung by the members of Christ’s body—that is, by the faithful—in confident expectation of the fulfilment of divine promises made to them. Those singing the psalm, he goes on, are not strangers to us, nor is the voice of this psalm any other voice but ours. Listen as if you are hearing yourselves; listen as if you are focusing attention on yourselves in the mirror of the scriptures. For when you attend to the scriptures as to a mirror, your face lights up with joy; when you find someone who is like yourself in the celebration of hope, among certain members of the body of Christ—the members who sang of those things—then you will be one of those members too, and you will sing of those things.38

Augustine’s tractatus on the Psalms are thick with passages like this one, in which we all but see and hear him working on the sensibilities of his congregation. One of his nearest predecessors in the genre, Hilary of Poitiers, wrote a preface to his Tractatus in Psalmos emphasizing the interpretive challenge posed by those texts and quoting Isaiah 29:11–2 on the sealed book that was 37 Petitmengin, “Codex,” cols. 1028–30, concluding: “‘Liber’ est donc, assez souvent, synonym de c[odex]. Le c[odex] et tellement prépondérant qu’il a entraîné ‘liber’ dans sa sphère sémantique.” 38 Enarrationes in Psalmos 123.3 (CCL  40, 1827): Non enim qui cantant alieni sunt a nobis, aut non in hoc psalmo vox nostra est. Sic audite, tamquam vos ipsos audiatis; sic audite, tamquam in speculo scripturarum vos ipsos adtendatis. Cum enim tamquam speculum adtendis scripturas, exhilaratur facies tua; cum similem te invenies exsultatione spei, membris quibusdam Christi, quae membra ista cantarunt, eris et tu in ipsis membris, et cantabis ista.

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as unreadable to those who could read as to those who could not.39 Augustine never prefaced his Psalter exegesis. In a sense, the whole of it was paratextual for him. It was the opening in the Scriptures that enabled him to open the Scriptures to others.40 From the moment he had any responsibility to preach, he seems to have used the Psalms of David as his hermeneutical studio or sandbox. It was the place he went for a break from grappling directly with the first book of Moses or the first letter of Paul, for a chance to try out ways of reading God’s books, “live” before an audience. Without making light of the difficulties he found in the Psalms, Augustine made as much as he could of their accessibility. The psalm-as-mirror trope was only one of a range of hermeneutical devices that he used for the purpose, and he typically worked it in combination with others—as in the passage just quoted, where his hearer’s self-attention in the now acoustically re-engineered mirror of the text is turned straightaway to Christo-ecclesiological account. Joyful at finding themself sharing in the hope of the Christian community or mystical body of Christ, every such hearer would at the same time become a useful member of the whole, their “action” or performance part of a larger action or performance stage-managed in this case by Augustine. In passages like this we see how Augustine meant to form a new kind of textual community, composed of readers and non-readers alike, their eyes and ears fixed on texts that showed them what they were and what they could be, shaping them cognitively and affectively in view of a future state of being in which, like the angels, they would “read” only the face of God. A few minutes earlier in the sermon on Psalm 123 he had reminded his audience of that splitscreen scenario: “Now we believe, then we shall see; when we believe, that is our hope in the time of this world; when we shall see, that will be the reality of the world to come. For then we shall see face to face  …”41 If a single scriptural sentence can be said to underpin Augustine’s hermeneutics it is the one echoed here and often in his Psalter exegesis, as well as in his other texts, namely 1 Corinthians 13:2: Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate, tunc autem facie ad faciem; nunc cognosco ex parte, tunc autem cognoscam sicut et cognitus sum.42 Paul appears to describe two interfacings, one present and one to come, between (A) the knowledge that God has of human beings and (B) 39 Hilary of Poitiers, Tractatus in Psalmos, instr. 5. 40 Fiedrowicz, Psalmus Vox Totius Christi: Studien in Augustins “Enarrationes in Psalmos” (Freiburg: Herder, 1997); Michael Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere: Augustine’s Early Figurative Exegesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 41 Enarr. in Ps. 123.2 (CCL 40, 1826). 42 For the salience of this verse in both the De doctrina christiana and Confessions see Vessey, “Face Book of the Common Reader?”, esp. 98–101.

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the knowledge that human beings severally have of themselves. The interfacing of those knowledges in the world to come would be unmediated, without interface, pure face-to-faceness. For the time being, however, what God knows is mediated to human beings at the interface figured by Paul as a mirror and taken somewhat literally by Augustine for the legible surface of Scripture— diuina pagina, as he twice calls it in his sermons on the Psalms.43 Pagina for him and his contemporaries meant a written/writable surface or space, not a two-sided leaf that could be turned.44 (Do we ever in fact see Augustine the convert “turn a page”?45) In practice, the literal and physical “page” of Scripture to which Augustine invited his auditors closely to attend—that is, before he turned it into a speaking page, as he always did when preaching ad populum— was that presented by an open codex (i.e. two facing pages).46 Although Augustine never calls the hair-and-flesh surface of a codex facies, it is possible that the proximity of per speculum to facie ad faciem in that central Pauline text made it easier for him to read off the faces of his ideal listeners the joy he thought should come to them from seeing and hearing themselves in the mirror of Scripture: Cum enim tamquam speculum adtendis scripturas, exhilaratur facies tua.

43

Both contexts are loaded. (1) Enarr. in Ps. 45.7 (CCL 38, 522): Liber tibi sit pagina divina, ut haec audias; liber tibi sit orbis terrarum, ut haec videas. In istis codicibus non ea legunt, nisi qui litteras noverunt; in toto mundo legat et idiota. (2) Enarr. in Ps. 140.2 (CCL 40, 2026): Quidquid ergo salubriter mente concipitur, vel ore profertur, vel de qualibet divina pagina exsculpitur, non habet finem nisi caritatem. Forms of pagina, variously qualified, appear regularly in Augustine’s sermons to denote (the text of) Scripture. 44 Lehmann, “Blätter, Seiten, Spalten, Zeilen,” 6. 45 We should in any case be careful of going all the way with Andrew Piper, Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2012), 2: “We know Augustine was reading a book [i.e. a codex] from the way he randomly accesses a page and uses his finger to mark his place. The conversion at the heart of The Confessions was an affirmation of the new technology of the book within the lives of individuals, indeed, as the technology that helped turn readers into individuals. Turning the page, not turning the handle of the scroll, was the new technical prelude to undergoing a major turn in one’s own life” (emphasis mine). What the author says next is less in need of nuance: “In taking hold of the book, according to Augustine, we are taken hold of by books.” 46 Again, one should probably resist rushing the historical plot as Piper does in asserting, albeit plausibly, that “[e]ver since its inception as a pair of wooden boards bound together by a loose string, the book has served as a tool of reflection” and that “there is a doubleness to the book that is central to its meaning as an object”—much as one may be tempted to claim Augustine as a witness already to the timeless truth that “[w]ith the pages facing each other as they face us, the open books stands before us as a mirror” (Book Was There, 3). I am glad to acknowledge the stimulus that Piper’s lively and important book has given to the present study.

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Rarely read these days, never likely to be translated in its entirety, the Speculum is a uniquely transparent and economical Augustinian textual device, as wild in its media-savvy way as the Confessions or, say, the Soliloquia, and as much of its moment, by then very late. The end of all Augustine’s teaching was endless face-time with God, for himself and his fellow human beings—the community of the ciuitas dei. His twin watchwords were frui deo and prodesse aliis. Immediately after the turning-point of the De ciuitate dei, where a fresh codex ushered in the twelve libri or quaterniones making up the latter part of the work, he had ponderously declared: “We tell of the city of God witnessed by the Scripture [in the Psalms] that, by no chance motions of souls but manifestly by the disposition of the highest providence excelling in its divine authority all writings of all nations, brings all kinds of human genius under its sway [subiecit, echoing Virgil, Aen. 6.853: parcere subiectis et debellare superbos]” (ciu. 11.1). De ciuitate dei was meant to demonstrate the special affordances of a supremely singular divine scriptura over against the most accredited litterae, in all genres, of the Roman nation.47 Having finally completed this magnum opus in 426/427, and then without pausing in his daily and nightly dealings with Julian of Eclanum, the monks of southern Gaul or other unrelenting interlocutors, he was to be found devoting himself to the Speculum and to two other works that, in common with the Speculum, had no simple controversial target nor any subject narrower than the total enterprise of text-based instruction that Possidius would eventually thematize in the Vita Augustini and anatomize in the Indiculum. One of them was of course the Retractationes. The other was an opusculum (his word) that the author had apparently set aside incomplete around the time of embarking on the Confessions, and whose opening lines, as we shall see in closing, contain perhaps the clearest formulation he ever gave of his working theory of human, mutual paratextuality within a codex ecology. III.

Closure? The (Late) De Doctrina Christiana

Flashback to earlyish Augustine, mid-397. O’Donnell marks the place, citing Letter  38 to Profuturus. The writer’s haemorrhoids were so painful, he could neither stand nor sit. Unfit for other business, he lay prone, dictating his Confessions, the work that would finally break the “writer’s block” that 47 See, e.g., Gillian Clark, “City of Books: Augustine and the World as Text,” in The Early Christian Book, ed. William  E.  Klingshirn and Linda Safran (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 117–38; Vessey, “History of the Book.”

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“claim[ed] its last victim in the unfinished torso of de doctrina christiana, apparently intended as an authoritative episcopal guide to Christian exegesis and preaching.” O’Donnell then quotes the final lines of De doctrina christiana from thirty years later, catching an echo of Confessions 10 that signals the “kinship between the two projects.”48 There may be another splice to make too, with the Retractationes, which Augustine would break off ca. 427 in order to go back and seamlessly complete De doctrina christiana.49 In Letter 37, also from 397, he asked his friend Simplicianus to bring to bear on his writings not only the care of a reader (cura legentis) but also the acumen of a critic (censuram corrigentis).50 What were the works that might then—not so fortuitously— have fallen under Simplicianus’s critical eye? It is very likely that they were the ones in a late-fourth-century (?) manuscript once at Corbie and now in St. Petersburg, namely (1) Ad Simplicianum de diuersis quaestionibus, (2) Contra epistulam Manichei quam uocant fundamenti, (3) De agone christiano and (4) the first two books De doctrina christiana: the first four works listed in Book 2 of the Retractationes, in the order in which they would eventually appear there, in the condition in which they would have been fit to circulate ca. 397.51 These would have been the first writerly fruits of Augustine’s episcopate, sent to his old mentor in Milan a few months before Simplicianus became bishop there in succession to Ambrose. Whatever Aurelius of Carthage could have expected at this time from a work like De doctrina christiana,52 it is not 48 James  J. O’Donnell, ed., Augustine: Confessions, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), vol. 1, xli–xliv with nn. 62 and 72. 49 Retr., 2.4.1 (CCL 57, 92–93): “When I discovered that the books De doctrina christiana were unfinished, I thought I’d better finish them, rather than go on with my revision of other works and leave them in that state. And so I completed the third book … and added a final one, rounding out the work in four books, the first three of which provide help in understanding the Scriptures, while the fourth provides help on how to set forth what we understand.” 50 Ep. 37.3 (CCL 31, 155, lines 26–31): Quaestiunculas sane quas mihi enodandas iubere dignatus es, etsi mea tarditate implicatus non intellegerem, tuis meritis adiutus aperirem. Tantum illud quaeso, ut pro infirmitate mea deprecaris deum et, sive in his quibus me exercere benigne paterneque voluisti, sive in aliis quaecumque nostra in tuas sanctas manus forte (!) pervenerint, quia sicut dei data sic etiam mea errata cogito, non solum curam legentis impendas, sed etiam censuram corrigentis. 51 Kenneth  B.  Steinhauser, “Codex Leningradensis  Q.v.I.3: Some Unresolved Problems,” De doctrina christiana: A Classic of Western Culture, ed. Duane W.H. Arnold and Pamela Bright (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 33–43, after Almut Mutzenbecher, “Codex Leningrad  Q.v.I.3 (Corbie): Ein Beitrag zu seiner Beschreibung,” Sacris Erudiri 18 (1967–68): 406–50. 52 See Edmund Hill, “De doctrina christiana: A Suggestion,” Studia Patristica 6 (1962) 443–46, citing Augustine, Ep. 41.2 (CCL 31, 167, lines 36–41), to Aurelius, which adumbrates a project for resourcing the scriptural preaching of African clergy.

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hard to imagine Augustine himself giving the order, satis episcopaliter and to the best librarii in Carthage, for a presentation codex of new works of his that Simplicianus might bring to the attention of Ambrose. The codex would have ended with a review of the “rightful use” made of liberal disciplines by Latin Christian writers from Cyprian to Hilary and (Marius) Victorinus, “not to mention those now living” (ut de uiuis taceam = De doctrina christiana 2.40.61). This was the circum-Mediterranean company, Ambrose pre-eminent in it, that Augustine as writing bishop was now self-consciously keeping, all the while bethinking himself, as he told Simplicianus, equally of God’s gifts and of his own errors (quia sicut dei data sic etiam mea errata cogito). There is no sign that Augustine or anyone in his entourage did anything with the two-and-a-bit-book De doctrina between the day he sent the two completed books to Simplicianus as part of a presentation codex in 397 and the day he returned to that point in his career in the course of the Retractationes. We know that Augustine as bishop and writer was constantly over-committed. Even so, it is difficult to reconcile the appearance of nonchalance with which he left the unfinished De doctrina christiana on one side for three decades with the appearance of urgency with which he eventually picked it up again and promptly finished it. It may be less difficult, however, if we make more allowance for the wildness, early and late, of Augustine’s sense of the cognitive affordances of books that could be opened and closed. Augustine, we may conjecture, was able to finish De doctrina christiana as he did, in a personal and pastoral context that had changed dramatically since 397, because, despite the dizzying ambition of the work’s first two and a half books, he found scarcely anything in need of revision when he returned to them. And he resolved to finish this work in particular—alone of several opuscula imperfecta from the 390s, and at the cost of delaying other, pressing revisions—because of its potential to offer a theoretical and practical rationale for everything that he had uttered as a teacher or consigned to writing since those far-off days at Cassiciacum, or that God might still grant him time to set forth. The overlap between the projected scheme of the Retractationes and the universal taxonomy of discursive genres presented in Book  4 of De doctrina christiana—“be it in the company of friends or opponents, in continuous speech or in debate, in sermons or in books, in letters of great length or extreme brevity”—leaps immediately to the eye.53 As there is an argument for reading Augustine’s tractates on the Psalms as paratextual with respect to 53 Doctr. chr. 4.18.37 (CCL 32, 143): sive ad populum sive privatim sive ad unum sive ad plures sive ad amicos sive ad inimicos sive in perpetua dictione sive in conlocutione, sive in tractatibus sive in libris sive in epistolis vel longissimis vel brevissimis … Cf. Retr. 1, prol. (CCL 57,

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his larger work as a scriptural teacher across exegetical genres, so there is an argument for reading the De doctrina christiana as a metatext for his entire published production—as the belatedly re-opened and shut book that, better in some respects than the Possidian Indiculum, would contain and open up the works of Augustine. By the late 420s, we have seen, Augustine was counting almost every codex and quire. Back in the 390s he had neatly tied off Book 1 of De doctrina christiana, on things (res) “that are objects of our faith,” by recalling how much had already been said on the subject by himself and “by others in other works.”54 After two books on signs (signa)—the largely self-contained hermeneutical core of the treatise, written across a gap of three decades—he embarked at length on a further one in the hope, as he said, that he would there be able to confine his remarks de modo proferendi and so finish the whole work in four.55 Book 4 is easily the longest book of De doctrina and would often circulate by itself in later tradition. Listening carefully, we may think we read at the end of it the author’s final words before retiring to the book-lined bedchamber described by Possidius: This book has ended up longer than I wanted or expected it to be; but it is not too long for the reader or hearer who welcomes it. Anybody who finds it too long should read it in parts if he or she wants to have a complete knowledge of it, and anybody who is not interested in such knowledge should not complain of its length. But in any case I thank God that in these four books I have been able to discuss, with such ability as I have, not the sort of person that I am—for I have many failings—but the sort of person that those who apply themselves to sound teaching, in other words Christian teaching, on behalf of others as well as themselves, ought to be.56 5): ut opuscula mea, sive in libris sive in epistulis sive in tractatibus cum quadam iudiciaria severitate recenseam. 54 Doctr. chr. 1.40.44 (CCL 32, 32): Propterea de rebus continentibus fidem, quantum pro tempore satis esse arbitratus sum, dicere volui, quia in aliis voluminibus, sive per alios sive per nos multa iam dicta sunt. Modus itaque sit iste libri huius. Cetera de signis, quantum dominus dederit, disseremus. 55 Doctr. chr. 4.1.1 (CCL  32, 116): Quia ergo de inveniendo multa iam diximus et tria de hac una parte volumina absolvimus, adiuvante domino de proferendo pauca dicemus, ut, si fieri potuerit, uno libro cuncta claudamus totumque hoc opus quattuor voluminibus terminetur. 56 Doctr. chr. 4.31.64 (CCL 32, 167): Longior evasit liber hic quam volebam quamque putaveram. Sed legenti vel audienti cui gratus est, longus non est. Cui autem longus est, per partes eum legat, qui habere vult cognitum. Quem vero cognitionis eius piget, de longitudine non queratur. Ego tamen deo nostro ago gratias, quod in his quattuor libris, non qualis ego essem, cui multa desunt, sed qualis esse debeat, qui in doctrina sana, id est christiana, non solum sibi, sed aliis etiam laborare studet, quantulacumque potui facultate disserui. The translation given above is from R. P. H. Green, ed. and trans., Augustine: De doctrina christiana (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). With the underlined passage compare (after O’Donnell,

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Here we encounter again the cognitive dynamic of parts and whole that is the signature of Augustine’s thinking about texts and discourse (and time and the universe). Impossible to preserve in translation is the syntax by which he ends on the word that Green renders as “discuss(ed),” disserui—as if to say in closing, orator that he was to the last, Dixi. The neatness of the closure is enviable but deceptive. There is a lot still happening here, even by the standards of Augustine’s eventful life in and with texts and books. In the previous paragraph he has set out the terms on which bishops and preachers coming after him but lacking his eloquence might take scripts for their teaching from collections of sermons such as he himself would shortly leave behind in the library at Hippo. The question was now no longer what kind of person Augustine had once been, nor even what kind of a person he had since become, but what Augustine (or “Augustine”) was about to become in the hands of future readers and compilers. There is our cue to end, but not without observing how the end of Augustine’s proceeding de doctrina christiana was set out already at the entrance of the handbook so titled. “There are certain precepts for handling the Scriptures,” he wrote before writing the Confessions, which can I think be usefully passed on to students of them, not only so that they may benefit by reading others who have opened the concealed contents of divine letters but also so that they themselves may benefit by opening them.57

The inference to be drawn from this finely balanced statement was made by O’Donnell: Aperire in this context … is clearly used of exposition of a text and the striking [quality of the] conjunction (etiam) lies in the claim that illumination comes not only from reading but even from the act of interpreting for others … One might think of the character in Forster who said she didn’t know what she knew until she heard what she had to say, or might think of Augustine himself, egoque ipse multa quae nesciebam scribendo me didicisse confitear [“And I myself confess that there are many things that I have learned in the process of writing”] (De trinitate 3, prol. 1).58 cited above, n48) Conf. 10.4.6, where we find the author’s characteristic language of (para) textual (self)indication: Hic est fructus confessionum mearum, non qualis fuerim sed qualis sim … Indicabo ergo talibus qualibus iubes ut serviam, non quis fuerim, sed quis iam sim et quis adhuc sim. 57 Doctr. chr., prol. (CCL 32, 1): Sunt praecepta quaedam tractandarum scripturarum quae studiosis earum video non incommode posse tradi, ut non solum legendo alios, qui divinarum litterarum operta aperuerunt, sed etiam ipsi aperiendo proficiant. 58 Bryn Mawr Classical Review 96.3.15 (online), reviewing R.P.H. Green’s edition and translation of De doctrina christiana (see n56).

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The specular cast of Augustine’s thinking in the passage quoted by O’Donnell from De trinitate is familiar, too, from the Retractationes, where it goes with an exhortation to the reader to read his works as a continuous sequence.59 What Augustine could usefully point out to others in writing was partly an accident of his attempt … to point things out in writing. So much is clear, and convincing. That a teacher learns in the course of trying to teach others is the kind of insight we associate with Augustine, but not one that can be claimed as original to him. What makes his opening gambit in De doctrina christiana so arresting is the instrumental lucidity of its notion of an individual’s making personal cognitive progress in the act of “opening” the Scriptures to others. As O’Donnell says, aperire here is “clearly used of the exposition of a text.” It should be added that, according to the lexica, aperire in this (para)textual application—as distinct from its use to denote the unfolding of a subject or problem—is a “late” Latin usage attested only in Christian milieux, apparently influenced by the locution aperire scripturas found in Old Latin versions of the Bible (as, for example, at Luke 24:32, where it refers to the risen Jesus’s discourse with his disciples on the road to Emmaus). Augustine uses aperire for the act of opening a biblical codex,60 most famously of course in the Confessions, a work that culminates in a bravura piece of scriptural exegesis and ends (closes?) with an almost physically demonstrative, kinesic sic inuenietur, sic aperietur. Whatever stopped him completing De doctrina christiana in the 390s, we may be justified in regarding the first sentence of that work—particularly in the light of its last sentence, dictated ca. 427—as marking the theoretical threshold or startingline for a species of textual productivity that was as wildly uncontainable as it was cardinally dependent on codex ecology. Works Cited I. Primary Sources

Augustine of Hippo. De doctrina christiana, translated by R. P. H. Green. Oxford Early Christian Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. —. Exposition of the Psalms 1–32, translated by Maria Boulding OSB. WSA III/15. New York: New City Press, 2000. 59 Retr., prol. (CCL 57, 6–7): Quapropter quicumque ista lecturi sunt, non me imitentur errantem, sed in melius proficientem. Inveniet enim fortasse quomodo scribendo profecerim, quisquis opuscula mea ordine quo scripta sunt legerit. Quod ut possit, hoc opere quantum potero curabo, ut eundem ordinem noverit. 60 Petitmengin, “Codex,” col. 1029.

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—. Speculum, edited by Franciscus Weihrich. CSEL 12. Vienna: Apud C. Geroldi Filium, 1887. Hilary of Poitiers. Tractatus in Psalmos, edited by J. Doignon. CCL 61–61B. Turnhout: Brepols, 1997–2009. Possidius of Calama. Indiculum. Appears as Operum s. Augustini elenchus, edited by André Wilmart. In Miscellanea Agostiniana: Testi e Studi pubblicati a cura dell’ Ordine Eremitano di S.  Agostino nel XV centenario dalla morte del santo Dottore. Vol. 2. Rome: Tipografia Vaticana, 1930–1931. —. Vita Augustini. In Vita di Cipriano, Vita di Ambrogio, Vita di Agostino, translated and edited by A. A. R. Bastiaensen, 127–241. Milan: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 1975. Tyconius. Tyconii Afri Expositio Apocalypseos, edited by Roger Gryson. CCL 107A. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011.

II.

Secondary Sources

Altaner, Berthold. “Beiträge zur Kenntnis des schriftstellerischen Schaffens Augustinus.” In Kleine patristische Schriften, 3–56. Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 83. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1967. Bennington, Geoffrey, and Jacques Derrida. Jacques Derrida, translated by Geoffrey Bennington. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Bischoff, Bernhard. Latin Paleography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, translated by Dáibhí Ó Cróinín and David Granz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Bonnardière, Anne-Marie la. “L’Apocalypse, Augustin et Tyconius.” In la Bonnardière, Bible, 369–86. —. Biblia Augustiniana, Livre de la Sagesse. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1970. —. “Le Speculum quis ignorat.” In la Bonnardière, Bible, 401–09. —, ed. Saint Augustin et la Bible. Paris: Beauchesne, 1986. Boudalis, Georgios. The Codex and Crafts in Late Antiquity. New York: Bard Graduate Center, 2018. Cameron, Michael. Christ Meets Me Everywhere: Augustine’s Early Figurative Exegesis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Cave, Terence. Thinking with Literature: Towards a Cognitive Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Clark, Gillian. “City of Books: Augustine and the World as Text.” In The Early Christian Book, edited by William E. Klingshirn and Linda Safran, 117–38. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007. Courcelle, Jeanne, and Pierre Courcelle. Iconographie de saint Augustin. 5 vols. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1965–1991. Dalmon, Laurence. Un dossier de l’Épistolaire augustinien: la correspondence entre l’Afrique et Rome à propos de l’affaire pélagienne (416–418): traduction, commentaire et annotations. Studia Patristica Supplement 3. Leuven: Peeters, 2015.

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Dekkers, Eligius. “Saint Augustin éditeur.” In Troisième centenaire de l’édition mauriste de saint Augustin, Communications présentés au colloque des 19 et 20 avril 1990, 235–44. Paris: Études Augustiniennes / Institut Catholique. Drecoll, Volker Henning. “Etiam posteris aliquid profuturum: Zur Selbstilisierung bei Augustin und der Beeinflussung der eigenen Wirkungsgeschichte durch Bücher und Bibliothek.” RÉAug 47 (2002): 313–3. Fiedrowicz, Michael. Psalmus Vox Totius Christi: Studien in Augustins “Enarrationes in psalmos.” Freiburg: Herder, 1997. Genette, Gérard. Seuils. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1987. Translated by Jane E. Lewin as Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Heath, Jane. “‘Textual Communities’: Brian Stock’s Concept and Recent Scholarship on Antiquity.” In Scriptural Interpretation at the Interface between Education and Religion: In Memory of Hans Conzelman, edited by Florian Wilk, 5–35. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Hill, Edmund. “De doctrina christiana: A Suggestion.” Studia Patristica 6 (1962): 443–46. Jager, Eric. The Book of the Heart. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Lehmann, Paul. “Blätter, Seiten, Spalten, Zeilen.” In Erforschung des Mittelalters: Ausgewählte Abhandlungen und Aufsätze. 3 vols. Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1959–1962. 3: 1–59. Madec, Goulven. Introduction aux “Révisions” et à la lecture des oeuvres de saint Augustin. Collection des études augustiniennes: Série antiquité 150. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1996. —. “Possidius de Calama et les listes des oeuvres d’Augustin.” In Titres et articulations du texte dans les oeuvres antiques, Actes du Colloque International de Chantilly 13–15 décembre 1994, edited by Jean-Claude Fredouille et  al., 427–45. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1997. Marrou, Henri-Irénée. Mousikos aner: Étude sur les scènes de la vie intellectuelle figurant sur les monuments funéraires romain. Grenoble: Didier & Richard, 1938. Matthews, John F. Laying Down the Law: A Study of the Theodosian Code. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Müller, Hildegund. “Augustine’s Retractationes in the Context of his Letter Corpus: On the Genesis and Function of an Uncommon Genre.” RÉAug 62 (2016): 95–120. Mutzenbecher, Almut. “Codex Leningrad  Q.v.I.3 (Corbie): Ein Beitrag zu seiner Beschreibung.” Sacris Erudiri 18 (1967–68): 406–50. —. “Der Nachtrag zu den Retraktationen mit Augustins letzten Werken.” RÉAug 30 (1984): 60–83. Petitmengin, Pierre. “Codex.” In AugLex 1: 1022–37.

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—. “Recherches sur Augustin et le livre antique.” In La Tradition vive: Mélanges d’histoire des textes en l’honneur de Louis Holtz, edited by Pierre Lardet, 3–14. Bibliologia 20. Paris and Turnhout: Brepols, 2003. Piper, Andrew. Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Scheele, Jürgen. “Buch und Bibliothek bei Augustinus.” Bibliothek und Wissenschaft 12 (1978): 14–114. Steinhauser, Kenneth B. “Codex Leningradensis Q.v.I.3: Some Unresolved Problems.” In De doctrina christiana: A Classic of Western Culture, edited by Duane W. H. Arnold and Pamela Bright, 33–43. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995. Stock, Brian. Augustine the Reader: Mediation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. —. “Textual Communities: Judaism, Christianity, and the Definitional Problem.” In Listening for the Text: On the Uses of the Past, 140–48. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. Tornau, Christian. “Medium und Text: Buch, Buchproduktion und Buchkomposition bei Augustinus.” In Von Rom nach Bagdad: Bildung und Religion von römischen Kaiserzeit bis zum klassischen Islam, edited by Peter Gemeinhardt and Sebastian Günther, 189–218. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013. Turner, Eric G. The Typology of the Early Codex. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977. Vessey, Mark. “Face Book of the Common Reader? Prosopography and Self-Recognition in Augustine’s Confessions.” In _Fide Non Ficta: Essays in Honor of Paul B. Harvey, Jr._, edited by John D. Muccigrosso and Celia E. Schultz, Biblioteca di Athenaeum 64, 91–113. Bari: Edipuglia, 2020. —. “The History of the Book: Augustine’s City of God and Post-Roman Cultural Memory.” In Augustine’s City of God: A Critical Guide, edited by James Wetzel, 14–32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. —. “Reading (in) the Confessions.” In The Cambridge Companion to Augustine’s Confessions, edited by Tarmo Toom. 317–34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. —, ed. A Companion to Augustine. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Weidmann, Clemens. “Augustinus als Organisator von Texten.” In Augustin philosophe et prédicateur: Hommage à Goulven Madec, Actes du colloque international organisé à Paris les 8 et 9 septembre 2011, edited by Isabella Bochet, 507–22. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 2012. —. “Augustine’s Works in Circulation.” In Vessey, Companion, 431–49.

Body and Soul as a Leading Theme in the Retractationes Johannes Brachtendorf I.

Literary Self-criticism in the Retractationes

The Retractationes undoubtedly count among the great works of Augustine’s last years. Here, Augustine does not criticize his literary opponents as he had done so many times before but discusses his own writings from his conversion to Christianity onward until the year 426/7. The Rectractationes reveal how the late Augustine viewed the ideas he himself had developed throughout his long career as a writer. In so doing, the Retractationes also reveal which ones among the many topics, subjects, and ideas he had addressed Augustine considered the most important toward the end of his life. Evidently the Retractationes also serve to prepare and preserve Augustine’s life-work for posterity. Through corrections, defensive moves, and commentaries, Augustine sought to bring all of his works, in particular the early ones, in line with his thinking around the year 427. He wanted to make sure that all his works were read in light of his most advanced state of thinking. Here it is important to note that Augustine did not claim that his views had reached their zenith and could not be developed further. However, his standpoints in 427 comprehensively represent the extent of his thinking up to that moment and he wants his earlier writings to be read as steps within a development toward these standpoints, which explains the strict chronological order in which he treated his works to date. The chapter that follows focusses on the topic of body and soul in the Retractationes. While the older scholarly literature on the Retractationes hinted at the importance of the theme without developing it further, more recent scholarship has underappreciated or even neglected the subject entirely. This chapter aims to redress this by drawing attention to the relevance of the theme of body and soul in the Retractationes. Augustine’s literary corpus is among the largest in ancient literature. In addition to hundreds of letters and sermons, he wrote about one hundred independent works, divided into more than two hundred and sixty books. Augustine’s literary achievements are unique because, unlike other authors before him, he cites his own writings. In the works he composed later in life, he frequently

© Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2021 | doi:10.30965/9783657704767_004

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refers to his own earlier treatises in order to represent, explicate, and critically evaluate their content. In letter 143 to Marcellinus (412), Augustine states the reasons for his literary self-critique: I therefore admit that I am among that number who write while developing and develop while writing […] For, if God grants me what I want, namely, that I may gather together and point out in some work created for this purpose whatever rightly displeases me in all my works, then people will see that I am not partial toward myself.1

Augustine makes clear in this letter that his works do not contain settled truths and final words. Instead, all his writings need correction and betterment. The letter to Marcellinus demonstrates that by 412 Augustine had already planned to compose a separate work in which he intended to collect all of the statements within his writings he deemed worthy of critical appraisal.2 Fourteen years later, this project came to fruition in his Retractationes (426/7). Here, Augustine undertook a critical retrospective of his literary compositions since the time of his conversion to Catholic Christianity in 386. He opens his Retractationes with the declaration that he had long planned to examine rigorously his own works like a judge. Initially, he intended to scrutinize his books, letters, and sermons as well, but in the Retractationes, he only addresses his books, deferring the critique of his letters and sermons to the composition of other works (e.g., De haeresibus and Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum). However, his death in 430 prevented him from completing/finishing the envisioned plan. In the prologue to the Retractationes, Augustine recasts his literary career as a progression toward betterment (in melius proficientem).3 He openly admits having written things that are superfluous, unnecessary, incomplete and at times even nonsensical. For instance, he confesses that his work De immortalitate animae is so confusing that he himself no longer understand its intention 1 Letters 110–155, WSA II/2, ed. Boniface Ramsey, trans. Roland Teske (New York: New City Press, 2003), 302. Ep. 143.2: “Ego proinde fateor me ex eorum numero esse conari, qui proficiendo scribunt, et scribendo proficiunt […] Si enim mihi Deus quod volo praestiterit, ut omnium librorum meorum quaecumque mihi rectissime displicent, opere aliquo ad hoc ipsum instituto, colligam atque demonstrem; tunc videbunt homines quam non sim acceptor personae meae.” 2 See also Goulven Madec, Introduction aux “Révisions” et à la lecture des oeuvres de saint Augustin (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1996), 18–9; Gustave Bardy, “Introduction,” in Les Révisions, Oeuvres des Saint Augustin 12 (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1950), 11–255, at 17–9. 3 retr., prol. 3: “Quapropter quicumque ista lecturi sunt non me imitentur errantem, sed in melius proficientem.”

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and he explains that De Genesi ad litteram raises many questions but gives few answers and that of those answers, even fewer are well-grounded. As John Burnaby points out, however, the purpose of the Retractationes seems to shift in the course of the work. In the prologue, Augustine mentions only his intention to critique (reprehensio) and to strive for improvement, but in fact in the body of the Retractationes he often also defends his books (defensio). According to Burnaby’s estimation, the ratio of reprehensio to defensio is roughly sixty to forty.4 Understandably, defensio is particularly prevalent in those parts of the Retractationes where Augustine rejects the Pelagian critique of his works on free will and grace. The Retractationes are divided into two books. While the first book is dedicated to those works that Augustine penned before becoming a bishop (from 386 to 396), the second book deals with those works composed after his ordination (from 396 to ca. 426). In book one, twenty-six works are discussed; in book two, more than twice as many—sixty-seven. Nonetheless, the first book is considerably more extensive than the second. Augustine was apparently of the opinion that his earlier works required much greater explication, correction, and defense than his later ones. Whereas the second book of the Retractationes contains almost exclusively exegetical corrections, the first book includes doctrinal (self-) defenses and self-critiques. Therefore, the first book is longer than the second, even though it assesses less than half as many works. II.

Body and Soul in the Retractationes

In the Retractationes, one can recognize the questions that especially occupied Augustine at the end of his life because he surveys and addresses not only all of his individual works but also all the questions that he treated over the course of his life. For the analysis of his late thinking, it is instructive to examine whether thematic emphases may be detected in the Retractationes. Even at first sight, one can observe which individual works he comments on most extensively, but to discover the topics that most intensely occupied him requires considering the commentaries on and corrections of all of the works. Such a cross-section analysis demonstrates that two objects of concern dominate the Retractationes. Hardly surprisingly, one of his central concerns is the doctrine of grace. On the one hand, Augustine attempts to defend De libero arbitrio against its appropriation by the Pelagians—a task he was consumed 4 Cf. John Burnaby, “The ‘Retractationes’ of Saint Augustine: Self-criticism or Apologia?” in Augustinus Magister I (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1954), 85–92, at 87.

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with at least since his treatise De natura et gratia from 415. On the other hand, he wants to correct and deepen his early doctrine of grace as expressed in particular in his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Expositio quarundam propositionum ex epistula apostoli ad Romanos (394).5 In his early works, he had explained that grace is granted to those who believingly request it (gratia sequens). Only later did he conclude that faith itself is already a gift of grace (gratia praeueniens).6 Augustine’s later teaching on the election of grace is closely linked to this self-correction. In the Retractationes—and even more clearly in his work De praedestinatione sanctorum, written approximately two years later—Augustine focuses on this reformulation of his doctrine of grace. The second dominant theme in the Retractationes concerns anthropology— more specifically the relationship of body and soul. This theme may be the more central of the two. Augustine mentions the relation of body and soul twenty-eight times throughout his discussion of eighteen different works, while his remarks on the doctrine of grace are restricted to fewer works. Moreover, his corrections concerning the topic of grace are limited to works he composed prior to his ordination as bishop, discussed in the first book of the Retractationes. In contrast, his comments on the topic of “body and soul” pertain to both his earliest works, like the Cassiciacum dialogues, and his major works during his time as bishop, including De trinitate and Contra Iulianum— books in which he does not otherwise see any need to make corrections besides exegetical subtleties. Apparently, when composing the Retractationes, Augustine perceived anthropology as a particularly urgent subject matter. Accordingly, in what follows, I will omit the topic of “grace” entirely to address exclusively the most significant topic, the question concerning the constitution of body and soul in the human person. Augustine’s self-critique serves as a critical engagement of the predominant Platonic orientation of his early anthropology and cosmology. He now recognized as undue the influence of the dualism of the intelligible and the material world and, correspondingly, the dualism of the human mind and sensibility on his early teaching, and he sought to redress the ethical consequences of these dualisms. I hope to show how Augustine’s early separation of body and soul gradually attenuates and how he increasingly focuses his attention on their interaction and their co-belongingness. Even though the importance of the topic of body and soul has not gone unnoticed in the scholarly literature on the Retractationes, its central significance 5 Cf. exp. prop. Rm. 54; diu. qu. 68.5; lib. arb. 3.19.53–54. 6 For this terminology, see De praedestinatione sanctorum in Oeuvres de Saint Augustin 24.3, ed. Jean Chéné (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1962), 6–7.

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has never been fully developed. Already Adolf von Harnack called Augustine’s critique of the Platonic intellectualism in his early work an important topic of the Retractationes.7 Von Harnack claimed that Augustine’s self-critique is eschatologically motivated, because the difference between this world and the afterworld replaced the distinction between body and spirit. Von Harnack thus suggested that Augustine’s concern in the Retractationes shifts from the separation of soul and body to the transfiguration of the soul and body. To underscore this thesis, von Harnack seems content, however, to list a series of corrections from the first book of the Retractationes. Similarly, John Burnaby discovers three major topics in the Retractationes: “Exegesis,” “Pelagianism,” and “Platonism.”8 Burnaby believes that Augustine intended to correct his own devaluation of the body with regard to both this life and the afterlife but he offers even less textual evidence from Augustine’s argumentation in the Retractationes than von Harnack did.9 In what follows, I will adopt von Harnack’s and Burnaby’s line of thought and attempt to give it more substance by investigating the Retractationes more closely and with greater differentiation with respect to the presence of the body-soul thematic in the text. Therefore, I will subdivide the topic into five parts. Several of the subtopics are thematized in the second book of the Retractationes. So even though the second book contains fewer corrections than the first book and even though the character of the second book is predominantly exegetical, the topic of “body and soul” connects both books of the Retractationes.

7 Adolf von Harnack, Kleine Schriften zur alten Kirche, vol. I (Leipzig: Zentralantiquariat d. DDR, 1980), 790–2; 797–8. 8 Cf. Burnaby, Augustinus Magister I, 89–90. 9 Gustave Bardy provides a comprehensive introduction to his translation of and commentary on the Retractationes. He explicates all of the passages in Augustine’s works that are treated in the Retractationes. Even though he addresses the questions of Platonism under the heading “Les problems philosophiques,” he does not recognize the significance of the body-soul topic for the Retractationes as a whole. In his monograph on Retractationes, Goulven Madec does not discuss the development of Augustine’s reflections on the relationship between the body and the soul. Hildegund Müller one-sidedly stresses the topic of Pelagianism in “Retractationes,” in Augustinus-Lexikon, vol. 4, ed. Robert Dodaro, Cornelius Mayer, Christof Müller et. al. (Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2019), 1180–99. She claims that Augustine’s selection of points of critique “is thoroughly dictated by the Pelagian-controversy” and that the Retractationes are, therefore, “specifically to be brought into connection with the situation of the Pelagian-controversy” (1187, 1190). Because of her thesis concerning the “omnipresence of antipelagian ideas” (1189), Müller, like Madec, omits the body-soul thematic, the significance of which von Harnack had already recognized.

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The Ugly King of Cyprus I begin with the retractatio to Contra Iulianum, which at first glance seems quite curious. Augustine makes only one comment on this work, which had been published shortly beforehand and which was to be continued with what has become the Opus imperfectum. This context makes this single comment all the more striking. In Contra Iulianum 5.14.51, Augustine tells the story “of a deformed married man who was accustomed to placing a beautiful picture in front of his wife when they were having sexual relations, lest he beget deformed children.”10 To underscore the credibility of this story, he writes that the man’s name is known. In the retractatio, he explains, however, that after consulting his source again, namely the Gynecology of the physician Soranus of Ephesus (ca. 140), he realized that Soranus never mentions the name of the man, only that he was a Cyprian king.11 This self-correction, the sole correction Augustine made to Contra Iulianum, puzzles the impartial reader of the Retractationes. However, the anthropological significance of this topic emerges upon closer consideration. Ever since Empedocles, the hypothesis that a woman’s perceptions and representations during conception influence the form of her offspring was commonly accepted in antiquity.12 With his reference to the king of Cyprus, Soranus justifies his medical hypothesis. As he explains, the king’s strategy was successful: even though he himself was deformed, his children were well formed. In this context, Soranus also mentions the practice of horsebreeders, who paraded noble horses in front of a mounted mare so that she would give birth to noble foals. Soranus’s comment about the horse-breeders leads us to Augustine’s examination of the story of Jacob and the striped lambs (Genesis 30:35–43). Jacob, who was charged with watching over the sheep of his father-in-law Laban, makes an agreement with him that all the newborn striped lambs will belong to Jacob, the single-colored lambs to Laban. The sheep copulated with the bucks at the watering hole. Jacob took the rods of a sycamore tree and peeled them so that they appeared in a pattern of light and dark strips. As the strong sheep came to drink, he laid the patterned rods in the trough so that the sheep had them in view while they copulated. When weak sheep came to the trough, he removed the rods. As a result, the strong sheep bore strong, striped lambs, 10 Revisions, WSA I/2, ed. Roland Teske, trans. Boniface Ramsey (New York: New City Press, 2010), 165. retr. 2.62: “deformem maritum coniugi suae, ne deformes pareret, proponere in concubitu formosam solere picturam.” 11 Soranus’ Gynecology, trans. Owsei Temkin (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956), 1.39. 12 Empedocles, The Poem of Empedocles, trans. Brad Inwood (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), A81, at 193.

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which then belonged to Jacob, while Laban received only the weak, singlecolored lambs. Augustine discusses this story repeatedly, particularly in Quaestiones in Heptateuchum 1.93 and De trinitate 3.15. In Quaestiones in Heptateuchum 1.93, he also draws on classical medical literature—this time referencing not Soranus but Hippocrates, who also held the view that representations at conception influence the physical constitution of the offspring. The strong sheep bore striped lambs because during conception the image of stripes penetrated through the sense of sight into the soul. In De trinitate 3.15, Augustine explains this process by means of a “mixture” of the body with the soul animating it. Due to such a mixture, soul and body could mutually influence each other. In this case, the perception, which is an act of the soul, determines the constitution of the offspring’s body. Nonetheless, Augustine stresses that such influence only takes place within certain parameters: Jacob’s sheep did not bear rods but lambs, just striped ones. According to Augustine, the mixture of soul and body is grounded in the “suitable reasons” (congruae rationes), “which immutably exist in that highest wisdom of God himself.”13 Why is Augustine interested in medical gynecology, in Jacob’s lambs, and in the deformed Cyprian king? In all these cases, at stake is the interplay between body and soul, and this is an anthropological topic of utmost significance. In his early writings, Augustine maintained a quite rigid dualism of body and soul—a dualism with which he had become familiar from Porphyry. Augustine remained a mind/body dualist his entire life and his best arguments for the distinction of body and soul stem from his later works like De trinitate, De Genesi ad litteram, and De ciuitate dei.14 Nevertheless, in his later thinking, Augustine develops a strong interest in how body and soul, despite their difference, operate on each other and how they, notwithstanding their ontological distinction, constitute one human being. The, at first, seemingly strange retractatio to Contra Iulianum attests to this interest. Learning through Reason and the Senses The Retractationes also offer indications of an attenuation of mind/body dualism in the field of epistemology. Augustine’s self-critique of his use of the Platonic anamnesis-doctrine demonstrates this shift. His revision takes aim at the books Soliloquia (retr. 1.4.4), De quantitate animae (retr. 1.8.2), and, in a 13 See also Gn. litt. 7.13.20–19.25, where Augustine offers a detailed representation of the interplay between soul, brain, nerves and bodily organs. Augustine apparently draws his knowledge from his readings of medical works. 14 Cf. trin. 10.5–16; Gn. litt. 7.27–28; ciu. 11.26–28.

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particular manner, De utilitate credendi (retr. 1.14.3). The doctrine of anamnesis states that knowledge cannot be attained through sensory perception but only through reasoned insight through the direct vision of the ideas. This vision of the ideas, according to Plato, took place in a world beyond, before the incorporation of the soul. In the incorporation, this knowledge was buried and sunk into oblivion. By means of skillful inquiry, however, the teacher assists humans in excavating their buried knowledge and in remembering that which they had once seen. The teacher, therefore, does not mediate any knowledge but simply enables the student to remember already existing knowledge.15 This doctrine is dualistic because it displaces the true process of learning into another world and suggests that the soul does not really acquire knowledge in the earthly world—that is, in its existence-form connected to the body. In his self-critique, Augustine inverts this contention: learning does not (or does not only) take place in a transcendent life but also in this earthly life through the “presence of the light of eternal reason” (praesens est lumen rationis aeternae) in humans.16 In every act of cognition, indeed in every declarative statement we formulate, we place a particular under a general concept, e.g.: “Socrates is a human.” The basic problem of epistemology lies in the question of how we arrive at general concepts, since every perception is of a particular. The apprehension of a particular occurs through sensory perception, whereas the apprehension of concepts occurs through reason. Apparently, Augustine came to realize that the Platonic doctrine of anamnesis divides the activities of sensual perception and reason, so to say, into two differing lives—one immanent and the other pre-existing and transcendent. He comes to deem this view unacceptable, however, claiming instead that both activities occur in earthly life. Humans attain knowledge in this life through the interplay of sensibility and reason. The bridging of the logical contradiction of particulars and universals—that is, the mediation between sensuousness and reason—takes place by means of the “presence of the light of eternal reason” in humans. Augustine’s theory of the light of eternal reason in humans thus entails an epistemological appreciation of sensibility. In his early writings, Augustine tended toward an apriorism according to which all knowledge is achieved by a direct vision of the ideas before sensible experience.17 In contrast, Augustine later allowed for experiential knowledge that is not available without sensory perception. 15 The anamnesis theory of knowledge is paradigmatically developed in Plato’s dialogue Meno 82a–86b. 16 retr. 1.4.4. 17 Cf. mag.14.46.

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Love of Family, Love of the Body In the field of ethics, too, the Retractationes exhibit a higher valuation of human corporeality than in the early works. Of particular note is Augustine’s thesis that even in paradise Adam and Eve would have sexually procreated if they had not sinned so early and been banned from paradise. The procreation of offspring thus belongs to created human nature and is not a consequence of sin. Augustine’s self-critique in the Retractationes is directed at De uera religione, De sermone domini in monte and, to some extent, at De bono coniugali.18 In De sermone domini in monte,19 Augustine had interpreted Jesus’s words “whoever hates father and mother for my sake …” as a critique of the love of relatives like parents, siblings and children. Such love is merely temporal, he had claimed, for every blood relationship arises exclusively through sexual reproduction, which has arisen from sin. For this reason, Augustine concluded, the bonds of blood should be despised. In the retractatio to De uera religione, Augustine first summarized his earlier position. He wrote, “For we would not have any such relationships as are connected with birth and death if our nature, by abiding in the precepts and image of God, had not been relegated to this corruption.”20 In the Retractationes, he then revises this earlier position: “I utterly reject this opinion…. [for] it leads to the belief that that first couple were not going to beget descendants unless they sinned.”21 The retractatio to De trinitate is also striking from an ethical perspective. As far as I can tell, it represents the only occasion in which Augustine does not merely comment on or supplement one of his later works but actually criticized it. In De trinitate 11.9, Augustine had written: “For this reason to love the body seen means being estranged.”22 He later denunciates this position as too undifferentiated. Love of the body does not necessarily arise from blindness or estrangement because one can love bodily beauty in the praise of the creator and even rejoice in it as a work of the creator (cf. retr. 2.15.2). The same tendency can be found in the retractatio to De trinitate 12.15, where Augustine confines to the body the fornication of which the apostle Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 6:18, “whoever commits fornication, sins against his own body.” Augustine later 18 Cf. retr. 2.23.2. 19 Cf. retr. 1.19.5. 20 uera rel. 46.88: “Non enim ullas tales necessitudines haberemus, quae nascendo et moriendo contingunt, si natura nostra in praeceptis et imagine Dei manens, in istam corruptionem non relegaretur.” 21 Revisions. WSA I/2, 63. retr. 1.13.8: “Hunc sensum prorsus improbo … Ad hoc enim ducit, ut credantur illi coniuges primi non generaturi posteros homines nisi peccassent.” 22 The Trinity. WSA I/5, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Edmund Hill (New York: New City Press, 2005), 311. trin. 11.5.9: “Quocirca id amare alienari est.”

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suggests that such an understanding of immorality is too narrow, because the concept of fornication encompasses many more sins than just those committed through illicit sexual intercourse (concubito illicito). In the extension of the concept, one can witness a reprieve for the body to the effect that the root of fornication resides in the soul, not in the body. Fornication, therefore, indicates all moral trespasses, even those that have nothing to do with the body. The Carnal Body in the Afterlife In the Retractationes, Augustine frequently addressed questions of eschatology. Eschatology is related to anthropology because it contains representations of a perfected human existence. On this point, too, Augustine criticizes his own Platonism in De ordine and the Soliloquia with respect to his portrayal of “the new heaven and the new earth” or “the kingdom, which is not of this world,” in terms of Plato’s intelligible world—that is, as a cosmos of ideas. He now objects that the cosmos of ideas is nothing other than divine reason.23 The new heaven and the new earth concern, however, the perfection of material creation, which is not identical to God but which was created by God from nothing. The new cosmos will not be an intelligible world but rather a perfected material world. In his critique of the Soliloquia, Augustine emphasizes that the new world will be a sensible world, a mundus sensibilis, which, in contrast to the present world, will be indestructible/incorruptible.24 This image of a perfect cosmos has significant consequences for the image of perfected humanity because if humans live in a mundus sensibilis, they will possess not only reason but also sensory organs and therefore a body. These organs, too, will be perfected and will differ from our present organs and from our present mortal body. For the Augustine of the Retractationes, it is of utmost importance that the transcendent beatific life is not exclusively a life of the soul but a life of the soul connected to the body. Human perfection is not attained by means of a flight from the body but instead by means of a harmony of and peace between soul and body. In the Retractationes, Augustine criticizes many of his earlier works because they underestimate the significance of corporeality. The objects of this critique include De beata uita, De ordine, Soliloquia, De musica, De uera religione, De utilitate credendi, De fide et symbolo, and De diuersis quaestionibus. While going over his early works, Augustine increasingly highlights that there will be a transcendent human body: this body will no longer be animalis, as even the bodies

23 Cf. retr. 1.3.2. 24 Cf. retr. 1.4.2–3.

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of Adam and Eve were in paradise,25 but rather spiritalis. The spiritual body will be beautiful and well-formed (retr. 1.11.2); it will neither age nor require sustenance (retr. 1.13.4); it will neither become ill or die (retr. 1.19); and it will not detract the soul from the contemplation of God (retr. 1.11). Significantly, however, Augustine states that this body will be of “carnal substance” (retr. 1.17; 1.26.47), which means that although it will be a corpus spiritalis, it will differ from the ethereal bodies of the angels in that it will be of flesh and blood (substantia carnis). The perfected body will remain visible and tangible like the resurrected body of Christ. The blessed in the life beyond will see each other and be able to touch each other. The resurrected body will even possess perfected sensory organs. Augustine criticized the Soliloquia and De musica because in them he now identified sensibility with the earthly body’s organs of perception, failing to consider that there could be another, perfect sensibility in the eschaton.26 In the Retractationes, therefore, Augustine strives to represent for posterity his thought as almost body-friendly. He corrects his earlier sharp separation of body and soul by emphasizing at every opportunity the cohesiveness of very different but related dimensions within individual human existence. He makes it clear to his readers that he wants his teaching to be understood in this holistic sense. It is holistic insofar as body and soul do not exist together in human life merely par force or solely as the result of sin. Instead, despite their difference, they refer to each other and conjointly constitute human perfection. Seeing God in the Body and through the Body When he addresses the question of the resurrected body in the Retractationes, Augustine repeatedly refers to the last book of De ciuitate dei, namely book twenty-two, where he further elucidates his position.27 In De ciuitate dei, Augustine develops more thoroughly his doctrine of the perfect body, the resurrected body, and he draws conclusions that, though intimated, are not explicitly formulated in the Retractationes. In order to make Augustine’s later position clear, it is also useful to examine De Genesi ad litteram 12, where Augustine takes a first step toward his final position, while in De ciuitate dei 22, he outlines his second step. In De Genesi ad litteram 12, Augustine explains that human reason cannot be perfectly happy even in the afterlife until it receives its body back as part of the general resurrection of the dead. It should be observed here that Augustine 25 Gn. litt. 6.19.30–28.39. 26 Cf. retr. 1.4.2; 1.11.2. 27 Cf. Augustine’s discussion of diu. qu. and uid. deo at retr. 1.26.47 and 2.41, respectively.

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speaks of the mens—that is, the rational part of the soul, not the vegetative or sensuous parts of the soul. According to Platonic measures, the mens would have to be perfectly happy in the afterlife because its natural striving for the intellectual vision of God is fully realized. According to Confessiones 10.33, happiness consists in “joy in the truth.”28 The truth, which the mens sees through the intellectus, is God himself, and the joy resides in the uoluntas rationalis, which equally belongs to the mens. In the vision of God, the mens thus attains its goal. It enjoys its highest good. Nevertheless, according to De Genesi ad litteram 12, the mens is not perfectly felicitous as long as it is missing its body. Whereas Porphyry claims that the connection of the soul to the body represents an obstacle to bliss, Augustine argues the inverse: the absence of the connection to the body detracts from the soul’s bliss. The reason, he states, is “that there is ingrained in the soul a kind of natural appetite for administering the body, and that as long as it does not have a body at its disposal, it is somehow or other held back by this unsatisfied appetite from pressing on with undivided attention to that highest heaven.”29 For the later thought of Augustine, body and soul are so intimately related to each other that even the mens, as anima rationalis, remains incomplete as long as it does not possess a body.30 In De ciuitate dei 22, Augustine takes this line of thought a step further. He no longer only poses the question of De Genesi ad litteram 12, namely whether we will see God in the body. He asks rather whether we will perhaps see God through the body. Will we see God only with our mind, the mens, which will have then received its body back, or will we perceive God with the eyes of our fleshly resurrected bodies (cf. ciu. 22.29)? For earthly bodies, this would be impossible. Augustine repeatedly states that God is invisible. From the standpoint of Platonic metaphysics—with its fundamental distinction between immaterial and material reality and the corresponding distinction between reason and sensibility—the notion of a vision of God with corporal eyes is indeed absurd. Yet, in the context of his eschatology, Augustine calls into question precisely this fundamental distinction of Platonism.

28 Confessions. WSA I/1, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Maria Boulding (New York: New City Press, 1997), 259. conf. 10.33: “gaudium de veritate.” 29 On Genesis. WSA I/13, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Edmund Hill (New York: New City Press, 2002), 504–05. Gn. litt. 12.35.68: “quia inest ei naturalis quidam appetitus corpus administrandi; quo appetitu retardatur quodammodo ne tota intentione pergat in illud summum coelum, quamdiu non subest corpus, cuius administratione appetitus ille conquiescat.” 30 For Augustine’s thought on the meaning of the body in the afterlife cf. David G. Hunter, “Augustine on the Body,” in A Companion to Augustine, ed. Mark Vessey (Oxford: Blackwell, 2012), 353–63.

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Johannes Brachtendorf For if that reasoning of the philosophers, by which they attempt to make out that intelligible or mental objects are so seen by the mind, and sensible or bodily objects so seen by the body, that the former cannot be discerned by the mind through the body, nor the latter by the mind itself without the body—if this reasoning were trustworthy, then it would certainly follow that God could not be seen by the eye even of a spiritual body. But this reasoning is exploded by true reason and prophetic authority.”31

“True reason” scoffs at the distinction of reason and sensibility! In the eschaton, Augustine suggests, we will see God not only with the eyes of the mind but also with the eyes of the body. Therefore, we will see God not only in the body but also through the body. Augustine attempts to make his thesis plausible by referring to the experience of other people as it occurs in daily earthly life. We do not experience only lifeless objects like tables, chairs, and houses but also other humans as just as alive as we are. How is this experience of other people constituted? According to Augustine, we see the other as a living being. It is not a matter of perceiving a body with our eyes and then assuming that this body is living, as if thought had to supplement perception due to our incapability of seeing life itself. Augustine claims instead that we do not infer the life of the other from the body we see. Rather, as soon as we see the other, we see that he is living (mox ut aspicimus, non credimus uiuere, sed uidemus) (ciu. 22.29). In the experience of the other, Augustine finds an example for a way of seeing with corporal eyes that extends beyond mere perception of a body and penetrates to the life of the other, which is not merely a body. In this case, he argues, sensory perception involves a direct apprehension not only of the corporeal but also of the incorporeal.32 If this is already the case in earthly life, Augustine asks, why should something similar not also occur in transcendent life, especially since our sensory perception will be perfected along with our entire body. According to Augustine, we will see God in all things of the new heaven and the new earth. We will not induce God, with the help of reason, from works of creation (Romans 1:20); rather, with the eyes of our bodies, we will perceive God in these things with utter lucidity. In earthly life we can see with bodily eyes the other 31 The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (New York: The Modern Library, 2000), 863. ciu. 22.29: “Ratiocinatio quippe illa philosophorum, qua disputant ita mentis adspectu intelligibilia uideri et sensu corporis sensibilia, id est corporalia, ut nec intelligibilia per corpus nec corporalia per se ipsam mens ualeat intueri, si posset nobis esse certissima, profecto certum esset per oculos corporis etiam spiritalis nullo modo posse uideri Deum. Sed istam ratiocinationem et uera ratio et prophetica inridet auctoritas.” 32 On this point, Augustine seems to anticipate insights first formulated in twentiethcentury phenomenology, for instance by Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

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as a living being. In transcendent life we will not only see with bodily eyes the life in the other; we will also perceive God in the other. All humans will behold God with their eyes in every other human and in themselves. In De Genesi ad litteram 12, Augustine develops an argument intended to make the Christian religious doctrine of the resurrection of the body rationally plausible. He claims that the mens would be distracted from the uisio intellectualis as long as it had not yet received its body back and therefore could not be perfectly happy without its body. This argument appears to be quite weak because it postulates an orientation of the mens toward the body, which has nothing to do with the essential activity of the mens, namely rational vision. It leads only to a supplementary justification of the resurrection of the body according to which the resurrected body remains external to the mind. His argument in De ciuitate dei 22.29 is more fundamental, however. If humans are to see God with bodily eyes in the eschaton, then there must be a resurrection of the body. Perfect bliss, attained in the vision of God, demands the body, but not because the mens would be distracted from the uisio intellectualis without the body but because this vision is also a uisio sensibilis, a vision through the body. According to this interpretation, the body in the afterlife is not a mere appendage to the mens. Instead, it proves to be essential for the perfect human being. This argument for the resurrection of the body requires, however, the relinquishment of basic tenets of Platonic doctrine, in particular the thesis that intelligible entities can be seen only with the eyes of the mind, not with the eyes of the body. In his later thought, Augustine is thoroughly prepared to draw out this consequence, as De ciuitate dei 22.29 and the references to it in the Retractationes attest.33 Augustine’s reflections on this point correspond to the general tendency of the Retractationes, which endeavors to attenuate the separation of the body and soul. Nevertheless, Augustine’s revocation of Platonic “reasoning” pertains only to the perfect human being in the afterlife. His example of the experience of other people bears witness to the fact that he considered an attenuation of the fundamental Platonic distinction with respect to earthly life, too. Ultimately, however, he upholds this Platonic distinction for the understanding of the earthly life of imperfect beings. Otherwise, subsequent to the Retractationes, Augustine would have had to rewrite a major portion of his work—which he might have done had he lived.

33 Cf. retr. 1.26.47 and 2.41.

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Conclusion

The anecdote of the deformed king of Cyprus deals with questions regarding the influence of the animal soul—that is, the aspect of the soul responsible for perception and corporeal growth—on the formation of the physical body. In that context, Augustine’s mature epistemology introduced the concept of the “light of eternal reason” to explain how perception through the bodily senses leads to knowledge. In his later ethical thought, Augustine reevaluated family relations constituted by our bodies and even allowed that the body could be loved. Finally, the late Augustine’s eschatology contains the thesis that even the perfect body after resurrection is made from flesh and blood. He suggests, moreover, that this body of flesh is necessary for perfect happiness and human fulfillment. What is even more striking, Augustine thinks we will see God eschatologically not only through the mind but also through our bodily eyes. Augustine became a mind-body dualist when he first adopted Neoplatonism, and he remained faithful to dualism throughout his life. However, while he presented a quite rigid distinction of body and soul in his earlier works, he emphasized in his later works the relation and the interconnection of body and soul as integral to the one human being. In De ciuitate dei 22.29 Augustine even goes so far as to question the mind-body distinction in its entirety. As the Retractationes show, the question of mind and body was of primary concern to Augustine’s later thinking, and he wanted his earlier position read through and corrected by his most mature views. Works Cited I. Primary Sources

Augustine of Hippo. The City of God, translated by Marcus Dods. New York: The Modern Library, 2000. —. Confessions, translated by Maria Boulding, edited by John E. Rotelle. WSA I/1. New York: New City Press, 1997. —. On Genesis, translated by Edmund Hill, edited by John E. Rotelle. WSA I/13. New York: New City Press, 2002. —. Letters 110–155, translated by Roland Teske, edited by Boniface Ramsey. WSA II/2. New York: New City Press, 2003. —. Les révisions, translated and edited by Gustave Bardy. BA  12. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1950. —. Revisions, translated by Boniface Ramsey, edited by Roland Teske. WSA I/2. New York: New City Press, 2010.

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—. The Trinity, translated by Edmund Hill, edited by John E. Rotelle. WSA I/5. New York: New City Press, 2005. Empedocles. The Poem of Empedocles: A Text and Translation with an Introduction. Rev. ed. Translated by Brad Inwood. The Phoenix Presocratics 3. (Phoenix Supplementary Volume 29.) Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. Soranus of Ephesus. Soranus’ Gynecology, translated by Owsei Temkin. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956.

II.

Secondary Sources

Burnaby, John. “The ‘Retractationes’ of Saint Augustine: Self-Criticism or Apologia?” In Augustinus Magister, 1:85–92. Année théologique supplèment. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1954. Harnack, Adolf von. Kleine Schriften zur alten Kirche. Vol. 1. Leipzig: Zentralantiquariat der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, 1980. Hunter, David G. “Augustine on the Body.” In Vessey, Companion, 353–64. Madec, Goulven. Introduction aux “Révisions” et à la lecture des oeuvres de saint Augustin. Collection des études augustiniennes: Série antiquité 150. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1996. Müller, Hildegund. “Retractationes.” AugLex 4:1180–99. Basel: Schwabe, 2018. Vessey, Mark, ed. A Companion to Augustine. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.

Augustine’s De haeresibus and Competitive Heresiology Richard Flower In the late 420s, nearing the end of his long and eventful life, Augustine, apparently yielding to persistent pressure, composed one of his final and leastappreciated works: the De haeresibus, a catalogue of eighty-eight heresies that had emerged in the period from the Incarnation to his own day.1 It is not a work which has been the subject of a great deal of scholarly attention compared to many of the great bishop’s more original and profound theological treatises, in part because it draws heavily on the work of his predecessors in the field. As the text’s preface states, he intended for it to be only the first part of a more extensive work, in which the second book would tackle the much thornier question of “what makes a heretic”.2 In this sense, therefore, it could be said to fit harmoniously with other works created by Augustine during this “late” period, especially the completed City of God. The aim of the work, as expressed in this preface, is to provide a thorough treatment of the subject of “heresy” itself, improving on earlier heresiological works not only in its comprehensiveness but also in its theoretical and methodological complexity, all underpinned 1 On this text, as well as the circumstances and process that led to its composition, see Gustave Bardy, “Le ‘De Haeresibus’ et ses sources,” in Miscellanea Agostiniana, 2 vols. (Rome: Typographia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1931), 397–8; Liguori G. Müller, The De Haeresibus of Saint Augustine: A Translation with an Introduction and Commentary (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1956), 2–6; Judith McClure, “Handbooks against Heresy in the West, from the Late Fourth to the Late Sixth Centuries,” JThS 30 (1979): 186–197, at 190–2; Hervé Inglebert, Interpretatio Christiana: les mutations des savoirs (cosmographie, géographie, ethnographie, histoire) dans l’antiquité chrétienne (30–630 après J.-C.) (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 2001), 450; Brent  D.  Shaw, “Who were the Circumcellions?” in Vandals, Romans and Berbers: New Perspectives on Late Antique North Africa, ed. A.  H.  Merrills (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 227–58, at 237–8; Brent  D.  Shaw, Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 310–1; Richard Flower, “The Insanity of Heretics Must be Restrained: Heresiology in the Theodosian Code,” in Theodosius II: Rethinking the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity, ed. Christopher Kelly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 172–94, at 180–4; Todd S. Berzon, Classifying Christians: Ethnography, Heresiology, and the Limits of Knowledge in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016), 218–45; Richard Flower, “The Rhetoric of Heresiological Prefaces,” in Rhetoric and Religious Identity in Late Antiquity, ed. Richard Flower and Morwenna Ludlow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 180–97. 2 haer. pref. 1. All translations are my own.

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by the monumental learning and authority of the great bishop himself. This great aim, however, was never realized and so all Augustine left to posterity was the list of heretical sects. The De haeresibus as it exists, and his creativity in composing it, has therefore been little appreciated in its own right, instead being termed a “simple catalogue, and for that he was not prepared to do anything very original” or classified as nothing more than “a typical Mediterranean handbook of heresies”.3 As Judith McClure noted, however, this modern lack of interest stands in stark contrast to the popularity of the work in the centuries immediately following its composition, as is evident from both the testimony of Gregory the Great and the large quantity of surviving manuscripts, including a number of early examples.4 Recent years have also seen signs of renewed consideration of the work—and of the discipline of late-antique heresiology as a whole—including some perceptive discussion by Todd Berzon as part of his broader consideration of the similarities between heresiological discourse and ethnographic literature, both ancient and modern.5 My intention in this chapter is to situate the De haeresibus more firmly within—and to examine moments when Augustine self-consciously attempted to situate himself within—two overlapping intellectual and literary contexts. The first of these is the tradition of Christian heresiology itself, particularly those works written in the half century before Augustine composed his own text, while the second is the broader phenomenon of ancient technical literature and the methods it employed for the construction of both author and text as reliable and scholarly authorities. This chapter will therefore be both exploring how Augustine engaged with earlier examples of late-antique heresiology and also highlighting a number of similarities between the De haeresibus and classical technical and scientific literature, especially encyclopaedic and medical writings, particularly in their rhetoric of scholarly comprehensiveness, expertise and diligence. In doing so, it will be examining Augustine’s relationship with authors and texts which he specifically mentions in his work, but, in addition to these, will also be exploring some parallels with other ancient writings, such as those of the Roman encyclopaedic author Pliny the Elder and the second-century doctor and philosopher Galen. These are not included in 3 McClure, “Handbooks against Heresy,” 191; Shaw, Sacred Violence, 310. 4 McClure, “Handbooks against Heresy,” 186, 193–4. 5 Berzon, Classifying Christians, 218–45. On the gradual resurgence of interest in heresiology more generally, see, in particular, Inglebert, Interpretatio Christiana, 393–461, and Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 1–27, together with the approving comments about these studies in Averil Cameron, “The Violence of Orthodoxy,” in Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity, ed. E. Iricinschi and H. M. Zellentin (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 105–6.

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order to suggest that Augustine was drawing on any individual one of them specifically, but rather to argue that he was engaging with the conventions and rhetoric of technical writing in the Roman world as a means to characterize his own compilatory endeavor and his authorial position within the growing field of heresiological literature. One particularly notable aspect of Roman encyclopaedism was the competitiveness displayed towards earlier works on similar subjects, whereby, in the words of Jason König and Greg Woolf, “compilers sought to convince their readers that their own compilations were the most authoritative, the best organised, to be contrasted with less successful attempts.”6 This is particularly evident in Augustine’s comments about the methodology which he employed when engaging with his source material, particularly the heresiological catalogues of Epiphanius of Salamis and Filastrius of Brescia, critically analyzing their selection and classification of heresies in order to correct their misinterpretation of the world of heresiological knowledge.7 As this chapter will show, Augustine repeatedly drew attention to their alleged failures of judgement and authorial practice in order to position his own work as the most accurate and useful catalogue ever written. Moreover, Augustine’s rhetoric of competitiveness extended beyond his immediate predecessors in the field, encompassing authors in related intellectual disciplines and also hypothetical works of heresiology that may have been written by unspecified others. In doing so, he sought to establish the place of his text within a recognizable literary heritage and to place himself within an orthodox lineage of ecclesiastical heresiologists, while simultaneously demonstrating the superiority of his own scholarship and the reliability of the theological statements contained therein. Despite its apparent shortcomings and Augustine’s own rhetoric of unwillingness about composing it in the first place, this work nonetheless stakes its claim as a vitally important milestone in the ongoing battle against the manifold dangers of heresy. *** The circumstances that led to the writing of the De haeresibus are set out clearly not only in the work’s preface, but also by a set of four letters, exchanged 6 Jason König and Greg Woolf, “Introduction,” in Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. Jason König and Greg Woolf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 1–20, at 8. 7 For some preliminary comments on this competitive engagement, see Flower, “Insanity,” 180–4, as well as Berzon, Classifying Christians, 225–31.

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between Augustine and Quodvultdeus, a deacon in the church at Carthage.8 These have been transmitted along with the heresiology and thus function as a form of extra preface to, and explanation of, the work itself, which is also addressed to Quodvultdeus.9 Although two of the letters were not written by Augustine, they can, therefore, nonetheless be taken as an aspect of the text’s pervasive construction of his authority, especially since a number of passages from them are also quoted by him in the actual preface to the De haeresibus. Thus even though Quodvultdeus is flattering Augustine in order to get him to write this work, when the letters are repurposed and recontextualized as prefatory material for the finished product, their effusive rhetoric is transformed into a means for establishing the scholarly credentials of both the bishop himself and his heresiological scholarship. In the first of his letters, the deacon explains that he has long hesitated to send this request but, provoked by the ignorance of some clergy in his city, he now feels it necessary to ask the venerable bishop to write a new work which will outline “from when the Christian religion received the name of its promised inheritance, what heresies have existed and exist, what errors they have introduced and do introduce, and what, in opposition to the catholic church, they have believed and do believe.”10 In doing so, he also states that he is aware that the subject would require an extremely large number of books to be answered properly and that others had engaged in similar enterprises before. He, on the other hand, was asking Augustine “to briefly, concisely and succinctly set out the views of each heresy and to append what the Catholic Church believes in opposition, as far as is needed for instruction, so that, if anyone wants to find out about some objection or refutation more copiously, more abundantly and more plainly, then by this, so to speak, summary produced from all of them he might be carried to expansive and splendid volumes.”11 8 epp. 221–4, of which 221 and 223 are by Quodvultdeus, while 222 and 224 are Augustine’s replies. A critical edition of these four letters is available in R. van der Plaetse and C. Beukers, CCL 46 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969), 273–81, placed immediately before the De haeresibus itself. 9 On the nature and functions of these multiple prefaces, see Flower, “Rhetoric,” 180–2. 10 ep. 221.1–2, quoting 221.2: “ex quo christiana religio hereditatis promissae nomen accepit, quae haereses fuerunt, sint, quos errores intulerint, inferant, quid aduersus catholicam ecclesiam senserint, sentiant.” This is one of the passages quoted by Augustine in haer. pref. 3. 11 ep.  221.3  : “sed breuiter, perstricte atque summatim et opiniones rogo cuiuslibet haeresis poni et, quid contra teneat ecclesia catholica, quantum instructioni satis est, subdi, ut uelut quodam ex omnibus concepto commonitorio, si quis aliquam obiectionem aut conuictionem uberius, plenius ac planius nosse uoluerit, ad opulenta et magnifica uolumina transmittatur.” This passage, or parts of it, can also be found quoted in haer. pref. 3, 4 and 6.

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Augustine’s response to Quodvultdeus does not accept this flattering request, but instead opens by explaining that he will “demonstrate the difficulty of this task.”12 Rather than providing an abstract explanation of theoretical difficulties, however, Augustine proceeds to explain the problems with two recent attempts to catalogue all the different forms of heresy: “a certain Filastrius, bishop of Brescia, whom I once actually saw myself with the blessed Ambrose of Milan, wrote a book about this, not omitting those heresies [haereses] which existed among the Jewish people before the coming of the Lord, and he listed twenty-eight of these and one hundred and twenty-eight after the coming of the Lord. Epiphanius, bishop of Cyprus, a man celebrated and praised for his learning in the catholic faith, also wrote about this in Greek. But he also assembled heresies from both eras and included eighty. Therefore, although they both wished to do what you ask of me, you see nonetheless how much they differ among themselves concerning the number of sects [sectae] during that time.”13 As Augustine went on to explain, the real issue here lay with the problem of how to define “heresy” itself, since each of these authors had clearly worked with different versions of this concept in compiling their lists. He therefore suggests that, instead of creating such a work himself, he ought to send Quodvultdeus a copy of Epiphanius’s writings, as the better of the two existing texts, so that he could have them translated from Greek into Latin at Carthage. These attempts to placate the deacon with existing works of scholarship were not, however, successful, and Quodvultdeus replied to explain why he felt them to be unsatisfactory for his needs, including because of the language barrier involved in reading Epiphanius.14 The last letter in the series does see Augustine finally relenting and agreeing to compose the requested treatise, but, in the manner of an email from an academic explaining why they have missed a deadline, he proceeds to inform Quodvultdeus about the various other pieces that he needs to write before he can devote attention to this one and so asks for a bit more time.15 12 ep. 222.1: “difficultatem operis eius ostendo.” 13 ep.  222.2: “Filastrius quidam, Brixensis episcopus, quem cum sancto Ambrosio Mediolani etiam ipse uidi, scripsit hinc librum nec illas haereses praetermittens, quae in populo Iudaeo fuerunt ante domini aduentum, easque XX et VIII commemorauit et post domini aduentum CXX et VIII. scripsit hinc etiam Graece episcopus Cyprius Epiphanius in doctrina catholicae fidei laudabiliter diffamatus. sed et ipse utriusque temporis haereses colligens LXXX complexus est. cum ergo ambo id uellent facere, quod a me petis, quantum tamen inter se different, de numero interim sectarum uides.” 14 ep. 223.2. 15 ep. 224. I would like to apologize to the editors of this volume for the occasions on which I have inadvertently imitated Augustine during the course of writing this chapter.

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These four letters, together with the actual preface of the De haeresibus, also addressed to Quodvultdeus, are therefore important both in establishing the nature of the work and also constructing a distinctive portrait of its author. As Tamsyn Barton has demonstrated, this practice of creating a scholarly ēthos for oneself was a central aspect of ancient technical literature, particularly in highly competitive and factional fields such as medicine.16 In his prefatory material, Augustine is certainly making extensive use of one common classical literary trope by which an author could seek to obtain an air of impartial and reliable expertise: the “rhetoric of modesty.” Attempts to establish a reputation for modesty were often linked with the claim to be writing in response to a request from a friend or correspondent, employing the “rhetoric of compulsion.”17 This allowed authors to present themselves as only making a written display of their erudition because of the pressure placed on them by others, helping them both to avoid a charge of arrogant competitiveness and self-promotion and also to appear to be figures whose expertise was acknowledged and sought after by a learned community of readers. Alongside this, however, the exchange of letters between these two men also emphasizes the working methods of Augustine, establishing him as a figure who displays almost unparalleled devotion to scholarship, regardless of the labor and toil required. When Quodvultdeus rejects the suitability of the works of Epiphanius and Filastrius for his purpose, one of his stated reasons is that he does not believe they will have written with the “care and diligence” required to both describe and refute the heresies.18 Even though he readily admits that he had not read their works, or even heard of them before this moment, his knowledge of Augustine reassures him that their efforts could never measure up to his in this regard. In the following letter, Augustine also constructs a sense of his position as a dedicated expert by explaining how he was going about writing the De haeresibus alongside his other current projects. In describing why he had been unable to fulfil Quodvultdeus’s request, he informed the deacon that his friend Alypius had pressed him to respond to eight books by Julian of Eclanum and so he had been carrying out this task alongside his other current work of checking and revising his own earlier writings, doing one of these by day and the other at night. Working at night was a common activity emphasized by classical authors 16 Tamsyn S. Barton, Power and Knowledge: Astrology, Physiognomics and Medicine under the Roman Empire (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 139. 17 For a discussion of the history of these linked tropes and their use in late-antique heresiology, see Flower, “Rhetoric,” esp. 194–5 on this exchange of letters and the De haeresibus itself. 18 ep. 223.2.

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in order to establish a suitable ēthos in the minds of their audience.19 In his On recognizing the best doctor, which now only survives in an Arabic translation, Galen explains that, as well as having relevant knowledge and experience, an observer should also examine the behavior of any doctor in order to form an assessment of him. Unsurprisingly, the paradigm constructed by Galen here is one which closely mirrors his own life, and he is at pains to explain that even as a young man, while other doctors were out enjoying themselves, he would work long into the night, studying an array of medical writings.20 Similarly, when describing his working practices in the preface to his own encyclopaedic Natural History, Pliny the Elder describes his own diligence in producing such a monumental work of scholarship. As well as enumerating the number of authors and books that he had read, he also reassures the emperor that while his days are devoted to official duties, his nights have been spent on compiling his magnum opus, “lest any of you might think that I have been idle during these hours.”21 In a similar way, Augustine also stresses that he will employ the same sort of method when he comes to start writing the De haeresibus, reassuring Quodvultdeus that he will continue with his existing work alongside this new project: “I set out, if the Lord wishes it, to begin what you ask, doing both at the same time—both this work and that one on the reviewing of my own writings—with the hours of night and day divided up between the two.”22 Like Galen or Pliny, his claim to expertise is supported by a description of his dedication to scholarship and his promise to perform this vitally important task to help others combat and escape the dangers of heresy. When he came to write the preface to the text itself, Augustine once again explained to Quodvultdeus the magnitude of the task which had been assigned to him.23 In order to demonstrate the challenges involved in producing the type of treatise requested by his correspondent, Augustine describes two earlier projects that he regarded as comparable. The first is by a figure named 19 20

21 22 23

See Tore Janson, Latin Prose Prefaces: Studies in Literary Conventions (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1964), 97–8, 147–8, for a discussion of the history of this topos, including its use by both Callimachus and Cicero. Galen, De optimo medico cognoscendo 9.2–5. See also Véronique Boudon-Millot, “Galen’s bios and methodos: From Ways of Life to Path of Knowledge,” in Galen and the World of Knowledge, ed. Christopher Gill, Tim Whitmarsh, and John Wilkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 175–89, at 182 for Galen making similar comparisons between himself and lesser physicians at De methodo medendi 9.4 (609K). Pliny, Historia naturalis pref.18. ep. 224.2 : “dispono, si dominus uoluerit, et, quod poscis, incipere simul agens utrumque et hoc scilicet et illud de retractatione opusculorum meorum nocturnis et diurnis temporibus in singula distributis.” haer. pref. 7.

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Celsus, who had written six substantial volumes describing the “views of all the philosophers who established various sects [sectae] up to his own time,” but had not passed any judgement on their beliefs in the way that Quodvultdeus wanted Augustine to do with the heretics.24 In addition, there were also problems with his taxonomic methodology in dividing up his material: “he named nearly one hundred philosophers, not all of whom established their own heresies [haereses], because he thought that he should not keep quiet about those ones who followed their teachers without any difference of opinion.”25 Although Augustine was not treating “pagan” philosophy as part of the history of Christian heresy, unlike Epiphanius who included some schools among his twenty pre-Incarnation sects, Celsus’s project was nonetheless presented as analogous to his own, with the terms haereses and sectae being used interchangeably to describe philosophical schools, just as he had done in his earlier letter when talking about Christian heresies.26 This was an encyclopaedic endeavor which fell short not only of Quodvultdeus’s stipulations but also of Augustine’s own standards for the proper distinguishing of individual groups, since Celsus had listed a number of philosophers separately when they were in agreement with their predecessors and so did not deserve to be seen as founders of new haereses. In addition, by comparing his project favorably to an example of the more established literary form of the collective biography, Augustine was also presenting heresiology itself as a similar type of intellectual exercise. It was cast as another taxonomizing technē that was structured according to the same sorts of classificatory principles and so, like Celsus and authors of such works, Augustine could lay claim to the status of an authoritative expert.27 Augustine’s second example is the work of Epiphanius, who had been mentioned already in his letters. He states that the Cypriot bishop’s text was in six books and included eighty heresies but provided no refutations of these 24 On the question of who this Celsus was, including the possibility that he was the firstcentury encyclopaedic author whose De medicina survives, see Arianism and Other Heresies. WSA I/18, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Roland Teske (New York: New City Press, 1995), 33n8. 25 haer. pref. 5 : “ferme centum philosophos nominasset quorum non omnes instituerunt haereses proprias quoniam nec illos tacendos putauit qui suos magistros sine ulla dissensione secuti sunt.” 26 ep. 222.2, discussed above. The Greek term haeresis was regularly used non-pejoratively for schools of thought in philosophy and medicine before it gained its distinctive Christian meaning. 27 On collective biography in the Roman world and its relationship to earlier heresiological literature, see Kendra Eshleman, The Social World of Intellectuals in the Roman Empire: Sophists, Philosophers, and Christians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

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groups and so it also failed to live up to the standard of the book which Quodvultdeus wanted to read and Augustine wanted to write.28 In contrast to Celsus’s six volumes, however, Epiphanius’s sextet were much shorter, so that, as Augustine explained, even if these libelli were added together they would not be as long as some individual books written by him or other authors. From the description given here, it is clear that Augustine was not making use of the full Panarion of Epiphanius, which is a very lengthy work incorporating many critiques of individual beliefs, but rather an extremely condensed summary of it known as the Anacephalaeoses, which only provides brief notices about each group.29 Although he had originally offered to send this text to the deacon, it is here held up as an example of a text which could not satisfy his needs, especially because, like Celsus, he had failed to refute the heresies he described. Moreover, the juxtaposition of Celsus and Epiphanius allows Augustine to position his intellectual endeavor as superior to both. Despite the fact that neither had exactly the same parameters as the De haeresibus, they nonetheless shared the same aim of accurately classifying human beliefs into discrete “sects” or “heresies.” These two earlier six-book attempts had, however, erred in diametrically opposing ways, with Celsus writing large volumes that included too many philosophers and Epiphanius composing such short “books” that they barely deserved the title. This sets the stage for Augustine’s own work to fill the gap in scholarship, avoiding the failings of his predecessors like Goldilocks’s third bowl of porridge. Quodvultdeus had asked for a text which would benefit “the learned and the inexperienced, the leisurely and the busy” and through which “the man who has read much might recall those things quickly and the ignorant man be instructed by the compendium.”30 Augustine now explains how his work finds the happy medium that was missed by others and so would be much more likely to act as the “one multiform spear” against all heresies requested by the deacon.31 After this criticism, Augustine does, however, sound another note of caution about his enterprise, warning that it would be difficult, maybe even impossible, to provide a clear answer to the question of what makes a heretic a heretic, although he still promises to explore this issue in his (never completed) second 28 haer. pref. 6. See also Flower, “Insanity,” 182. 29 See Bardy, “Le ‘De Haeresibus’ et ses sources,” 401–404; Silvia Jannaccone, La dottrina eresiologica di S. Agostino: studio di storia letteraria e religiosa a proposito del trattato De Haeresibus (Catania: Università di Catania, 1952), 23–26; Frank Williams, The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis: Book I (Sects 1–46) 2nd edn. (Leiden : Brill, 2009), xxii. 30 ep. 221.3 : “doctis et imperitis, otiosis et occupatis … ille, qui multa legit, eadem breuiter recordatur et compendio ignarus instruitur.” 31 ep. 221.3: “uno multiformi iaculo.”

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book.32 Despite the apparent uncertainty about whether he would be able to achieve this aim, he is nonetheless competing with Epiphanius by challenging the bishop’s account of heresy. This picks up his earlier comments about both Epiphanius and Filastrius in his first letter to Quodvultdeus, where he ascribes their varying tallies of heresies to their differing definitions of the concept itself: “In fact, this is difficult to define completely and so we must beware, when we try to count them all, lest we omit some, although they are heresies, or include others, although they are not.”33 He may have been uncertain about how to define heresy itself to a reader, or even whether such a definition was possible, but his own understanding of the subject was still superior to theirs because he could see the flaws in their approaches and could point out where they erred in their categorization of groups and beliefs. In addition, he pronounces Epiphanius to have “spoken in a more learned manner on this subject than Filastrius,” even if neither got it right.34 By passing judgement on the relative merits of the two most notable heresiologists of recent times, Augustine’s own expertise in the field is therefore being demonstrated even before he has written a single word about any given sect. This competitive engagement with Epiphanius and Filastrius is then developed throughout the catalogue itself, as Augustine repeatedly passes judgement on these two sources and the ways in which they had divided and structured their taxonomies of the world of heresy. After giving an account of the beliefs of the Ebionites in chapter 10, he remarks that “Epiphanius united the Sampsaeans and Elcesaeans to this heresy so that he places them under the same number as though it was one heresy, even though he states that they differ in some way. However he also speaks about them later, placing them under their own number.”35 Not content with this remark, Augustine returns to the 32 haer. pref. 7. 33 ep.  222.2: “et re uera hoc omnino definire difficile est et ideo cauendum, cum omnes in numerum redigere conamur, ne praetermittamus aliquas, quamuis haereses sint, aut adnumeremus aliquas, cum haereses non sint.” See also Quodvultdeus’ comments on the unsuitability of these two heresiologies in his reply at ep. 223.2–3, also asking to avoid such imported works and “with foreign flavors having been set aside” to receive instead “African bread.” 34 ep. 222.2: “ipsum enim arbitror Filastrio doctius hinc locutum.” 35 haer. 10: “huic haeresi Epiphanius Sampsaeos et Elcesaeos ita copulat ut sub eodem numero tamquam una sit haeresis ponat, aliquid tamen interesse significans. quamuis et in consequentibus loquatur de illis, ponens eos sub numero suo.” See Anacephalaeoses 30.1, where these groups are mentioned alongside the Ebionites, although Augustine’s claim that Epiphanius treats them “as though it was one heresy” seems to be rather unfair. On Augustine’s use of Epiphanius as a source, see also Bardy, “Le ‘De Haeresibus’ et ses sources,” 399–401.

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topic again in chapter 32, stating that “Epiphanius describes the Elcesaeans and Sampsaeans in this place according to his own order.”36 In the rest of this chapter, instead of simply stating what they believe in his own voice, the only details he provides are described as coming second-hand from Epiphanius. Augustine generally follows the list and sequence of heresies in the Anacephalaeoses very closely with very few deviations, but he does not usually explicitly remark that any given entry is in accordance with Epiphanius’s structuring of the topic. On this occasion, however, he draws attention to the inconsistency in Epiphanius’s classification system, correcting the ambiguity, by confirming their division from the Ebionites through being assigned their own entry in the catalogue, but also distancing himself from the matter to some extent by noting the problems with the source material. The practice of careful division and separation of any phenomenon according to observable criteria was a common feature of ancient technical literature, including those of Galen and the naturalist Nicander of Colophon, and is also visible in the works of earlier heresiologists, including Epiphanius’s own Panarion.37 Augustine is here claiming to outdo his illustrious predecessor in precisely this manner and so demonstrate his own superior mastery of the nature of heresy itself. Elsewhere, Augustine also briefly draws his audience’s attention to where he has decided to amend Epiphanius’s categorization by expansion or contraction, for instance commenting that he has put the Tatians and Encratites together in a single chapter, even though Epiphanius split them into two, and also that he was giving the Artotyrites their own entry as a separate group, in contrast to Epiphanius, who had joined them to the Pepuzians.38 At times, however, his criticism of his main source is more extended and explicit, as well as finding fault with Filastrius at the same time. This is particularly striking in chapter 41 on the Sabellians, who are said to be derived from the Noetians that had appeared five chapters earlier. Augustine expresses his exasperation about 36 haer. 32: “Elcesaeos et Sampsaeos hic tamquam ordine suo commemorat Epiphanius.” 37 On this issue, see Richard Flower, “Genealogies of Unbelief: Epiphanius of Salamis and Heresiological Authority,” in Unclassical Traditions, Volume II: Perspectives from East and West in Late Antiquity, ed. Christopher Kelly, Richard Flower, and Michael Stuart Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society, 2011), 70–88, at 79; Young Richard Kim, Epiphanius of Cyprus: Imagining an Orthodox World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015), 173–203; Richard Flower, “Medicalizing Heresy: Doctors and Patients in Epiphanius of Salamis,” Journal of Late Antiquity 11, no. 2 (2018): 251–73, at 253–61, as well as Berzon, Classifying Christians, esp. 186–217, including a number of comparisons specifically with ancient ethnography and its classification of peoples. 38 haer. 25 and 28. The separation of the Artotyrites may have been due to their appearance as a separate group in the Indiculus of Pseudo-Jerome. On this text and Augustine’s use of it, see 77 below.

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the difficulty of acquiring accurate information about the differences between the two groups, grumbling that “I have not been able to find out clearly why it was that the aforementioned bishop Epiphanius placed the Noetians and the Sabellians as two heresies, not as two names of one heresy; because if they differed amongst themselves at all, he stated this so obscurely, perhaps through his zeal for brevity, that I do not understand.”39 This is followed by a translation of the relevant notice from the Anacephalaeoses and the suggestion that Epiphanius wrote with too much ambiguity for Augustine to be sure what was meant by these words. He then invokes the text of the entry written by Filastrius in his “very lengthy book” of one hundred and twenty-eight heresies, but finds this to be similarly unsatisfactory: “certainly he said that those who were later called Sabellians were the same ones who believed what Noetus believed, and [Filastrius] related other names for the same sect. Nonetheless, he also placed Noetians and Sabellians under two numbers as two heresies; why he did this, he himself knows!”40 Unlike his revision of Epiphanius’ classification of the Encratites and Artotyrites, Augustine is not actually choosing to contradict the previous heresiologists entirely, since he still gives the Sabellians their own entry in his catalogue. Nonetheless, his acceptance of their account of the divisions of heresy is certainly qualified by his complaints about their failure to provide sufficient information to justify their decision to separate this group from the Noetians. As with the criticism of Celsus and Epiphanius in the preface, these two sources are also presented as extremes of writing practices, but with the same result that they were both unable to explain their classification of the sect: for Epiphanius this was due to his wish for brevity, while for Filastrius it was despite the great size of his work. Some similar criticisms also appear in chapter 45 on Photinus, which comes immediately after the discussion of Paul of Samosata and his followers. Augustine once again explains that his sources are unsatisfactory, but here in different ways: Epiphanius said that Photinus disagreed with Paul in some regards, but without saying what they were, and he also listed him some distance away in his catalogue; Filastrius put the two heretics in successive chapters, but said that Photinus followed Paul’s doctrine

39 haer. 41: “unde ergo sit factum ut Noetianos et Sabellianos non unius haeresis duo nomina, sed tamquam duas haereses supradictus episcopus Epiphanius poneret, liquido inuenire non potui; quia si quid inter se differunt, tam obscure dixit, studio forsitan breuitatis, ut non intelligam.” 40 haer. 41: “in prolixissimo libro; certe iste eosdem postea Sabellianos dixit appellatos qui ea quae Noetus sentiebant, et alia nomina eiusdem sectae commemorauit. et tamen Noetianos et Sabellianos sub duobus numeris tamquam duas haereses posuit; qua causa, ipse uiderit.”

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in every way.41 Augustine’s solution to this disagreement is to correct both of them, accepting the distinction in the beliefs put forward by Epiphanius (despite his failure to provide any supporting detail once again), but amending his order to match that of Filastrius, recognizing Photinus as having branched off from Paul in this taxonomy of the family tree of heresy.42 After describing the Massalians in chapter 57, Augustine explains that these are the last sect in Epiphanius’s work and that he has therefore finished using it for his own catalogue: “in describing heretics, I have not followed his method, but his order. For from other authors I incorporated some things which he did not include, and I have not included some things which he did. And so I explained some things more extensively than him, I also explained some others more briefly and in a number of them I displayed equal brevity, arranging everything as the principle of my purpose demanded.”43 As Augustine then goes on to state, Epiphanius’s eighty heresies had been trimmed down to sixty by removing the twenty pre-Incarnation groups, as they did not fit the project, and then sixty became fifty-seven in his own reckoning, with divisions or combinations being made where he disagreed with the classification.44 Just as Epiphanius had carefully categorized heresy, Augustine now revises and corrects Epiphanius’s map of knowledge, competing with his illustrious predecessor. The following part of the text consists of those heresies which appear in Filastrius but not Epiphanius, filling up the next twenty-three chapters, numbers 58 to 80. At the end of this, as he had done with Epiphanius, he then also passes judgement on Filastrius’s definition of heresy: “I decided that these heresies ought to be transferred from the work of Filastrius into my own. Certainly, he also recorded some others, but it seems to me that they ought not to be termed heresies. Whichever ones I have listed without names, he did not record their names either.”45 Augustine therefore told his readers that he had fully and faithfully trawled Filastrius’s text for information, so that any 41 haer. 45. Paul and Photinus appear in Anacephalaeoses 65 and 71 respectively, as well as chapters 64 and 65 of Filastrius. 42 Augustine also reiterates this correction of Epiphanius at the end of chapter 50, noting that the Photinians appeared at this point in Epiphanius’ list, but he had already covered them. 43 haer. 57: “cuius ego in commemorandis haereticis non modum, sed ordinem sum secutus. nam et aliqua ex aliis posui quae ipse non posuit, et aliqua non posui quae ipse posuit. itaque alia latius quam ipse, alia etiam breuius explicaui, paremque in nonnullis exhibui breuitatem, omnia moderans sicut intentionis meae ratio postulabat.” See also Berzon, Classifying Christians, 228. 44 On this passage, see Flower, “Insanity,” 183; Berzon, Classifying Christians, 228. 45 haer. 80: “has haereses putaui in hoc opus meum de Filastri opere transferendas. et alias quidem ipse commemorat, sed mihi appellandae haereses non uidentur. quascumque autem

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unnamed heresies were the result of Filastrius’s failure to name them, rather than his own failure to copy this information. At the same time, however, the omission of a significant proportion of Filastrius’s 156 “heresies,” of which 128 post-dated the Incarnation, is explained as the result of a well-considered editorial decision, whereby Augustine had rejected those beliefs and practices which had been incorrectly classified by his predecessor. The authority of earlier heresiologists is thus recognized, but also subjected to critical scrutiny by a figure who claims the expertise to assess and correct their taxonomies of heresy. For the final eight entries in his catalogue, Augustine draws upon other written works and his own experience, supplementing the lists provided by Epiphanius and Filastrius, which was only to be expected since they had written a few decades previously. Even when not directly discussing them, however, he nonetheless finds opportunities to critique their scholarship and demonstrate his own superior knowledge. The Luciferians and Jovinianists, who appear in chapters 81 and 82, are drawn from an anonymous heresiology, now known as the Indiculus of Pseudo-Jerome. Noting the absence of the Luciferians from both Epiphanius and Filastrius, Augustine suggests that they believed it to be a schism rather than a heresy. In contrast, he has chosen to follow his other unnamed source, which attributes to the group an error regarding the origin of the soul, but adds that, even if this is incorrect, they are still to be categorized as heretics “because they reinforced their disagreement through their intransigent hostility.”46 The failure of his two main sources to mention the Luciferians is therefore cast not as due to a lack of knowledge, but rather to an error of classification, while Augustine’s own understanding that inveterate schism can become heresy ensures that their heretical status is assured even if the anonymous text he had read turns out to be inaccurate.47 His own contribution to heresiological knowledge is therefore emphasized in this last part of the De haeresibus. This is certainly true for the Helvidians, Paternians, Tertullianists, Abeloites and Pelagians in the final five chapters, which are explicitly said to come not from the authors he has read but via other means, including his personal experience.48 Augustine also makes this sine nominibus posui, nec ipse earum nomina memorauit.” On Augustine’s use of Filastrius, see also Bardy, “Le ‘De Haeresibus’ et ses sources,” 404–7. 46 haer. 81: “quia dissensionem suam pertinaci animositate firmarunt.” 47 In chapter 84 about the Helvidians, one of the sects based on Augustine’s own experience, he also takes Epiphanius to task for referring to them as Antidicomarites and failing to name Helvidius in his account. 48 Chapter 82 also states that he was already familiar with the Jovinianists before encountering them in the anonymous book.

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claim, however, for his engagement with another text which, unlike the previous three, is not specifically a work of heresiology: “When I scrutinized the history of Eusebius, which Rufinus translated into Latin and also supplemented with two additional books about the subsequent period, I did not find any other heresy which I had not read about in them [the other sources], except one which Eusebius places in his sixth book, relating that it existed in Arabia. Since he does not describe the founder of these heretics, we can name them Arabici.”49 This statement could be taken as an implicit criticism of the other three scholars, all of whom postdate Eusebius and so could have included this group. Augustine’s dedication to research and ability to recognize and classify discrete heretical sects are shown to be superior to theirs and so, using this historical work, he is now able not merely to aggregate and correct the work of earlier heresiologists, but also to add to the total sum of heresiological knowledge, emphasizing his contribution through the symbolically powerful act of naming. *** Despite his impressive combination of expertise, diligence and experience, however, Augustine concludes the work on a more pessimistic note, explaining to Quodvultdeus that he had not fulfilled the deacon’s request because he could not acquire information about every sect: “I think that this is because no one of those whose works on this subject I read listed all of them. For I found some in one which I did not find in another, and again some in the second which the first did not list. But I listed more than them because I collected from all of them, not finding all the heresies in each one, and I even added to them those which I recalled, but did not find in any of them.”50 He follows this by admitting that he has not been able to read every book ever written on the subject, yet even this statement becomes an opportunity for self-justification, since he repeats his claim that none of those he had encountered listed all 49 haer. 83: “cum Eusebii historiam perscrutatus essem, cui Rufinus a se in Latinam linguam translatae subsequentium etiam temporum duos libros addidit, non inueni aliquam haeresim quam non legerim apud istos, nisi quam in sexto libro ponit Eusebius, narrans eam exstitisse in Arabia. itaque hos haereticos, quoniam nullum eorum ponit auctorem, Arabicos possumus nuncupare.” The relevant passage appears at Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica 6.37. 50 haer. epil. 1: “quod ideo existimo quia nullus eorum quorum de hac re scripta legi omnes posuit. quando quidem inueni apud alium quas apud alium non inueni, et rursus apud istum quas ille non posuit. ego autem propterea plures quam ipsi posui quia collegi ex omnibus quas omnes apud singulos non inueni, additis etiam his quas ipse recolens apud ullum eorum inuenire non potui.” See also Flower, “Insanity,” 184 on this passage.

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heresies, demonstrating that his lack of comprehensiveness reflects not his scholarly failure, but rather the actual impossibility of the task. Moreover, he tells Quodvultdeus, new heresies will arise in the future, so even if his heresiology were complete now, it will lose this status over time.51 This aspect of Augustine’s work has been explored by Todd Berzon, who compares Augustine’s heresiology extensively with ethnographical writings, but also argues that serious problems are raised for heresiology by the bishop’s recognition that no example of this genre could ever be complete. For Berzon, this undermines a sense of heresiology as an encyclopaedic enterprise that enhances the author’s authority: “The internal rhetoric of heresiological texts at best complicated and at worst subverted the triumphalist, expansive discourse of Christian orthodoxy. The heresies were not simply a disruption within sacred history; they challenged the very foundations of narration, comprehension, and human understanding of the world that they had permeated.”52 Nonetheless, although Augustine’s presentation of what a heresiologist could and could not achieve differs from the claims to comprehensiveness made by Epiphanius and Filastrius, his position is certainly not unique to the study of heresies and is actually quite common in encyclopaedic literature. Pliny the Elder, in introducing the great catalogue of Roman imperial knowledge in his Natural History, similarly unites a competitive claim to surpass his predecessors with an ostensibly modest remark about the impossibility of achieving actual comprehensiveness: “by reading around two thousand volumes, very few of which are consulted by scholars because of the abstruseness of their subject matter, in thirty-six volumes I have compiled twenty thousand facts worthy of attention, drawn from a hundred authors whom I have examined, and I have added very many more, which earlier writers did not know about or which human experience has discovered later on. I do not doubt that there are also many things which have escaped my notice; for I am human and busy with duties.”53 There will be changes or new discoveries, especially in a field such as heresiology, but this is also true of many other forms of knowledge; nor does the recognition of this fact prevent an author from making competitive claims to exceed their predecessors in scholarship and, within the limits of possibility, 51 haer. epil. 3. 52 Berzon, Classifying Christians, 245. 53 Pliny, Historia Naturalis pr. 17–18: “uiginti milia rerum dignarum cura … lectione uoluminum circiter duorum milium, quorum pauca admodum studiosi attingunt propter secretum materiae, ex exquisitis auctoribus centum inclusimus triginta sex uoluminibus, adiectis rebus plurimis quas aut ignorauerant priores aut postea inuenerat uita. nec dubitamus multa esse quae et nos praeterierint; homines enim sumus et occupati officiis.”

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comprehensiveness. While the aim of an encyclopaedia is complete understanding of a subject, any such work will always suffer from “incompletion and obsolescence,” in the words of the theorist H.  A.  Clark.54 The notion of the “fragmentary encyclopaedia,” which explicitly acknowledges this fact, has been explored by Daniel Harris-McCoy in his work on Artemidorus’s Oneirocritica, a second-century guide to the interpretation of dreams.55 Artemidorus defends his work against charges of incompleteness precisely by saying that no text can ever achieve that ideal. Nonetheless, he claims that his text comes closer than any other and also provides its readers with vital knowledge so that they can supplement it through analogy and experience. Similarly, despite the fact that heresiology would always be a never-ending quest for knowledge, Augustine proclaims his own book superior to all others. In his epilogue, he responds to the rumor that Jerome had written a guide to heresies, but casts doubt on the story, saying that he could not obtain a copy of it and that a homo studiosus, who knew Jerome’s works well, assured him that it did not exist.56 Nonetheless, he says, if it exists it is unlikely to be better than his own De haeresibus, since Jerome, even though he was a homo doctissimus, could not have known about heresies such as the Abeloites, whom Augustine describes in his chapter 87 on the basis of his own personal experience. The message is clear: Augustine’s text is more comprehensive than any other, either real or hypothetical.57 In this final stage of his life, Augustine was engaged in a number of projects that constructed comprehensive and authoritative bodies of knowledge which, vitally, also proclaimed their own comprehensiveness and authority. His City of God, written over the course of more than a decade, was, among other things, a work of compilation which simultaneously collected and radically reframed classical and ‘pagan’ material. Similarly, as Augustine explained to Quodvultdeus in his Letter 224, he had also just been engaged in writing the Retractationes, through which he exercised authority and control over no less a figure than his own younger self. The De haeresibus might therefore be read within this context, as another example of Augustine engaging with a body of literature and reworking it to create his own superior guide to the subject. Moreover, this competitiveness is also evident in his rejection of the notion of the complete heresiology, since it implicitly criticises the methodology of his 54 Hilary A. Clark, “Encyclopedic Discourse,” SubStance 67 (1992): 95–110, at 97. 55 Daniel Harris-McCoy, “Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica as Fragmentary Encyclopaedia,” in Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. Jason König and Greg Woolf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 154–77. 56 haer. epil. 2. 57 Berzon, Classifying Christians, 234 discusses this passage, but regards it as a further sign of Augustine’s pessimism, rather than a competitive statement.

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predecessors Epiphanius and Filastrius, just as he had done when commenting on their failure to fully comprehend the nature of heresy in his preface and his first letter to Quodvultdeus. His superficially pessimistic tone in the epilogue, which also draws on the rhetoric of modesty that pervades classical technical literature, is, therefore, actually making a subtly triumphalist statement: he had read widely and, after finding the best authorities to be insufficient in a variety of ways, had drawn from them all, supplemented them from his own experiences, and so created the most authoritative heresiology yet. The audience is reassured that his was the best work to use, imitate and supplement in the continuing battle against the enemy. Works Cited I. Primary Sources

Augustine of Hippo. Arianism and Other Heresies, translated by Roland Teske, edited by John E. Rotelle. WSA I/18. New York: New City Press, 1995. —. The De Haeresibus of Saint Augustine: A Translation with an Introduction and Commentary, translated by Liguori G. Müller. Patristic Studies 90. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1956. Epiphanius of Salamis. The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis: Book I (Sects 1–46). 2nd ed. Edited by Frank Williams. Leiden: Brill, 2009.

II.

Secondary Sources

Bardy, Gustave. “Le ‘De Haeresibus’ et ses sources.” In Augustine of Hippo, Miscellanea Agostiniana, 397–8. 2 vols. Rome: Typographia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1930–1931. Barton, Tamsyn S. Power and Knowledge: Astrology, Physiognomics and Medicine under the Roman Empire. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994. Berzon, Todd  S. Classifying Christians: Ethnography, Heresiology, and the Limits of Knowledge in Late Antiquity. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016. Boudon-Millot, Véronique. “Galen’s bios and methodos: From Ways of Life to Path of Knowledge.” In Galen and the World of Knowledge, edited by Christopher Gill, Tim Whitmarsh, and John Wilkins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Boyarin, Daniel. Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Cameron, Averil. “The Violence of Orthodoxy.” In Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity, edited by Eduard Iricinschi and Holger  M.  Zellentin, 102–14. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008. Clark, Hilary A. “Encyclopedic Discourse.” SubStance 67 (1992): 95–110.

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Eshleman, Kendra. The Social World of Intellectuals in the Roman Empire: Sophists, Philosophers, and Christians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Flower, Richard. “Genealogies of Unbelief: Epiphanius of Salamis and Heresiological Authority.” In Unclassical Traditions, Volume II: Perspectives from East and West in Late Antiquity, edited by Christopher Kelly, Richard Flower, and Michael Stuart Williams, 70–88. Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society, 2011. —. “The Insanity of Heretics Must be Restrained: Heresiology in the Theodosian Code.” In Theodosius II: Rethinking the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity, edited by Christopher Kelly, 172–94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. —. “Medicalizing Heresy: Doctors and Patients in Epiphanius of Salamis.” Journal of Late Antiquity 11, no. 2 (2018): 251–73. —. “The Rhetoric of Heresiological Prefaces.” In Flower and Ludlow, Rhetoric and Religious Identity in Late Antiquity, 180–97. —, and Morwenna Ludlow, eds. Rhetoric and Religious Identity in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Harris-McCoy, Daniel. “Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica as Fragmentary Encyclopaedia.” In König and Woolf, Encyclopaedism, 154–77. Inglebert, Hervé. Interpretatio christiana: Les mutations des savoirs (cosmographie, géographie, ethnographie, histoire) dans l’antiquité chrétienne (30–630 après J.-C.). Collection des études augustiniennes: Série antiquité 166. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 2001. Jannaccone, Silvia. La dottrina eresiologica di S. Agostino: Studio di storia letteraria e religiosa a proposito del trattato De Haeresibus. Raccolta di studi di letteratura cristiana antica 20. Catania: Università di Catania, 1952. Janson, Tore. Latin Prose Prefaces: Studies in Literary Conventions. Studia Latina Stockholmiensia 13. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1964. Kim, Young Richard. Epiphanius of Cyprus: Imagining an Orthodox World. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015. König, Jason, and Greg Woolf. “Introduction.” In König and Woolf, Encyclopaedism, 1–20. —, eds. Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. McClure, Judith. “Handbooks against Heresy in the West, from the Late Fourth to the Late Sixth Centuries.” JThS 30 (1979): 186–97. Shaw, Brent D. Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. —. “Who Were the Circumcellions?” In Vandals, Romans, and Berbers: New Perspectives on Late Antique North Africa, edited by A. H. Merrills, 227–58. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004.

Augustine’s Marginalia Contra Julianum Catherine Conybeare In the Philadelphia Museum of Art, an entire room, and part of its anteroom, is dedicated to the display of a renowned sequence of paintings by the American artist Cy Twombly (1928–2011). It is called “Fifty Days at Iliam”—we are assured that the “a” in “Iliam” is intentional—and it simultaneously presents and critiques the violence and sorrow of the Trojan war. There are ten vast canvases, each minimally prepared with a white foundation. Dimensions vary, but they are roughly on a scale of 10 × 12 feet (3 × 3.5 meters). Twombly’s intervention on each canvas seems provisional and partial. There are intense swirls and splotches of paint, irregular scribbled forms, names scrawled across patches of canvas with seemingly random styles and spelling conventions (though capital A is always represented as capital delta, which lends a vestigial Greekness but is constantly disorienting). There is a repeated motif, loosely drawn, which is reminiscent simultaneously of a phallus and a handgun. Large areas of each canvas simply remain blank. The overall effect is somehow both scattered and overwhelming. I had visited this room several times and had long struggled to understand why this sequence of paintings is so renowned. Then one day I happened across a brief essay on Twombly by John Berger—and suddenly, Twombly’s work began to make sense to me. Berger wrote of Cy Twombly that his paintings “touch upon something fundamental to a writer’s relationship with her or his language,” and went on to elaborate: A writer continually struggles for clarity against the language he’s using, or, more accurately, against the common usage of that language. He doesn’t see language with the readability and clarity of something printed out. He sees it, rather, as a terrain full of illegibilities, hidden paths, impasses, surprises, and obscurities… . Its obscurities, its lost senses, its self-effacements come about for many reasons—because of the way words modify each other, write themselves over each other, cancel one another out, because the unsaid always counts for as much, or more, as the said, and because language can never cover what it signifies. Language is always an abbreviation.1

1 John Berger, Portraits: John Berger on Artists, ed. Tom Overton (London/New York: Verso, 2015), 426.

© Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2021 | doi:10.30965/9783657704767_006

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Reading this, I was reminded in particular of another Twombly canvas that I saw a couple of years ago at the Peggy Guggenheim collection in Venice. This is a rather smaller work, some 4 × 5 feet (1.2 × 1.5 meters). The ground is dark grey, the color of an old-fashioned chalkboard. This particular chalkboard seems to have suffered the intervention of a mischievous yet somehow orderly student. From top to bottom, in chalk-white crayon, there are rows of loops, repeated over each other, mimicking writing but never resolving into letters. The viewer reaches for meaning in this visual language that “can never cover what it signifies.” The effect is striking, but puzzling. Rather to my surprise, Berger’s essay also helped me to understand something about the textual traces of the encounter between Augustine of Hippo and Julian of Eclanum, with which I had also—and more urgently—been struggling. This encounter played out through the 420s CE, and both writers pursued it with an urgency and exhaustiveness that reflected the significance of the issues at hand. For Julian of Eclanum was a proponent of the teachings of Pelagius, and Augustine thought that those teachings were not only heretical but undermined the entire structure of Christian belief. So fundamental has the Pelagian challenge remained that it is still enshrined in the ninth of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church: Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam, (as the Pelagians do vainly talk;) but it is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit …

The particular episode of the encounter between Augustine and Julian that is under scrutiny here dates to 429 CE. It has come down to us as Augustine’s Opus imperfectum contra Iulianum, and was, as its received title implies, unfinished.2 It was composed too late to be included in the Retractationes, Augustine’s polemical “catalogue raisonné” of his own works, which seems to compound its character of incompleteness. As Augustine maps out in his preface to the work, the Opus imperfectum continues an escalating war of words: his own single book De nuptiis et concupiscentia, addressed to count Valerius,3 had inspired a response in four books from Julian, to which Augustine had responded in six, Julian in eight  … and now this was the work with which Augustine hoped definitively to close out the exchange. The notion that 2 Translations of all works are my own. 3 See “Valerius 3,” PLRE 2. 1143–4.

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“language is always an abbreviation” may seem an odd way to introduce this notoriously verbose exchange; but it will prove useful, as we shall see. The Opus imperfectum was a work composed as Augustine confronted his own mortality. He must have known that the end of his long, full, combative life was close at hand; he had already far exceeded the regular life expectancy of his time. And mortality was, in this work, his recurring theme: the mortal state to which human flesh had been consigned at the Fall; the state of original sin that this mortality signified; the grace of God that was the only hope for release from mortality—from deathliness. Augustine was reading as if for the first time Paul’s anguished disentangling of God’s dispensation in the letter to the Romans, and he cried out with Paul: “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”4 Again and again, he returned to two poignant phrases from Ambrose: “omnes in peccato nascimur” (we are all born in sin) and “fuit Adam et in illo fuimus omnes” (Adam existed, and in him have we all existed).5 Augustine’s conversation with Paul and with Ambrose is in some ways as urgent as his conversation with Julian. But this work is not, in fact, a conversation. It has no oral trace; it was composed purely in writing. There are interesting vestiges of an oral conceit, generally used to underscore a point of particular theological moment. For example, the simple imperative “dic” (tell me) occurs 84 times in the work, according to the Cetedoc database of Latin texts: “dic mihi,” “dic quaeso,” “dic aperte,” “dic euidenter.” But if the two men are in any way to be conceived of as talking, they are talking across each other. There is no real space for a response to the insistent demand of “dic,” and not only because Augustine died before he completed the work. The terms in which a satisfactory response might be given are never disclosed, because satisfactory will never be good enough. “Dic” can never be fully answered. To what genre, then, does this work belong? As we observe the format, it appears at first glance to belong to the genre of late antique controversial dialogues. These were increasingly establishing themselves in both the eastern and western empire as a way of displaying, if not always settling, theological debate.6 Sometimes composed purely for the page—whether or not they can 4 Romans 7:24. 5 Despite the fact that in literal terms it hinges on only two words, the echo in “fuit Adam …” of Aeneid 2.325–6 is almost irresistible: “fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium et ingens/ gloria Teucrorum”. The sense is of something irrevocably past. Ambrose, Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam 7.234 continues: “periit Adam et in illo omnes perierunt.” 6 On the typology of the dialogues, proposing the category “controversial,” see Peter Lebrecht Schmidt, “Zur Typologie und Literarisierung des frühchristlichen lateinischen Dialogs,” in Christianisme et formes littéraires de l’Antiquité tardive en Occident: 23–28 août 1976: huit exposés

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fall under the designation of “literature” is a subject that needs exploration— and sometimes stenographic transcriptions of actual encounters, they have in common two clearly demarcated interlocutors (occasionally more), an obsessive attention to detail, and a tone that periodically veers into startling abuse. Augustine himself had recently been a participant in a particularly humiliating instance of the stenographic type of dialogue, which has come down to us as the Conlatio cum Maximino.7 Here in the Opus imperfectum we seem to have all the formal characteristics of a controversial dialogue. A glance at a page of the modern printed text shows the alternation of “speakers;” one puts forth a proposition, the other counters it. Zelzer’s edition for CSEL emphasizes the call-and-response nature of the exchange by giving each proposition a fresh number. The speakers are clearly noted in the text as “IUL.” and “AUG.,” personalizing the already dialogic exchange. Moving from form to content: there is persistent dogmatic citation—particularly on the part of “AUG.”—of chapter and verse. There are the requisite bursts of insults, ranging from the simple jingle of “Iuliane/ insane” to the portrayal of Augustine as a gladiator fighting in a helmet without eyeholes to the twisting of the personal revelations in the Confessions—for example, when Julian retells the episode in which Monnica is accused as a meribibula, and introduces the additional insinuation of sexual license.8 So we could argue for dialogic status on purely cosmetic grounds, with some thematic support. But a dialogue, whether fictive or transcribed, always maintains the convention that the speakers are engaging each other in real time, each responding to the other sequentially as the debate unfolds. This work does not conform to that convention; the speakers are temporally dissevered from each other. This Augustine makes quite clear. He describes his compositional suivis de discussions, Entretiens sur l’Antiquité classique 23 (Geneva: Fondation Hardt, 1977), 101–90. For the importance of dialogues in late antiquity, see Averil Cameron, Dialoguing in Late Antiquity, Hellenic Studies 65 (Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies, Trustees for Harvard University, 2014); Averil Cameron and Niels Gaul, eds., Dialogues and Debates from Late Antiquity to Late Byzantium (London: Routledge, 2017); Charles Kuper, “The Latin Controversial Dialogues of Late Antiquity,” (PhD dissertation, Bryn Mawr College, 2017). 7 On the Conlatio cum Maximino, see Neil McLynn, “From Palladius to Maximinus: Passing the Arian Torch,” JECS 4, no. 4 (1996): 477–93; Catherine Conybeare, “Correcting a Heretic: Augustine’s Conlatio cum Maximino,” in Fide non Ficta: Essays in Memory of Paul B. Harvey Jr., ed. John Muccigrosso and Celia Schultz (Como: Biblioteca di Athenaeum, 2020): 115–27. 8 Respectively c. Iul. imp.  2.31; 1.19; 1.68. On the insinuations about Monnica, see Mathijs Lamberigts, “The Italian Julian of Æclanum about the African Augustine of Hippo,” in Augustinus Afer: Saint Augustin, africanité et universalité. Actes du colloque international AlgerAnnaba, 1–7 avril 2001, ed. Pierre-Yves Fux, Jean-Michel Roessli, and Otto Wermelinger (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 2003), 83–94.

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technique in the preface to the Opus imperfectum: he will proceed “eius uerba praeponens eisque subiungens responsionem meam ad loca singula” (putting his words first and subjoining to them my own response at individual points). Julian’s book is already written. The conversation on one side is, in some ways at least, foreclosed. Augustine will reopen it by quoting the book verbatim and inserting his own objections and corrections and animadversions in the appropriate places. Sometimes he will even interrupt in mid-sentence, pouncing on Julian’s thought before it is syntactically complete. It is widely recognized—for example, by Michaela Zelzer in the Augustinus-Lexikon—that Augustine had used this technique previously, in the works Contra litteras Petiliani and Contra Faustum, “correcting” respectively a Donatist and a Manichean. I have not, however, seen it remarked that Augustine actually glosses his own technique in the preface to another work, composed in 419, about a decade before the Opus imperfectum. This is the Contra Gaudentium, Augustine’s last anti-Donatist work, directed against the bishop of Thamagudi (Timgad):9 For I shall put his words first, and then subjoin my own [note again the sequence ponere—subiungere]: but not in the same way as I did when I responded to the writings of Petilian. There, at individual points when his words were inserted, was placed ‘Petilian said;’ and when my words were given, ‘Augustine responded.’ Because of that, I was accused of having lied, on the grounds that he never actually confronted me in debate; as if, moreover, he could not have said what he wrote, because I didn’t hear it in his words, but read it in writing [in litteris]; or I could not have responded, because I didn’t speak in his presence, but responded in turn, in writing, to what he had written. What are we to do with people who feel this way, or who think that those to whom they want to make their writings known feel this way? But let me give satisfaction even to such as these: when I cite the words of Gaudentius, I shan’t say, ‘Gaudentius said,’ but ‘Here are the words of the letter;’ and when I respond, I shan’t say, ‘Augustine responded,’ but ‘Here’s the response to this.’10 9 See “Gaudentius 2,” PCBE 1 (Afrique), 522–25. 10 c. Gaud. 1.1.1: “Nam prius verba eius ponam, deinde nostra subiungam: non sic quemadmodum feci, cum Petiliani litteris responderem. Ibi enim per loca singula, quando verba ipsius inseruntur, positum est: ‘Petilianus dixit’: quando autem mea verba redduntur: ‘Augustinus respondit.’ Unde mihi, tamquam mentitus fuerim, calumniatus est, dicens quod numquam mecum comminus disputaverit: quasi propterea non dixerit quod scripsit, quia hoc non in verbis eius audivi, sed in litteris legi; aut ego ideo non responderim, quia non eo praesente locutus sum, sed scriptis eius vicissim scribendo respondi. Quid faciamus hominibus qui tale cor habent, aut eos quibus scripta sua innotescere cupiunt, tale cor habere opinantur? Sed etiam talibus hic satisfaciamus: et quando ponimus verba Gaudentii, non dicamus: ‘Gaudentius dixit;’ sed: ‘Verba Epistolae’: et quando respondemus, non dicamus: ‘Augustinus respondit;’ sed: ‘Ad haec responsio.’”

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This is the technique that Augustine follows in the Opus imperfectum. It is a technique that self-consciously refuses the oral uerba and hews to the written litterae. It inverts all ancient assumptions about the primacy of oral communication—that poetry will pretend to be sung long after it has been divorced from the lyre, for example, or historians will recreate the speech that they feel ought to have been said on such-and-such an occasion. Such apparently oral markers as “dic tibi” or “dic aperte” are here simply written indications of outrage. (We may compare the use of “ecce”, which does not literally suggest a pointing finger: its indexical quality has become a way of introducing a brief but emphatic pause into a text.) This is also a technique that, ironically, preserves complete the words of Augustine’s opponent, the words that support the theological structure that he wishes to erase. Augustine is presented by Julian with a very particular problem of response. He cannot simply write an expository treatise—he has done that (many times), and it has not sufficed to close the debate. He cannot excerpt from Julian’s text and provide responses, or he opens himself to accusations of partiality and misquotation. (As it is, Julian accuses him of having earlier responded not to his full work, but to a redaction.)11 Julian’s persistence forces Augustine to strive toward completeness in every aspect of his written response, including the reproduction of the work to which he is objecting. If all pretense of orality is deliberately eschewed, what are we left with? This is writing on the written, supplementing and correcting it. Could we consider this in the genre of commentary? Might we think of it as Augustine’s exegesis of the work of Julian?—But in simply replacing the more neutral word “commentary” with the dignified and scripturally loaded “exegesis,” we can see why this won’t work.12 First, to call it “commentary” presupposes the primacy of the originary text. This text is considered superior, in need of—and deserving of— elucidation; commentary is the result. Concomitant with this runs a respectful relationship of commentator to originary text. Where the two differ, the burden of accommodation must fall on the commentator (the tenor of Servius’s commentary on Virgil when confronted with certain impossible passages is a case in point).13 Certainly, the commentator will supplement the written; but 11 c. Iul. imp. 1.16. 12 There is a helpful discussion of medieval patterns of commentary by Rita Copeland, “Gloss and Commentary,” in The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Latin Literature, ed. Ralph Hexter and David Townsend (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 171–91. 13 See the discussion of Servius by Robert A. Kaster, Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1988), 169–97, particularly his remarks on the Servian motifs “dicimus” and “debuit dicere.”

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she or he will rarely correct or challenge it. The commentator tends, moreover, to be as far as possible a neutral presence. Though inevitably their sense of what requires elucidation or elaboration will be shaped by personal perception and preference, there is also an obligation to cover the interpretative ground as evenly as possible for the sake of a range of readers. Unless, perhaps, one were Nabokov, it would be hard to write a biography of someone—even an intellectual biography, still less an affective one—from their commentary alone (though interesting to try).14 So how may we designate this writing on the written in Augustine’s Opus imperfectum? It is not dialogue; it is not commentary. I propose that we consider it as marginalia—the often opinionated markings and notes in the margins of a text composed by another party15—for all that these marginalia are presented intratextually and are often well out of proportion to the source text (a point to which we shall return). Augustine has, in effect, taken his text of Julian’s treatise and marked it up with comments. He challenges, corrects, expresses his disgust. The result is the unwieldy, repetitious, argumentative composite text that we have inherited. There is a delightfully concise example of marginalia in the recent study by Stephen Orgel, The Reader in the Book. In a seventeenth-century edition of Paradise Lost, at the top of a page in book 6, is written in an elegant and determined hand, “Improve Line 640. 641” and further down the page, in the margin by the as yet unimproved lines, the note “amplify this Thought.”16 Augustine’s mission was indeed to “improve”—and often, inevitably, also to “amplify”—every line of Julian’s text. The improvements in his case were not, 14 Note the rich range of approaches to commentary in Glenn  W.  Most, ed., Commentaries—Kommentare, Aporemata  4 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1999); and Roy  K.  Gibson and Christina Shuttleworth Kraus, eds., The Classical Commentary: Histories, Practices, Theory, Mnemosyne Supplements  232 (Leiden: Brill, 2002). 15 For a sweeping study of more recent marginalia, and in particular their responsive nature, see H.  J.  Jackson, Readers Writing in Books (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2001). Mariken Teeuwen has recently performed, for marginalia in manuscripts, exactly the sort of comprehensive cataloguing as that for which Jackson calls: see her report, “Voices from the Edge: Annotating Books in the Carolingian Period,” in The Annotated Book in the Early Middle Ages: Practices of Reading and Writing, ed. Mariken Teeuwen and Irene van Renswoude, Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 38 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017). 16 Stephen Orgel, The Reader in the Book: A Study of Spaces and Traces (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 28–9. The lines read “(For Earth hath this variety from Heav’n/ Of pleasure situate in Hill and Dale).” The call for amplification makes an amusing contrast with Wim Verbaal’s recent comments on copia verborum, with an example from Milton, in “Reconstructing Literature. Reflections on Cosmopolitan Literatures,” Journal of Latin Cosmopolitanism and European Cultures 1 (June 2019): 1–15.

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of course, aesthetic (which I think we may assume was the concern of the Miltonian annotator)—in fact, we constantly see Julian attempting to claim the high ground in that arena, sneering at Augustine for suiting his language to the plebiculae rurales et theatrales rather than the eruditus lector.17 Instead, Augustine’s marginalia dictated moral improvement, the urgent ethical correction of what he considered Julian’s misbegotten views about grace and sin. These marginalia were intended to supersede the source text—but were constrained to retain that text alongside them. My example from Orgel’s work is not wholly adventitious. Scholars of early modern English texts have of late been producing particularly interesting work on marginalia which helps to make clear why this might be a useful way of thinking about the Opus imperfectum. Jason Scott-Warren argues that marginalia work to challenge “the precondition of modern[ist?] notions of the literary that words should float free of their material form …;” they represent a “simultaneous attention to form and content, a faith [this is a pleasing choice of word for our purposes] that meaning and presentation might work together to transform the reception of a text.”18 In a significant move, Scott-Warren goes on to relate the formal properties of marginalia to graffiti. For graffiti, he argues, are conspicuously tied both to the self, to the identity of their “author,” and to place. Graffiti artists claim that their identity is not just expressed through but represented by their work. Moreover, there is no such thing as a free-floating graffito: it must, of necessity, be considered in relation to where it is situated. In the case of Scott-Warren’s marginalia, this is the “quasi-public environment” of the early modern book; we may equally fittingly, I think, speak of the “quasi-public environment” of the late antique manuscript. Further—though this is not a point made by Scott-Warren—the analogy between graffiti and marginalia captures the non-linear nature of both, their logic of juxtaposition rather than direct relation, and their ability to capture a cacophony of different voices. The guiding formal principle is spatial: all that is required is that the texts be encountered in the same material place. This analogy directs us for a moment back to the work of Cy Twombly. In a blistering refutation to reverential, hieratic interpretations of the “meaning” in

17 c. Iul. imp. 1.33 and 2.14 (plebiculae) and 2.36 (lector). Note also the retort: “plebicularum quas irrides catervae noverunt catholicam fidem.” Julian’s view of himself is taken up at length by J. H. Baxter, “Notes on the Latin of Julian of Eclanum,” Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi 21 (1949–1950): 5–54. 18 Jason Scott-Warren, “Reading Graffiti in the Early Modern Text,” Huntington Library Quarterly 73, vol. 3 (September 2010): 363–81, at 364. The suggestion of “modernist” for “modern” is mine.

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Twombly’s work, the art historian Rosalind Krauss points out that it is better read as graffiti: For graffiti is a medium of marking that has precise, and unmistakable, characteristics. First, it is performative, suspending representation in favor of action: I mark you, I cancel you, I dirty you. Second, it is violent: always an invasion of a space that is not the marker’s own, it takes illegitimate advantage of the surface of inscription … Third, it converts the present tense of the performative into the past tense of the index: it is the trace of an event, torn away from the presence of the marker.19

Krauss’s emphasis on dirt is subsequently developed in remarks about Twombly’s proclivity for the deflationary and scatological. The latter categories do not apply to Augustine; but the desire to “dirty” his opponent should be borne in mind. As for the violence, that is indubitably relevant, as we shall see. The consequences of proposing that we read Augustine’s interventions in Julian’s text as marginalia are several; and they are revealing. They are yet more revealing if we continue to bear in mind our analogy between marginalia and graffiti. We see that Augustine is, in a sense, marking Julian’s textual space as his own: he is “tagging” the originary text, as well as supplementing it. But this repossession of textual space is always perforce incomplete, for Julian’s words remain, however much they may be interrupted or corrected. They function not so much as another, earlier set of graffiti on the wall, but as the wall itself. To see this more clearly, we should think about the original process of composition of the Opus imperfectum. We do not know how the work was originally presented: the earliest manuscript, with severe corruption that seems to indicate use of a Merovingian exemplar, dates to the first half of the ninth century, the next (in a clearer Beneventan script, but replicating some of the same types of errors) to the end of the eleventh.20 We may guess that the presentation was more or less as it is published today: with each change of “speaker” marked, possibly by a dash, possibly by their names or an abbreviation of them. Probably each intervention began a new line, or at least was clearly marked. Whatever the exact mise-en-page, however, it is the actual process of composition, the moment of inscription, that bears pause. Augustine clearly had a full copy of Julian’s text in his possession. He would almost certainly have been working with an amanuensis or notarius, to whom he would have been dictating his 19

Rosalind Krauss, “Cy was here; Cy’s up,” Artforum International 33, no. 1 (September 1994): 71–4. 20 These observations are not based on autopsy but paraphrased from Zelzer’s preface to CSEL 85/1.

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interventions. How, then, were Julian’s own words encountered? Did the scribe read to Augustine from Julian’s text and then record Augustine’s responses on the text itself, quite literally as marginal annotations? It seems unlikely: many of the responses are too long for all but the most generous of margins.21 Longer responses could have been written on scraps of parchment and interleaved in the original codex, or stuck to the edges of pages—one sees examples of both techniques in later manuscripts. While the technique would save on the expense of fresh parchment, this too seems unlikely: would Augustine have allowed these crucial, salvific interventions to be recorded in a form that could easily become separated from the heretical asseverations that prompted them? No: the most likely scenario seems to be that Augustine himself would have read aloud to his amanuensis from Julian’s text, and then dictated his own responses. Thus Augustine, in a succession of strange moments, would have been forced to ventriloquize Julian even as he then tried to dismantle his arguments. Even as he was attempting to erase Julian’s theology and replace it with his own, Augustine was reproducing and re-materializing his opponent. Augustine’s words, his “graffiti”, would have had nothing to support them, no “wall,” without this process of ventriloquy. Christopher Baswell once wrote, in an article on medieval textual culture, of “marginal voicings” that “at once construct authority and undermine it.”22 The irony of Augustine’s situation is that he was constructing authority for the very text that he wished to undermine. The second consequence of reading Augustine’s intervention as marginalia is that we see their unabashed subjectivity. Marginalia are always (initially, at least) produced in the specific hand of a specific reader. They are, as Krauss wrote, “the trace of an event, torn away from the presence of the marker.”23 This is not for a moment to propose that Augustine was doing anything other than arguing for what he felt was the truth of the Christian dispensation and the judgement and grace of God. But it goes some way to explain and contextualize the ad hominem attacks and the biographical interpolations that 21 Even though “A notable feature of the marginal space in medieval manuscripts is that there is so much of it”: see Erik Kwakkel, “The Margin as Editorial Space: Upgrading Dioscorides alphabeticus in Eleventh-Century Monte Cassino,” in The Annotated Book The Annotated Book in the Early Middle Ages: Practices of Reading and Writing, ed. Mariken Teeuwen and Irene van Renswoude, Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 38 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 323–41, at 323. 22 Christopher Baswell, “Talking Back to the Text: Marginal Voices in Medieval Secular Literature,” in The Uses of Manuscripts in Literary Studies: Essays in Memory of Judson Boyce Allen, ed. Charlotte Cook Morse, Penelope Reed Doob, and Marjorie Curry Woods, Studies in Medieval Culture XXXI (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992), 121–60, at 130. 23 Krauss, “Cy was here.”

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surround that argument. Augustine has not laid aside his personal identity to intervene in this debate—any more than Julian has done so: they each bring their history, their loyalties, their specific locations to the page. Julian casts Augustine’s Manichean past repeatedly in his teeth; Augustine says that he is glad that Julian’s parents (whom he knew)24 had died before discovering that their son was a heretic. Augustine cites Ambrose, who baptized him, and Cyprian, whom he proudly claims as a fellow-African, more often than anyone else except Paul. The Africanness of Cyprian is particularly important to this encounter for the way in which it protects, and even redeems, Augustine’s own African origins. Near the beginning of his text, Julian refers to Augustine dismissively as “tractator poenus” (he also calls him “poenus orator” and “poenus scriptor,” neatly covering every stage of communication; “poenus” is clearly being taken generically as African, not just Punic).25 Augustine retorts, punning on the near-homonyms poena and Poenus, “Magna tibi poena est disputator hic Poenus, et longe antequam nasceremini, magna poena haeresis uestrae Poenus praeparatus est Cyprianus” (this Punic debater is a great pain for you, and long before you were born, the Punic Cyprian was equipped as a great pain for your heresy).26 The space in which Augustine is writing back to Julian is his own space: anchored securely in Hippo, he makes sure that Julian is aware of his opponent as African—that the “wall” which Julian has provided is scored over with Africanness. The geopolitics of this encounter are finally literalized towards the end—by which I mean the place where the text stops: IUL… . Quid enim tam prodigiale quam quod Poenus eloquitur?… AUG… . Noli istum Poenum monentem uel admonentem terrena inflatus propagine spernere. Non enim quia te Apulia genuit, ideo Poenos uincendos existimes gente, quos non potes mente.27 Julian: What is so outrageous as what the Punic man says? Augustine: Don’t be so puffed up with the spawn of this world that you despise the advice, or rather the warnings, of that Punic man. Just because Apulia [on the Italian mainland] gave birth to you, don’t think that you can beat Africans with your breeding when you can’t with your intellect.

24 ep.  101, which accompanies the text of Augustine’s De musica, is addressed to Julian’s father Memor. There, Augustine writes of Julian, “Quem quidem non audeo dicere plus amo quam te, quia nec ueraciter dico, sed tamen audeo dicere plus desidero quam te.” 25 “Poenus” as an abusive adjective at c. Iul. imp. 1.7, 1.48, and 1.73 respectively; also tout court at c. Iul. imp. 2.19 and 6.18 (on which, see below). 26 c. Iul. imp. 1.7. 27 c. Iul. imp. 6.18.

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The exchange pits Italian against African, Apulian against Numidian (Augustine’s provincial origin was Numidia). The subjective space of the graffiti-like marginalia is not just the space of the page; it is also the indebtedness to the space, the location, in which they are produced. After considering textual space and subjective space, the third advantage of thinking of Augustine’s interventions as marginalia is that we recuperate this blazing encounter from the orderly pages of our printed editions and resituate it in the time of its generation. Marginalia are not only created by specific readers; they are created at specific moments. Augustine’s identity was profoundly tied up in this debate in so many ways. The issue, in 429 CE, was not just that his entire painfully-accrued reputation as a guide to, and beacon of, Christian orthodoxy was under attack. It was not just that an old man from Numidia was being challenged by an Italian man the age of his long-dead son. It was that, as I mentioned earlier, the specific moment for this old man was the confrontation of his mortality. Again and again he returns to Romans 5:12, “by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin.” The reversal of that death came through the gift of Christ. Without original sin, Christ’s death would be meaningless. Julian focused his argument on the state of paruuli, the little children who died unbaptized. But the fearlessness with which Augustine gazes at—indeed, insists on, with the repetitiousness afforded by marginalia—the mystery of the bestowal of God’s grace and the possibility of it being withheld is remarkable. Reading his interventions as marginalia, with all their unvarnished subjection to temporality, restores to us a sense of this unblinking gaze. To claim that Augustine’s interventions in the incomplete encounter with Julian of Eclanum should be read as marginalia is essentially to make a literary point about genre, or in this case about a sort of sub-generic textual trace. The associated notions of space and time and identity in written intervention are significant. But John Berger’s essay on Cy Twombly helped me to range beyond the literary and to see that there was a wider philosophical point to be made. I have described marginalia as “writing on the written.” Literally, of course, they are writing in the margins, on the edges of texts. But another way of describing them would be writing at the limits of the textual. This is not just a point about space: the edges or limits are not only those of a page. In Orgel’s example from the text of Milton, the marginal comment reads, “amplify this Thought.” But the irony is that the thought can never be sufficiently amplified, the lines never sufficiently improved. All the striving for correction only puts the gaps ever further on display. And this is what seems to be happening in the Opus imperfectum contra Iulianum. By its very nature, it could never have become the opus perfectum, the “completed work,” however long Augustine had lived. In the very striving for completeness, it becomes more and more apparent how incomplete the responses must be. Augustine had spent his

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entire life—or at least, his life from 387 CE onwards—reflecting on the imperfections and inadequacies of human communication. He saw the fall from paradise as in part a fall into language. As Berger wrote, and as Augustine was constantly aware, “A writer continually struggles for clarity against the language he’s using.” Perhaps it is fitting that his final work should not only be formally incomplete but should put these imperfections and inadequacies so vividly on display. This was, in every sense, writing at the limits of writing. While I was writing this paper I went back to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to look afresh at the canvases of “Fifty Days at Iliam.” And I realized that this was visual expression—sometimes writing, sometimes not—under erasure. Twombly had found a way to put that erasure on display in the scrawls, the errors, whole areas visibly painted out or written over. But what draws attention above all to the erasures is all that white space of canvas: what is not there? what could have been there? This is, in effect, what Augustine is doing in his Opus imperfectum. It is not just that he is operating in such a way that Julian’s words are put under erasure: simultaneously occluded by Augustine’s own words, and yet their necessary foundation. It is that in the tenacious endlessness of his project he is, as it were, putting an ever-increasing expanse of white canvas on display. There is more and more space around and between the words. The issue is no longer erasure. It is writing at the limits of writing—and it is the receding horizon beyond the limits of writing. In happier times, Augustine had presented an image of heaven in which the angels eternally read and loved the word of God in a book that would never close.28 But that was the perfect completeness of the divine word, not the pathetic, messy, limited array of words with which humans have to make do. John Berger concludes his essay on Twombly with the observation: “I know of no other visual Western artist who has created an oeuvre that visualizes with living colors the silent space that exists between and around words.” By his very attempt to be exhaustive, Augustine ends up emphasizing “the silent space that exists between and around words.” As Berger wrote, “the unsaid always counts for as much, or more, as the said.” By highlighting through his marginal method the unsaid, the inexpressible, was Augustine not also inadvertently casting a light on the inexpressible, unfathomable operation of grace?29 28 conf. 13.15.18. 29 Thanks to all the participants in “The Late (Wild) Augustine” for their warm and constructive responses to these ideas, and especially to Susanna Elm for organizing the workshop; and special thanks to Lisa Saltzman, who prevented me from taking too many liberties with Twombly, and made me think through the materiality of the text much more systematically.

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Works Cited I. Secondary Sources

Baswell, Christopher. “Talking Back to the Text: Marginal Voices in Medieval Secular Literature.” In The Uses of Manuscripts in Literary Studies: Essays in Memory of Judson Boyce Allen, edited by Charlotte C. Morse, Penelope B. Doob, and Marjorie C. Woods, 121–60. Studies in Medieval Culture 31. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992. Baxter, J. H. “Notes on the Latin of Julian of Eclanum.” Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi 21 (1949–1950): 5–54. Berger, John. Portraits: John Berger on Artists, edited by Tom Overton. London: Verso, 2015. Cameron, Averil. Dialoguing in Late Antiquity. Hellenic Studies 65. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies, Trustees for Harvard University, 2014. —. “The Violence of Orthodoxy.” In Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity, edited by Eduard Iricinschi and Holger M. Zellentin, 102–14. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008. Cameron, Averil, and Niels Gaul, eds. Dialogues and Debates from Late Antiquity to Late Byzantium. London: Routledge, 2017. Conybeare, Catherine. “Correcting a Heretic: Augustine’s Conlatio cum Maximino.” In Fide non Ficta: Essays in Memory of Paul B. Harvey, Jr., edited by John Muccigrosso and Celia Schultz, 115–27. Biblioteca di Athenaeum 64. Santo Spirito: Casa Editrice Edipuglia, 2020. Copeland, Rita. “Gloss and Commentary.” In The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Latin Literature, edited by Ralph Hexter and David Townsend, 171–91. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Gibson, Roy  K., and Christina Shuttleworth Kraus, eds. The Classical Commentary: Histories, Practices, Theory. Mnemosyne Supplements 232. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Jackson, H. J. Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Kaster, Robert A. Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity. Transformations of the Classical Heritage  11. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Krauss, Rosalind. “Cy Was Here; Cy’s Up.”  Artforum International 33, no. 1 (September 1994): 71–4. Kuper, Charles. “The Latin Controversial Dialogues of Late Antiquity.” PhD diss., Bryn Mawr College, 2017. Kwakkel, Erik. “The Margin as Editorial Space: Upgrading Dioscorides alphabeticus in Eleventh-Century Monte Cassino.” In Teeuwen and van Renswoude, Annotated Book, 323–41.

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Lamberigts, Mathijs. “The Italian Julian of Æclanum about the African Augustine of Hippo.” In Augustinus Afer: Saint Augustin, africanité et universalité. Actes du colloque international Alger-Annaba, 1–7 avril 2001, edited by Pierre-Yves Fux, Jean-Michel Roessli, Otto Wermelinger, et al., 83–94. Paradosis 45. Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 2003. McLynn, Neil B. “From Palladius to Maximinus: Passing the Arian Torch.” JECS 4, no. 4 (1996): 477–93. Most, Glenn  W., ed. Commentaries—Kommentare. Aporemata  4. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1999. Orgel, Stephen. The Reader in the Book: A Study of Spaces and Traces. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Schmidt, Peter Lebrecht. “Zur Typologie und Literarisierung des frühchristlichen lateinischen Dialogs.” In Christianisme et formes littéraires de l’Antiquité tardive en Occident: 23–28 août 1976: huit exposés suivis de discussions, 101–90. Entretiens sur l’antiquité classique 23. Geneva: Fondation Hardt, 1977. Scott-Warren, Jason. “Reading Graffiti in the Early Modern Book.” Huntington Library Quarterly 73, no. 3 (September 2010): 363–81. Teeuwen, Mariken. “Voices from the Edge: Annotating Books in the Carolingian Period.” In Teeuwen and van Renswoude, Annotated Book, 13–36. —, and Irene van Renswoude, eds. The Annotated Book in the Early Middle Ages: Practices of Reading and Writing. Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 38. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017. Verbaal, Wim. “Reconstructing Literature: Reflections on Cosmopolitan Literatures.” Journal of Latin Cosmopolitanism and European Cultures 1 (June 2019): 1–15.

The Late Augustine against Julian on Inherited Guilt J. Patout Burns Modern interpreters agree that Augustine changed his teaching on the condition of human beings at birth significantly during the forty years that he worked on it. They disagree on the proper mapping of that change. This chapter will devote more attention to the last dozen years of his work. It will begin by summarizing the analysis of its earlier stages, up to 418, when Augustine achieved episcopal support for the doctrine. Thence it will move to the sustained debate with Julian of Eclanum, during which Augustine was required not only to defend his earlier teaching but to demonstrate that it was compatible with Christian understandings of the creation of the human soul and with the justice of divine judgment. Three components of Augustine’s teaching on inherited guilt can be distinguished. First, its dogmatic foundation included the unique role of Christ as savior of all who were to be saved and the shared roles of the people of Israel and the Christian church in mediating that salvation. Second, the doctrine was justified by appeal to declarations of universal human sinfulness in the scripture and to the church’s practices, especially the baptizing of infants when they were in danger of death. Third, it required explanations, particularly of a type of sin and guilt that afflicted both newborns incapable of serious violations of divine law and mature Christians living in divine favor. This chapter will deal with the first two—the dogmatic foundation and the justification— only in passing. It will focus on the third: Augustine’s explanation of why and how guilt was inherited that he developed during the Pelagian controversy, particularly in his debates with Julian of Eclanum. I.

The First Two Decades

Augustine began by considering mortality as the most significant component of the heritage that Adam and Eve passed to their descendants. God punished their sin by removing the gift that had protected them from death and bodily dissolution. In the first parents and in all subsequently born of them, susceptibility to death increased the urgency to satisfy the appetites that sustained

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mortal bodies—food, drink, sleep, sex. Mortality thereby caused an affective shift away from heavenly and toward earthly goods. The text of Romans 7:14–25 (on the inability to free oneself from the opposition of desires focused on the flesh and its health) was treated by Augustine as reflecting the power of mortality and the habits of self-protection. The text was usually applied to a person not yet guided and inspired by a desire to enjoy the divine goodness.1 During the first two decades of his life as a Christian, Augustine paid little attention to the situation of infants, since he considered them incapable of sinning and thereby not in danger of divine condemnation.2 In the sermons on the Gospel and (first) Letter of John that can be dated to 406–407, Augustine began to deal differently with the heritage of Adam. The punishment visited on the sin of Adam and Eve was both death and the insubordination of the impulses of bodily life to personal, mental and voluntary control; in their descendants, these punishments were interpreted as signs of sin and condemnation.3 Only in preaching on the Letter of John, during the octave of Easter in 407, did Augustine refer to the baptism of infants as a means of forgiving a sin with which they were born, prior to the sins they would add personally.4 In one instance, he explained Christ’s freedom from this iniquity through the mode of his conception and birth.5 He provided little explanation of how this initial sin and its guilt were acquired or transmitted. In these sermons on the Gospel and Letter of John, however, Augustine began to use one of the Pauline texts that would become part of the dogmatic foundation of his doctrine of inherited guilt. In 1 Corinthians 15:21–22, Paul contrasted Adam and Christ as the respective sources of bodily death and life.6 Other texts linking Adam and Christ as type and anti-type, such as 1 See for example diu. qu. 65–67; exp. prop. Rm. 44–46; Simpl. 1.1.10–14; f. et symb. 23. For a carefully nuanced study of Augustine’s use of Romans  7:7–25, see Marie-François Berrouard, “L’exégèse augustinienne de Rom., 7, 7–25 entre 396 et 418 avec des remarques sur les deux premières périodes de la crise “pélagienne”,” Recherches Augustiniennes et Patristiques 16 (1981): 101–96. 2 See an. quant. 36.80; lib. arb. 3.23.66–68; One can find a parallel in en. Ps. 84.7, which Hombert dates between 400–405 CE. See Pierre-Marie Hombert, Nouvelles recherches de chronologie augustinienne, Collection des études augustiniennes: Série Antiquité 163 (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 2000), 617–9. Its teaching is different from that of the In Iohannis euangelium tractatus that follow. 3 Io. eu. tr. 3.12, 4.10, 10.11–12, 4.13. 4 ep. Io. tr. 4.11. 5 Io. eu. tr. 4.10. 6 Io. eu. tr. 4.10. Add to these en. Ps.132.10, that was part of the same sermon series, and en. Ps. 84.7, dated just prior to the series by Pierre-Marie Hombert, Nouvelles recherches, 617–9.

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Romans 5:12–21 (through Adam sin and then death entered into the world, and then passed to all), received no significant attention in this period.7 II.

The Anti-Pelagian Period

Augustine’s preaching and writing about inherited guilt developed rapidly after 411. In the autumn of that year, Caelestius, a devotee of Pelagius, was condemned by the Catholic bishop of Carthage for his teaching on human freedom and the innocence of infants.8 In the series of treatises responding to questions posed by Marcellinus, the imperial tribune who had conducted a hearing on the Donatist schism, and in sermons on original sin delivered in Carthage during the summer of 413,9 Augustine moved toward a more elaborate explanation of the sinful heritage of Adam. He returned to 1 Corinthians 15:21–22—used in the earlier commentary on John’s Gospel—to prove that the first humans actually died only because they had sinned.10 Turning to Romans 5:12–19, he asserted that all Adam’s descendants had sinned with and in him before they began to live as separate individuals. As a result, they shared his guilt and punishment. He considered that the ambiguous Latin phrase—in quo omnes peccauerunt— might mean “in whom (Adam) all sinned,” or “in which (sin) all sinned,” or even “because all sinned.”11 In each case, he explained, the meaning of the 7

The following analysis is dependent on the introduction to the edition of Augustine’s sermons 151–6 by Gert Partoens and the essay on their dating in that volume by Josef Lössl, CCSL 41Ba, ix–lv. The confirmation of the dating of these texts to the period between 417–419 enables their correlation with the analyses of the failure of angels and humans in ciu. 12.6–8 and 14.11–17. This, in turn, supports the interpretation of Augustine’s later description of lust—in the works against Julian—as a uitium, a defect that results from the failure to continue in the state of loving God, in which both angels and humans were originally created. 8 A fuller exposition of the material in this section can be found in my essay, “Augustine’s Changed Interpretation of Romans 7 and his Doctrine of Inherited Sin,” in Augustine on Heart and Life: Essays in Memory of William Harmless, S.J., ed. John J. O’Keefe and Michael Cameron, Journal of Religion & Society, Supplement  15 (2018): 104–27. http://moses. creighton.edu/JRS/toc/SS15.html. 9 s. 293, 294; en. Ps. 50. For the dating, see Pierre-Marie Hombert, Nouvelles recherches, 385– 6, 163. One should note that the summary table of the dating (639) is in error in assigning en. Ps. 50 to September rather than July 413. 10 pecc. mer. 1.8.8. 11 pecc. mer. 1.10.11. Augustine considered only the Latin text of Romans  5.12, exploring all the possible meanings of the in quo. Augustine argued from the Latin translation of Romans 5.12 to what the Greek text could not have been in c. ep. Pel. 4.4.7—excluding the quo as a reference to sin, that was feminine in Greek. He gave no indication that he had checked the Greek text, though he did appeal to its interpretation by “Hilary,” though the

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passage as a whole was the same: one sin and one sinner affected all of humanity. Sharing the sin and its guilt, he explained, required the unified presence and participation of all his descendants in Adam and in his sinning—the contrary condition of all the saved being joined together into Christ and into his redeeming action. Augustine then explained that carnal concupiscence was a defect consequent upon the loss of the original gift of the creator that had subordinated the human body to the person’s mind or spirit. The resulting disorder in sexual generation then caused the transmission of the guilt and punishment of the original transgression that had occurred in Paradise.12 In this development, Augustine was exploiting the parallel between the texts of Romans 5:12–19 and 1 Corinthians 15:21–22 in order to affirm that the genetic unity of all humanity corrupted and condemned in Adam and Eve was the contrary type of the unity of all the healed and justified joined into the ecclesial body of Christ.13 Because incorporation into Christ was the only means of salvation, even of children, he would have to explain the contrary unity through which they existed and were condemned in Adam in order to share the guilt and punishment of his sin.14 That would prove no easy task. In a series of developments over the next five years, Augustine changed his understanding of the relationship between sin and death in the descendants of Adam. First, he introduced a new interpretation of 1 Corinthians 15:54–56, in which Paul asserted that the sting of sin was death. He had earlier understood that death “stung” by promoting personal sinning in the course of satisfying the appetites that preserved bodily life.15 During the Pelagian controversy, he

12 13

14 15

text he cited is from Ambrosiaster. For a full discussion of that reading and interpretation, see the notes in Theodore S. de Bruyn, Ambrosiaster’s Commentary on the Pauline Epistles: Romans (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017), 96–7. In pecc. mer. 1.11.13, Augustine was faced with variants of the Latin translation of Romans 5.14, about sinning or not sinning in the likeness of the sin of Adam. On that passage, he checked the Greek text. pecc. mer. 1.9.9–1.17.22. pecc. mer. 1.9.9–10, 1.11.13, 1.12.15, 1.16.21, 1.26.39, 1.27.55–56; see also pecc. mer. 3.4.8, 3.11.19; s. 294.15.15; nat. et gr. 41.48. Augustine had earlier used John 3:13 to demonstrate that a person could hope to attain the Kingdom of Heaven only by baptismal incorporation into the one Christ, who first descended alone from heaven but ascended there clothed in his ecclesial body, Io. eu. tr. 12.8–9. See also, pecc. mer. 1.30.60; s. 294.9.9–10. The idea without the text is repeated in pecc. mer. 3.4.7–9. s. 293.8, 11; 294.4.4; en. Ps.50.10; pecc. mer. 2.29.48. Io. eu. tr. 12.11 and en. Ps. 127.16 can be securely dated in the period 406–407. Marie-François Berrouard, Introduction aux homélies de saint Augustin sur l’Évangile de saint Jean, Collection des études augustiniennes: Série Antiquité 170 (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 2004), 22–27. Other texts make the same point: diu. qu. 70 (no later than 396); en. Ps. 84.10 (400–405); 143.9 (406); s. Denis 13 (305A).7–8. For dating of the psalm commentaries, see Pierre-Marie Hombert, Nouvelles recherches, 558n18, 617–19.

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reversed that sequence, showing that the text meant that the sting belonged to sin and that sin used it to cause death. As the Tree of Life in Paradise had given life and a “death cup” kills, so the sin of transgressing the prohibition of the tree of knowledge was the sting that had brought death first upon Adam and then on his progeny.16 Second, he supported his assertion that all had sinned in Adam by arguing that divine justice would extend the punishments of suffering and death to their descendants only if they actually shared the sin and guilt of their first parents.17 Third, establishing the shift made in the Johannine commentaries, Augustine showed that bodily lust was a component of penal mortality and thus a punishment imposed for sin rather than a consequence of habits formed by each person in response to the urgency of bodily appetites that resulted from mortality.18 Fourth, returning to the importance of Christ’s virginal conception, he asserted that the lust operating in the generative activity of parents—even baptized Christians—transmitted the Adamic sin and its guilt to their children.19 Fifth, in his responses to Caelestius, he demonstrated that in Romans 7 Paul taught that the “law of sin in his members” was evil and that it made a person sinful.20 Sixth, in the series of sermons on Romans 7 preached in October 417 or 419,21 Augustine explicitly linked his developing interpretation of the successive sins of Adam and Eve—first pride and then transgression of a prohibition— to Romans 7:1–12 where Paul explained the role of the Mosaic Law in exposing hidden sin, so that it could be repented, forgiven, and eventually healed. The transgression of the divine prohibition of eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was preceded by a hidden sin of pride and followed immediately by the involuntary sexual arousal that punished the two sins of rebellion against God and that exposed the loss of the divine gift integrating the affective lives of the sinners. The arousal of their genital organs also indicated that 16 17 18 19

pecc. mer. 3.11.20; s. 299.9–11; 131.7; 151.3.3, 7.7; 155.2.2; 163.9.9. See also, c. ep. Pel. 4.4.7. en. Ps. 50.10. Gn. litt. 11.1.3; 11.30.39–32.42. en. Ps. 50.10; pecc. mer. 2.9.11; 2.23.37–24.38; 2.27.44–28.45; 3.9.17. Augustine had asserted the connection between freedom from mortality in generation and freedom from sin earlier in the sermons on the Gospel of John. Io. eu. tr. 4.10; 12.9–17. 20 pecc. mer. 2.22.36–23.37; perf. iust. 11.28. 21 For dating, see Josef Lössl’s essay in CCSL 41Ba, xxi–lv. M-F Berrouard, “L’exégèse augustinienne de Rom., 7, 7–25,” 190n405, following O. Perler and J. L. Maier, Les voyages de saint Augustin (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1969), 357–9, had placed them two years later, in October 419, contemporary to the first book of nupt. et conc.

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their sin, along with its guilt and punishments, would be transmitted to their descendants through sexual generation.22 In these sermons on the texts of Romans 7:14–25, in which he made regular reference to Galatians 5:16–17, Augustine identified what Paul called “the law of sin in the body” as inherited carnal concupiscence. He also developed a new interpretation of Romans 7:15, “I do not do the good I want to do; instead I do what I hate,” and of Romans 7:18, “I can will but I cannot complete the good,” that he had introduced three years earlier.23 The good that Paul willed to perform but proved unable to complete (or accomplish) was the eradication of the evil desires that were produced by the sin dwelling in him.24 Paul not only suffered these lustful desires as a punishment but performed them as sins, even though the desires were opposed by his explicit desire to eliminate them.25 Thus, Paul contrasted his rejection and hatred of “the law of sin in his body” to his love of the law of God that charity inspired in his spirit. Still, he recognized that the sinful desires were his own, that he went on lusting even as he tried to suppress and refused to act upon those impulses.26 In these discussions of Romans 7, Augustine presented a series of arguments proving that the concupiscence bred into the descendants of Adam was evil and sinful. First, the lustful desires violated the first and greatest commandment: that the whole of human desire should be directed toward God. Second, as preceding and continuing independently of a person’s voluntary control, they were a reversal of the proper ordering of human powers and operations.27 Third, the Mosaic Law explicitly forbade lust: “You shalt not lust,” Romans 7:7 proclaimed. Knowledge of that prohibition added the guilt of transgression to the continuing sin of evil desire.28 22 s. 151.5.5, 8.8; 152.5; 153.9.11, 11.14; 155.14.15; 156.2.2. A link between the punishment of Adam and Eve and the situation described in Romans  7:14–25 had been asserted in Gn. litt. 9.10.16; 11.1.3. 23 Io. eu. tr. 41.12, dated by Marie-François Berrouard, Introduction aux homélies de saint Augustin sur l’Évangile de saint Jean, 97–99 in summer or autumn of 414; and perf. iust. 11.28. 24 s. 152.2; 154.11–12. 25 s. 151.6.6; 154.3, 8–10. The interpretation also appeared in the contemporary or earlier gest. Pel. 7.20. 26 s. 151.6.6; 154.8, 10, 13–15; s. Morin 4(154A).2. s. 154 is dedicated to Paul’s personal condition. Berrouard carefully tracked Augustine’s hesitant approach to this interpretation of the passage, which had been implied in the earlier pecc. mer. 2.12.17; ep. 157.3.16; and Io. eu. tr. 41.12. Jerome offered the interpretation in his ep. 133.2 against Pelagius. See Augustine’s reference to this in gr. et pecc. or. 1.39.43. 27 s. 151.3.3, 8.8. 28 s. 152.5–6; 153.4.5, 5.7.

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Augustine explained that baptismal regeneration for both children and adults removed the guilt associated with this inherited concupiscence and its desires.29 The punishment of bodily death and the inherited evil orientation of the affections, however, continued to exist and to operate in baptized children and adults. Disordered affections constantly solicited a baptized person to revive the guilt baptism had removed by consenting to the evil desires, and, especially, to increase that guilt by fulfilling the desires in action (Galatians 5:16–17, Romans 6:12–13).30 On May 1, 418, a plenary council of the Catholic bishops of Africa declared that infants drew original sin from Adam and must be liberated through Christian baptism.31 Augustine began writing to influential Christians who had defended Pelagius and his now condemned teaching. In his On Original Sin, he again argued that the carnal concupiscence that punished Adam and Eve’s transgression provided the best explanation for the transmission of their sin and guilt to all their descendants.32 During the following summer, Augustine responded in a treatise to Christians who had tried to solve the problem of the origin of the soul and the inheritance of guilt. He specified that God neither creates souls sinful nor makes them responsible for a sin in which they had not participated.33 He insisted that any solution to the question of the origin of the individual human soul must show the connection of a child’s soul to those of its parents so that the guilt of Adam’s sin was properly its own, even if it had not been committed individually as a person separate from the parents.34 He did not offer a theory for the origin of individual souls that fit this rule. During the next decade, he would try a different approach.

29 30 31 32 33

s. 151.5.5; 152.3, 5; 155.9.9; s. Guelf. 33(77A).2. s. 152.3; 155.2.2; 155.9.9; see also s. 30.6–7; 128.12; 163.6. Registri ecclesiae Carthaginensis excerpta 110; CCSL 149, 69–70. gr. et pecc. or. 2.39.44–40.45. an. et or. 1.8.8, 13.16, 19.34. He enunciated four principles that must guide any solution. First, God neither creates souls sinful nor makes them responsible for sin committed by someone else in which they had no part; second, children must be baptized into Christ in order to enter eternal life and/or the kingdom of God, a ritual that was not universally available; third, souls do not sin personally in some earlier existence and thus do not carry their own guilt into earthly bodies; fourth, God does not condemn children for sins that they do not commit but would have committed if they had lived longer than they actually did. 34 an. et or. 1.11.13–14.18; 2.9.13; 2.13.18.

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Against Julian

Augustine’s seven-year conflict had began with the trial and condemnation of Caelestius in Carthage and reached its term with the condemnation of Pelagius at Carthage and then at Rome. The teaching developed during that battle was carried forward into the extended dispute with Julian of Eclanum, who took up the defense of Pelagius’s ideas. Augustine would face pointed challenges from this new opponent and would elaborate his earlier explanations to meet Julian’s objections. Throughout, he maintained the same line of thought on inherited guilt that he had developed in responding to Pelagius. The analysis of this body of work against Julian will pursue inquiries into a set of topics that were treated either once or continuously in these writings.35 The Origin of the Soul Augustine held to the principles and conclusions that he summarized in his 418 treatise on the soul and its origin that were treated briefly above. From the outset, he insisted that the doctrine of inherited guilt was clear in the scripture and that it had been followed in the church’s baptismal practice. Any explanation of the origin of the soul that contradicted that teaching must be rejected as wrong.36 In these later writings, he insisted that neither human reason nor study of divine revelation could resolve the ambiguities surrounding the origin of the human soul and its sinfulness.37 The scriptural language allowed and did not require the rejection of a theory of the derivation of the souls of his descendants from that of Adam and their intermediate parents.38 He continued to focus on sexual generation and concupiscence in his attempts to explain the transmission of sin. Romans 5:12–21: All Sinned in Adam The single most important scriptural texts for understanding the inheritance of Adam’s sin and guilt by his descendants continued to be Romans 5:12–21 and 35

Augustine’s writing on original sin in this period have received comparatively less attention than those prior to the Pelagian controversy, where advances in dating the Tractatus in evangelium Ioannis and other sermons have brought new material into play. Jesse Couenhoven’s study, “St. Augustine’s Doctrine of Original Sin,” AugStud 36 (2005): 359–96 is unusual in devoting significant attention to the writings of this period. 36 c. ep. Pel. 3.10.36. 37 c. Iul. 5.4.17; 5.15.53; c. Iul. imp. 2.61. 38 The Bible sometimes referred to the whole person as “flesh.” c. Iul. imp.  2.178; 3.38, 43, 49, 53. He declined to use John 3:6 as evidence for the birth of spirit from spirit, c. Iul. imp. 3.172.

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1 Corinthians 15:21–22. They contrasted Adam and Christ as the sources of sin and grace, condemnation and justification, death and life, disobedience and obedience. Augustine examined the Romans text in each of his works directed against Julian but gave it most attention in the second book of his last, unfinished work. According to Julian of Eclanum, Paul had taught that sin, condemnation, and death had passed from Adam to other humans through their individual, voluntary imitations of his deliberate transgression of a divine command. As he had in challenging Caelestius, Augustine insisted that the entire passage had to be considered in determining the meaning of each its sentences.39 In pursuing that analysis, he challenged the wording of the passage that Julian used—a different translation of the Greek—and defended his own Latin translation and interpretation by grammatical analysis of Paul’s statements. He demonstrated that Julian’s argument that Adam’s descendants had imitated his sin would not fit the meaning of Paul’s text as a whole.40 Augustine contended that Paul had distinguished the one sin, by the one man (Adam), by the transgression of the prohibition of eating from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, from the many sins, committed by Adam’s many descendants, none of which were transgressions before the giving of the Mosaic Law.41 Paul taught that the one trespass of Adam had brought death and condemnation upon all humans, even on those who neither recognized nor violated a revealed law.42 Moreover, in saying that the sin had passed, in the active form—transit or transiit—to all his descendants, Paul indicated generation by Adam rather than imitation by his offspring.43 This preference for generation was also shown by Paul’s emphasis on the one male, who was regarded as the principal agent in propagation by the sowing of his seed.44 Similar usage was to be found in the Letter to the Hebrews (11:8–12) to indicate Levi’s participation in Abraham’s tithe to Melchizedek and in the genealogical list from Abraham to Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew (1:2–3), where an active verb unites father to son.45 If Paul had intended imitation as the method of transmission, he would have named as the exemplar either the devil, who had introduced sin into the 39 nupt. et conc. 2.27.45–29.49; c. ep. Pel. 4.4.8. For the earlier analysis, see pecc. mer. 1.9.9–17.22. 40 in quo, v. 12, c. ep. Pel. 4.4.7; c. Iul. 6.24.75; c. Iul. imp. 2.74; in plures, v. 15, c. Iul. imp. 2.148; unum peccantem, v. 16, c. Iul. imp. 210–13. Once again, Augustine did not cite the Greek of Romans 5.12. 41 c. Iul. 6.24.79; c. Iul. imp. 2.191, 202. 42 nupt. et conc. 2.27.46–47; c. Iul. 6.4.9, 24.79; c. Iul. imp. 2.105, 108, 185, 191, 202, 217. 43 nupt. et conc. 2.27.47, 28.48; c. Iul. 5.14.51. 44 c. Iul. imp. 2.56, 194. 45 c. Iul. imp. 3.85, 88.

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creation, (Wisdom 2.24–25) or Eve, who was the first human sinner, rather than Adam who had not initiated the practice of sinning.46 Applying his analysis of Romans 7:14–25,47 Augustine contrasted Adam’s voluntary transgression to the sin his descendants bore as an involuntary punishment.48 By these and other observations, Augustine argued that Paul had intended generation rather than imitation as the means by which Adam’s sin, guilt, and punishment passed to his descendants. Divine Justice Julian dismissed Augustine’s doctrine of inherited sin and guilt as incompatible with divine justice: only those who had sinned personally and voluntarily would be punished by God. Augustine retorted that Julian failed to notice that the scriptural witness to the commands God gave to humans about judging one another were different from the divine practice of judgment and condemnation. God forbade humans to punish children for sins committed by their parents whom they did not imitate. God, however, did not observe this rule either in judging individuals or in instructing the prophets to speak and act.49 Augustine provided a review of the many instances in which God threatened to punish children for the sins of their parents, such as Exodus 20:5 and Numbers 14:18.50 In contrast, scripture recorded no instances of God threatening or punishing parents for their children’s sins, one child for another’s, or one friend for another’s.51 Moreover, Augustine claimed, God punished only those descendants who were still bodily united to their parents at the time the sin being punished was committed, not descendants who were already living as distinct individuals.52 Thus, he argued that the divine justice followed the lines of generation and only from parents to children not yet brought forth into distinct existence.53 Augustine explained that the comprehensive divine knowledge provided a basis for a just punishment of children for sins that their 46 47 48 49

50 51 52 53

nupt. et conc. 2.27.45; c. Iul. imp. 2.50, 52, 56, 149. c. Iul. imp. 2.38. nupt. et conc. 2.28.47; c. Iul. imp. 2.185, 191, 202; 4.104. c. Iul. imp. 3.12, 15, 20, 22–23, 30, 33, 35–36. See Wisdom 12:10–11, Exodus 20:5, Leviticus 26:39, Numbers 14:18, Jeremiah 32:18, 2 Kings 14:5–6. The singular exceptions, Ezra 18:1–30, with Jeremiah 31:21–30, were interpreted as referring to the New Testament period and persons who had been liberated from the inherited guilt, c. Iul. imp. 3.38, 41–42, 50. c. Iul. imp. 3.57.1–2; 3.63. c. Iul. imp. 3.16, 28. c. Iul. imp. 3.38, 43, 49, 53. c. Iul. imp.  3.28. Augustine also noted other differences in divine and human justice: despite having the power to do so, God did not prevent crimes by creatures and God took vengeance for offenses against the divine, c. Iul. imp. 3.24, 26.

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parents had committed before generating them, even though these offspring may not have engaged in such sinning during their individually separate lives.54 This analysis of the scriptural witness to the operation of divine justice halfway through the final response to Julian supported the position that Augustine had been asserting for nearly two decades as his interpretation of Romans 5:12: that the suffering and death imposed on all of humanity indicated that all had been present genetically in Adam and had sinned together with him.55 Transmission of Guilt by Carnal Lust Augustine continued to focus on the role of sexual lust in the transmission of the inherited sin and its punishments.56 Christian parents, though freed from the guilt of their inherited concupiscence, were still burdened by lust and, in particular, were dependent upon its operation in the sexual intercourse by which they generated children. By employing the lustful impulses, even for the good purpose of generating, they allowed concupiscence to pass to their children, as both sin and punishment.57 Thus, the disorder in the generative activity of the parents affected their children, thereby replicating the defect of the parents in their offspring.58 The generative process failed to function as it had been designed and created originally. This connection between the disordered sexual impulse and the transmission of Adamic sin was the reason, Augustine explained, for Christ’s decision to be conceived without the operation of concupiscence in sexual intercourse; he had preserved himself from all sin, as a child and adult.59 The Use of Romans 7:14–25 Paul identified the “law of sin” dwelling in himself and opposing his desire to follow the law of God as a defect—uitium—that resulted from Adam’s abandoning the good willing that had been created in him and God’s consequent withdrawal of other spiritual gifts that had established and maintained his blessed state.60 That defect had consequences in his descendants. First, it made 54 c. Iul. imp. 3.66. 55 pecc. mer. 1.8.8–10.12; 3.7.14, 11.19; nupt. et conc. 2.5.15; c. ep. Pel. 4.4.7–8; c. Iul. 1.5.18; 6.24.75; c. Iul. imp. 2.178; 4.104. 56 nupt. et conc. 1.1.1, 19.21; c. Iul. 2.10.33. 57 nupt. et conc. 1.32.37; 2.34.57–59; c. Iul. 3.26.66; c. Iul. imp. 2.226.1; 4.79, 83. 58 c. Iul. 5.14.51. In nupt. et conc. 1.7.8 and s. 155.10.10 he compared it to an injury to the leg that resulted in limping when a person walked. 59 nupt. et conc. 1.12.13; c. Iul. 5.15.54, 57; c. Iul. imp. 1.66.2; 2.42, 45, 57; Augustine noted that the Letter to the Hebrews 7 used a different means of freeing Christ from the limits of the Israelite priesthood, c. Iul. imp. 6.22.6–7. 60 c. Iul. imp. 5.59.A.05, 61.A.2; c. Iul. 6.22.68.

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a person guilty of Adam’s failure—the sin of transgression—that had resulted in the loss of the original powers and operations.61 Second, in the absence of those divine gifts, human nature gave rise to disordered desires, largely but not exclusively associated with bodily appetites, that were no longer subject to personal control. This human condition was both evil and sinful.62 Paul experienced both the sin and the desires that arose from it as involuntary and alien;63 simultaneously, he experienced them as part of his own nature and as his own operations.64 Paul found himself at war with himself. He confessed that intentionally he was determined to follow the law of God, which forbade him to lust; yet, he found himself unable to stop that lusting.65 Noting a variance between the Greek and Latin texts of Romans 7:18,66 Augustine explained that Paul wanted to eliminate these evil desires and their root in the flesh he had inherited from Adam. Paul longed and strived to accomplish the good of giving himself completely to the love of God and the observance of God’s law.67 Because he could not suppress the evil desires and prevent their arising in him,68 he did not and could not accomplish the good that he wanted to do: not to lust.69 Augustine identified Paul’s situation both as sinful and as a punishment for sin. Paul was voluntary in his desire to follow the law of God. Had he abandoned the love of God, he would have been voluntary in consenting to and acting upon the evil desires that arose in him.70 However, neither was he nor could he be self-determining in the spontaneous and incessant evil desires themselves.71 That lust was not unlike the desire for personal happiness; it was prior to and independent of individual decision or choice. No one could suppress or abandon either the lust or the desire for happiness.72 A person could 61 In c. Iul. 6.51, Augustine clarified that guilt—reatus—belongs to persons; concupiscence makes a person guilty; baptism removes the guilt from the person but the guilt-causing concupiscence remains and operates. 62 c. ep. Pel. 1.10.18–19; c. Iul. 2.9.32; 6.23.73; c. Iul. imp. 5.28.A. 63 c. ep. Pel. 1.10.21, 11.23; c. Iul. 6.23.71; c. Iul. imp. 1.105.A.1. 64 c. Iul. imp. 2.15.A; 5.59.A.1–2; c. ep. Pel. 1.11.24. 65 c. ep. Pel. 1.10.18–19. 66 c. Iul. 3.26.62. It affected only Romans 7:18. 67 This interpretation first appears in perf. iust. 11.28. After the s. 151–56, it is repeated in nupt. et conc. 1.27.30, 29.31–32; c. Iul. 6.23.73; c. Iul. imp. 4.57, 58.A.3, 59. 68 c. Iul. imp. 1.67.A.2–3. 69 nupt. et conc. 1.29.32–30.33; c. Iul. imp. 5.59.A.1–2. 70 If the spirit completely agrees with the desires of the flesh, the opposition ceased, c. Iul. 3.26.62. 71 c. Iul. imp. 1.44, 47.1–2, 67.A.2–3, 104; 2.38.A; 5.28.A, 51.A.1–2, 59; 6.31.A.3. 72 c. Iul. imp. 6.12.7. Under the influence of divine charity, a person could be voluntary in loving God as the fulfillment of that involuntary desire for happiness.

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consent to and act on the lust, making the inherited sin personal and reviving the guilt removed by baptism into Christ. Paul, Augustine argued, did not initiate the condition in which he found himself. The evil he identified had been imposed upon him prior to any personal decision of his own.73 In particular, it was not the result of habits of sinning formed by repeated personal choices, as the Pelagians contended and Augustine himself had initially judged.74 Augustine contrasted this involuntary sin to the other punishments deriving from the Adamic sin—such as the mental and bodily suffering that ended in death—that were penal but not sinful.75 Augustine insisted that the sinful defect Paul described in himself as a mature Christian was already present in a newborn,76 although the indwelling sin was mute and unnoticed in infants and children.77 The sin became operative as the person matured; it was recognized as sinful, however, only through its prohibition in the revealed law; it was effectively opposed through the gratuitous operation of the Holy Spirit that moved a Christian to love God.78 In the condition of involuntary sinfulness described by Paul in Romans 7, Augustine found a description of the inherited sin and guilt that derived from Adam and afflicted all his descendants. Its guilt was removed by Christian faith and baptism, as it had been by Israelite faith and circumcision; the defect itself would be healed and its evil desires extinguished only by the fullness of love of God that Christ would grant in the resurrection of the dead. Using this involuntary concupiscence, Augustine had constructed an explanation of the transmission of inherited guilt through defective sexual generation. The explanation was independent of any particular understanding of the origin of the human soul.

73 74

75 76 77 78

The good that opposed it was the gratuitous operation of the Holy Spirit within him, the gift of charity. See pecc. mer. 1.33.62; 2.18.28–31, for instances of the foundational statement that good willing is an effect of divine operation in the person. c. Iul. imp. 1.67.J.3, 69.J.1, 105.A.3. This was the position that Pelagius himself had put forward in his explanation Romans 7:7 in expositiones xiii epistularum Pauli, de natura and pro libero arbitrio, for the latter two see Augustine’s nat. et gr. 54.64 and gr. et pecc. or. 1.39.43. In his early work, Augustine had offered such an interpretation of the opposing force in Romans 7:14–25: diu. qu. 66.5, 67; exp. prop. Rm. 45–46; Simpl. 1.1.10–12; mus. 6.14; f. et symb. 23; conf. 7.21.27, 8.5.12, 10.22. c. Iul. imp. 1.47.3–4; 2.236.1–2. c. Iul. imp. 1.96.A.3, 105.A. c. Iul. imp. 1.47.5, 88; 2.221, 233; 3.178.A.3–4; 5.62.A.5; 6.13.A.2–3. c. Iul. 2.4.8; c. Iul. imp. 2.221.

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Conclusion

Augustine went through four phases in developing his teaching on inherited guilt. He focused first on mortality that resulted in universal personal sin. Next, he shifted to inherited concupiscence as punishment for an unspecified sin. Then, during the Pelagian controversy, he began to argue that all humans shared a sin they had committed together in their progenitor, Adam; that sin caused both bodily death and concupiscence in them; it was transmitted by the defective operation of sexual generation. Finally, in the controversy against Julian of Eclanum he identified that inherited sin and its effect in the mature Christian by exploiting Romans 7:14–25. In his final controversy with Julian, Augustine effectively set aside two closely related obstacles to a coherent theory of inherited guilt. He showed that divine judgment did hold descendants involuntarily responsible for the voluntary sin of an ancestor. He sidelined the question of the origin of the human soul and its relation to the souls of its parents as insoluble by human reason and unrevealed by God in the scriptures. Two points emerge in this review of Augustine’s last decade of struggling with the Pelagian theology that deserve special notice. First, Augustine appealed to scripture to distinguish the limits that God set on the human punishment of sin from those evident in divine punishment. Humans could not punish children not yet living separately from their ancestors because they lacked the relevant knowledge. Comprehensive divine knowledge of that pre-personal or pre-earthly life enabled God to practice (and on specific occasions to direct humans to practice) a higher form of justice. Here, an exacting interpreter might discern a last, even traducianist vestige of Augustine’s closely held Origenist views on the existence of humans prior to their earthly birth.79 Second, in the debate with Julian, Augustine did not introduce the advances he made in the analysis of the fall of the angels and humans in de ciuitate dei 12.6–8 and 14.11–17.80 Instead he focused, perhaps led by Julian’s attacks, on the role of fleshly lust in the origin, transmission, and consequent experience of sin. The original divine gift of a love of God had ordered the desires natural to both the mental and bodily endowments of the original humans. Its 79 See Robert J. O’Connell, The Origin of the Soul in St. Augustine’s Later Works (New York: Fordham University Press, 1987); Ronnie J. Rombs, Saint Augustine & the Fall of the Soul: Beyond O’Connell & His Critics (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006). 80 J.  Patout  Burns, “Human Agency in Augustine’s Doctrine of Predestination and Perseverance,” AugStud 48, no. 1–2 (2017): 45–71; J.  Patout  Burns, “Augustine’s Changed Interpretation of Romans 7 and His Doctrine of Inherited Sin.”

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catastrophic loss in their first sin of pride has been overshadowed by a focus on the consequent disintegration and conflict of personal desires not only in historical scholarship of Augustine’s thought but in its reception and elaboration in Western Christianity. Works Cited I. Primary Sources

Ambrosiaster. Ambrosiaster’s Commentary on the Pauline Epistles: Romans, translated by Theodore S. de Bruyn. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017. Augustine of Hippo. In Iohannis euangelium tractatus, edited by Marie-François Berrouard. BA 71. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1969. Concilia Africae a. 345–525, edited by Charles Munier. CCL 149. Turnhout: Brepols, 1974.

II.

Secondary Sources

Berrouard, Marie-François. “L’exégèse augustinienne de Rom., 7, 7–25 entre 396 et 418 avec des remarques sur les deux premières périodes de la crise “pélagienne”.” Recherches augustiniennes et patristiques 16 (1981): 101–96. —. Introduction aux homélies de saint Augustin sur l’Évangile de saint Jean. Collection des études augustiniennes: Série antiquité 170. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 2004. Burns, J. Patout. “Augustine’s Changed Interpretation of Romans 7 and his Doctrine of Inherited Sin.” In Augustine on Heart and Life: Essays in Memory of William Harmless, S.J., edited by John J. O’Keefe and Michael Cameron. Journal of Religion & Society, Supplement 15 (2018): 104–27. http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/toc/SS15.html —. “Human Agency in Augustine’s Doctrine of Predestination and Perseverance.” AugStud 48 (2017): 45–71. Couenhoven, Jesse. “St. Augustine’s Doctrine of Original Sin.” AugStud 36 (2005): 359–96. Hombert, Pierre-Marie. Nouvelles recherches de chronologie augustinienne. Collection des études augustiniennes: Série antiquité 163. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 2000. O’Connell, Robert  J. The Origin of the Soul in St. Augustine’s Later Works. New York: Fordham University Press, 1987. Perler, Othmar. Les voyages de saint Augustin. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1969. Rombs, Ronnie J. Saint Augustine and the Fall of the Soul: Beyond O’Connell & His Critics. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006.

“Dutifully They Were Crucified”: The Moral and Legal Redemption of the Sabine Women in Augustine’s City of God Darcy Tuttle I.

Introduction

“No misfortune of captivity is worse than being dragged away by a stranger’s lust,” wrote Jerome in Aduersus Iouinianum, quoting Seneca the Younger.1 For many in Jerome’s audience, this misfortune was not hypothetical. Though the risk of being abducted and raped by strangers was real throughout the history of the Roman empire, it became particularly acute in late antiquity, as outside groups made repeated incursions into Roman territories, enslaving the captives they took or holding them for ransom.2 The reality of women and men * This paper would not have been possible without the support and guidance of Susanna Elm, Philip Abbott, Joshua Benjamins, Joshua Freed, Samuel Stubblefield, and Yuan Zhang. I am so grateful for all of their suggestions and willingness to answer my many questions about Augustine and late antiquity. 1 Jerome, Adversus Iovinianum 1.49, ed. Ernst Bickel, Diatribe in Senecae Philosophi Fragmenta, Vol.  1 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1915): “Captivitatis nulla maior calamitas est quam aliena libidine trahi.” Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own. This excerpt is also discussed in Dennis Trout, “Re-Textualizing Lucretia: Cultural Subversion in the City of God,” JECS 2, no. 1 (1994): 53–70, at 58–9. 2 For an overview of this practice, see Noel Lenski, “Captivity, Slavery, and Cultural Exchange between Rome and the Germans from the First to Seventh Century CE,” in Invisible Citizens: Captives and Their Consequences, ed. Catherine  M.  Cameron (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2008), 80–109. See also Noel Lenski, “Captivity among the Barbarians and Its Impact on the Fate of the Roman Empire,” in  The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Attila, ed. Michael Maas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 230–46 and Noel Lenski, “Captivity and Romano-Barbarian Interchange,” in Romans, Barbarians, and the Transformation of the Roman World: Cultural Interaction and the Creation of Identity in Late Antiquity, ed. Ralph W. Mathisen (London: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 2016), 185–98. “Barbarian” groups were also not the only ones abducting freeborn Roman citizens. See Judith Evans-Grubbs on legal responses to the issue of marriage by abduction and Susanna Elm on Augustine grappling with instances of Roman slave traders capturing or buying North African Romans. Judith Evans-Grubbs, “Abduction Marriage in Antiquity: A Law of Constantine (CTh IX 24.1) and Its Social Context,” Journal of Roman Studies 79 (1989): 59–83. Susanna Elm, “Sold to Sin through origo: Augustine of Hippo on Slavery and Freedom,” Oxford International Patristic Conference Opening Keynote, Studia Patristica 98, ed. Markus Vinzent (Leuven: Peeters, 2017), 1–21.

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taken into captivity, raped, or even forced to marry their captors raised difficult questions about both their legal and moral status within the Roman state and the Roman church.3 These questions became especially pressing for Augustine in the aftermath of the sack of Rome in 410. In his later works, Augustine directly addressed the concerns of his own congregants, many of whom had fled Rome and personally experienced sexual violence. He gave a series of sermons addressing those who had redeemed captive relatives, and for the remainder of his life he frequently returned to issues of kidnapping, slavery, and sexual violence in his writings.4 Most notably, in the first three books of the City of God, published in 413 or 414, Augustine drew upon his readers’s lived experience of kidnapping and sexual violence to support his broader project of reframing Roman historical exempla in furtherance of a new, Christian, conception of history.5 While many of Augustine’s new exempla have been extensively explored by scholars, his approach to one of the most foundational narratives in Roman history, the abduction of the Sabine women, remains almost entirely uninvestigated.6 However, Augustine’s version of the Sabine abduction, which is briefly mentioned in Book 2.17 and then fully explored in 3.13, is a vital part of his reworking of Roman history and serves to complicate and elucidate other, more well-known exempla, like the rape of Lucretia in Book 1.7 More importantly, Augustine’s account of the Sabine abduction forms a foundation for his broader arguments about condicio and origo, Roman social position and inherited legal status, as a metaphor for the genealogical transmission of sin.8 In his version of the Sabine narrative, Augustine drew on his understanding 3 For illustration of this phenomenon, see Kristina Sessa, “Ursa’s Return: Captivity, Remarriage, and the Domestic Authority of Roman Bishops in Fifth-Century Italy,” JECS 19, no. 3 (2011): 401–32. 4 See, e.g. exc. urb. 2.2, s. 134.3, s. 344.4 and s. 345.2, all preached after the sack of Rome. See also ep. 10*, discussed in Elm, “Sold to Sin,” 3. 5 The dating of the early books of the City of God is discussed in Gerard O’Daly, Augustine’s City of God: A Reader’s Guide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 23. 6 See, however, Antonia Holden, who discusses Augustine’s Sabine narrative to elucidate the social and historical context of a series of late antique contorniate medallions depicting the abduction. This paper owes her work a great debt. Antonia Holden, “The Abduction of the Sabine Women in Context: The Iconography on Late Antique Contorniate Medallions,” American Journal of Archaeology 112, no. 1 (January 2008): 121–42, at 133–5. 7 For analyses of Augustine’s approach to Lucretia, see, e.g. Trout, “Re-Textualizing Lucretia,” 53–70; Virginia Burrus, Saving Shame: Martyrs, Saints, and Other Abject Subjects (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 125–9; Melanie Webb, “‘On Lucretia who slew herself’: Rape and Consolation in Augustine’s De ciuitate dei,” AugStud 44, no. 1 (2013): 37–58. 8 Building off Susanna Elm’s work on Augustine and origo and condicio. Elm, “Sold to Sin,” 18–20.

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of contemporary Roman law on abduction marriage and consent to undermine the very idea of Roman citizenship itself. His Sabine women stand-in for Augustine’s contemporary Romans taken into captivity. They are protoChristians, “dutifully crucified” when they refuse to be won over by their captors.9 Augustine makes the case that the Sabine women, the first mothers of the city of Rome, were in fact, as captives, slaves. And therefore, so are all their descendants. II.

Souls and Bodies: Livy’s Sabine Women

Of all the versions of the story of the Sabine women, Livy’s is the most famous.10 Livy’s patriotic retelling of Rome’s rise enjoyed a widespread popularity in late antiquity among Christian audiences, so it unsurprising that Augustine directly undermines and overwrites his version of the story in the City of God.11 Livy’s and Augustine’s versions of the story involve numerous structural parallels and Augustine also recycles much of Livy’s terminology. As has been argued by Gary  B.  Miles, Livy’s version of the abduction (as well as the versions of Cicero and Dionysius of Halicarnassus) is in part an etiology of Roman marriage customs. The story traces the shifting status and relationships between the Romans and the Sabine women, from abduction to legitimate marriage (conubium).12 To briefly summarize Livy’s telling: the first Romans were in need of wives, so they invited neighboring peoples to Rome for a religious spectaculum in honor of Neptune.13 Once everyone was distracted by the games, the Romans seized all of the unmarried women, choosing them either by chance or, in the 9 Aug. ciu. 3.13, ed. George  E.  McCracken, Loeb Classical Library  411 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957): “Nam propter interitum civium propinquorum, fratrum parentum aut pie cruciabantur, aut crudeliter laetabantur victoriis maritorum.” 10 Other major ancient accounts include Cicero, De Re Publica 2.7; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanae 2.30–47; Ovid, Ars Amatoria 1.34 and Fasti 3.167–258; Plutarch, Romulus 14–20; and Varro, Lingua Latina 6.20. Summarized in Holden, “The Abduction of the Sabine Women,” 121n1. For a detailed analysis of the versions of the story by Livy, Cicero, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Ovid, see Gary Miles, “The First Roman Marriage and the Theft of the Sabine Women,” in Livy: Reconstructing Early Rome (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018), 179–219. 11 See Alan Cameron, “The Livian Revival,” in The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 498–526, at 513–5. 12 Miles, Livy, 181–8. 13 Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 1.9.6–9, ed. B. O. Foster, Loeb Classical Library 114 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919).

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case of the more elite Romans, picking those who were most beautiful.14 The parents of the maidens fled in the ensuing turmoil, “accusing the Romans of the crime of violated hospitality and invoking the god whose religious games they, deceived according to divine law and trustworthiness, had come to.”15 Still, the Romans’ initial problem was not solved. They had captives, but they wanted wives. The children of women not legally married could not be legitimate. So, Romulus approached the indignant captured women and negotiated: Nor was hope about the situation any better nor indignation less among the captured women (raptis). But Romulus himself was going around and was convincing them that the pride of their fathers, who had refused marriage (conubium) to their neighbors, had brought it about, and that nonetheless the women would receive the rights found in marriage and in co-partnership (societate) in all the Romans’s good fortunes, the rights of citizenship, and those found in that thing to which nothing is dearer to the human race, freeborn children (liberum). Let them only soften their anger and give their souls to those to whom chance had given their bodies.16

As Miles has noted, Livy’s version of the story is particularly focused on status, employing the legal terminology of relationships and alliances.17 Livy has Romulus propose a quid pro quo whereby the women receive legal rights in exchange for acquiescing to marriage. The language used in the passage implies that the alternative to marriage is slavery. The women are initially raptae, seized captives, their bodies owned by their captors. But if they surrender their souls (i.e., consent to marriage) they will retain their legal status as free women and gain additional legal rights associated with the states of matrimonium, societas, ciuitas.

14 Livy, Ab Urbe Cond. 1.11–2: “signoque dato iuventus Romana ad rapiendas virgines discurrit. Magna pars forte, in quem quaeque inciderat, raptae: quasdam forma excellentes primoribus patrum destinatas ex plebe homines, quibus datum negotium erat, domos deferebant …” 15 Livy, Ab Urbe Cond. 1.13–4: “Turbato per metum ludicro maesti parentes virginum profugiunt, incusantes violati hospitii scelus deumque invocantes, cuius ad sollemne ludosque per fas ac fidem decepti venissent.” 16 Livy, Ab Urbe Cond. 1.9.14–5: “Nec raptis aut spes de se melior aut indignatio est minor. Sed ipse Romulus circumibat docebatque patrum id superbia factum, qui conubium finitimis negassent; illas tamen in matrimonio, in societate fortunarum omnium civitatisque, et quo nihil carius humano generi sit, liberum fore; mollirent modo iras et, quibus fors corpora dedisset, darent animos.” 17 Miles, Livy, 203–4.

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According to Livy, the women were ultimately won over by this proposal.18 They accepted Romulus’s offer and validated their status as wives and the freeborn status of their Roman children when they famously threw themselves between the opposing armies of their husbands and their fathers: Here [they were] begging their fathers, here their husbands, that the fathers and sons-in-law not bespatter themselves with impious blood, that they not stain the women’s offspring with parricide: the grandchildren of one side, the freeborn offspring (liberum progeniem) of the other. “If you are ashamed of the alliance by marriage (adfinitatis) between you all, of our wedlock (conubii), turn your anger against us. We are the cause of the war. We are the cause of your wounds and the cause of death for both our husbands and our fathers. We would be better dead than alive as widows or orphans without each of you.”19

Just as Romulus had earlier employed the language of status and legal relationships, so too did the Sabine women. The women’s plea was effective, the desecration of their children through parricide was averted, and ultimately their fathers acquiesced to the marriage, unifying the Romans and the Sabines and ratifying the legal marriage ties between the Romans and the Sabine women. III.

Real Raptae: Abduction Marriage in the Historical Context

But was a marriage like that of the early Romans and Sabines legal? The question was a pertinent one in the ancient world, not solely because of the Sabine abduction’s role as a foundational legend, but also because the process of status negotiation laid out in Livy parallels that of actual abduction marriages that occurred in the historical period. Judith Evans-Grubbs has explored the development of this practice in the Roman context, where abduction marriage “functions as an alternative to the arranged marriage preceded by betrothal. Betrothal, generally considered the ‘correct’ way of contracting a marriage, is an agreement entered into by the 18 As well as by flattery and excuses, which are, according to Livy, “the most efficacious entreaties to female temperament.” Livy, Ab Urbe Cond. 1.9.16: “Accedebant blanditiae virorum factum purgantium cupiditate atque amore, quae maxime ad muliebre ingenium efficaces preces sunt.” 19 Livy, Ab Urbe Cond. 1.13.2–4: “hinc patres hinc viros orantes ne se sanguine nefando soceri generique respergerent, ne parricidio macularent partus suos, nepotum illi, hi liberum progeniem. ‘Si adfinitatis inter vos, si conubii piget, in nos vertite iras; nos causa belli, nos volnerum ac caedium viris ac parentibus sumus; melius peribimus quam sine alteris vestrum viduae aut orbae vivemus.’”

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families of the bride and groom (more precisely, by their fathers).” In an abduction marriage, on the other hand, the would-be abductor gathers together male companions of his own age. The raiding party may waylay the intended bride outside her home while she is going about her daily chores, […] or they may break into her house and seize her. Often violence ensues. The girl’s father and brothers will attempt to defend her; the conflict may result in death, particularly for the abductor. If the abduction is successful, the girl is taken to a place […] where she cannot be found. She may then be raped by her prospective husband, but not necessarily; what is important is that her reputation will be irreversibly damaged, since it will be assumed by her family and by the community that she is no longer a virgin.”

Ultimately, the abductor offers to marry the abductee, and she may convince her family to support the union, since her chances of marrying anyone else have been damaged by the abduction.20 As Evans-Grubbs notes, the story of the Sabine women is in many ways a textbook example of an abduction marriage.21 The youthful Romans form a raiding party and seize the Sabine women. War breaks out between the abductors and the abductees’s fathers and brothers. Marriage is then offered as a solution, and the women convince their fathers to consent to it, ending the violence. But abduction marriages were not merely mythical. There is good evidence that such marriages occurred throughout the Mediterranean in antiquity, and the practice was legal (i.e. there were no laws against it) until the fourth century CE.22 It should be noted, however, that generally real-life abduction marriages did not involve strangers, but rather members of the same social group. Often the abductor was someone whose suit had recently been refused by the family of the young woman.23 This meant that while the abduction called into question the woman’s status as a virgin, it did not change her legal status. For example, if she was a freeborn Roman citizen, she remained one after abduction. If she and her family agreed to the marriage to her abductor, she would subsequently become a legal wife.

20 Evans-Grubbs, “Abduction Marriage,” 61–2. 21 Evans-Grubbs, “Abduction Marriage,” 67. 22 The first extant law to explicitly mention abduction marriage (raptus) and outlaw it is CTh IX 24.1, which likely dates to 326. Evans-Grubbs, “Abduction Marriage,” 67. 23 Though mythical abduction marriages, such as Paris’ abduction of Helen, were often between outside groups and explained city foundations or ancient conflicts (see, e.g. Herodotus’ History, also discussed briefly in Evans-Grubbs, “Abduction Marriage,” 67–8.)

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In cases where a woman was abducted by strangers or enemies, her status and options were rather different. Legally, she had been enslaved. Her captor might still offer to marry her, but if she did not “accept” the marriage, her options were dependent on her captor’s willingness to let her go. If he was not willing to release her, the only other option was continued habitation with her captor as an enslaved concubine with no legal rights. If he allowed her to return to her parents, likely in exchange for a ransom, her odds of marrying well would be materially damaged based on the assumption that she was no longer a virgin.24 Such women (like the mythical Sabine women) occupied an uncomfortable position between slavery and freedom. Thus, although the abduction of the Sabine women fit neatly into existing practices familiar to ancient audiences, it was not an uncomplicated or comfortable story. Though the story was frequently retold in literature, surviving ancient depictions of the abduction of the Sabine women are rare.25 Antonia Holden suggests that the lack of imagery may indicate official discomfort with the story starting in the age of Augustus.26 Even Livy’s version highlights this discomfort—when the fathers of the abducted women accused the Romans of violating the laws of hospitality, they were clearly correct.27 However, the tale was certainly broadly popular into late antiquity, as evidenced by a series of late antique contorniate medallions (ca. 357 to 394) that Holden argues depict contemporary re-enactments of the abduction of the Sabine women in the Circus Maximus before games, and thus attest to the continuing relevance of the story.28 Indeed, both pagan and Christian sources from this period identify certain equestrian games as related to or commemorative of the abduction, since the Sabine women themselves were abducted during ludi.29 Christian sources in particular are often critical of the story of the Sabine women, aligning their abduction and rape with the sinful origins of spectacula in general.30 On the 24 Evans-Grubbs, “Abduction Marriage,” 61–4. 25 The only known examples are a frieze from the Basilica Aemelia, and a series of imperial medallions and late antique contorniates likely linked to equestrian games. For discussion on the imagery of the Sabine women and the implications of these contortionates in particular, see Holden. “The Abduction of the Sabine Women,” 121–42. 26 Holden, “The Abduction of the Sabine Women,” 139. 27 Livy, Ab Urbe Cond. 1.13–14: “Turbato per metum ludicro maesti parentes virginum profugiunt, incusantes violati hospitii scelus deumque invocantes, cuius ad sollemne ludosque per fas ac fidem decepti venissent.” 28 Holden, “The Abduction of the Sabine Women,” 121–42. 29 Livy, Ab Urbe Cond. 1.9.6–9. 30 Jerome, Vita  S.  Hilarionis 20, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, PL 23.38 (Paris: Garnieri Fratres, 1844–1891): “Sed et Italicus eiusdem oppidi municeps Christianus, adversus Gazensem

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other hand, in a letter thanking the emperor Theodosius for his patronage of games, Symmachus makes the same connection to games in a positive vein, noting that “it was the attraction of their neighbors’s horse races that obtained wives for [the first Romans].”31 Holden uses this evidence to suggest that in the late fourth and early fifth century, the story of the Sabine women “had become a form of apology for each side in Rome.”32 IV.

Not to Be Imitated by Law or Custom: Late Antique Law on Abduction Marriage

Thus, Augustine entered a live debate about the negative or positive value of the abduction of the Sabine women as exemplum when he penned the City of God. Like Jerome and Tertullian, Augustine links the sin of abducting the Sabine women to contemporary spectacula. However, in the context of the Sabine women, he sees the continuing existence of spectacula as the lesser of two evils. According to Augustine, the Sabine exemplum was not only morally wrong, it was illegal: although the spectaculum of the circuses remained in remembrance of Romulus’s deceit, nonetheless the exemplum of the deed was not acceptable in that city [Rome] or in imperial authority. And the Romans erred less damagingly in that they consecrated Romulus as a god after that injustice, rather than allowing his deed of abducting women to be imitated by any law or custom.33

Duumvirum, Marnae idolo deditum, Circenses equos nutriebat. Hoc siquidem in Romanis urbibus iam inde servabatur a Romulo, ut propter felicem Sabinarum raptum, Conso, quasi consiliorum Deo, quadrigae septeno currant circumitu; et equos partis adversae fregisse, victoria sint.” Tertullian, De Spectaculis 4, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, PL 4.813–14 (Paris: Garnieri Fratres, 1844–1891): “Idololatria, ut iam dixi, ludorum omnium mater est; quae ut ad se Christiani fideles veniant, blanditur illis per oculorum et aurium voluptatem. Romulus Conso, quasi consilii deo, ob rapiendas Sabinas circenses primus consecravit.” 31 Symmachus, Relationes 9.6: “Dubia est optio, cum desimilibus iudicatur, nec putetus sitiusmodi voluptatem plebi Martiae parvam videri, cui delenimenta circensius finitimorum conubium praestiterunt.” Translation and Latin found in Holden, “The Abduction of the Sabine Women,” n89, quoting R.  H.  Barrow, Prefect and Emperor: The Relationes of Symmachus A.D. 384 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 71. For further analysis of these sources see Holden, “The Abduction of the Sabine Women,” 132–4. 32 Holden, “The Abduction of the Sabine Women,” 134–5. 33 Aug. ciu. 2.17: “Hoc sane utilius feliciusque successit, quod, etsi ad memoriam fraudis illius circensium spectaculum mansit, facinoris tamen in illa civitate et imperio non placuit exemplum, faciliusque Romani in hoc erraverunt, ut post illam iniquitatem deum sibi Romulum

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When Augustine says that abduction marriage is not permitted by the Roman state (tamen in illa ciuitate et imperio non placuit exemplum) or under Roman law ( factum eius imitandum lege ulla uel more), he is reflecting a major change in the legal landscape concerning abduction marriage that began in the fourth century and evolved in parallel with (but independent of) contemporary Christian critiques of the Sabine abduction.34 In a 326 edict, Constantine outlawed abduction marriage (raptus), mandating extraordinarily harsh penalties for all parties involved: If someone who has not previously made any agreement with a girl’s parents should seize (rapuerit) her although she is unwilling or if he should lead her away when she is willing, hoping for protection from the response of one whom, on account of the fault of frivolity and the fickleness of her sex and judgement, our ancestors completely excluded from making legal complaints and from giving testimony and from all judicial matters, (or: … hoping for protection from her response which … our ancestors completely excluded from legal complaints, etc.), the girl’s response shall be of no use to him according to the ancient law, but rather the girl herself shall be made guilty by association (societate) in the crime. […] (2) And if voluntary assent is revealed in the virgin, she shall be struck with the same severity as her abductor (raptor); impunity shall not be offered to those girls who are abducted against their will either, since they too could have kept themselves at home till their marriage day and, if the doors were broken down by the abductor’s audacity, they could have sought help from the neighbors by their cries and could have defended themselves with all their efforts. But we impose a lighter penalty on these girls, and order that only legal succession to their parents is to be denied them. […] (4) But if any slave should bring forth into public the fact that the crime of abduction has been neglected by deception or disregarded by an agreement [of marriage] (between the abductor and the girl’s parents), he shall be rewarded with Latin status, or if he already has Latin status, he shall become a Roman citizen: the parents, for whom revenge (for the abduction) was the major concern, if they displayed forbearance and repressed their sorrow, shall be punished with exile. (5) We order that partners and accomplices of the abductor also be subjected to the same punishment without regard to sex; and if among these attendants anyone of servile status should be caught, we order that person to be burned without regard to sex.35 consecrarent, quam ut in feminis rapiendis factum eius imitandum lege ulla vel more permitterent.” 34 Evans-Grubbs, “Abduction Marriage,” 59–83. See also Kyle Harper, who has argued that overall, “Christian influence did not deeply affect Roman family law” and that changes to marriage laws in Late Antiquity often had more to do with issues of property than Christian views on marriage. Kyle Harper, “Marriage and the Family in Late Antiquity,” The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, ed. Scott Fitzgerald Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 667–714, at 668. 35 CTh IX.24.1, translation by Judith Evans-Grubbs, with some Latin terminology added. Evans-Grubbs, “Abduction Marriage,” 59–60.

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This 326 edict was followed by a series of revisions, as the authorities tested different approaches to the issue of abduction marriage, which clearly remained a problem, likely due to lax enforcement. In 349, a law was appended declaring that, “Although the authority of the former law, in which our glorious father had ordered that very fierce vengeance be taken against raptores, still stands, we, however, have established only a capital penalty, lest any delay in avenging the crime should arise under the pretext of too fierce a judgment.”36 Evans-Grubbs notes that this still extremely harsh capital penalty would likely have involved execution by the sword for the raptores and any abductee judged to have been willing. This “downgrade” suggests that the penalty Constantine prescribed (which does not survive) was likely summum supplicium, “an especially atrocious and degrading form of the death penalty, such as crucifixion or condemnation ad bestias or, most likely, burning” normally reserved for slaves or other humiliores except in the case of especially egregious crimes.37 During the reign of Constantius, the first laws specifically addressing the raptus of Christian women sworn to celibacy were passed and raptus continued to be classified as the worst type of criminal offense with no right to appeal or pardon. A 354 law further negated the legal admissibility of an abducted woman’s subsequent agreement to marriage as a defense. Under Jovian in 364, even attempted abduction marriage became a crime mandating a capital sentence.38 In 374, concerns about delayed prosecution of abduction marriages causing children to be born without clear legal status led to an additional law that imposed a five-year statute of limitations after which “there will be no opportunity for accusation or contesting the marriages or the offspring” of abduction marriages.39 Church leaders also opined on abduction marriage during this period, though Evans-Grubbs notes that their views were generally less strident than those of the imperial authorities. For instance, a canon from the 314 Council of Ancyra mandated that abducted women should be returned to their fiancées, even if they had been raped.40 .

36 CTh IX.24.2. Translation by Evans-Grubbs. “Abduction Marriage,” 66. 37 Ibid. 38 These legal developments are analyzed and laid out in Evans-Grubbs, “Abduction Marriage,” 77. Citing CTh IX.25.1 (354), and CTh IX.25.2 (364). 39 CTh IX.24.3, translation by Judith Evans-Grubbs. Discussed at Evans-Grubbs, “Abduction Marriage,” 66–7. 40 Discussed in Evans-Grubbs, “Abduction Marriage,” 73, citing C.  J.  Hefele, Histoire des Conciles d’apres les documents originaux, rev. H. Leclerq (1909), I.I,3I3. See Evans-Grubbs, “Abduction Marriage,” 72–6, for further examples. Evans-Grubbs finds that the Christian authorities’ more lenient approach to abduction marriage suggests that Constantine’s

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Laws of Peace, Laws of War: Abduction, Slavery, Redemption, and Legal Status

Thus, by the time Augustine was writing the City of God, abduction marriage as related in the traditional version of the story of the Sabine women had become thoroughly illegal. In fact, if evaluated based on Constantine’s law, all parties involved in Livy’s version of the tale were criminally liable—the Roman raptores most of all, but also the raptae women and their parents, who ultimately willingly accepted the marriage. Constantine’s law took a particularly grim view of the culpability of abducted women, since even those kidnapped unwillingly, who refused to acquiesce to marriage to their captors, were denied inheritance rights (presumably including dowries) and consequently would probably be unable to marry anyone else. Just as Livy’s raptae became partners in the fortunes of the Roman state (in societate fortunarum omnium), so too the law made fourth-century raptae partners in crime (sed ipsa puella potius societate criminis obligetur).41 By belatedly agreeing to the marriage, the Sabine fathers would be subject to exile. Moreover, since the marriages were themselves illegal, the status of much-vaunted freeborn offspring (liberum progeniem) would also be at risk.42 As has also been noted by Holden, Augustine seems to have been aware of many of these legal implications when he composed his version of the story in City of God 2.17 and 3.13.43 He uses the legal terms of abduction marriage throughout in his account, referring to the Romans as raptores and the Sabine women as raptae, and a key concern of his account is to determine whether the raptae maidens had in fact been able to consent to the offered marriage.44 Augustine makes it clear that the abduction of a bride was a violation of civil law, noting that Romulus “abducted women who were not given to him, in accordance with no law of peace.”45 Since Constantine’s 326 edict, it had been illegal to abduct or marry a woman without successfully negotiating first with

41 42 43 44 45

turn against the practice was not due to his Christian faith but rather prompted by a desire to curb a real-life practice. Livy, Ab Urbe Cond. 1.9.14–5; CTh IX.24.1, Latin cited from Evans-Grubbs, “Abduction Marriage,” 59. Livy, Ab Urbe Cond. 1.13.2–4. Holden notes that Augustine’s framing of the story in ciu. 2.17 is consistent with contemporary Roman law. Holden, “The Abduction of the Sabine Women,” 132–3. Aug. ciu. 3.13: “… et raptores illi etiam superabantur et crebro fugientes inter domos suas gravius foedabant pristinas  … nisi raptae illae laceratis crinibus emicarent et provolutae parentibus iram eorum iustissimam non armis victricibus, sed supplici pietate sedarent.” Aug. ciu. 2.17: “nullo autem iure pacis non datas rapuit et iniustum bellum cum earum parentibus iuste suscensentibus gessit.”

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her parents (cum parentibus puellae ante depectus).46 So by the time Augustine was writing the City of God, it had been accepted legal practice for several decades that Roman marriage was legal only if the woman was given. She could not be taken and then given after the fact. Laws around this issue continued to be fine-tuned during the composition of the City of God; Honorius would again ban the abduction of consecrated virgins in 420.47 But, as Augustine himself notes in his first mention of the Sabine women, Romulus’s abduction of the women was only illegal because it occurred in the context of a religious festival during peacetime. “Perhaps,” Augustine allows, “by some law of war a victor might justly abduct (rapuit) women denied to him unjustly.”48 The laws of war are different than the laws of peace. If Romulus had gone to war with the Sabines before kidnapping their daughters instead of after, it would have been “more justly” done.49 As Augustine himself well knew, abduction (sometimes followed by marriage), remained an accepted practice under the laws of war. Augustine’s own congregation contained many Romans who had been “captured by barbarians” (captiuatus a barbaris)50 or were related to or knew others to whom this had happened during the sack of Rome in 410.51 Augustine addressed this reality and the expense of the redemption of abductees in several of his sermons.52 The church itself was also deeply involved in the ransoming of captives during 46 CTh IX.24.1: “Si quis nihil cum parentibus puellae ante depectus invitam eam rapuerit vel volentem abduxerit patrocinium ex eius responsione sperans  …” Latin quoted from Evans-Grubbs, “Abduction Marriage,” 59. 47 Evans-Grubbs, “Abduction Marriage,” 77, citing Sirmondian Constitution  10 and CTh IX.25.3. 48 Aug. ciu. 2.17: “Aliquo enim fortasse iure belli iniuste negatas iuste victor auferret; nullo autem iure pacis non datas rapuit et iniustum bellum cum earum parentibus iuste suscensentibus gessit.” 49 Aug. ciu. 2.17: “Ex hoc iure ac bono credo raptas Sabinas. Quid enim iustius et melius quam filias alienas fraude spectaculi inductas non a parentibus accipi, sed vi, ut quisque poterat, auferri? Nam si inique facerent Sabini negare postulatas, quanto fuit iniquius rapere non datas! Iustius autem bellum cum ea gente geri potuit, quae filias suas ad matrimonium conregionalibus et confinalibus suis negasset petitas, quam cum ea, quae repetebat ablatas.” 50 Aug. s. 134.3. 51 See Aug. exc. urb 2.2, where Augustine concedes that many Romans were taken captive during the 410 sack of Rome. Translation in Augustine: Political Writings, ed. E.  Margaret  Atkins and Robert  J.  Dodardo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 207. 52 Aug. s. 134.3: “Ingenuus est aliquis captivatus a barbaris, ex ingenuo factus est servus: audit homo miserator, considerat se habere pecuniam, fit redemptor, pergit ad barbaros, dat pecuniam, redimit hominem.” Aug. s. 344.4: “Redimis te forte a barabaris, ne occidaris: redimis te magno, non parcis omnino rebus tuis, et filios tuos spolias; et redemptus crastino morieris.”

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this period. Prominent bishops were actively engaged in brokering and paying for these redemptions in the fourth and fifth centuries. Perhaps the most famous example is Ambrose, who used liturgical vessels to ransom Roman citizens captured during a Gothic invasion in 379.53 But of course, not all abductees could or would be ransomed, and wealth and status were not necessarily a protection against rape and forced marriage. Galla Placidia, the sister of the emperor Honorius, was captured in 410 and eventually married her captor, the Gothic king Athaulf. Her return was not negotiated until 416, after his death.54 These abductions also raised issues about legal status. As Augustine himself puts it, a freeborn (ingenuus) person who was “captured by barbarians, was made a slave.”55 But even if freed, some mark of slavery remained.56 Though generally the principle of postliminium meant that Romans who escaped or were ransomed from captivity immediately regained their former legal status and privileges, some limitations were imposed in the fourth to early fifth centuries. A 366 law revoked postliminium for those who deserted to the barbarian side or remained among barbarians longer than they were forced to.57 Honorius promulgated another law in 409 that allowed those who paid ransoms to mandate reimbursement. If the person freed from captivity could not afford to pay back their redeemer, that person would be bound to work for their redeemer for five years.58 Another limitation on the rights regained by Roman citizens after captivity related to marriage itself. Under Roman law captives and slaves could not enter a legal marriage (conubium). This also meant that any marriages contracted before a citizen was taken captive were nullified during captivity.59 As Kristina Sessa has argued, this law conflicted with Christian teaching about the

Aug. s. 345.2: “Totum dedisti barbaris quod habuisti, frater? Totum, inquit, dedi, nudus remansi; etsi nudus, vivam.” 53 See generally Lenski, “Captivity and Romano-Barbarian Interchange,” 189 and also Lenski, “Captivity among the Barbarians,” 242–4. 54 See Lenski, “Captivity, Slavery, and Cultural Exchange,” 93. 55 Aug. s. 134.5: “Ingenuus est aliquis captivatus a barbaris, ex ingenuo factus est servus …” 56 For discussion of the marks of slavery (macula seruitutis), see Elm, “Sold to Sin,” 11–2; Susanna Elm, “Signs under the Skin: Flogging Eternal Rome,” in Unter die Haut. Tätowierungen als Logo- und Piktogramme, ed. Iris Därmann and Thomas Macho (Munich/ Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2017), 51–75, at 54; and Susanna Elm, “‘Pierced by Bronze Needles’: Anti-Montanist Charges of Ritual Stigmatization in Their Fourth-Century Context,” JECS 4, no. 4 (1996): 409–39. 57 See Lenski, “Captivity and Romano-Barbarian Interchange,” 191, citing CTh V.7.1. 58 See Lenski, “Captivity among the Barbarians,” 242, citing CTh V.7.2. 59 Sessa, “Ursa’s Return,” 413–4.

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sanctity of marriage and was one that the bishop of Rome grappled with during Augustine’s own lifetime.60 Though there is no evidence that, for instance, the 366 law revoking postliminium for those who deserted to the barbarian side was applied to women who remained among their captors because their slavery was converted to marriage (Galla Placidia, for instance, went on to become regent of the western Roman empire), the existence of these laws indicates that once one was abducted and enslaved, one was not necessarily free upon return. Moreover, they demonstrate that any marriage contracted during captivity to one’s captor had no validity under Roman law. VI.

“Not Yet Won Over”: Augustine’s Sabine Women

Augustine grapples with these issues of abduction, freedom, consent to marriage, and legal status in his retelling of the capture of the Sabine women, which occupies the entirety of section 13 of Book 3 in the City of God. If Livy’s version of the Sabine women is a traditional abduction marriage, where the marriage’s violent beginning is successfully (and legally) resolved by the negotiation of marriage rights, Augustine’s is an enslavement by (Roman) barbarians. The story itself is told from an inverted perspective. While Livy’s account is, unsurprisingly, told from the perspective of the Romans, as Gerard O’Daly has noted, Augustine’s is told from the perspective of the abducted women themselves.61 This allows Augustine to exploit the natural sympathies of his readers. The fate of the Sabine women must have represented a very real nightmare for many in Augustine’s audience: being unable rescue a relative, who would then be forced to permanently join the society of her captors.62 Even if nominally she became a wife, she would still be a slave in all but name, and she might lose the ability to reclaim Roman citizenship. Augustine thus forced his audience to 60 She analyzes the case of Ursa, a woman who was redeemed from barbarian captivity sometime between 410 and 417 CE. Ursa discovered that in her absence her husband had remarried. She approached Innocent, the bishop of Rome, to contest this second marriage. Sessa, “Ursa’s Return,” 417–8. 61 O’Daly, Augustine’s City of God, 86–7. 62 In fact, Holden believes that the popularity of the story of the Sabine women in the third and fourth centuries was followed by a sharp reversal in popular views coinciding roughly with the sack of Rome in 410 and the publication of the City of God. She argues this change may have been partially related to the increasing influence of the church, but also the story becoming overly relatable as more Romans experienced similar abductions. Holden, “The Abduction of the Sabine Women,” 134–5.

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equate themselves with the Sabines, turning Romulus’s Romans into barbarian captors. Augustine opens his account of the abduction by asking the following question: How was neither Juno, who with her husband Jupiter already was favoring the “Romans, masters of the world and people of the toga,” [able to help the Romans], nor Venus able to help the descendants of her own Aeneas so that they might be entitled to a wife by a good and fair behavior, with the result that such great disaster from this scarcity [of women] fell upon them that they seized brides via deception and soon were compelled to fight with their fathers-in-law, so that the wretched women, not yet won over (conciliatae) from the injustice (iniuria) inflicted by their husbands, were now dowered with the blood of their fathers?63

Framed this way, the story of the Sabine women fits well into Augustine’s broader critique in Book 3 of pagan gods’s power and immorality, since Juno (goddess of marriage) and Venus (goddess of love) failed to provide the Roman men with wives and Jupiter (arbiter of justice) ultimately helped the Romans overcome the Sabine fathers in battle.64 But the story of the Sabine women is not just about gods misbehaving. It is also about status and slavery. The passage is rife with language associated with slavery from the very beginning, where Augustine quotes Vergil to describe the Romans as “masters” (dominos).65 However, Augustine then undercuts this framing by comparing the status of the Sabine women to that of Andromache. On the surface, this comparison works well: both the Sabines and Andromache were taken captive and forced to cohabit with men who had killed or would kill their family members. But, says Augustine: Andromache was more fortunate taken captive than those Roman wives who were taken in wedlock (coniugia). Although Pyrrhus was permitted his embraces (amplexus) of her, as is the lot of slaves, nonetheless afterwards he killed no further Trojans. The Romans on the other hand were killing in battle their fathersin-law, whose daughters they were already embracing (amplexabantur) in the 63 Aug. ciu. 3.13: “Quo modo nec Iuno, quae cum Iove suo iam fovebat ‘Romanos rerum dominos gentemque togatam’ nec Venus ipsa Aeneidas suos potuit adiuvare ut bono et aequo more coniugia mererentur, cladesque tanta inruit huius inopiae, ut ea dolo raperent moxque compellerentur pugnare cum soceris, ut miserae feminae nondum ex iniuria maritis conciliatae iam parentum sanguine dotarentur?” 64 Aug. ciu. 3.13: “Hic tamen Romulus de suorum iam virtute desperans Iovem oravit ut starent, atque ille hac occasione nomen Statoris invenit; nec finis esset tanti mali, nisi raptae illae laceratis crinibus emicarent et provolutae parentibus iram eorum iustissimam non armis victricibus, sed supplici pietate sedarent.” 65 Vergil, Aeneid 1.218: “Romanos rerum dominos gentemque togatam.”

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Augustine appears to be arguing that the Sabine women are not slaves. He emphasizes the differing legal status of Andromache and the Sabine women. Andromache has been enslaved (captiuata est), whereas Augustine piles the terms of legal marriage and alliance onto the Sabines: coniugia, nupserunt, sociatae. Andromache is subject to assaults that are seruiles (worthy of a slave), while the Sabine women are assaulted in their marriage bed (thalamis). Augustine here echoes Livy’s assertion that Sabines will enjoy the legal rights of marriage, outlined by Livy as resting in “marriage (matrimonio) and co-partnership (societate) in all the Romans’s good fortunes and in citizenship, and in that that thing to which nothing is dearer to the human race, free-born children (liberum).”67 Why then was Andromache luckier? Because the Sabine women’s status was by no means as straightforward as it appears. Though she was treated legally as a slave, Augustine argues that Andromache had more freedom than the supposedly free Roman wives. Instead of being given the children (liberum) and co-partnership (societate) promised by Romulus in Ab Urbe Condita, the Sabine women’s partnership (sociatae) removed their freedom (liberum) to show their fear or grief over the potential deaths of their parents. Andromache, at least, was free to mourn the death of her people.68 Romulus’s promise of rights was a hollow one. The women not only lacked freedom, they were 66 Aug. ciu. 3.13: “Andromacha felicius captivata est quam illa coniugia Romana nupserunt. Licet serviles, tamen post eius amplexus nullum Troianorum Pyrrhus occidit; Romani autem soceros interficiebant in proeliis, quorum iam filias amplexabantur in thalamis. Illa victori subdita dolere tantum suorum mortem potuit, non timere; illae sociatae bellantibus parentum suorum mortes procedentibus viris timebant, redeuntibus dolebant, nec timorem habentes liberum nec dolorem. Nam propter interitum civium propinquorum, fratrum parentum aut pie cruciabantur, aut crudeliter laetabantur victoriis maritorum.” 67 Livy, Ab Urbe Cond. 1.9.14–5: “Sed ipse Romulus circumibat docebatque patrum id superbia factum, qui conubium finitimis negassent; illas tamen in matrimonio, in societate fortunarum omnium civitatisque, et quo nihil carius humano generi sit, liberum fore.” 68 Aug. ciu. 3.13: “Illa victori subdita dolere tantum suorum mortem potuit, non timere; illae sociatae bellantibus parentum suorum mortes procedentibus viris timebant, redeuntibus dolebant, nec timorem habentes liberum nec dolorem.”

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emotionally tortured like slaves (cruciabantur) if they remained properly pious and dutiful (pie) to their families and people.69 Earlier in the passage, Augustine uses similar language to emphasize the Sabine women’s curtailed emotional freedom and to directly describe the embraces the Romans forced upon the Sabine women as a form of torture: Therefore the Romans conquered, so that with hands gory with the butchery of their fathers-in-law they wrested/tortured (extorquerent) wretched embraces (amplexus) from their daughters, nor did those daughters dare to lament their slain fathers, lest they give offence to their victorious husbands …70

Augustine further frames Romulus’s effort to placate the women, where rights were exchanged for the women softening their anger and giving “their souls to those to whom chance had given their bodies,” as an unholy quid pro quo.71 While the women accepted the offer in Livy’s version, Augustine’s women were “not yet won over.”72 The verb he uses, conciliare, can both generally mean to win over but can also mean to procure or acquire “an object of love, in an honorable and (more freq.) in a dishonorable sense.”73 Not only did Romans procure these women’s bodies by kidnap and rape, the Romans attempted to purchase their very souls. The contract of marriage, normally involving the exchange of a woman and her dowry, was itself perverted. In these marriages, the only dowry was blood (iam parentum sanguine dotarentur). Augustine does not see the potential acceptance of these new “victorious” Roman husbands as Livy’s “softened” anger and an appropriately feminine acceptance of flattery.74 He sees in 69 Aug. ciu. 3.13: “Nam propter interitum civium propinquorum, fratrum parentum aut pie cruciabantur, aut crudeliter laetabantur victoriis maritorum.” 70 Aug. ciu. 3.13: “Vicerunt ergo Romani, ut strage socerorum manibus cruentis ab eorum filiabus amplexus miserabiles extorquerent, nec illae auderent flere patres occisos, ne offenderent victores maritos …” 71 Livy, Ab Urbe Cond. 1.9.15: “mollirent modo iras et, quibus fors corpora dedisset,  darent animos.” 72 Aug. ciu. 3.13: “Quo modo nec Iuno, quae cum Iove suo iam fovebat ‘Romanos rerum dominos gentemque togatam,’ nec Venus ipsa Aeneidas suos potuit adiuvare ut bono et aequo more coniugia mererentur, cladesque tanta inruit huius inopiae, ut ea dolo raperent moxque compellerentur pugnare cum soceris, ut miserae feminae nondum ex iniuria maritis conciliatae iam parentum sanguine dotarentur?” 73 Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, eds., A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879), s.v. “concilio.” 74 Livy, Ab Urbe Cond. 1.9.15–6: “mollirent modo iras et, quibus fors corpora dedisset, darent animos. Saepe ex iniuria postmodum gratiam ortam, eoque melioribus usuras viris, quod adnisurus pro se quisque sit ut, cum suam vicem functus officio sit, parentium etiam patriaeque expleat desiderium. Accedebant blanditiae virorum factum purgantium cupiditate atque amore, quae maxime ad muliebre ingenium efficaces preces sunt.”

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any acceptance of the marriage an inhuman, cruel delight in the destruction of one’s family.75 The fact that the women had “not yet been won over” when the Romans met their fathers in battle also represents a radical reordering of the story’s timeline. In Livy’s account, the Romans did not fight and kill any Sabine fathers until after they had won over their daughters. By the time the two sides engaged in battle, the Sabine women had so thoroughly accepted their marital status that they intervened to implore their fathers and husbands not to “defile themselves with impious blood, nor stain the women’s offspring with parricide, the grandchildren to one side, the freeborn offspring (liberum progeniem) to the other.”76 But in Augustine’s retelling, this defilement was not prevented. The women had still not agreed to the marriage mid-battle, when “with hands gory with the blood of their fathers-in-law, the Romans wrested wretched embraces from their daughters.”77 When the Sabines broke into the city of Rome and put the raptores to flight, the Romans also “gravely defiled their own prior triumphs, although those victories themselves were shameful and deplorable.” The battle, “polluted and cruel beyond measure” (scelerata et nimis atrox),78 only ended when the raptae intervened and appeased the “most justified” anger of their fathers “not with conquering weapons but with dutiful supplication.”79 But, unlike Livy’s women, who appealed to and were torn between both sides (hinc patres hinc uiros orantes), Augustine’s women chose a side. They only appealed to their fathers. They made no mention of their own status as wives or that of their children. Though Augustine emphasizes that the women did not know “for whom they ought to make prayers” while the battles are raging, 75 Aug. ciu. 3.13: “Nam propter interitum civium propinquorum, fratrum parentum aut pie cruciabantur, aut crudeliter laetabantur victoriis maritorum.” 76 Livy, Ab Urbe Cond. 1.1.13: “Tum Sabinae mulieres, quarum ex iniuria bellum ortum erat, crinibus passis scissaque veste victo malis muliebri pavore, ausae se inter tela volantia inferre, ex transverso impetu facto dirimere  infestas acies, dirimere iras, hinc patres hinc viros orantes ne se sanguine nefando soceri generique respergerent, ne parricidio macularent partus suos, nepotum illi, hi liberum progeniem.” 77 Aug. ciu. 3.13: “Vicerunt ergo Romani, ut strage socerorum manibus cruentis ab eorum filiabus amplexus miserabiles extorquerent.” 78 Aug. ciu. 3.13: “Neque enim et apud Romanos parva fuerunt illa discrimina, si quidem ad obsidionem quoque perventum est civitatis clausisque portis se tuebantur; quibus dolo apertis admissisque hostibus intra moenia in ipso foro scelerata et nimis atrox inter generos socerosque pugna commissa est, et raptores illi etiam superabantur et crebro fugientes inter domos suas gravius foedabant pristinas, quamvis et ipsas pudendas lugendasque victorias.” 79 Aug. ciu. 3.13: “nec finis esset tanti mali, nisi raptae illae laceratis crinibus emicarent et provolutae parentibus iram eorum iustissimam non armis victricibus, sed supplici pietate sedarent.”

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for they dared not mourn their fathers, “lest they give offence to their victorious husbands,”80 in the two instances where the women enacted the quintessential Roman trait of pietas, it was only directed towards their fathers.81 The implication of all this is that Romans sought to conceal a moral crime with legal status, but the status was itself a lie. Augustine foreshadows this at the beginning of his narration of the Sabine abduction by quoting the opening of Lucan’s Pharsalia, where “civil law is given over to crime.”82 Though joined (sociatae) to their husbands, the Sabine women lacked free status (nec timorem habentes liberum nec dolorem). They were not Livy’s true partners in the fortunes of the Roman state (in societate fortunarum omnium).83 And because they were enslaved and could not become real wives, under the 326 law of Constantine they were not partners in the Romans’s crime either (sed ipsa puella potius societate criminis obligetur).84 Because the Sabine women did not accept Romulus’s offer, their intervention in the battle became a sacrifice to save their fathers rather than a validation of their marriages. Augustine again highlights how the Romans had mixed and violated the laws of war and peace by emphasizing how this “unjust war” ended, not with “conquering weapons,” but with the dutiful surrender of women.85 VII.

Sin and Slavery: The Impact of the Legal Status of Sabine Women

Augustine does all of this to demonstrate that the social and legal status of the Sabine women (their condicio) is unstable. Are they free wives or are they slaves? At stake is the status of the women themselves and of their descendants.86 The 80 Aug. ciu. 3.13: “nec illae auderent flere patres occisos, ne offenderent victores maritos, quae adhuc illis pugnantibus pro quibus facerent vota nesciebant.” 81 Aug. ciu. 3.13: “Nam propter interitum civium propinquorum, fratrum parentum aut pie cruciabantur, aut crudeliter laetabantur victoriis maritorum. […] nisi raptae illae laceratis crinibus emicarent et provolutae parentibus iram eorum iustissimam non armis victricibus, sed supplici pietate sedarent.” 82 Aug. ciu. 3.13: “quanto et quam iusto doloris instinctu Lucanus exclamat: ‘Bella per Emathios plus quam civilia campos/Iusque datum sceleri canimus.’” 83 Livy, Ab Urbe Cond. 1.9.14–5. 84 CTh IX.24.1, Latin cited from Evans-Grubbs, “Abduction Marriage,” 59. 85 Aug. ciu. 3.13: “Aliquo enim fortasse iure belli iniuste negatas iuste victor auferret; nullo autem iure pacis non datas rapuit et iniustum bellum cum earum parentibus iuste suscensentibus gessit.” Augustine, ciu. 2.17: “nec finis esset tanti mali, nisi raptae illae laceratis crinibus emicarent et provolutae parentibus iram eorum iustissimam non armis victricibus, sed supplici pietate sedarent.” 86 Lenski, “Captivity, Slavery, and Cultural Exchange,” 82.

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Sabine women were the mothers of the Roman empire—if they were enslaved, what did that mean for all the generations that followed? With this framing of the abduction of the Sabine women, Augustine makes the case that all Romans are slaves. Augustine was broadly interested in issues of condicio and origo, the status someone is born with.87 As Susanna Elm has argued, this interest informs Augustine’s view that Adam’s sin was a peccatum originale, meaning that his descendants are born enslaved to his sin.88 Just as Augustine believes that all people are born enslaved to Adam’s sin, so too all Roman citizens are born enslaved to Romulus’s sin, bearing the status of their Sabine forebears. Augustine uses legal terminology denoting noncitizen status to analogize the experience of Christians living in the earthly city elsewhere in the City of God as well. For example, he notes in Book 18 that the city of God itself is merely “living as a foreigner in this world,” casting the city of God, and consequently its inhabitants, the Christians, as peregrini, resident aliens, lacking the legal status and many of the rights provided by Roman citizenship.89 And in Book 19 as part of a broader discussion of slavery he argues that the origin of all slavery is sin, and that even legally free domini are themselves slaves of sin.90 Augustine reinforces these ideas at the close of his section of the Sabine women by calling into question all of the social (and legal) bonds that tie together the peoples of Rome: What kind of laws of marriage are these? What kind of provocations of war? What kind of alliances of brotherhood, of relation by marriage (adfinitatis), of community (societatis), of religion?91

Here again he echoes and undermines Livy, whose Sabine women asked their husbands and fathers whether they were “ashamed of their relation by marriage” (adfinitatis).92 The answer, for Livy’s Sabines fathers, turns into a no, 87 Elm, “Sold to Sin,” 1–12. 88 Elm, “Sold to Sin,” 18–20. 89 Aug. ciu. 18.51: “peregrinantem in hoc mundo civitatem dei.” On the legal status of peregrini under Roman law, see Ralph Mathisen, “Concepts of Citizenship,” in The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, ed. Scott Fitzgerald Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 747–755. For the use of this terminology more broadly in City of God, see M. A. Claussen, “‘Peregrinatio’ and ‘Peregrini’ in Augustine’s ‘City of God,’” Traditio 46 (1991): 33–75. 90 Aug. ciu. 19.15. 91 Aug. ciu. 3.13: “Quae sunt ista iura nuptiarum, quae inritamenta bellorum, quae foedera germanitatis adfinitatis, societatis divinitatis?” 92 Livy, Ab Urbe Cond. 1.13.3–4:“Si adfinitatis inter vos, si conubii piget, in nos vertite iras; nos causa belli, nos volnerum ac caedium viris ac parentibus sumus; melius peribimus quam sine alteris vestrum viduae aut orbae vivemus.”

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but the answer in the City of God is unequivocally a yes. Last but not least, Augustine asks what manner of “life of citizenship” (uita ciuitatis) have the false gods protected?93 What kind indeed? There can be no citizenship without free status, so Roman citizenship itself is built upon a lie. The implication is that the only true citizenship can be to the city of God. VIII.

Undermining Exempla: Lucretia and the Sabine Women in Dialogue

Thus, Augustine’s version of the abduction of the Sabine women radically reframes one of the most important Roman exempla. If Livy’s version of the story is an etiology of alliance, marriage, and the perpetuation of citizenship, Augustine’s is a story of unjust violence, rape, and enslavement. Augustine’s approach to the Sabine women is comparable to his similar reinvention of the rape of Lucretia earlier in Book 1.94 In each, Augustine topples the founding story of a different period in Roman history: the regal period in the case of the Sabines and the republic in the case of Lucretia. Though many scholars have explored the significance of Augustine’s unique version of the Lucretia narrative, it gains additional resonance when explored in a dialogue with the Sabine abduction.95 In fact, Augustine himself directly invites such a comparison: when he first touches on the Sabine women in Book 2 to disprove Sallust’s claim that the Romans are naturally just and moral, he cites Lucretia immediately afterwards in the same passage to transition to his next example, Collatinus.96 This passage in Book 2 invites the reader to both look backwards at Augustine’s full analysis of the rape of Lucretia in Book 1 and forwards to his complete retelling of the Sabine abduction in Book 3. Augustine’s versions of the abduction of the Sabines and the rape of Lucretia are forms of consolation addressed to Augustine’s congregants who had suffered sexual violence in the 410 sack of Rome.97 In the cases of both Lucretia 93 Aug. ciu. 3.13: “Quae postremo sub tot diis tutoribus vita civitatis?” 94 Aug. ciu. 1.19. 95 See, e.g. Trout, “Re-Textualizing Lucretia,” 53–70; Burrus, Saving Shame, 125–9; and Webb, “On Lucretia,” 37–58. 96 Aug. ciu. 2.17: “Ex hoc iure ac bono credo raptas Sabinas […] Ex hoc iure ac bono post expulsum cum liberis suis regem Tarquinium, cuius filius Lucretiam stupro violenter oppresserat, Iunius Brutus consul Lucium Tarquinium Collatinum, maritum eiusdem Lucretiae, collegam suum, bonum atque innocentem virum, propter nomen et propinquitatem Tarquiniorum coegit magistratu se abdicare nec vivere in civitate permisit.” 97 Dennis Trout has advanced this argument about the role of the rape of Lucretia in City of God. Trout, “Re-Textualizing Lucretia,” 62. Melanie Webb further explores Augustine’s Lucretia as a new form of consolatio. Webb, “On Lucretia,” 55–8.

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and the Sabine women, Augustine grapples with issues of consent and avers that no blame attaches to someone who has been assaulted if their will did not consent to the assault.98 In both, he departs from Livy’s narrative, which centered on the perspectives of men, to tell the story from the perspective of the victims, in particular, women.99 However, though Augustine highlights both Lucretia and the Sabine women as victims of the sins of another, his final rulings on the women’s culpability and sinfulness are not identical. Augustine finds Lucretia guilty of self-murder and possibly adultery,100 while in the case of the Sabine women, he completely rescues them from culpability. Instead, Augustine makes a legal case against Romulus’s and the Romans’s behavior, demonstrating that the supposed marriages that are the foundation of Roman history would have no validity under contemporary civil and criminal law. At the same time, he exempts the Sabine women from culpability under those same laws, which see a woman who consents to marry her abductor as equally liable.101 Augustine’s women explicitly do not consent to marriage. They have no freedom with which to enter into such an agreement, but this lack of freedom removes their ability to contest the Romans’s decision to refer to them as wives. Augustine’s moral redemption of the Sabine women (as opposed to his conviction of Lucretia for her suicide) is due to their differing approach to suffering. As Susanna Elm has argued, in the aftermath of the Sack of Rome, Augustine framed the suffering experienced by the inhabitants of the Urbs aeterna as divine lashings provided by God to educate and mold a sinful 98 Aug. ciu. 1.16–20. 99 Melanie Webb has noted that “Augustine’s reading of Lucretia uniquely features Lucretia,” compared to Livy’s version, as Augustine highlights her thought process, decisions, agency, and her nobility and shame, rather than her male relatives and their responses. Webb, “On Lucretia,” 41. 100 Aug. ciu. 1.19. See Trout, “Re-Textualizing Lucretia,” 55 and Burrus, Saving Shame, 125–9. 101 This view continued to be reflected in subsequent Roman law around raptus. A 533 law of Justinian allowed a victim of raptus to marry anyone except her abductor, so that “no opportunity for sinning will be left to any woman, whether willing or unwilling, because a woman is persuaded to want this very thing [marriage] by the ambushes of a very wicked man who meditates plunder. For indeed unless he has solicited her, unless he has surrounded her with odious stratagems, he does not make her want to surrender herself to so great a disgrace.” CTh IX.13.1.2 and IX.13.1.3b, translation by Evans-Grubbs. Evans-Grubbs argues that “In Justinian’s eyes, the most deplorable aspect of raptus is not the possibility of violence, even rape, but that the woman may be won over by the flattery and promises of her abductor” (Evans-Grubbs, “Abduction Marriage,” 78). Augustine’s approach to the story of the Sabine women reflects a similar attitude and is in opposition to Livy’s presentation of the story, where the women are partially won over by the “blandishments” of their kidnappers (Livy, Ab Urbe Cond. 1.1.9.16: “Accedebant blanditiae virorum …”).

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humanity.102 Though prior Christian authors had framed Lucretia as a pagan role model for Christian martyrdom, in the City of God Augustine’s Lucretia becomes a negative exemplum demonstrating how one should not endure these lashings. Lucretia wrongly seeks to escape them, and hence her possible correction, through suicide.103 The Sabine women, on the other hand, dutifully surrender to the torture the Romans inflict upon them. For Augustine, the Sabine women provide a positive exemplum for how his Christian audience should respond to enslavement, assault, and corrective lashings. It is not by chance that Augustine writes that the Sabine women were “dutifully crucified” (pie cruciabantur)—to him, they are in a sense proto-Christians. Although the Romans’s abduction of the women has enslaved subsequent generations to sin, the Sabine women’s actions provide a template for their descendants’s ultimate redemption in the city of God.104 IX.

Conclusion

For Augustine, the 410 sack of Rome spurred an ongoing engagement with status and the nature of consent, one that would occupy his attention for the remainder of his life. In the early books of the City of God, Augustine aligned his reworking of Roman history with contemporary experiences of capture and enslavement, appealing to the sympathies of his audience and furthering his argument that everyone is enslaved until they enter the city of God. The abduction of the Sabine women provided uniquely fertile ground for this project. Augustine was able to exploit the parallels between Livy’s narrative and the experiences of Augustine’s congregation during the 410 sack of Rome, the contradictions between the ratification of the Sabine women’s marriages and late antique law, and the didactive potential of their response to suffering when reinterpreted through a Christian lens. In Augustine’s view, his enslavement of the Sabine women ultimately redeemed them, freeing them from 102 Elm, “Signs under the Skin,” 51–75. 103 As noted in Trout, “Re-Textualizing Lucretia,” 61–2 and Burrus, Saving Shame, 128, citing Tertulian, Ad martyras 4, De exhortationis castitatis 13, De monogamia 17; Jerome, Adversus Iovinianum 1.46; and Paulinus of Nola, Poem 10.192 to Ausonius. 104 The idea of the captive women reforming and ultimately saving their captors has interesting parallels in fifth-century Georgian and Armenian narratives of foreign captive women acting as missionaries and helping to convert their captors to Christianity. According to Andrea Sterk, these accounts of female captive evangelists underscored “the power of the powerless, God’s choice of the weak and despised of the world as ambassadors” (referencing 1 Corinthians 1:28). Andrea Sterk, “Mission from Below: Captive Women and Conversion on the East Roman Frontiers,” Church History 79, no. 1 (2010): 1–39, at 32.

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both moral and legal jeopardy. At the same time, Romulus’s enslavement of the women paralleled Adam’s enslavement to sin, tying together the very roots of biblical and Roman history. Works Cited I. Primary Sources

Augustine of Hippo. Augustine: Political Writings, edited by E.  Margaret  Atkins and Robert J. Dodaro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. —. City of God, Volume I: Books 1–3, translated by George E. McCracken. Loeb Classical Library 411. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957. Jerome of Stridon. Aduersus Iouinianum. In Diatribe in Senecae philosophi fragmenta, vol. 1, edited by Ernst Bickel. Leipzig: Teubner, 1915. Livy. History of Rome, Volume I: Books 1–2, translated by B.  O.  Foster. Loeb Classical Library 114. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919. Q. Aurelius Symmachus. Relationes. Translated as Prefect and Emperor: The Relationes of Symmachus, A.D. 384, by R. H. Barrow. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.

II.

Secondary Sources

Burrus, Virginia. Saving Shame: Martyrs, Saints, and Other Abject Subjects. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. Cameron, Alan. The Last Pagans of Rome. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Claussen, Martin A. “‘Peregrinatio’ and ‘Peregrini’ in Augustine’s ‘City of God.’” Traditio 46 (1991): 33–75. Elm, Susanna. “‘Pierced by Bronze Needles’: Anti-Montanist Charges of Ritual Stigmatization in Their Fourth-Century Context.” JECS 4, no. 4 (1996): 409–39. —. “Signs under the Skin: Flogging Eternal Rome.” In Unter die Haut: Tätowierungen als Logo- und Piktogramme, edited by Iris Därmann and Thomas Macho, 51–75. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2017b. —. “Sold to Sin through origo: Augustine of Hippo on Slavery and Freedom.” Studia Patristica 98 (2017a): 1–21. Evans-Grubbs, Judith. “Abduction Marriage in Antiquity: A Law of Constantine (CTh IX 24.1) and Its Social Context.” Journal of Roman Studies 79 (1989): 59–83. Harper, Kyle. “Marriage and the Family in Late Antiquity.” In Johnson, Late Antiquity, 667–714. Hefele, Karl Joseph von. Histoire des conciles d’après les documents originaux, vol. 1, translated by H. Leclercq. Hildesheim: G. Olmos, 1973.

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Holden, Antonia. “The Abduction of the Sabine Women in Context: The Iconography on Late Antique Contorniate Medallions.” American Journal of Archaeology 112, no. 1 (January 2008): 121–42. Johnson, Scott Fitzgerald, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Lenski, Noel. “Captivity among the Barbarians and Its Impact on the Fate of the Roman Empire.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Attila, edited by Michael Maas, 230–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. —. “Captivity and Romano-Barbarian Interchange.” In Romans, Barbarians, and the Transformation of the Roman World: Cultural Interaction and the Creation of Identity in Late Antiquity, edited by Ralph W. Mathisen and Danuta Shanzer, 185–98. London: Routledge, 2016. —. “Captivity, Slavery, and Cultural Exchange between Rome and the Germans from the First to Seventh Century CE.” In Invisible Citizens: Captives and Their Consequences, edited by Catherine M. Cameron, 80–109. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2008. Mathisen, Ralph W. “Concepts of Citizenship.” In Johnson, Late Antiquity, 774–63. Miles, Gary. Livy: Reconstructing Early Rome. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018. O’Daly, Gerard. Augustine’s City of God: A Reader’s Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Sessa, Kristina. “Ursa’s Return: Captivity, Remarriage, and the Domestic Authority of Roman Bishops in Fifth-Century Italy.” JECS 19, no. 3 (2011): 401–32. Sterk, Andrea. “Mission from Below: Captive Women and Conversion on the East Roman Frontiers.” Church History 79, no. 1 (2010): 1–39. Trout, Dennis. “Re-Textualizing Lucretia: Cultural Subversion in the City of God.” JECS 2, no. 1 (1994): 53–70. Webb, Melanie. “‘On Lucretia who slew herself’: Rape and Consolation in Augustine’s De ciuitate dei.” AugStud 44, no. 1 (2013): 37–58.

The Council of Hippo in 427: The Donatists are Still Keeping Augustine Busy in the 420s Erika T. Hermanowicz I.

Introduction

We know little about how (and even if) the Donatist and Catholic churches successfully merged after the conference of 411. Historical interpretations vary. Some argue that the imperial intervention succeeded, leading to the churches’s unification and a transfer of Donatist property to the Catholic church, gutting the former and greatly enriching the latter.1 Others maintain that the 411 conference, whatever financial damage it did, did not break the Donatist church, and while its members may have been forced underground, the persecution narrative they adopted for themselves intensified and, at least from what we see in the texts, post-411 conditions further emphasized their self-styled role in God’s plan for end times.2 Our relative ignorance about unification is due to a decrease in information Augustine had hitherto provided in his letters and pamphlets about the Donatists. What was once insistent textual engagement on his part began to wane after 412.3 1 Emin Tengström, Donatisten und Katholiken: Soziale, wirtschaftliche und politische Aspekte einer nordafrikanischen Kirchenspaltung (Gothenburg: Elanders Boktryckeri Aktiebolag, 1964), 165–6, Carles Buenacasa Pérez, “La creación del patrimonio eclesiástico de las iglesias norteafricanas en época romana (siglos II–V): Renovación de la visión tradicional,” in Sacralidad y arqueología: homenaje al Prof. Thilo Ulbert, ed. J. M. Blázquez Martínez and Antonio González Blanco (Murcia: Universidad de Murcia, 2004), 493–509, Carles Buenacasa Pérez, “The Ecclesiastical Patrimony of the Donatist Church,” in The Uniquely African Controversy: Studies on Donatist Christianity, ed. Anthony Dupont, Matthew Alan Gaumer, and Mathijs Lamberigts (Leuven: Peeters, 2015), 101–25, and Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). 2 Maureen Tilley, The Bible in Christian North Africa (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), esp. 143–9, and Jesse A. Hoover, The Donatist Church in an Apocalyptic Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 3 For more general studies about how Donatism fared in the 5th–7th centuries, Jonathan  P.  Conant, “Donatism in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries,” in The Donatist Schism: Controversy and Contexts, ed. Richard Miles (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016), 345–61, Stanisław Adamiak, “When Did Donatist Christianity End?” in The Uniquely African Controversy: Studies on Donatist Christianity, ed. Anthony Dupont, Matthew Alan Gaumer, and Mathijs Lamberigts (Leuven: Peeters, 2015), 211–36, Bruno Pottier, “Les donatistes,

© Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2021 | doi:10.30965/9783657704767_009

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The reasons for Augustine backing away from the Donatists are also unclear. It could be that Augustine dropped them for different foes. The press of other matters in the 420s, especially his engagement with Pelagius and Julian of Eclanum, may have prompted loss of interest in the theological or logistical complications unification presented.4 But the shift of attention has also been taken to mean that a merger was successfully imposed upon pacified Donatist communities. Augustine’s biographer, Possidius, treats the “crisis” as over once the Catholics are declared victors in the 411 debates.5 In so many words, Possidius intimated there was nothing left to write about, but both explanations—loss of interest and/or loss of source for the tension—are untrue. Augustine remained engaged with efforts toward unification. Gone were the days of lengthy theological tracts, but the problems attendant with unification still garnered his attention. Possidius may have streamlined his narrative for dramatic effect, but he knew better, for along with Augustine, he attended all the councils we know of that sought remedies for the significant disturbances an attempted merger brought to both churches. The Donatists never fully reconciled with the Catholics after the 411 conference, and judging from the African council minutes of 418, the process of consolidating churches and diocese property, initially greeted with optimism by Augustine and his associates, turned out to be a slow, messy affair of only qualified success. Throughout the 410s, some Donatist bishops held on to their churches because they were never approached by their Catholic counterparts to enter negotiations for unification. Augustine acknowledged that his own episcopal counterpart, Macrobius, re-opened churches in Hippo’s diocese (ep. 139.2). Possidius personally witnessed the encounter between Augustine and a silent Emeritus in the latter’s own basilica in 418,6 and somewhere between 419 and 422, the Donatist bishop of Timgad, Gaudentius, threatened to burn his basilica with everyone in it if Dulcitius, tribunus et notarius, the imperial administrator attempting to enforce unification in Timgad, did l’arianisme et le royaume vandale,” in Littérature, politique et religion en Afrique vandale, ed. Étienne Wolff, Collection des études augustiniennes: Série antiquité 200, (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 2015), 127–36, and R. A. Markus, “Donatism: The Last Phase,” in Studies in Church History 1 (1964): 118–26. 4 Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967; reprint 2000), 339. 5 A. A. R. Bastiaensen, ed. Vita Augustini in Vita di Cipriano, Vita di Ambrogio, Vita di Agostino (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori editori, 1975). V. Aug. chapter 13 covers the 411 conference where Augustine wins the palm (palmam) of victory, with a final strangled gurgle of protest coming from the bishop Emeritus in chapter 14. After that, we hear no more about the Donatists from Possidius. 6 Emer.

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not back down.7 Into the 420s, the Donatists remained organized enough to push against the African Catholics and the imperial court, even requesting the emperor to rescind the decision of the 411 conference after Marcellinus’s execution.8 There is more evidence out there to underscore the difficulties unification brought to Africa. Augustine did not foresee the challenges the property issue would pose to clergy. In his desire to assure the Donatists that Catholics would honor the offices and wealth belonging to Donatist clerics who agreed to unification, Augustine and his colleagues created conditions for clerics on both sides to liquidate, hide, and transfer church property.9 These activities occurred with some frequency if the council minutes of 418, 419, and 427 are adequate gauges. This paper examines the extant minutes of the Council of Hippo, a meeting requested by Augustine and convened by order of Aurelius, the primate of Africa, in September of 427. I argue that the ten canons approved at this meeting, nine of them already having been adopted by the bishops at previous councils, reveal that matters having to do with unification were still very much on Augustine’s mind. To be clear: the canons of 427 do not mention Donatists specifically. They are not theological in nature, and they do not mention baptism or the location of the church in the world. They are concerned with clerical property and actors embroiled in clerical hearings. I argue that the canons pertain to Donatist-Catholic relations in particular and were invoked to support continuing efforts by the Catholics to manage the aftershocks of forced unification in 411, sixteen years earlier. The connection between Donatism and the council of 427 is not obvious and requires analysis of when, how, and the circumstances under which these canons were first adopted. It will also be necessary to discuss manuscript history, as my philological argument rests on the assumption that the textual material here pre-dates the canon collections translated by Dionysius Exiguus in the early 6th century. This chapter engages in some fine-grained sifting through the history of manuscript transmission, but the reason behind it is to assist in establishing two big points. The first: well into the 420s, the Donatist church and the fallout from the 411 conference were still very much on Augustine’s mind, to the degree 7 c. Gaud. See also ep. 204.3. For Dulcitius, see Brent Shaw, “Augustine and Men of Imperial Power,” Journal of Late Antiquity 8 (2015): 32–61. 8 Codex Theodosianus, 16.5.55 (30 August 414). 9 Erika Hermanowicz, “African Ecclesiastical Wealth,” in Colorful Lives and Living in Roman North Africa: Essays in Memory of Maureen A. Tilley, ed. Zachary Smith and Elizabeth A. Clark (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming).

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that he felt a council was warranted to address pressing issues. This conflict was by no means over. The second: in the 5th century, into the last years of his life, Augustine along with his colleagues sought conciliar solutions to ecclesiastical problems by borrowing from transmarine churches. The African bishops’s use of extra-African canon collections as they generated their own body of ecclesiastical law is a manifestation of a number of interesting problems Augustine faced in his final decade, not least among these the continuing effort by the bishops to situate the African Catholic church in its appropriate and deserved place among ecclesiastical counterparts to the north and east of Africa. II.

Translation of the Extant Minutes of the 427 Council of Hippo

The complete minutes of the council of 427 survive in only one manuscript, Verona LX (58), but are mislabeled in that MS as a conference held at Carthage in June of 421. The city must be Hippo, not Carthage, because Aurelius himself mentions the gathering as being held in Augustine’s diocese in his prefatory remarks. The correct date was determined by the presence of two of these canons in another MS (the collectio Fossatensis [M]) that provides both the consular year and the council’s location at the basilica Leontiana.10 The text from Verona LX (58), first published by the Ballerini brothers in 1757, is re-printed in PL 56.876–79. Munier also includes it in his edition of the Concilia Africae (CCL 149: 250–53). The minutes for the 427 council are not lengthy, and I include a translation here. The Latin is supplied in the appendix. In the year Piaerius [Hierius] and Ardabur were consuls, eight days before the kalends of October, in the basilica Leontiana. When the primate Aurelius, together with his fellow bishops, had taken their seats while the deacons remained standing, the bishop Aurelius said: Your Sanctity well recalls from what necessity it was decided that the solemnity established for councils meeting twice a year should cease. Now, with God’s aid, because in this particular province it was decided that our holy 10 A.  Boudinhon, “Note sur le concile d’Hippone de 427,” Revue d’histoire et de littérature religieuses 10 (1905): 267–274, and Charles Munier, Concilia Africae A. 345–525, CCL 149 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1974), 248. See also C.  H.  Turner, “Chapters in the History of Latin MSS of Canons VII. The Collection Named after the MS of St Maur (F), Paris lat. 1451,” JThS 32 (1930): 1–11, and Friedrich Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen und der Literatur des canonischen Rechts (Graz: Leuschner & Lubensky, 1870; reprinted Akademische Drucku.  Verlagsanstalt, 1956), 619. I follow Munier’s text (which is also that of the Ballerini brothers [PL 56: 876–79]). Boudinhon’s “Note” excised a lot of the text assuming it interpolation from previous councils. Munier disagrees at 248.

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brother and co-bishop Augustine willingly undertake a council on behalf of his own reverence, and because the Lord had ordered us to come together as one, let us accomplish something for the benefit of the church, so what has been begun or what must be heard may be heard, so these issues not take a turn for the worse, albeit up until now they have continued for some time to find resolution. It is accordingly necessary these church issues be dealt with, issues which have to do with discipline. The entire council said: “That this may be done, we willingly listen.” Aurelius the primate said: “Let the previous council decisions agreed upon and defined in communal deliberation be read aloud in order for insertion in the pages of the present council.” 1. It is agreed by the entire council that he who has been excommunicated, a bishop or cleric of whatever rank, if during the time of his own excommunication he presumes to act as if not in the state of excommunication, let him be judged to have passed sentence of damnation against himself. 2. It is agreed that if the accused or accuser fears any violence from an unruly crowd in the diocese where he is being called to account, let him choose for himself another diocese close by where it is not difficult to call forth witnesses, and let the case be concluded there. 3. It is agreed that whatever cleric or deacon has not obeyed his own bishop who wants to promote him to higher office in his own diocese, let him not serve there in that position which he did not want to resign. 4. It is agreed that bishops and presbyters provide justifiable reasons if they have given to some other diocese the property located in the dioceses where they were ordained; bishops either [need to explain themselves] at their councils, or clerics to their own bishops. And if they had no justifiable reasons, let it be held against them as if they were caught in the act of thievery. 5a. It is agreed that bishops, priests, deacons and whatever clergy who are ordained [at a time when they have] no property, and during their own episcopacy or clerical career acquire farm land or whatever kind of estates in their own name [or through a third party],11 let them be considered guilty of the crime of stealing from God’s patrimony. 5b. If, once admonished, they return these properties to the same church, good. If, however, they want to leave it to their own relatives or to someone else unrelated, they are not permitted to do so.

11 “vel per aliud excusandum” is written in the margin in the Verona LX (58) MS. In the three MSS families we have for this canon (first adopted in 419, to be discussed presently), the Isidoran and that of Exiguus do not contain this phrase, but the Italian MSS do.

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5c. If something personally falls to the lot of these clerics because of the succession of parents or blood relation, let them then do with it what is congruent with their [the benefactors’s] intention. But if they depart from its past intended use, let them, unworthy of the honor of the church, be judged as false. 6a. It is agreed that all slaves or one’s own freedmen not be admitted as accusers nor any of those who according to public laws are barred from bringing accusation in criminal proceedings. 6b. Nor can those who, after they have been excommunicated, whether a cleric or a layman—if still in that state of excommunication—be in a position to make an accusation. 6c. Nor can anyone held in contempt with the stain of infamia, that is actors, persons subject to base acts, also heretics, pagans, and Jews; but for all those to whom the right of bringing an accusation is denied, these must not be forbidden the freedom of making accusation in their own private suits. 7a. It is agreed that however many crimes were attributed to clerics by their accusers, if it is not possible to prove one of them based on which the case was first brought, the remaining accusations may not now be heard. 7b. They who are forbidden to be admitted to make an accusation are also not allowed to appear as witnesses, nor can those whom the accuser himself has produced from his own household. 7c. None under fourteen years of age shall be admitted as witness. 8a. It is agreed that if on any occasion a bishop said that someone had confessed to him alone about a personal crime, and now that man denies it, let not this bishop think that any slight is laid upon him if he is not believed on his word alone, even if through scruple of his own conscience he says he is unwilling to communicate with the man who denies his confession. 8b. As long as his own bishop will not communicate with one excommunicated, the other bishops should have no communication with that bishop, in order that the bishop may be more careful not to accuse anyone of what he cannot prove by other means. 9a. It is agreed that presbyters may under no circumstances sell property of the church where they are established without their own bishops knowing about it. 9b. It is not permissible for any bishop to sell landed estates of the church without informing the council of bishops or his own primates. 10. It is agreed that fields and whatever landed estates located in the diocese have been bequeathed to the church, the bishop cannot seize them to add them to his own episcopal church. Each bishop has confirmed these resolutions with his own signature: Aurelius, Simplicius, Augustine, and the rest.

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Themes

I am aware my readers have just seen the canons for themselves, but to prepare them for arguments referring to post-unification troubles, I want to call attention to some particulars. The primate Aurelius’s reference to semi-annual meetings comes from canons adopted at other church councils, namely Nicaea and Antioch, and the admonition is likewise found in the Apostolic canons.12 African Catholics met in their own regional councils and also agreed in 393 to convene general councils once a year at Carthage, but the latter were discontinued in 407 because the bishops found the trips arduous and expensive.13 General councils after that time were not automatically scheduled, which means 427 was called for a specific reason.14 The problems, Aurelius says, had to do with discipline (disciplina), and their roots were historic rather than theological or procedural. Aurelius regards the issues as long-standing which, despite improvement over the long-term, still required attention lest they make a turn for the worse. The issues were three: property dealings, clerics in the midst of disciplinary hearings, and refusal of clerics to accept promotion offered by their bishops. They are reviewed here in that order. Clerics were abusing their access to church property and were therefore reminded of the following: Priests must not sell church property just as bishops must not sell estates without permission from superiors. Priests and bishops were also told to stop giving (dederint) property to dioceses (loca) outside their own where they had been ordained unless they had justifiable reasons. Transfers of this kind were otherwise considered theft ( furto). During their time of service, clerics of all grades, with those who come from poor backgrounds singled out, were accruing land and estates for their own patrimonies, but they were reminded whatever they obtained in the course of their careers belonged to the church. Clerics could not give or leave what they had garnered during their clerical careers to family members or any other individual, and while it was understood that clerics could inherit 12 For Antioch, C. H. Turner, Ecclesiae Occidentalis Monumenta Iuris Antiquissima (henceforth EOMIA) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1899–1930), 2.290–3 as canon 20, and for the Apostolic canons, 1.32v as canon 33. 13 Concilia Africae, 215 ll. 1121–6 for mention by Aurelius that the bishops had decided at Hippo in 393 to meet every year in a plenary council. Concilia Africae, 215 ll. 1128–33 where in 407 Aurelius announced that these annual meetings were too physically taxing to continue. 14 General councils did not have to meet at Carthage. Concilia Africae, 215 ll. 1121–6. Othmar Perler thinks the 427 meeting was held at Hippo on account of Augustine’s delicate health. Les Voyages de saint Augustin (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1969), 385.

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and keep property from parents or other blood relations, clerics had to honor the conditions under which they were named beneficiaries. If the beneficiary ignored the benefactor’s wishes, he was considered unworthy of his clerical office. Finally, bishops were to stop transferring to their own basilicas estates that had been donated to smaller churches located within their dioceses. The second theme is about investigatory proceedings involving clerics. These “cases” were not part of the Roman judicial system, but constituted internal disciplinary hearings conducted by church personnel. They did, however, mimic Roman judicial procedure in that they stipulated who could not bring actions and could not serve as witnesses. Slaves, any freed persons formerly belonging to the would-be accuser, the excommunicated, those who are tinged with infamia, like actors and those who were subjected to the base actions (turpitudo) because of their livelihoods, as well as heretics, pagans, and Jews: None of these could bring accusation against clergy or serve as a witness. In addition, a witness could not be a member of the plaintiff’s household and had to be more than fourteen years of age. All charges against clerics were dismissed if the first taken up during a hearing could not be demonstrably proven. If either accuser or accused feared violence from those in the diocese where the case originated, the hearing could be moved to a diocese nearby and conducted there until its conclusion. These procedures took time, and the parties sometimes had to wait in a state of excommunication until matters were settled. If any excommunicated clergy member conducted himself as if he were not under this order, he would never be re-instated. In attempt to separate rumor from fact before a case was decided, a bishop’s word could not be taken alone as proof of wrongdoing by a cleric who at one time admitted his transgression (crimen) to that bishop but now denied it. If a bishop excommunicated someone, other bishops were not allowed to contact their episcopal colleague while the matter remained open in order to avoid being influenced by him when they had yet seen no other proof justifying his action. The third issue, seen in only one canon, is about clerics and deacons refusing promotion. If they did refuse, they would be deposed from the office they currently held. On what grounds would they not accept such an offer? At more advanced levels, marital liberties for clerics became increasingly restricted,15 but that explanation is unlikely because rules regarding the marriages of 15 Concilia Africae, 12–3 ll. 25–40 from the year 390 on the chastity of clerics (bishops, priests, and deacons). This is re-adopted in the September 401 council, Concilia Africae, 201 ll. 650–7. See also Concilia Africae, 38 ll. 114–7 on rules regarding marriage and chastity for readers (from 393).

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various grades of clerics had been established in the 390s, and this canon regarding clergy refusing promotion was not adopted by the African church until 419 (and repeated here in 427). The demand for Catholic clerics rose after the 411 conference, as Catholics wanted to secure previous Donatist strongholds and needed more staff to accomplish that goal.16 Perhaps clerics resisted their bishops in hopes of being offered something better, but again, the timing makes that solution unlikely. From Cyprian on we have continuous pleas for qualified clergy to meet demands in Africa. The opportunity for appointment had always been high in proportion to the numbers available.17 We know about one African cleric who refused promotion to the episcopate. He never showed up for his ordination after having agreed to undertake the office. Augustine’s letters describing the event date to the early 420s (ep. 209 and 20*) but the incident probably occurred a few years earlier. Augustine tells his correspondents that he and the primate of Numidia, Silvanus, the latter having traveled a distance to oversee the ordination, were put in a terrible bind when stood up, and Augustine said he had to find another candidate quickly (ep. 209.3 and 20*.3). He chose Antoninus, a decision he came to regret. Fear must have been one reason this first cleric backed out. He was to administer a territory solidly Donatist. It was not just about fear for one’s physical safety, but also the complicated process of unification: convincing a reluctant Donatist clergy to come to the Catholic side, if possible, negotiating the transfer of Donatist church property, and assuring estate owners concerned about potential disturbances among their tenant farmers and the meddling into their own affairs by some small-time bishop. One can imagine that those asked to serve as priests and other kinds of clerics in hostile territories would hesitate in taking up such assignments. This particular event culminating in the ordination of Anthony of Fussala may be an example of a phenomenon that prompted bishops to adopt this canon, but the connection is only suggestive, and while Aurelius affirms that this canon, like the others, is embedded in historical circumstances, other churches outside Africa adopted a similar ruling long before 419.18 To link this and the other canons of 427 to unification, stronger evidence is required. It 16 Leslie Dossey, Peasant and Empire in Christian North Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 133, but this should not overshadow Dossey’s main point, 125–44, that the election of bishops was a bottom-up effort by the people rather than a top-down “arms race” by bishops themselves to increase their numbers. 17 Concilia Africae, 194–5 ll. 419–30 on complaints by Aurelius in September of 401 about the dearth of clergy. 18 The Antiochene and Apostolic canons have similar canons about clerics refusing promotion. See table 1.

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does exist, and although circumstantial, its accumulation makes a case for the abiding difficulties experienced by the two churches after 411. This is where discussion of canon formation and adoption enters. The first order of business is to discuss where these 427 canons came from: when and the circumstances under which they were first adopted by the African church. At issue are their dates of promulgation, the order in which they appear in the 427 council, and their textual pedigree, including extra-African church canons that inspired their creation. IV.

The Origin and Order of the 427 Canons: 25 May 419

The surviving canons adopted by the African Catholics beginning from the mid-4th century are most readily assessable in C.  Munier’s 1974 collection (CCL 149). In his remarks regarding the making of canons, including how council decisions were recorded and then revisited in succeeding years, Munier observes that it was common for the African Catholics to re-adopt canons from previous councils.19 Repetition was not unusual and Aurelius, bishop of Carthage and primate of Africa, often emphasized that council decisions were based on established precedent, but he also believed that new circumstances required new rules. Re-adoption and innovation both, therefore, can offer clues. As for the ten canons from 427, only one—the fourth, prohibiting bishops and priests from giving property owned by a diocese in which they had been ordained to another—is new. That means this activity was considered a problem requiring address in 427. We will return to this new canon after discussion of the other nine, all of which emerged from two council meetings held within a few days of each other, one on the 25th and the other on the 30th of May in the year 419. In this section, I focus on the 25 May meeting. The 25 May council meeting at Carthage was a paramount event in the history of the African church. There were 217 bishops in attendance along with legates representing the bishop of Rome. The council’s origins come from a disgraced priest from Sicca, Apiarius, who succeeded in persuading the Roman bishop to re-instate him after he had been deposed by his bishop. The African bishops considered this papal interference inappropriate. The Roman legates present at this 25 May meeting were in Carthage to explain Rome’s position, claiming that the Roman bishop’s privilege of ruling on appeals in regional disputes was guaranteed by the canons adopted at the council of Nicaea. To 19

Charles Munier, “Vers une édition nouvelle des conciles africaines (345–525),” RÉAug 18 (1972): 249–59, at 250.

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which explanation Alypius and Augustine replied that no version of Nicaea they knew said anything of the kind (the legates were actually referring to canons adopted at Serdica that had been incorporated into Rome’s copies of the Nicaean canons).20 Apiarius, this otherwise unknown priest whose apparently salacious transgressions we do not know about in satisfactory detail, became the unwitting source of rarified drama: jurisdictional tension between Rome and Carthage, bold claims by the bishop of Rome based on canonical authority, claims that were squarely contradicted by the African bishops, consultation of a copy of the Nicene canons brought back to Carthage by Caecilian, an attendee of that council in 325, as well as a search through any other pertinent documents stored in the church archives at Carthage. The African bishops decided to write to Alexandria, Antioch, and Constantinople to request their copies of the Nicene canons as a check against Rome’s copy and their own.21 We know the churches of Alexandria and Constantinople sent the requested documents, as well as other material.22 As they waited for responses, the African bishops held the line on their autonomy. They approved canons at this meeting for themselves but also with an eye to an audience across the sea to demonstrate their administrative competence and claim their place among the major 20 For the story, Conrad Leyser, “Law, Memory, and Priestly Office in Rome, c. 500,” Early Medieval Europe 27 (2019): 61–84, at 74–6, Hamilton Hess, The Early Development of Canon Law and the Council of Serdica (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 55–7, Jane Merdinger, Rome and the African Church in the Time of Augustine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 111–35, and C. H. Turner, “The Genuineness of the Sardican Canons,” JThS 3, no. 11 (1902): 370–97, at 370–2. 21 Concilia Africae, 91 ll. 78–85. 22 C. H. Turner, “The Verona Manuscripts of Canons LX (58) and LIX (57): The Theodoran MS and Its Connection with St. Cyril,” The Guardian 11 (December, 1895): 1921–2, Eduard Schwartz, “Über die Sammlung des Cod. Veronensis LX,” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche 35 (1936): 1–23, and W. Tefler, “The Codex Verona LX (58),” Harvard Theological Review 36.3 (1943): 169–246, argue that portions of the dossiers the Eastern churches sent to Africa in response to its bishops’s request were preserved in the Verona LX (58) codex. In other words, they argue, this Verona MS was originally an African collection of material, which explains, in part, why the minutes of the 427 Hippo council are included in its contents. More recent work has tried to rebuff those claims, such as that of Lester L. Field, Jr., On the Communion of Damasus and Meletius: Fourth-Century Synodal Formulae in the Codex Veronensis LX (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2004), 55–68. For work on other African collections of material that reached the northern side of the Mediterranean, Richard Rouse and Charles McNelis, “North African Literary Activity: a Cyprian Fragment, the Stichometric Lists and a Donatist Compendium,” Revue d’histoire et textes 30 (2001): 189–238.

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ecclesiastical centers in the empire.23 These are known as the canones in causa Apiarii. There are, essentially, three separate manuscript traditions for these Apiarian canons, and in what I present here, I closely follow C. Munier’s choice of MSS:24 the first one, the oldest and best, which may ultimately be traced back to Africa, is sometimes referred to as the Isidoran, or more recently, the corpus canonum Africanum. The second is referred to by Munier as the Italian collection, but is also sometimes called Prisca.25 Both of these traditions predate the third and most famous, the early 6th century version of Dionysius Exiguus.26 Munier includes all three in his Concilia Africae.27 These separate MSS lines are almost identical in language but the canons in each are numbered slightly differently: 34 canons in the Isidoran / African group, 40 in the Italian, and Exiguus numbers them at 33. Most of the modern studies on the African councils, including the seminal article on the 419 canons by F. L. Cross, use Exiguus’s numbering.28 That poses a slight challenge for my readers here, as for reasons we shall soon see, I prefer the MSS traditions pre-dating Exiguus, and I shall use the text and canon numbering from what is considered closest to African origin (the Isidoran). F. L. Cross, repeating observations first made in the Ballerini essay of 1757,29 noted that canons 2–28 (and recall I am using a different numbering than Cross, who employs Exiguus’s numbering) had been re-adopted from earlier 23

Charles Munier, “La tradition littéraire des dossiers africains,” Revue de droit canonique 29 (1979): 41–52. 24 See also F. L. Cross, “History and Fiction in the African Canons,” JThS 12 (1961): 227–47, at 240n3, for what he considers the paramount MSS for the Apiarian canons. 25 MSS J and I are the two main Italian manuscripts. For MS J, see C. H. Turner, “Chapters in the History of Latin MSS of Canons V. The Version called Prisca: (a) the Justel MS (J) now Bodl. E Mus. 100–102, and the editio princeps (Paris, 1661),” JThS 30, no. 120 (1929): 337–46. For MS I, C. H. Turner, “Chapters in the History of Latin MSS of Canons VI. The Version called Prisca: (b) the Cheti MS (=I) now Vatic. Regin. 1997,” JThS 31, no. 121 (1929): 9–20. For MS I, see also Lotte Kéry, Canonical Collections of the Early Middle Ages (ca. 400–1140) (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1999), 25–6. 26 Leyser, “Law,” 74, Kéry, Canonical Collections, 1, Jean Gaudemet, Les sources du Droit de l’Église en Occident du IIe au VIIe siècle (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1985), 131–3, and Munier’s discussion in Concilia Africae, 98–9. 27 For the texts of the different MSS, the Isidoran (codices Y, F, and W, with F [Freising, now Monacensis 6243] being paramount), Concilia Africae, 101–11 (see also Kéry, Canonical Collections, 2–3); the Italian collection (predominantly codices I and J), Concilia Africae, 117–29; Dionysius Exiguus’s version, Concilia Africae, 133–45. 28 Cross, “History and Fiction,” 246. 29 Pietro and Girolamo Ballerini, Balleriniorum disquisitiones de antiquis collectoribus et collectionibus canonum, PL 56: 117; Cross, “History and Fiction,” 246–7.

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African councils, some going back to the mid-300s, but that canons 29–34 were new. Those last five were proposed and accepted in 419. Of the total, that is, the 34 canons from 25  May  419, only the new ones, 29–34, were re-adopted by the council of 427. The first, second, third, fifth, ninth and tenth canon of 427 are taken from, and come in the same order as, the new canons that were adopted at the 25 May, 419 conference. (That is, canon 1 of 427 = canon 29 of 25 May 419 [on presuming communication]; canon 2 = canon 30 [transfer of hearing for fear of violence]; canon 3 = 31 [refusal of promotion]; canon 5 = 32 [clergy accruing church property for their own patrimonies]). The final two canons adopted at the council of 427, numbers 9 and 10, correspond to canons 33 (clergy selling church property) and 34 from the 25 May 419 session.30 The language of canon 10 varies somewhat from its 419 counterpart (canon number 34 [bishops are not to seize property of smaller churches]), but the two clearly match. These five canons are special for a number of reasons, not just because they were taken up again for re-adoption at the council of 427. These constitute the most extensive comments about clerical relationships with church property made by the African bishops that survive to us.31 We may assume their proposal in 419 was related to perceived necessity. More about that soon. But it should also be remembered that the canones in causa Apiarii were not for an exclusively African audience. They were sent to Rome as proof and warning that African decisions were not to be overruled by Rome’s bishop. Almost all of the canones in causa Apiarii were therefore carefully culled from past African council canons, building a case for regulatory structure that extra-African churches would respect. But what about those new canons, the ones without African precedent? They, too, as it turns out, are indebted to older canons, but their source is from a transmarine collection.

30 Point of clarification: canon 26 of the Apiarian canons is a blanket command that no one may sell property of the church (ut rem ecclesiae nemo vendat [Concilia Africae, 109 l. 263]). While not extant in Dionysius Exiguus’s Registri, we know it comes from 401, care of Maassen, Geschichte, 162. Our canon 9 from 427 = 33 from the canones in causa Apiarii is different because it is explicit in saying that presbyters may not sell the property of the church where they are established without their bishops knowing about it. But cf. Concilia Africae, 252, n. on canon 9. 31 Hermanowicz, “African Ecclesiastical Wealth.” Rules about usury, inheritance strictures, and some regulations about clerical occupations had already been established, but these canons here, appearing in a cluster, are the most we get about clerical malfeasance vis-à-vis church property.

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Not enough work has been done on cross-pollination in canon development when it comes to the African churches and the Greek East.32 How much influence did the canons from the eastern churches exercise over African Christianity? The dispatches from the 25 May conference to Constantinople and Alexandria resulted in receipt of their copies of the Nicaean canons by the African Catholics, but the bishops already knew these well. There was in addition a collection of documents, what is now called the Antiochene dossier, consisting of the canons from the councils of Ancyra, Neocaesarea, Gangra, Antioch, and Laodicea, listed and numbered consecutively. It has been suggested that this Antiochene dossier was sent to the West and then translated into Latin specifically in response to requests apropos the Apiarius affair.33 Most scholars believe that the translation was made in Rome, but the contents of the Freising MS (Monacensis 6243, this being the fundamental MS representing the Isidoran collection) that preserves this list had its origins in Africa.34 African allusion to this Antiochene dossier or indeed any canon collections received apropos the 25 May 419 council would only begin to appear in African records after 419, since it was at this time they were sent to the West. We possess partial records from only two more African councils after that date (our council of 427, and a council of 525), as well as the Breuatio canonorum of Ferrandus (523–546).35 The Breuatio does indeed list canon titles that have their origins in the councils of Nicaea, Serdica, Laodicea, Gangra, Antioch, and Neocaesarea, but the Breuatio was compiled more than one hundred years after Apiarius’s case. That is too much time for the African Catholics to acquire copies of canons from elsewhere. I am asking if one can detect African interaction with transmarine church council canons from 419 or before.

32

Turner, “Chapters in the History of Latin MSS of Canons V,” on how Nicaea and the Greek tradition in general influenced the West, Africa in particular. But Schwartz, “Über die Sammlung,” 1–23 believed that Greek canons owed their circulation in the West before 419 to Africa. Hess, Early Development, 143–5 finds that the western Serdican canons take their subjects and order of presentation from the Nicene and Antiochene canons. 33 Gaudemet, Sources, 75–7; Abigail Firey, “The Collection Dionysiana,” posted on 28 July 2008 at http://ccl.rch.uky.edu/dionysiana-article. 34 Hubert Mordek, “Karthago oder Röm? Zu den Anfängen der kirchlichen Rechtsquellen im Abendland,” in Studia in honorem eminentissimi cardinalis Alphonsi  M.  Stickler, ed. Rosalio José Castillo Lara, Studia et textus historiae iuris canonici 7 (Roma: LAS, 1992), 359–74. 35 I omit the evidence of African council canons from the 400s in the Collectio Hispania because of interpolation of other, non-African, texts in that collection. See Concilia Africae, 323–69.

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Throughout the history of African council meetings, bishops were exhorted to know the canons adopted by their predecessors, and that injunction, obviously, need not have been limited to African canons.36 Alypius made reference on 25 May 419 to Greek copies of the Nicene canons the African bishops had consulted in trying to account for Rome’s claim it had a right to adjudicate appeals, but he made mention of no others by name.37 As early as 411, however, Augustine indicates in his De peccatum meritis that he was aware that the “canons of the eastern churches” deemed canonical Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews.38 Some of the African canons adopted before 419 overlap in topic and admonition with those in other collections, especially the Antiochene canons (date about 330) and the collection known as the Apostolic canons, the latter being appended to a better known text, the Apostolic Constitutions (date about 380).39 Examples: clarification as to what is considered an acceptable offer at the altar,40 a prohibition against clerics frequenting taverns,41 rebellious presbyters setting up rival altars against their bishops,42 and the inclusion of lists of canonical biblical texts.43 Is this coincidence? 36 Concilia Africae, 13 ll. 43–5. 37 Concilia Africae, 91 ll. 75–7. 38 pecc. mer. 1.27: “Ad Hebraeos quoque Epistola, quanquam nonnullis incerta sit, tamen quoniam legi quosdam huic nostrae de baptismo parvulorum sententiae contraria sentientes, eam quibusdam opinionibus suis testem adhibere voluisse, magisque me movet auctoritas Ecclesiarum orientalium, quae hanc etiam in canonicis habent, quanta pro nobis testimonia contineat, advertendum est.” 39 Bruno Steimer, Vertex Traditionis. Die Gattung der altchristlichen Kirchenordnungen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1992), 88; Brian Daley, “Primacy and Collegiality in the Fourth Century: A Note on Apostolic Canon 34,” The Jurist: Studies in Church Law and Ministry 68 no.1 (2008): 5–21, at 6–9. Marcel Metzger, Les Constitutions Apostoliques Vol. 1, Sources chrétiennes 320 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1985), 22 for the date of the Antiochene canons, and 23 for the date of the Apostolic Constitutions and appended Apostolic canons. 40 Concilia Africae, 39–40 ll. 133–41 (from the Breviarium Hipponense) and 184 ll. 76–83 (from Reg. Eccl. Carthag. Excerpta from the year 397). 41 Concilia Africae, 40 ll. 153–4 (from the Breviarium Hipponense) and 185 ll. 99–100 (from Reg. Eccl. Carthag. Excerpta from the year 397). 42 Concilia Africae, 15–6 ll. 107–14 (from 390) re-adopted at the 25 May 419 conference and placed in the mouth of Alypius, 103 ll. 85–90. Such a ruling may be found as Antiochene canon 3 and Apostolic canon 27. 43 The Apostolic and Laodican canons list the accepted canonical texts. On Hebrews in particular, Charles Munier, “La tradition manuscrite de l’Abrégé d’Hippone et le canon des Ecritures des églises africaines” Sacris erudiri 21 (1977–1978): 43–55, Kilian McDonnell, “Canon and Koinonia/communio: The Formation of the Canon as an Ecclesiological Process,” Gregorianum 79 (1998): 29–54, at 34–5, and Antonio Spagnolo and C. H. Turner, “Latin Lists of the Canonical Books. IV. An Early Version of the Eighty-Fifth Apostolic Canon. From MS Veron. LI foll. 155 b, 156 a.” JThS 13, no. 52 (1912): 511–4.

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Similar challenges may arise in disparate churches, and that may explain overlap in topics addressed, but the African adoption of similar rules found in eastern collections is not coincidental. The five new canons adopted in the 25  May council in Carthage (29–34) address immediate problems, but they take inspiration, order of presentation, and language from transmarine canons. The table below lists in order the five new canons from the 25 May meeting. Similar Antiochene and Apostolic canons, which are, incidentally, noted by scholars for having little discernable order when it comes to presentation of their subjects,44 appear in the same order as the 25 May canons, as if the African scribes went through from the beginning the lists of either the Antiochene or Apostolic canons and transcribed what entries they wanted for their own adaption and adoption. Table 1

419 canones in causa Apiarii

Canons of Antioch

Apostolic canons from Verona LX(58)

Concilia Africae, 110–111 Canon 29: An excommunicate cleric or bishop who presumes to act as if he were not before his case is heard will never be re-instated.

EOMIA, 2. 246–311 Canon 4: Both bishops deposed by synods and presbyters and deacons deposed by their bishops who continue in their ministry duties will never be re-instated.

EOMIA, 1. 32s–32x Canon 24: If a bishop, priest or deacon justly deposed dares to continue in his ministry, he will be excluded in every way from the church.

Canon 30: A plaintiff or defendant who fears violence from a mob may have his case transferred to a neighboring diocese until the case is concluded.

44

C. H. Turner, “Notes on the ‘Apostolic Constitutions’. II. The Apostolic Canons.” JThS 16, no. 64 (1915): 523–38, at 532–3, and Daley, “Primacy,” 9.

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Table 1 (cont.)

419 canones in causa Apiarii

Canons of Antioch

Apostolic canons from Verona LX(58)

Canon 31: A cleric or deacon who refuses promotion offered by his bishop may not serve in the grade he did not wish to give up. Canon 32: Poor clerics who have accrued since ordination property in their own names must return it to the church or be held as having stolen from the Lord’s property. Clerics may inherit property from family members. Canon 33: Priests cannot sell church property without the consent of their bishops. Bishops cannot sell church estates without councils and their priests having been notified. Canon 34: A bishop may not usurp for his own basilica the property of an endowed church overseen by one of his priests.

Canon 17: A bishop who refuses to take up his ministry and refuses the church to which he is appointed will be excommunicated. Canon 24: What is the bishop’s property should be clearly distinguished from what belongs to God. Bishops may bequeath their own property to whomever they will.

Canon 32: If a bishop refuses to take up his ministry and the care of his people, he will be excommunicated until he does. The same goes for priests and deacons. Canon 36: Let the property of the bishop and that of the Lord be clearly visible. Bishops may bequeath their own property to whomever they will.

Canon 25: The bishops have control over funds of the church. Administration of funds by the bishop is done with the consent of presbyters and deacons.

Canon 37: The bishops have control over the funds of their church and are to be administered through the priests and deacons.

But which collection is the source for the Apiarian canons: the Antiochene or Apostolic? I am convinced that the Africans took from the Apostolic canons because one of our new canons from 25  May has a philological connection

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with Apostolic canon 36. I give the African version first, numbered 32 in the canones in causa Apiarii and readopted almost verbatim as canon 5 in the council of 427 (Concilia Africae, 110 ll. 306–15):45 It is agreed that bishops, priests, deacons and whatever clergy who are ordained [at a time when they have] no property, and during their own episcopacy or clerical career acquire farm land or whatever kind of estates in their own name [or obtain them under someone else’s name],46 let them be considered as if guilty of the crime of stealing from God’s patrimony (tamquam rerum dominicarum inuasionis crimine teneantur), unless once admonished, they return these properties to the church. If, however, something personally falls to the lot of these clerics because of the generosity of someone or by succession of kin, let them do something with it congruent to their [the testators’s] intention. But if they depart from its past intended use, let them, unworthy of ecclesiastical honor, be judged as if they were mere pretenders to that name.47

This is Apostolic canon 36, from the copy in the Verona codex LX (58) (EOMIA 1. 32w–32x): Sint manifestae propriae res episcopi (si quidem et proprias habet), et manifestae Dominicae, ut licentiam habeat de suis episcopus moriens ut vult et quibus vult relinquere, et ne occasione rerum aeclesiasticarum intercidere ea quae sunt episcopi, interdum uxorem et filios habente aut cognatos vel servos: iustum enim hoc apud Deum et homines, neque aeclesiam detrimentum aliquid pati ignorantia rerum episcopi, neque episcopum vel ipsius cognatos sub praetexto aeclesiae publicationem sustinere vel in negotia incidere ad ipsum pertinentes ac mortem ipsius blasfemiis circundari.

I call attention to the phrase in African canon 32 (= canon 5 from 427): rerum dominicarum invasionis crimine. The adjectival form dominicus, a, um is 45 Concilia Africae, 110 ll. 306–15: “Item placuit, ut episcopi, presbyteri, diaconi vel quicumque clerici, qui nihil habentes ordinantur et tempore episcopatus vel clericatus sui agros vel quaecumque praedia nomini suo comparant, tamquam rerum dominicarum invasionis crimine teneantur, nisi admoniti in ecclesiam eandem ipsa contulerint. Si autem ipsis proprie aliquid liberalitate alicuius vel successione cognationis obvenerit, faciant inde quod eorum proposito congruit; quod si a suo proposito retrorsum exorbitaverint, honore ecclesiastico indigni, tamquam reprobi iudicentur.” 46 “vel per alium excusandum comparant” is in the collection of Italian MSS (which pre-dates Dionysius Exiguus). It does not appear in the African grouping (Y, F, and W). Dionysius also leaves it out. The council of Hippo in 427 re-adopted this canon. Again, our record of the 427 conference survives in the MS Verona LX (58), and while the text there omits the phrase in the text block, a medieval reader added it in the margin (see Concilia Africae, 251, n. for canon 5a). 47 “reprobus” means false in the way that false money is counterfeit. These clerics are not just false as in they lie, but they are fakes, phonies, or counterfeit clerics.

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common enough, but as a modifier of res, it is very rare, found, besides here, once in Ambrose, once in Hilary of Poitiers,48 and in the Latin translation of Apostolic canon 36. That canon states, “Let the property of the bishop, if he has any of his own, and that of God, be clear[ly apparent]: sint manifestae propriae res episcopi (si quidem et proprias habet), et manifestae Dominicae, so that when a bishop dies he can bequeath it from his patrimony as he wants, and to those whom he wants.”49 The canon further states that both private property and that of the church must be protected so that neither suffers loss. The Antiochene canons have a similar admonition, but the language employed is different in the Latin translations we have—the Isidoran, Priscan, and the Dionysian—all of which use the term res ecclesiae (as opposed to res dominicae).50 Canon 24 of Antioch was not the source for canon in causa Apiarii 32. It was Apostolic canon 36. What assures direct textual allusion to the Apostolic canon, aside from res dominicae, is that the African canon refers to another textual source in its admonition. It posits an assumed interlocutor in establishing a dichotomy between the property of God and the property of clerics. “Let them be considered guilty of the crime of stealing from God’s patrimony.” As opposed to whose? The African canon does not specify, but implies that specific other (clerical) property which is named in the prior text. It is at this point that MSS traditions become important. Dionysius Exiguus made his own translations of both the Apostolic and Antiochene canons. He also knew the canones in causa Apiarii, and included them in the first and second recensions of his own canon collection. Confidence that the African bishops in 419 borrowed language from the Apostolic canons can therefore only come from comparing versions extant before Exiguus, because having all these texts in hand, it is possible that Exiguus’s own translation from the Greek into Latin of the earlier Apostolic canon was influenced by what he saw in the African texts. As already stated, we have three MSS traditions for the Apiarian canons, two of which pre-date Exiguus. The Antiochene canons survive in Latin translations that pre-date Exiguus’s version and were, in fact, consulted 48

The very first line of Ambrose’s Expositio on Luke (PL 15: 1261), and Hilary’s Epistola seu Libellus (PL 10: 0741A). Ambrose is not referring to property, but Hilary is speaking of appropriate and inappropriate ways to use earthly resources. 49 EOMIA 1:32w. The Greek for manifestae is φανερά. I thank Peter O’Connell who told me that this is the verb employed by the 5th- and 4th-century Attic orators to denote money and property that was visible, that is, it could be traced and accounted for rather than being hidden under others’ names or in third party investments so its owners might avoid liturgical responsibilities (e.g. Demosthenes 50.8 and 56.1; Lysias 32.4). 50 EOMIA 2:300–5.

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by him. Verona LX (58) MS, our sole source for the complete 427 council minutes, is also home to a Latin translation of all 85 Apostolic canons that was made before Dionysius Exiguus rendered his own translation of the first 50 canons.51 A.  Spagnolo and C.  H.  Turner began studying the faded pages of Verona LX (58) in earnest in the early 1900s,52 and in the following decades, Turner grew more confident that what he saw—the tail end of book eight of the Apostolic Constitutions followed by the 85 Apostolic canons—was different and older than Dionysius Exiguus’s versions. In the EOMIA, he wrote that he could narrow the age of the text (as opposed to the MS itself, which is from about 700 CE)53 from 375 to 600, but he was confident it was on the earlier end of that scale.54 His subsequent comparisons of this Latin translation in Verona LX (58) with the original Greek assisted him in identifying what he considered the best Greek MS (Vat. gr. 1506).55 His considerations about Verona LX (58), on which he continued to publish until his death in October of 1930,56 were, as he himself readily admits, always evolving,57 but his philological sleuthing gave him confidence that this Latin version was very early, and assuredly came before the translation of Dionysius Exiguus.58 Moreover, Dionysius translated only the first 50 of the canons, but here in Verona LX (58) all 85 were present. Turner concluded that Exiguus did not have access to all 85 canons (rather than deciding to omit them for theological, namely Arian, reasons): another 51 Metzger, Les Constitutions, 1.72–3; Steimer, Vertex Traditionis, 91–2. 52 C.  H.  Turner, “Antonio Spagnolo: A Notice and Bibliography of his Writings,” JThS 20, no. 79 (1919): 193–9 on their first attempts to read the MS. 53 C.  H.  Turner, “Eduard Schwartz and the ‘Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum,’” JThS 30, no. 118 (1929): 113–20, at 115. 54 EOMIA 1.32ii; Antonio Spagnolo and C.  H.  Turner, “A Fragment of an Unknown Latin Version of the Apostolic Constitutions (Book VIII–End: Lagarde 274. 22–281. 9),” JThS 13, no. 52 (1912): 492–510, at 509, and Spagnolo and Turner, “Latin Lists,” 511–2. 55 The Verona MS is four centuries older than any extant MS of the original Greek. C. H. Turner, “A Primitive Edition of the Apostolic Constitutions and Canons: An Early List of Apostles and Disciples,” JThS 15, no. 57 (1913): 53–65. See also C. H. Turner, “Notes on the ‘Apostolic Constitutions’: The Text of the Eighth Book,” JThS 31, no. 122 (1930): 128–41, at 129. 56 W. Lock and F. C. Burkitt, “Cuthbert Hamilton Turner,” JThS 32, no. 126 (1931): 113–8, at 114. 57 Turner, “Notes on the ‘Apostolic Constitutions’: The Text of the Eighth Book,” 128. 58 EOMIA 1.32ii–32jj on the vocabulary which indicates that this translation uses Latin terms indicating a late 4th century origin. For example, the African canons as we have them use the word “deponere” when indicating the defrocking or firing, if you will, of clerics. The text in Verona LX (58) consistently uses “degradare” instead, which is, according to Turner, indicative of early date because of its close adherence to the Greek. See also Metzger, Les Constitutions, 1.72–4.

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clue as to why Turner thought the Verona LX (58) translation could not be that of Exiguus.59 Volume one of C. H. Turner’s EOMIA includes Dionysius Exiguus’s translation of the first 50 Apostolic canons in both his first and second recensions.60 Only a casual comparison of these two recensions with the 85 canons from the Verona LX (58) MS (also in EOMIA, 1. 32a–32ww) is required to conclude that the latter is not an example of either of Dionysius Exiguus’s recensions. I belabor the point because (relatively) recent scholarship still insists that the Apostolic canons in Verona LX (58) are from Dionysius Exiguus’s second recension.61 They are not. And while a great deal has been made about the Verona LX (58) codex being a collection of African origin, I am not arguing here that the Apostolic canons from Verona LX (58) must be the version which the African bishops knew. What I am looking for is the existence of a Latin translation of the Apostolic canons pre-dating that of Exiguus. And we have one in Verona LX (58). The whole crux on which the allusion rests, therefore, remains confirmed: we have pre-Exiguuan texts of both the Antiochene and Apostolic canons, as well as earlier, pre-Exiguus MSS traditions for the African councils, all of which means philological comparisons may be made without risk of linguistic similarities ascribable to a single translator responsible for all the texts. When in the very early 6th century Exiguus compiled his canon collections (again, he produced three editions), he included the first 50 Apostolic Canons in the first two recensions, but left them out in the third. He wrote in the preface of his second recension that he was doubtful of their authenticity, but noted that bishops (pontificum) in the past had adopted them for their own enactments.62 The African church most certainly did. 59

C. H. Turner, “Notes on the ‘Apostolic Constitutions’ II. The Apostolic Canons,” 537, and Turner, “A Primitive Edition,” 56. 60 For Dionysius Exiguus’ first recension, see also Adolf Strewe, Die Canonessammlung des Dionysius Exiguus in der ersten Redaktion (Berlin: Verlag von Walter de Gruyter, 1931). Dionysius’ second recension (where he included the first 50 Apostolic canon) may be found in PL 67: 141–8. 61 Tefler, “The Codex Verona LX (58),” 169–246, and Field, Jr., On the Communion, 60n27. 62 Dionisii Exigui Praefationes Latinae Genuinae in Variis Suis Translationibus ex Graeco, in Scriptores ‘Illyrici’ Minores, ed. Fr. Glorie, CCL 85 (Turnholt: Brepols, 1972), 40–1: “In principio itaque Canones qui dicuntur Apostolorum, de graeco transtulimus—quibus quia plurimi consensum non praebuere facilem, hoc ipsum vestram noluimus ignorare sanctitatem; quamvis postea quaedam constituta pontificum ex ipsis Canonibus assumpta esse videantur.” In the preface to his third recension (CCL 85, 51), Dionysius says he is leaving out the Apostolic canons, the canons of Serdica, and those of Africa, saying although they were included in his first translation, the purpose here was to demonstrate the honor in which

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The Origin and Order of the 427 Canons: 30 May 419

Most of the 217 bishops attending the 25 May 419 meeting asked to be excused from the next one, planned for just five days later, because they said they wanted to return to their own churches. The bishops thereupon appointed twenty-one representatives, not including the primate Aurelius, to make decisions on their behalf. Two legates from Rome were also in attendance. Many of these African representatives were senior bishops (including Aurelius, Alypius, Augustine, and Possidius) with twelve of those twenty-one, plus Aurelius, having been signatories to the Catholic mandatum presented at the 411 conference.63 The proceedings of that 30 May meeting of 419 survive only in Dionysius Exiguus’s Registri Ecclesiae Carthaginensis Excerpta and constitute his final entries in the listing of African church council decisions spanning the years 393 to 419 (of 133 numbered items in Exiguus’s Register, the decisions from the 30 May 419 conference constitute numbers 128–133). There is no independent MS tradition for this Register apart from Exiguus, and it should be noted that of the three recensions (or editions) of his collected church canons, Exiguus included the African Register only in the second. The  30  May  419 meeting began with the observation that while previous councils had agreed as to what kind of persons could lodge complaints against clerics (ad accusationem clericorum), no council had yet decided to whom this privilege was not granted. They were to be identified at this meeting (idcirco definimus). The canons of 30 May 419 are new, also without African precedent. the eastern churches are held: ut et vestra paternitas auctoritate, qua tenentur ecclesiae orientales quaesivit agnoscere. In 520, under orders of Pope Gelasius, the Apostolic canons were categorized among apocrypha. See Gaudemet, Sources, 25. That many of the documents African bishops turned to (including the Apostolic canons) were forgeries is the subject for another paper. There is a great deal written about the Apostolic canons, but I direct readers to an overview with an appended essay by J.  J.  Scaliger regarding their mendacity in Henk Jan de Jonge, “J.  J.  Scaliger’s De LXXXV canonibus Apostolorum Diatribe,” Lias 2 (1975): 115–24. 63 There were ten episcopal legates from Proconsularis, three from Numidia, three from Byzacena, two from Mauritania Sitifensis, and three from Mauritania Caesarensis. André Mandouze, Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire 1: Afrique (303–533) (Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1982), loc. cit. Aurelius of Carthage, Alypius of Thagaste, Augustine of Hippo, Possidius of Calama, Maximianus of Aquae Regiae, Iucundus of Sufetula, Novatus of Sitifis, Leo of Mopti, Vincentius of Culusi, Fortunatianus of Neapolis, Marianus of Uzipparitana, Adeodatus of Simidicca, and Rufiniaus of Muzuca were present at the 411 conference. The others we do not know too much about: Hilarianus of Horrea Caelia, Ninellus of Rusuccuru, Laurentius of Icosium, Numerianus of Resguniae, Pentadius of Carpi, Praetextatus of Sicilibba, Quodvultdeus of Ucres, Candidus of Abbiritanus Germanicianorum, and Gallonianus of Uthina.

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Of the six adopted on 30  May, most of that material, and almost verbatim, was re-adopted at the 427 meeting. The 30 May 419 decisions became canons 6–8 of the 427 meeting, and they appear in (almost) the exact same order as they do in the 30 May session (canon 6 of 427 = 128 and 129 of the Register; canon 7 = 130 and 131; canon 8 = 132 and 133). These canons from 30 May have no African precedent, but again, some may have been inspired by a transmarine church. The proposal I make here rests neither on secure manuscript transmission nor philological connection, but the overlap in subject matter is so striking that it is worth making the suggestion: The African bishops at this 30 May meeting were borrowing from council decisions made at Constantinople several decades before. Conventional wisdom maintains that western churches did not know any of the canons from Constantinople before Chalcedon (451), and even after that, did not readily accept them.64 But I see strong similarities in thematic substance between canon six from the council of Constantinople in 381 and Exiguus’ss Register numbers 128 and 129, the ones adumbrating who can and cannot bring accusations against clerics. More about what those texts say presently, but first some issues regarding manuscript transmission and survival. As I have said before, the canons from the African council of 30 May 419 are only preserved in Exiguus’ss second recension (the final entries of his Register), dated to the early 6th century. As to the sixth canon from the 381 Council of Constantinople, its textual origins are even more obscure. The earliest sources on the 381 council are aware of only four canons, not six (there is a seventh, too, but that one is thought to be a much later accretion and is of no concern to us here). Canons five and six first appear in the collection of John Scholasticus, the patriarch of Constantinople from 565–577. The authenticity of canon six has never been questioned, nor do people deny it was adopted by the bishops at Constantinople, but its date is difficult to pinpoint: probably not at the 381 council, but rather, as the Ballerini brothers and C. H. Turner believe, close to that time, perhaps at the conference at Constantinople convened the following year, in 382.65 As far as transmittal to the West, there are a number of Latin MSS containing the four canons adopted at Constantinople in 381, but only one extant Latin manuscript contains canon six, a manuscript once owned by

64 Balleriniorum Disquisitiones, 66: “Canones vero Constantinopolitani ante Chalcedonense Latinis fuere ignoti; et adhuc post hoc concilium, etsi in collectiones Latinas traducti, non tamen statim fuerunt recepti.” 65 Balleriniorum Disquisitiones, 18 and EOMIA 2:421.

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Bobbio (dated to the 9th century) but now housed in the Ambrosian collection at Milan.66 The lack of an evidentiary “smoking gun” establishing assured links between Constantinople and Carthage through MSS transmission or philological connection means one is left to point out similarities in subject matter and order of presentation. These are not optimal proofs; however, when one compares this canon six from Constantinople and the African decisions of 30 May 419 (again, these being Exiguus’ss numbering 128 and 129 of the Registri, which accord with canon 6a, 6b, and 6c adopted at the 427 conference at Hippo), those similarities are indeed impressive. The African bishops said that until May 30 of 419 they had never articulated who was not allowed to make accusations against clerics, so we know there are no previous discussions missing because of the fragmentary and précis-like nature of the African council minutes. But why were the African bishops at pains to make clear it was time now to adumbrate who was forbidden from making accusations? African bishops did not describe canon formation this way, and it is unusual for them to say something to the effect of: “we have long since addressed this aspect of the issue, but not that aspect.” An historical explanation is that the church now needed to circumscribe the number of complaints being made against clerics in the aftermath of the 411 conference and the attendant confusion over ownership of ecclesiastical property. A textual explanation is that the bishops at Constantinople in their canon on accusations against clerics drew the same distinction, and the African text modeled itself after the earlier one.67 Here are direct similarities: Slaves, freed persons, and those tinged with infamia could not bring accusations against clerics. Nor might heretics. That these kinds of persons were named in both texts comes as no surprise, but it should be noted they are listed in the same order.68 Both texts distinguish between 66 EOMIA 2:403. 67 Latin text of canon six (EOMIA 2:423): “Placuit sancto concilio Constantinopolitano, convenientibus episcopis, non sine discussione suscipi accusatores, neque ab omnibus permitti accusationes fieri adversus dispensatores aecclesiarum, neque tamen omnes excludere.” Compare with the African text Reg. Eccl. Carthag. Excerpta 128 (Concilia Africae, 230 ll. 1590–3): “Placuitque omnibus, quoniam superioribus conciliorum decretis de personis quae admittendae sint ad accusationem clericorum iam constitutum est, et quae personae non admittantur non expressum est, idcirco definimus.” 68 Canon six (EOMIA 2:421–3), the order is: “servi et liberti, omnes infames personae… . Non liceat hereticis accusationes facere adversus …” In the African text the order of appearance is the same (Concilia Africae, 231): “Omnes servi vel proprii liberti…  . Omnes etiam infamiae maculis aspersi … haeretici …” (notice the Africans specify: all slaves, but one’s own freedmen).

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ecclesiastical and private suits: those disqualified could not make accusations against clerics in ecclesiastical cases, but anyone, including heretics and those labeled with infamia, were free to accuse clerics in pursuing private suits.69 The excommunicated, whether cleric or layperson, could not make accusations until their situation was resolved.70 Likewise, anyone still embroiled in a secular case and who stood as the accused would not have his accusations against clerics heard by the church until he was free from his legal entanglements.71 One may argue that these kinds of issues would naturally arise as churches established guidelines for when clerics faced accusations of malfeasance in the course of their ecclesiastical duties. That could explain the similarities in full, I suppose, but in each respective document these rules are bundled together (as opposed to being dispersed throughout a number of canons) and these matching rules are succinctly, rather than diffusely, presented. What I described of the Constantinople canon here is about three quarters’s worth of the entire text; therefore, the proportion of overlap is very high when the amount of text is taken into account. Moreover, many of the admonitions and specific labels in the Constantinople canon are listed in the same order as in the African: all this inclines me to believe, rather than discount, the suggestion that the African bishops knew about [at least one of the] canons adopted by Constantinople.

69 Latin text of canon six (EOMIA 2:423): “sed si quis propriam aliquam querellam, id est suam, inducat episcopo… . Oportet enim omnibus modis et conscientiam episcopi liberam esse, et qui praegravatum se asserit, cuiuscumque sit religionis, iustitiam inpetrare.” Compare with the African text, Reg. Eccl. Carthag. Excerpta 129 (Concilia Africae, 231 ll.1605–6): “sed tamen omnibus, quibus accusatio denegatur, in causis propriis accusandi licentiam non negandam.” 70 Latin text of canon six (EOMIA 2:423): “seu de clero sive de laico agmine, neque hi licentiam habeant accusare episcopos, ante quam a proprio crimine exuantur.” And compare to the African text, Reg. Eccl. Carthag. Excerpta 128 (Concilia Africae, 230 ll. 1593–6): “eum rite ad accusationem non admitti qui, posteaquam excommunicatus fuerit, in ipsa adhuc excommunicatione constitutus, sive sit clericus, sive laicus, accusare voluerit.” 71 Latin text of canon six (EOMIA 2. 423–5): “et qui subiacent anteriori accusationi non prius recipi in accusatione episcopi aut quorundam clericorum ante quam mundos sese demonstrent a criminibus sibi inlatis.” And compare with the African Reg. Eccl. Carthag. Excerpta 129 (Concilia Africae, 231 ll. 1600–1): “vel omnes quos ad accusanda publica crimina leges publicae non admittunt.”

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The Order of the 427 Canons

All ten of the 427 canons have now been accounted for. The next task is to explain the order in which they are listed, with the assumption that it corresponds to the order in which they were adopted at the conference. We recall that the manuscript histories of the 25 May and the 30 May councils of 419 are different. The canones in causa Apiarii were preserved in a separate tradition from the record of the 30 May meeting, which, again, is known only through Dionysius Exiguus’s Register. The separation of the MSS in their transmission to us was a matter of chance and is not the issue. What is important comes from before, when these transcripts were initially made and came to reside among the records of the African church. As much as we understand how the African bishops kept records of their councils, we can be confident that the minutes of the 25 May meeting and the 30 May meeting were not combined or drawn up as one document with the different days’s decisions mixed. The bishops were careful with their records: each meeting’s minutes, as well as any decisions made, would have been dated, with location and bishops named and the participants’s signatures appended. It is all but assured that the bishops and their scribes in 427 consulted two separate registers when they chose the canons they wanted to repeat, one register for 25 May and another for 30 May. One of the major points F. L. Cross made in his work on the African canons is that most of the canones in causa Apiarii are recorded as if part of a transcript where bishops were speaking to each other. Much of what is there appears to be “live,” but it was not. Scribes went through records of previous canons that the African church had adopted and logged them, largely in chronological order, into the 419 proceedings. But they did it in such a way that sometimes words that were spoken and recorded in councils of the mid 300s were placed in the mouths of people active in 419, like Aurelius and Alypius, making it appear that old canons were being spoken anew. A little more than halfway through the transcript, that pretense is dropped and the canons shift to a series of third person “item placuit” declarations.72 The canones in causa Apiarii were an exercise in textual transposition half-dressed as dialogue. The canons from 427 do not attempt to disguise themselves in that way. Save for Aurelius’s prefatory remarks, the canons adopted here were transferred almost verbatim from the two council meetings in 419. Aurelius underscores that these canons came as established precedent from previous councils, and that their being read aloud at the 427 meeting was a function of transferring them onto the written page. “Let the previous council decisions which were agreed upon and defined 72

Cross, “History and Fiction,” 246–7.

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in communal deliberation be read aloud for insertion in the pages of the present council.” This is how court hearings and extraordinary administrative cases were conducted, such as the 411 conference: old documents were read aloud for incorporation into the new minutes.73 What they did at the 427 council was the following: the scribes culled canons 29–32 from the 25 May meeting (427 corresponding canon numbers 1, 2, 3, and 5). They next consulted the records for the 30 May meeting and took from them what would become canons 6–8 of the 427 meeting. Then, and here is the interesting bit, they went back to the records of 25 May and took two more canons from those records (33 and 34) and transposed them, making these canon numbers 9 and 10 of 427. The table below illustrates: Table 2

The Order of the 427 Canons

Canons of 427

Order of Appearance in 419 Conferences

1. The excommunicate clerics who presume to act otherwise are forever deposed. 2. Plaintiff or defendant fearful of violent mob may have his hearing in another diocese. 3. Clerics and deacons refusing their bishops’s offers of promotion will lose their current office. 4. Bishops and priests who give to other dioceses property located in their dioceses where they were ordained without permission will be accused of theft. 5. Clerics accumulating property for their own patrimonies must return it to the church. They may not give it to anyone. Bishops do have the right to inherit from family. 6a. Slaves, ones’ own freedmen, and those accused of a crime may not serve as plaintiffs. 6b. An excommunicated cleric or layman may not serve as plaintiff.

25 May 419 canon 29 25 May 419 canon 30 25 May 419 canon 31

25 May 419 canon 32

30 May 419 canon 129a 30 May 419 canon 128

73 Elizabeth A. Meyer, Legitimacy and Law in the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 243–9, and Hans C. Teitler, Notarii and Exceptores (Amsterdam: J. C. Geiben, 1985), 6–7.

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The Order of the 427 Canons (cont.)

Canons of 427

Order of Appearance in 419 Conferences

6c. Nor may others of base background, or heretics, pagans or Jews. All of these may bring their own suits, however. 7a. If a cleric is accused of many things, and the first cannot be proven, the remaining accusations will not be heard. 7b. Those who cannot be plaintiffs also cannot serve as witnesses, nor can someone from the accuser’s own household serve as witness. 7c. Someone younger than 14 years of age may not serve as a witness. 8a. A bishop who says someone confessed to him a crime, but now that person says he did not, should not be offended that he is not taken on his word alone. 8b. As long as a bishop does not communicate with an excommunicate, his fellow bishops should not be in a communication with him, so he does not say something against the excommunicate to the bishops that cannot be proven otherwise. 9a. Presbyters may not sell church property without knowledge of the bishops. 9b. Bishops are not allowed to sell church estates without council and primates knowing. 10. A bishop is not take for the use of his own basilica whatever fields and estates have been left to the church established in the diocese.

30 May 419 canon 129b 30 May 419 canon 129c 30 May 419 canon 130

30 May 419 canon 131a

30 May 419 canon 131b 30 May 419 canon 132

30 May 419 canon 133

25 May 419 canon 33 25 May 419 canon 33 25 May 419 canon 34

Several possible explanations may be offered, including a correction necessitated by oversight or carelessness, as to why the scribes switched from one list to another and then returned to the first. One can see the same thing in the creation of the canones in causa Apiarii, but F.  L.  Cross believed it was

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no accident. Instead, a going back and forth between texts shows the scribes working methodically through the registers. What is striking about this order of canons for 427 is that numbers 6–8 regarding accusations and witnesses are sandwiched between admonitions, two on either side, governing church property. Canons 6–8 are applicable to ecclesiastical hearings in general, but the context suggests that reiterations about defendants and plaintiffs in clerical adjudications were linked to difficulties attendant to clerical misdeeds regarding church property, such as are articulated before and after the canons detailing how clerics are embroiled in disciplinary proceedings. VII.

The African Canons of 427 and the Story They (May) Tell

The structural aspects of how these canons came to be have now been presented. The next part of this essay takes those pieces—subject matter, time of first adoption of our 427 canons, and the order in which they are presented— and tries to discern what historical picture they create. Is there a cohesive narrative that can be constructed from these constituent parts and tell us why Augustine thought a general meeting at Hippo in 427 was necessary? The concerns of 427 have their origins in recent circumstances. Since all the canons were first adopted in 419 or 427, that is our time-frame. These rules speak about events happening in the first decades of the 5th century. Aurelius told the bishops gathered at Hippo in 427 that these disciplinary issues required re-visitation, for although they had begun to be resolved, he now feared deterioration. The questions are: what were the major challenges facing the North African church between 419 and 427? More to the point: why do church property and clerical involvement in church disciplinary actions weigh on the bishops’s minds? As for the first topic, church property, that may be narrowed further. At issue were illegal transfers, gifts, sales, and acquisitions. Regarding the second, clerical adjudication, the aim was to limit the ability to bring complaints against clerics, to protect actors involved in suits from bodily harm or intimidation, and to keep the judicial process clean by restricting informal information channels and restraining excommunicated clerics while cases remained pending. Before 419, there was nothing akin to these kinds of clerical transgressions regarding property found in the Concilia Africae.74 And while previous canons, such as those found in the Breuiarium Hipponense, spell out procedures for when a cleric is accused, excommunicated, or he attempts to seek redress through the civil courts, these new rules were different from the 74

See Hermanowicz, “African Ecclesiastical Wealth.”

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previous in that they sought to circumscribe, rather than explain, a process. It is as if the case load became so onerous that new limitations, until now unforeseen, had to be imposed. Before concluding that African clergy have become a gallery of rogues, whose forays into crime have caused a glut of accusations, these symptoms of disorder make better sense if attributed to the aftershocks of unification. In Africa, as in all territories, bishops controlled their own churches’s wealth.75 There was no kind of administrative structure whereby ecclesiastical wealth functioned corporately, above and apart from the control of each bishop who oversaw his own diocese. Several canons from transmarine churches instructed the bishops to keep accurate financial records so they and their staff could track what belonged to them and what belonged to their churches. Untimely deaths of bishops who left behind sloppy accounts meant confusion and loss for the bishops’s churches and families. The situation was made more complex in that bishops regularly employed their own patrimonies to benefit their churches which would pay them back eventually when investments (such as land acquisition) generated return. It was also standard for bishops without patrimonies to use church funds to support themselves and their families. For bishops and indeed other clergy, private finances and church money always mixed. That was the way churches operated. The emperor Honorius commissioned Marcellinus to represent him at the 411 conference, and one of Marcellinus’s first directives was for all formerly Donatist holdings now held by Catholics, including and especially church buildings, to be returned to the Donatists.76 The transfers were not completed before the conference began.77 Aside from whatever personal feelings inspired delay, avoidance, or outright refusal, there must have been confusion regarding the age and legitimacy of numerous claims. Some episcopal property had been passing back and forth between the two churches since the days of

75 Jean Gaudemet, L’Église dans l’Empire romain (Paris: Sirey, 1958), 299–302, and Yves Modéran, “L’établissement territorial des Vandals en Afrique,” Antiquité Tardive 10 (2002): 87–122, at 119. The best descriptions of bishops’ economic behaviors, which are in line with other landowners, are found in Harmut G. Ziche, “Administrer la propriété de l’Église: l’évêque comme clerc et comme entrepreneur” Antiquité Tardive 14 (2006): 69–78, and “Integrating Late Roman Cities, Countryside and Trade” in Ancient Economies, Modern Methodologies: Archaeology, Comparative History, Models and Institutions, ed. Peter F. Bang, Mamorou Ikeguchi and Harmut G. Ziche (Bari: Edipuglia, 2006), 255–76. 76 Collatio Carthaginensis Anni 411, ed. Clemens Weidmann, CSEL 104 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2018), 1.5 ll. 34–40. 77 Collatio Carthaginensis Anni 411, 2.18.

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Constantine.78 The Catholic bishops who developed the logistic strategy for the 411 conference, namely Augustine and his close allies, made the following offer to their Donatist counterparts just before the conference began: assuming that the Catholics won, the Donatist bishops who agreed to unification could keep their clerical positions and their property, including agricultural estates and church buildings.79 Marcellinus himself told the Donatists when he rendered his verdict: “[Donatist] churches, in fact, will essentially belong to [the Donatists] if they are willing to consent to Catholic unity.”80 In cases where two bishops ruled—one Catholic, the other a former Donatist—they would both now oversee a unified diocese. Upon the death of one, the other would proceed in his office alone, and all church property managed by the deceased would cede to his successor. If the people considered two bishops ruling simultaneously untenable, both were to withdraw and a third appointed, chosen by fellow bishops who also ruled alone in their dioceses.81 Letters of Augustine’s (ep. 128.3 and 185.9.35) reveal the complications inherent in a plan so optimistic—perhaps naïve is a better term—and spearheaded by the only (or the very few) bishop(s) in Africa who advocated clerical renunciation of property.82 Augustine exhorts African bishops to train their eyes on higher rewards rather than on the earthly bounty and comfort their positions afforded them, but these were difficult words to hear for bishops facing not only loss of access to church wealth, but also any part of their own patrimonies they had given or invested in their churches. Being asked to step aside to bring in a new, neutral player, or realizing your younger episcopal colleague (and former rival) would probably outlive and thus succeed you, along with what might be large chunks of your own wealth: these possibilities, difficult enough in and of themselves, could also be tinctured with sectarian animosities of a deep and often personal nature.

78 Noel Lenski, “Imperial Legislation and the Donatist Controversy: From Constantine to Honorius,” in The Donatist Schism: Controversy and Contexts, ed. Richard Miles (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016), 166–219. 79 ep. 128.3. 80 Collatio Carthaginensis Anni 411, Edictum cognitoris: “Ut ecclesias … quas quidem, si unitati catholicae consentire voluerint, eorum esse sat certum est.” 81 On Catholic vision on the unification of property, see discussion in Émilien Lamirande, “L’offre conciliatrice des Catholoques aux Donatistes relativement à l’épiscopat,” Église et théologie 2 (1971): 285–308. 82 For brilliant articulation of the fault lines among and between the African Catholic bishops at the time of the 411 conference, Neil McLynn, “The Conference of Carthage Reconsidered,” in The Donatist Schism: Controversy and Contexts, ed. Richard Miles (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016), 220–48.

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Donatist bishops refusing unification were subject to property confiscation, but the situation was difficult for everyone. Those agreeing to mergers, Catholic and Donatist, would experience change and potential loss in this process. The upheaval shoots through the surviving minutes of the council at Carthage in 418. It is seven years later, and because of the continuing difficulties, the bishops have to re-think the solutions they once proposed before the conference of 411 took place. Geographic confusion over different diocese configurations was one issue.83 Another was that before 405 and the promulgation of the Edict of Unity, formerly Donatist churches having joined the Catholics were to be under the episcopal oversight of the bishop who had successfully negotiated their transfer. After the promulgation of heresy laws (405), Donatist churches that joined the Catholics were to be affiliated with the episcopal seat that had oversight of their particular geographical locales. As of 418, these historical and geographical alignments were still causing enough confusion that the bishops admitted that they needed to adjust how churches fell under particular episcopal jurisdictions.84 We also see at the 418 meeting the bishops re-assessing how formerly Donatist and Catholic property—churches, church buildings, houses, agricultural land, and estates—could be equitably divided: the senior bishop should make the division, while the other chose first which half he wanted.85 That sounds reasonable, but proposed remedies were coming seven years after imperial orders to merge. Augustine and his allies did not plan these property transfers with adequate specificity in 411, and they may have been taken off guard when they found that the Catholic bishops reacted as strongly as the Donatist ones. The Conference of 418 reveals what bishops did in the absence of clear directives as to how property merges were to occur. There were land grabs, with bishops trying to elbow out others who had much better claims over territories in question. For such disputes, panels of episcopal judges were appointed to adjudicate, but we learn from 418 that they were sometimes bypassed altogether, or their decisions ignored, or bishops (and other clerics) unhappy with decisions, made appeals to primates in hopes of circumventing unsatisfactory decisions.86 Some probably appealed to imperial representatives in Africa. We also hear that some Catholic bishops made no attempt to engage in the process of unification with their Donatist neighbors, and they lied to their primates 83

Serge Lancel, “Le sort des évêques et des communautés donatistes après la Conférence de Carthage en 411,” in Internationales Symposion über den Stand der Augustinus-Forschung, ed. Cornelius Mayer and Karl Heinz Chelius (Würzburg: Augustinus-Verlag, 1989), 149–67. 84 Concilia Africae, 224 ll. 1424–37. 85 Concilia Africae, 224 ll. 1440–55. 86 Concilia Africae, 226 ll. 1501–6.

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and other bishops, assuring their superiors that their communities had unified when in fact no overture for negotiation had been made.87 Transgressions, such as ignoring decisions rendered by the episcopal judges, could result in excommunication.88 Those found to have lied about unification within their communities were to be deposed.89 Post-411 unification was a messy business, and we know that as of May 418, the difficulties continued apace. The proximity of dates means one may look at the canones in causa Apiarii, as well as those from the 30 May 419 council, in light of problems surrounding unification. An indication of the possible extent of complications are the canons of the 30 May meeting (re-adopted in 427) discussing clerical adjudication. As already mentioned, not until 419 did the African church identify ways to restrict the number and kinds of accusations made against clerics. This is also the first time efforts were made to protect the physical safety of disputants, as well as the first to safeguard the reputations of those under investigation and/or excommunication until their cases had been decided. As for the physical protection of accuser and accused awaiting a decision: we hear about such tension apropos the aftermath of unification, such as the people fearful of Anthony’s possible retribution if they voiced complaint at his hearing (ep. 20*.22). So, questions: are that many more charges being brought now? What other reasons exist in Africa to restrict the qualifications for plaintiffs this late in the history of the African church aside from the aftermath of unification? I want to answer these in part by returning to the question of property. It has been suggested that the canon admonishing poor clerics who took church property for their own patrimonies (canon 32 [25  May  419] = canon 5 [September  427]) was adopted in response to the misdeeds of Antoninus of Fussala,90 but it pertains to any number of African clerics who came from obscure beginnings, including erstwhile Donatist clergy who joined the Catholics after 411. But we are also told presbyters and bishops could not sell church property, especially estates, without permission (canons 33 of 25 May 419 = 9 of 427). Nor might bishops muscle in on titular churches overseen by the presbyters in their own diocese and take their revenues for themselves (canons 34 of 25 May 419 = canon 10 of 427). It seems to me that what is going on here is an effort by clerics, Catholic and Donatist, to transfer or hide property to prevent it from being absorbed away from their control in post-411 unification. There are any number of reasons why bishops would want to sell 87 88 89 90

Concilia Africae, 227 ll. 1519–22. Concilia Africae, 226 ll. 1505–6. Concilia Africae, 227 ll. 1521–2. Dossey, Peasant, 140.

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property, especially if it was donated land that proved unprofitable,91 but the pace of sale in 419 necessitated a brake. Clergy were liquidating immovable assets to make them easier to hide. Property transfer away from churches may also be read into a canon’s admonition to make clear the lines between the patrimony of a cleric and that of his church, and not to claim the latter as one’s own. As already stated, church canons, east and west, endorsed the authority (potestas) a bishop exercised over his own church’s wealth. The African church in particular, with its hundreds of bishops and large number of clerics, had in its service thousands of men, the majority of whom were from relatively humble backgrounds. Rather than suspecting that opportunistic embezzling was on the rise in Africa in the early 5th century, I argue that there is an effort afoot by clerics to keep what they believed they had earned and was theirs. The pressure was equally felt by Donatist and Catholic clerics: they were drawing wealth away from situations where its future control and oversight was threatened. Transferring property to family, friends, or to one’s own patrimony kept church property from getting absorbed in the post-411 merger. We know from Justinianic sources that decurions “hid” their own property by “giving” it to family and friends so they would not have to spend it supporting their cities and towns.92 Interestingly, the Italian MSS tradition of the canones in causa Apiarii attests an additional phrase in this canon, namely clerics could not hold onto church property by placing it in the possession of a third person.93 Again, there are several reasons why someone would be motivated to do this, including trying to hide taxable property. In light of current events, however, one sees an attempt to obfuscate and protect assets. My interpretation is supported, I believe, by the fact that one particular canon (32 of 25 May 419 = 5 of 427) is directed specifically against poor clerics, those “having nothing” when they began serving. That means the issue as perceived in 419 is not clerical “stealing” writ large. The canon ignores clergy with patrimonies. Clerics, especially bishops, who came to office with their own wealth inevitably had some or much of it embedded and invested in their own churches, more than those who were poor. The assets became mixed, and I stress that entanglements were anticipated. By singling out poor clerics in the African canon, financial complexities of wealthier bishops were, I think, being 91 Cf. canones in causa Apiarii 26 (Concilia Africae, 109 ll. 263–70) referring to sale of church property that gives no return (reditum non habet). The same qualifier is not mentioned in our canon 9 of 427. 92 Justinian Novel 38. 93 See n. 11.

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tacitly recognized. The specificity of the language singling out poor clerics gave the necessary flexibility for those with their own patrimonies to recoup what was their own before it could be absorbed into a merging diocese. If that interpretation is correct, one can sympathize with those who began careers with “nothing” when the orders for unification came. Bishops of humble origins would have used church money (call it salary) to purchase land— the investment of choice for anyone in the ancient world—for their own patrimony and for their families. Despite whatever outrage Augustine claimed he felt about Anthony’s use of church money, the bishop of Fussala’s directing rent money from church land toward the purchase of more acreage (in his own name, Augustine fumes) must have been a common occurrence before 411.94 My point is clerics, rich and poor, used church revenues to make purchases that would ultimately constitute part of their private property, and when they were able, they used their own funds towards the good of the their churches, with the understanding that the giving and taking would wash out evenly in the end. Unification overturned that calculus. What we see in 419 and 427 is the result of disruption to a long-established economic system, the forcing of clarity upon once permeable boundaries. Clergy, even the ones who “began with nothing,” had much to lose from a merger, and they began to direct assets away from church oversight and place them into private hands. Clerics from both sides were protecting what they saw as theirs. This returns us to the only new canon adopted by the bishops at the 427 council, the one forbidding bishops and presbyters to give property belonging to the diocese where they were ordained to another. Without justifiable cause, these transfers would be considered theft. Such transfers could be the result of sending property to another, friendly, diocese for protection. As we know from the 411 rollcall on the first day of the conference, there were plenty of dioceses where the Catholic bishop had no rival and others where Donatist bishops ruled without a Catholic counterpart. Sending property to one of these by clerics facing merger may have been a way to “hide” property under the protection of a third party, such as decurions did in Justinianic sources. We are used to church canons from across the Mediterranean emphasizing non-transferability of clerics, namely bishops, to other sees. But after 411, new dioceses were created in Africa, so priests and clerics had to move from their old dioceses to new ones, Anthony of Fussala being a prime example, 94

“Normalizing” Antoninus of Fussala is done beautifully in Neil McLynn, “The Conference of Carthage Reconsidered.” See also Brent Shaw, Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 373n106.

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although he had not even attained the priesthood when promoted to the episcopate. He and his staff moved from Augustine’s diocese of Hippo proper to this new one carved out from the former’s southern-most boundary. For those cities and towns that found the simultaneous rule of two bishops unpalatable, the two were asked to step away, with another single candidate chosen to replace the formerly rival bishops. We have no idea how many cases such as the one described occurred, or where the old bishops went to, and where the new ones came from. But all things being equal, for this proposed system to work, all kinds of clerics would have to be transferred among and between sees in unprecedented numbers. These clerics obviously were taking to their new assignments the property they had heretofore overseen and, perhaps, in part paid for. They did so because they considered it their own. VIII.

Conclusion

Augustine and his colleagues remained embroiled in complications associated with unification well into the 420s. The cascade of anti-Donatist tracts marking Augustine’s career from the late 300s until shortly after the 411 conference had subsided. What took their place were attempts to settle the problems created by Augustine’s (and friends’s) confidence that the logistics of property mergers would succeed with only a sketch of a plan in place. He must have been surprised to witness the ensuing scramble to secure property by his fellow bishops and then watch it bleed out of the churches. By 427, Aurelius could say many of the difficulties attendant to unification were behind them, but in no wise was the situation resolved. My historical reconstruction of why Augustine requested a conference in 427 may be accused of leaning too strongly on the evidence when we do not have the benefit of hearing our bishops gathered at Hippo speak about the Donatists by name. The same criticism may be leveled at the assertion that the increase in disputes over property and battles over dioceses because of 411 and its aftermath necessitated new rules as to who and under what conditions complaints could be brought against clergy. But the narrative I have set forth best explains all the constituent parts. What is assured is that Africa turned to transmarine canons to inform and justify their own positions. With the exception of their frequent dealings with Rome, we rarely see the African bishops engaged with other churches, especially in the Greek east. Africa’s use of the Apostolic canons and perhaps canons from Constantinople in the formation of its own corpus of canon law helps center the African church (in our minds as much as it must have the African

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bishops) as players and partners in a Mediterranean-wide conversation. The strategy of informing African decisions with extra-African canons protected the African Catholics from attempts by other churches, especially the Roman one, to push them around. A collection of law endowed with historical depth and geographical breadth spoke of an “international” outlook and standing. This desire by the African bishops to be in step with transmarine churches renders other contemporary, and to me, mysterious, literary phenomena more explicable. Example: Augustine’s biographer’s strange insistence on Augustine’s influence on the Greek speaking east during his lifetime.95 The stance also speaks to one of Augustine’s favorite arguments he had used against the Donatists ever since the 390s: the Catholics in Africa belonged to the correct church, the one affirmed by scriptural testimony (Luke 24:47), that one being the church scripture promised would be spread across the world.96 Textual adoption from eastern canons, as much as it was declarative and self-defining, could be used as a theological weapon, too.

Appendix

The 427 council minutes from Munier, Concilia Africae, 250–53. Piaerio et Ardabure uu. cc. conss. viii. kal. octobris, in basilica Leontiana. Cum Aurelius senex una cum fratribus et consacerdotibus suis consedisset, adstantibus diaconibus, Aurelius episcopus dixit: Sanctitas vestra melius recolit qua necessitate factum est ut instituta concilii solemnitas per biennium cessaret. Nunc, quia adiuvante Deo, certa provintia,97 factum est ut sanctus frater et coepiscopus noster Augustinus pro sua religione concilium libenter acciperet, et nos Dominus in unum congregari iussisset, agamus aliquid pro utilitate ecclesiae, ut ea quae incepta vel quae audienda sunt audiantur, ne causae, cum diutius adhuc dimitti coeperint, in peius exsurgant. Unde hoc opus est ut ecclesiae causae, quae disciplinae congruunt, pertractentur.

95 V. Aug. 11.5–6. 96 This argument is made dozens of times throughout Augustine’s anti-Donatist works, but see Collatio Carthaginensis Anni 411, 1.55 where the Catholics have read aloud their mandatum, or statement of belief and intent. The universality and internationalism of the true church is articulated here. 97 The Ballerini brothers corrected provintia to providentia. Boudinhon, “Note,” 272 accommodates the suggestion but Munier, Concilia Africae, 250n retains the MS reading. “Provintia” was a known alternative spelling for provincia. See Chronica Minora Saec. IV.V.VI.VII. Vol. 1, ed. Theodor Mommsen (Berlin: Weidmann, 1892), 524n1.

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Universum concilium dixit: Ut hoc fiat, libenter audimus. Aurelius senex dixit: Quae inter communi deliberatione statuta et definita sunt concilia praeterita ex ordine relegantur, praesentis concilii paginis inserenda. 1. Placuit universo concilio ut qui excommunicatus fuerit, sive episcopus vel quilibet clericus, et tempore excommunicationis suae communionem praesumpserit, ipse in se damnationis iudicetur protulisse sententiam. 2. Item placuit ut accusatus vel accusator, in eo loco unde est ille qui accusatur si metuit aliquam vim temerariae multitudinis, locum sibi eligat proximum, quo non sit difficile testes adducere, et ibi causa finiatur. 3. Item placuit ut quicunque clericus vel diaconus non obtemperaverit episcopis suis volentibus eos honore ampliore in sua dioecesi provehere, nec illic ministrent in gradu suo unde recedere noluerint. 4. Item placuit ut episcopi sive presbyteri, ea quae sunt in locis ubi ordinantur si ad alia loca dederint, causas praesentent, vel episcopi suis consiliis, vel clerici episcopis suis; et si nullas iustas habuerint causas, sic in eos vindicetur tamquam in furto fuerint deprehensi. 5a. Item placuit ut quicumque episcopus, presbyter, diaconus vel quilibet clericorum, qui nihil habentes ordinantur et tempore episcopatus vel clericatus sui agros vel quaecumque praedia nomini suo comparant [vel per aliud {alium} excusandum], tamquam rerum dominicarum invasionis crimine teneantur. 5b. Si admoniti in ecclesiam eadem contulerint, bene; sin autem ipsi propriae consangvinitati ea vel exteris cuilibet voluerint relinquere, non permittantur. 5c. Si autem ipsis proprie aliquid ex successione parentum vel cognationis obvenerit, faciant inde quod eorum proposito congruit. Quod si a suo proposito retrorsum exorbitaverint, honore ecclesiae indigni, tamquam reprobi iudicentur. 6a. Item placuit ut omnes servi vel proprii libertini ad accusationem non admittantur, vel omnes quos ad accusanda publica crimina leges publicae non admittunt. 6b. Neque ii qui posteaquam excommunicati fuerint—si in ipsa adhuc excommunicatione constitutus, sive sit clericus, sive laicus, accusare voluerit. 6c. Neque omnes infamiae macula adspersi, idest istriones et turpitudinibus subiectae personae, haeretici etiam, sive pagani, sive Iudaei; sed tamen omnibus quibus accusatio denegatur, in causis propriis accusandi licentiam non negandam. 7a. Item placuit, quotiescumque clericis ab accusatoribus multa crimina obiciuntur, et unum ex ipsis de quo prius egerit probare non valuerit, ad cetera iam non admittantur. 7b. Testes autem ad testimonium non admittendos, qui nec ad accusationem admitti praecepti sunt, vel etiam quos ipse accusator de sua domo . 7c. Ad testimonium autem intra annos xiv aetatis suae non admittantur.

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8a. Item placuit ut si quando episcopus dicit aliquem sibi soli crimen fuisse confessum, sed ille neget se confessum fuisse, non putet ad iniuriam suam episcopus pertinere quod illi soli non creditur, etsi scrupulo propriae conscientiae se dicit neganti nolle communicare. 8b. Quamdiu excommunicato non communicaverit, nec ipsi ab aliis episcopis communicetur, ut magis caveat episcopus ne dicat in quemquam quod aliis documentis convincere non potest. 9a. Item placuit ut eo modo non vendant rem ecclesiae presbyteri ubi sunt constituti, nescentibus epsicopis suis. 9b. Quomodo episcopo non licet vendere praedia ecclesiae, ignorante concilio vel primatibus suis. 10. Item placuit ut agri vel quaecumque praedia ecclesiae in diocesi constituta fuerint derelicta, non ea matrici ecclesiae applicari usurpet episcopus. Haec statua singuli propria subscriptione firmarunt: Aurelius, Simplicius, Augustinus, et ceteri. Works Cited I. Primary Sources

Collatio Carthaginensis anni 411, edited by Clemens Weidmann. CSEL 104. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018. Concilia Africae a. 345–525, edited by Charles Munier. CCL 149. Turnhout: Brepols, 1974. Les constitutions apostoliques. Vol.  1, edited by Marcel Metzger. Sources chrétiennes 320. Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1985. Dionysius Exiguus. Die Canonessammlung des Dionysius Exiguus in der ersten Redaktion, edited by Adolf Strewe. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1931. —. Dionisii Exigui praefationes latinae genuinae in variis suis translationibus ex graeco. In Scriptores ‘Illyrici’ minores, edited by Fr. Glorie. CCL 85. Turnholt: Brepols, 1972. Ecclesiae occidentalis monumenta iuris antiquissima, edited by C.  H.  Turner. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899–1930. Possidius of Calama. Vita Augustini. In Vita di Cipriano, Vita di Ambrogio, Vita di Agostino, translated and edited by A. A. R. Bastiaensen, 127–241. Milan: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 1975.

II. Secondary Sources

Adamiak, Stanisław. “When Did Donatism End?” In Dupont, Gaumer, and Lamberigts, Uniquely African Controversy, 211–36.

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Ballerini, Pietro, and Girolamo Ballerini. “Balleriniorum disquisitiones de antiquis collectionibus et collectoribus canonum.” In Sancti Leonis Magni Romani Pontificis opera omnia, edited by Jean-Paul Migne, 11–354. PL 56. Paris: Garnier, 1846. Boudinhon, A. “Note sur le concile d’Hippone de 427.” Revue d’histoire et de littérature religieuses 10 (1905): 267–74. Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. New ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. —. Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. Buenacasa Pérez, Carles. “La creacion del patrimonio eclesiástico de las iglesias norteafricanas en época romana (siglos II–V): Renovación de la visión tradicional.” In Sacralidad y arqueología: homenaje al Prof. Thilo Ulbert al cumplir 65 años, edited by J. M. Blázquez Martínez and A. González Blanco, 493–509. Murcia: Universidad de Murcia, Area de Historia Antigua, 2004. —. “The Ecclesiastical Patrimony of the Donatist Church.” In Dupont, Gaumer, and Lamberigts, Uniquely African Controversy, 101–25. Conant, Jonathan  P. “Donatism in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries.” In Miles, Donatist Schism, 345–61. Cross, F. L. “History and Fiction in the African Canons.” JThS 12 (1961): 227–47. Daley, Brian E. “Primacy and Collegiality in the Fourth Century: A Note on Apostolic Canon 34.” The Jurist: Studies in Church Law and Ministry 68, no. 1 (2008): 5–21. Dossey, Leslie. Peasant and Empire in Christian North Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Dupont, Anthony, Matthew Alan Gaumer, and Mathijs Lamberigts, eds. The Uniquely African Controversy: Studies on Donatist Christianity. Late Antique History and Religion 9. Leuven: Peeters, 2015. Field, Lester L., Jr. On the Communion of Damasus and Meletius: Fourth-Century Synodal Formulae in the Codex Veronensis LX. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2004. Gaudemet, Jean. L’Église dans l’Empire romain. Paris: Sirey, 1958. —. Les Sources du droit de l’Église en Occident du IIe au VIIe siècle. Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1985. Hermanowicz, Erika  T. “African Ecclesiastical Wealth.” In Colorful Lives and Living in Roman North Africa: Essays in Memory of Maureen A. Tilley, edited by Zachary Smith and Elizabeth Clark. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming. Hess, Hamilton. The Early Development of Canon Law and the Council of Serdica. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

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Hoover, Jesse A. The Donatist Church in an Apocalyptic Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Jonge, Henk Jan de. “J. J. Scaliger’s De LXXXV canonibus Apostolorum Diatribe.” Lias 2 (1975): 115–24. Kéry, Lotte. Canonical Collections of the Early Middle Ages (ca. 400–1140): A Bibliographical Guide to the Manuscripts and Literature. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1999. Lamirande, Émilien. “L’offre conciliatrice des Catholiques aux Donatistes relativement à l’épiscopat.” Église et théologie 2 (1971): 285–308. Lancel, Serge. “Le sort des évêques et des communautés donatistes après la Conférence de Carthage en 411.” In Internationales Symposion über den Stand der Augustinus-Forschung, edited by Cornelius Mayer and Karl Heinz Chelius, 149–67. Würzburg: Augustinus-Verlag, 1989. Lenski, Noel. “Imperial Legislation and the Donatist Controversy: From Constantine to Honorius.” In Miles, Donatist Schism, 166–219. Leyser, Conrad. “Law, Memory, and Priestly Office in Rome, c. 500.” Early Medieval Europe 27 (2019): 61–84. Maassen, Friedrich. Geschichte der Quellen und der Literatur des canonischen Rechts im Abendlande bis zum Ausgange des Mittelalters. Gratz: Leuschner & Lubensky, 1870. Reprint, Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1956. Mandouze, André. Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire 1: Afrique (303–533). Paris: Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1982. Markus, R. A. “Donatism: The Last Phase.” Studies in Church History 1 (1964): 118–26. McDonnell, Kilian. “Canon and Koinonia/communio: The Formation of the Canon as an Ecclesiological Process.” Gregorianum 79, no. 1 (1998): 29–54. McLynn, Neil B. “The Conference of Carthage Reconsidered.” In Miles, Donatist Schism, 220–48. Merdinger, Jane E. Rome and the African Church in the Time of Augustine. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. Meyer, Elizabeth A. Legitimacy and Law in the Roman World: Tabulae in Roman Belief and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Miles, Richard, ed. The Donatist Schism: Controversy and Contexts. Translated Texts for Historians: Contexts 2. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016. Modéran, Yves. “L’établissement territorial des Vandals en Afrique.” Antiquité Tardive 10 (2002): 87–122. Mordek, Hubert. “Karthago oder Röm? Zu den Anfängen der kirchlichen Rechtsquellen im Abendland.” In Studia in honorem eminentissimi cardinalis Alphonsi M. Stickler, edited by Rosalio José Castillo Lara, 359–74. Studia et textus historiae juris canonici 7. Rome: LAS, 1992.

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Munier, Charles. “La tradition littéraire des dossiers africains.” Revue de droit canonique 29 (1979): 41–52. —. “La tradition manuscrite de l’Abrégé d’Hippone et le canon des Ecritures des églises africaines.” Sacris erudiri 21 (1977–1978): 43–55. —. “Vers une édition nouvelle des conciles africaines (345–525).” RÉAug 18 (1972): 249–59. Perler, Othmar. Les voyages de saint Augustin. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1969. Pottier, Bruno. “Les donatistes, l’arianisme et le royaume vandale.” In Littérature, politique et religion en Afrique vandale, edited by Étienne Wolff, 109–26. Collection des études augustiniennes: Série antiquité 200. Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2015. Rouse, Richard, and Charles McNelis. “North African Literary Activity: A Cyprian Fragment, the Stichometric Lists and a Donatist Compendium.” Revue d’histoire des textes 30 (2001): 189–238. Schwartz, Eduard. “Über die Sammlung des Cod. Veronensis LX.” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche 35 (1936): 1–23. Shaw, Brent D. “Augustine and Men of Imperial Power.” Journal of Late Antiquity 8, no. 1 (Spring 2015): 32–61. —. Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Spagnolo, Antonio, and C.  H.  Turner. “A Fragment of an Unknown Latin Version of the Apostolic Constitutions (Book VIII–End: Lagarde 274. 22–281.9).” JThS 13, no. 52 (July 1912): 492–510. —. “Latin Lists of the Canonical Books. IV. An Early Version of the Eighty-Fifth Apostolic Canon. From MS Veron. LI foll. 155b, 156a.” JThS 13, no. 52 (July 1912): 511–4. Steimer, Bruno. Vertex traditionis: Die Gattung der altchristlichen Kirchenordnungen. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft  63. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1992. Tefler, W. “The Codex Verona LX (58).” Harvard Theological Review 36, no. 3 (July 1943): 169–246. Teitler, Hans  C. Notarii and Exceptores: An Inquiry into Role and Significance of Shorthand Writers in the Imperial and Ecclesiastical Bureaucracy of the Roman Empire ( from the Early Principate to c. 450 A.D.). Dutch Monographs on Ancient History and Archaeology 1. Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1985. Tengström, Emin. Donatisten und Katholiken: Soziale, wirtschaftliche und politische Aspekte einer nordafrikanishen Kirchenspaltung. Studia graeca et latina gothoburgensia 18. Gothenburg: Elanders Boktryckeri Aktiebolag, 1964. Tilley, Maureen. The Bible in Christian North Africa: The Donatist World. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997.

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Rewilding the Late Augustine in Fifth-Century Gaul: Gennadius of Marseilles’s De uiris illustribus Christopher M. Blunda I.

Introduction

The last years of Augustine’s life and the decades that followed his death on August 28, 430 witnessed opposition from monastic communities in southern Gaul, particularly those located in the port city of Marseilles and at Lérins, to the emphasis placed on original sin, the absolute gratuity of grace, and predestination in his late writings. Influenced by the theological tradition of the east and thus assuming a positive anthropology, a synergistic relationship between divine grace and the human will, and God’s universal salvific will, members of these monastic establishments (henceforth Massilians) contended that the views expressed in Augustine’s late writings—most notably De gratia et libero arbitrio, De correptione et gratia, and the double treatise De dono perseuerantiae and De praedestinatione sanctorum—departed from the established teachings of the church and undermined the theological basis for ascetic practice.1 In addition to Augustine’s own writings and those of two lay partisans, Prosper of Aquitaine and a certain Hilary, texts written by several Massilian critics document what has traditionally, if incorrectly, been labelled the Semipelagian Controversy.2 To determine Augustine’s status as a theological authority in southern Gaul on the basis of these texts has proven difficult because the authors of these works were reluctant to name the sources 1 Donato Ogliari, Gratia et Certamen. The Relationship Between Grace and Free Will in the Discussion of Augustine with the So-called Semipelagians, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 169 (Leuven: Peeters, 2003) is the best treatment of the subject. See also, Roland Teske, “1 Timothy 2:4 and the Beginnings of Massalian Controversy,” in Grace for Grace: The Debates After Augustine and Pelagius, ed. Alexander Y. Hwang, Brian J. Matz, and Augustine Casiday (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), 14–34. 2 Sixteenth century coinages, “Semipelagianism” and “Semipelagian” have obscured rather than elucidated the historical and theological circumstances of the fifth and sixth centuries: Irena Backus and Aza Goudriaan, “‘Semipelagianism’: The Origins of the Term and its Passage into the History of Heresy,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 65.1 (2014): 25–46. Alexander  Y.  Hwang, Intrepid Lover of Perfect Grace: The Life and Thought of Prosper of Aquitaine (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009), 2–5 refers instead to the Augustinian Controversy. Throughout this chapter, I follow Ogliari, Gratia et Certamen, 7–9 in using “Massilian” to describe the theological position of the monks in southern Gaul.

© Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2021 | doi:10.30965/9783657704767_010

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upon which they drew and the figures whose ideas they deplored.3 Eucherius of Lyon, for example, benefitted from close, albeit mostly silent, engagement with Augustine’s writings in the Formulae spiritalis intellegentiae.4 Likewise, when Cassian explained his own view of the relationship between grace and the human will in Conlatio XIII, he did so absent any mention of Augustine. Even more ambiguous is the case of Vincent of Lérins, whose Commonitorium, a treatise devoted to the preservation of orthodoxy through the maintenance of tradition, and his now lost Obiectiones Vincentiae (evidenced by Prosper’s response) opposed Augustine’s emphasis on the absolute gratuity of grace and predestination while his Excerpta, a florilegium of passages selected from Augustine’s works—including the late De dono perseuerantiae—characterized the Bishop of Hippo’s Trinitarian and Christological views as authoritative doctrinal statements.5 Not taken in isolation, these attempts to circumscribe Augustine’s status as a theological authority through silence and textual selection were calculated responses to Augustine’s own efforts—most notably in Retractationes—and those of his partisans, especially Prosper, to define how Augustine’s texts should be read and what authority they should be accorded. Nearly 50 years after Augustine had died, however, Gennadius of Marseilles approached the vexed question of Augustine’s status as a theological authority more directly in De uiris illustribus, a reference catalog of short, biobibliographical notices devoted to Christian authors.6 3 The first phase of Augustinian reception in southern Gaul: Ogliari, Gratia et Certamen, 93–153 and Mark Vessey, “Opus Imperfectum: Augustine and His Readers, 426–435 A.D.,” Vigiliae Christianae 52.3 (1998): 264–85 at 272–85. Additionally, Alexander Y. Hwang, “Reception of Augustine in Hadrumetum and Southern Gaul,” in Augustine in Context, ed. Tarmo Toom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 238–45 at 240–5 and David Lambert, “The Making of Authority: Patterns of Augustine’s Reception, 430–c. 700,” in The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine, ed. Karla Pollman, Willemien Otten et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 15–23 at 15–7. A central facet of Augustine’s early reception is the textualization of Latin Christianity and the role that Augustine played in that process: James  J. O’Donnell, “The Authority of Augustine,” Augustinian Studies 22 (1991): 7–35 and Mark Vessey, “Augustine among the Writers of the Church,” in A Companion to Augustine, ed. Mark Vessey (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 240–54. 4 Martine Dulaey, “Augustin en Provence dans les premières décennies du Ve s.: le témoignage des Formulae d’Eucher,” Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum 90 (2004): 121–46. 5 Augustine Casiday, “Vincent of Lérins’s Commonitorium, Objectiones, and Excerpta: Responding to Augustine’s Legacy in Fifth-Century Gaul,” in Grace for Grace: The Debates After Augustine and Pelagius, ed. Alexander Y. Hwang, Brian J. Matz, and Augustine Casiday (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), 131–154. 6 Alfred Feder, “Die Entstehung und Veröffentlichung des gennadianischen Schrift­ stellerkatalogs,” Scholastik 8 (1933): 217–32 contends that the catalog was composed in stages between 467 and 476 and then published 477/8. De uiris illustribus as a reference text: Colin Whiting, “Jerome’s De viris illustribus and New Genres of Christian Disputation in Late

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A monk, a presbyter, and one of the most theologically learned figures of his day, Gennadius was a fitting continuator of the work that Jerome had begun nearly eight decades earlier in 392/3. Knowledge of his life comes primarily from the laconic prose of De uiris illustribus. Notices devoted to Cassian (62), Eucherius (64), Vincent (65), and Hilary of Arles (70), reveal the high esteem in which he held his Massilian predecessors, especially Cassian whose legacy he sought to associate with Marseilles.7 Notice 68 shows him to have been personally acquainted with Salvian, a fellow Massilian priest and the teacher of bishops (magister episcoporum). Titles of lost works—Aduersum omnes haereses (8 books), Aduersum Nestorium (5 books), Aduersus Eutychen (10 books), Aduersus Pelagium (3 books), De mille annis, De Apocalypsi beati Iohannis, and De fide mea—recorded in notice 101 attest to his expansive theological knowledge.8 References to Latin translations of Evagrius Ponticus’s ascetic works and Timothy Aelurus’s libellus to the Emperor Leo, the latter naturally prefaced with a warning because its author was a heretic (cauendum praetitulaui), undertaken because he had been “commanded” (iussus) and “asked by the brothers” (rogatus a fratribus) in notices 11 and 73, respectively, shed light on the eastern orientation of his asceticism.9 Considered a piece of evidence in its own right, De uiris illustribus was a work of massive erudition that contained notices devoted to authors of the previous eight decades from across the Roman Empire.10 The search for isolated biographical and bibliographical details Antiquity,” in Shifting Genres in Late Antiquity, ed. Geoffrey Greatrex and Hugh Elton with the assistance of Lucas McMahon (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2015), 41–51 at 49–50. 7 Richard Goodrich, Contextualizing Cassian: Aristocrats, Asceticism, and Reformation in Fifth-Century Gaul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 226–30. 8 Gennadius, De uiris illustribus 101, ed. Ernst Cushing Richardson, TU 14.1a (Leipzig: J.  C.  Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1896): “Ego Gennadius, Massiliae presbyter, scripsi Adversum omnes haereses libros octo, et Adversum Nestorium libros quinque, et Adversus Eutychen libros decem, et Adversus Pelagium libros tres, et tractatus De mille annis, De Apocalypsi beati Iohannis et hoc opus, et epistolam De fide mea missam ad beatum Gelasium, episcopum urbis Romae.” Aduersum omnes haereses probably refers to the catalogus haereticorum mentioned in notices 36 and 54. It is now agreed that Gennadius was the author of Liber ecclesiasticorum dogmatum and probably of Statuta ecclesiae antiqua. Although written using the first person (following the example of Jerome’s autobiographical notice 135), notice 101 appears to have been appended to the text of De uiris illustribus shortly after it began to circulate and is thus not, strictly speaking, authentic: Alfred Feder, “Zusätze des gennadianischen Schriftstellerkatalogs,” Scholastik 8 (1933): 380–99 at 381–3. 9 Columba Stewart, “Evagrius beyond Byzantium: The Latin and Syriac Traditions,” in Evagrius and His Legacy, ed. Joel Kalvesmaki and Robin Jane Darling (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016), 206–35 at 210–2. See also Pierre Courcelle, Late Latin Writers and their Greek Sources, trans. Harry Wedeck (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969), 236–8. 10 Geographical elements: Mark Vessey, “Peregrinus against the Heretics: Classicism, Provinciality and the Place of the Alien Writer in Late Roman Gaul,” Studia Ephemeridis

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(sometimes unpreserved elsewhere) that occasions most engagement with De uiris illustribus has relegated Gennadius’s work to the periphery of scholarship where its actual significance has remained mostly unrecognized. Ostensibly dispassionate, De uiris illustribus was an inherently tendentious text: through its portrayal of individual authors—Augustine among them—Gennadius endeavored to shape how they would be perceived as theological authorities by contemporary and future readers. This chapter uses Gennadius’s portrayal of Augustine in De uiris illustribus to investigate his status as a theological authority in southern Gaul.11 Its analysis builds upon the insights of Irene SanPietro, whose recent article observed how Jerome employed biographical elements in De uiris illustribus to situate authors within social networks and to form criteria (intellectual and actual lineage, genius, martyrdom, officeholding, independent attestation or prior authoritative reception, the existence of published works, and the utility of those works for preaching) that alone or in combination produce authority.12 The five notices (37, 39, 40, 46, and 60) in which Augustine is mentioned by name are examined in order and in relation to one another.13 Through close readings of these notices it demonstrates Gennadius’s allusive engagement with his sources, particularly Vincent of Lérins’s Commonitorium and Augustine’s Retractationes, which the aged bishop of Hippo used to reassess the books that he had written over the course of a long and productive career

Augustinianum 46 (1994): 529–65 at 533–43. 11 Not the first of its kind, this study has benefitted immensely from Alfred Feder, “Der Semipelagianismus im Schriftstellerkatalog des Gennadius von Marseille,” Scholastik 2 (1927): 481–514; Salvatore Pricoco, Storia letteraria e storia ecclesiastica dal De viris inlustribus di Girolamo a Gennadio, Quaderni del Siculorum Gymnasium 6 (Catania: Universita di Catania, 1979); and Ralph Mathisen, “For Specialists Only: The Reception of Augustine and his Teachings in Fifth-Century Gaul,” in Presbyter Factus Sum, ed. Joseph T. Lienhard, Earl C. Muller, and Roland J. Teske (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 29–41 even if some of its conclusions differ. 12 Irene SanPietro, “The Making of a Christian Intellectual Tradition in Jerome’s De viris illustribus,” Memoirs of the American Academy at Rome 62 (2017): 231–59. 13 The order in which Gennadius arranged the notices of De uiris illustribus played an important role in presenting a Massilian view of authority. For example, the lengthy notice devoted Evagrius Ponticus (11) was placed immediately after those devoted to Pachomius (7), Theodorus (8), Oresiesis (9), and Macarius (10) to locate him not only within the ascetic tradition of the Egyptian Desert but at its apex. Additionally, Vessey, “Peregrinus against the Heretics,” 541 notes “In terms of strict chronology, Cassian’s entry in the De uiris illustribus comes too late. It is hard to resist the suspicion that Gennadius delayed it by design, in order to emphasize the ascendancy of Gallic monastic theology in the second and third quarters of the fifth century.”

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in an effort “to impose criteria for the subsequent reception of his oeuvre.”14 The result is a striking image of Augustine that was intended to counteract his posthumous ascendance as a doctrinal authority. II.

Notice 37: Simplicianus

Gennadius introduced Augustine to readers of De uiris illustribus in notice 37, which he devoted to Simplicianus.15 Known chiefly for his actions as a priest—namely securing the conversion of the Neoplatonic philosopher Marius Victorinus c. 355, participating in Ambrose of Milan’s baptism in 374, and setting Augustine on the path that led to his conversion in August of 386— Simplicianus was nevertheless identified in notice 37 as a bishop, the office he occupied from 397 until his death c. 400.16 During those years Augustine replied to Simplicianus’s scriptural queries regarding Romans  9:10–29 in De diuersis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum and first articulated his most significant theological insight: God’s election is made without any consideration of human merits and is thus entirely gratuitous.17 Augustine himself acknowledged this fact nearly thirty years later in Retractationes 2.1 when he recalled 14

Vessey, “Opus Imperfectum,” 266. Also, Johannes Brachtendorf, “Augustine’s Reception of Himself,” in Augustine in Context, ed. Tarmo Toom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 221–9. I owe my method of reading De uiris illustribus to Frederick Ahl, “The Art of Safe Criticism in Greece and Rome,” The American Journal of Philology 105.2 (1984): 174–208. 15 Gennadius, De uiris illustribus 37: “Simplicianus episcopus multis epistulis hortatus est Augustinum adhuc presbyterum, agitare ingenium et expositioni Scripturarum vacare, ut etiam novus quidam Ambrosius, Origenis ἐργοδιώκτης videretur. Unde et multas ad eius personam Scripturarum quaestiones absolvit. Est eius epistula Propositionum, in qua interrogando quasi disciturus docet doctorem.” I follow Carl Albrecht Bernoulli (ed.), Hieronymus und Gennadius: De viris inlustribus (Freiburg im Breisgau: Akademische Buchhandlung von J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1895), 74 in reading quidam instead of quondam. 16 conf. 8.2.3–6.5. Simplicianus’s participation in Ambrose of Milan’s baptism is unclear. Neil McLynn, Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 54 notes that Augustine’s phrase patrem in accipienda gratia at 8.2.3 is “an enigmatic expression which seems nevertheless to refer to baptism preparation (if not baptism itself).” 17 According to retr. 2.1.1, Simpl. was the first work that Augustine wrote as a bishop. It was probably completed late in 397 or early in 398; the correspondence that led to its composition would therefore have taken place while Augustine was still a priest. Book 1 addresses Romans 7:7–25 and 9:10–29; while book 2 discusses 1 Samuel 10:10; 16:14; 15:11; 28:7–19; 2 Samuel 7:18; 1 Kings 17:20 and 22:19–23. Augustine had previously examined the passages from Romans 9 in exp. prop. Rm. 29–38 and 52–4, but according to Simpl. pref. 1, Simplicianus had asked him to revisit them.

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that “in the explanation of that point I labored on behalf of the free choice of the human will, but the grace of God conquered.”18 He underscored the significance of De diuersis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum as a turning point again c. 429 in De praedestinatione sanctorum 4.8 and De dono perseuerantiae 20.52 and 21.55 when answering critics in southern Gaul who sought to demonstrate inconsistency in his thought by comparing his late works to those he had written earlier.19 It is therefore unsurprising that Gennadius used notice 37 to emphasize the composition of De diuersis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum rather than Simplicianus’s own writings, which were few and unremarkable. Gennadius’s description of the impetus behind the production of this work is curious. Added to it was a gloss with sweeping implications for the significance of De diuersis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum and Augustine’s status as a theological authority in southern Gaul. According to Gennadius, Simplicianus the bishop exhorted Augustine (still a priest) with many letters to excite his talents and to devote himself to the exposition of the scriptures, such that he appeared to be a new Ambrose, the taskmaster of Origen (nouus quidam Ambrosius, Origenis ἐργοδιώκτης). Wherefore Augustine resolved many contentious points of the scriptures for him. Unattested elsewhere, Gennadius’s comparison of Simplicianus to Ambrose of Alexandria, the patron and taskmaster of Origen, is less significant for what it says about Simplicianus than for what it suggests about Augustine, who is implicitly likened to Origen.20 In so doing, Gennadius sought to cast suspicion on Augustine’s central insight 18 retr. 2.1: “in cuius quaestionis solutione laboratum est quidem pro libero arbitrio uoluntatis humanae, sed uicit dei gratia.” 19 According to the letter that Hilary had sent to Augustine (ep.  226.3), these texts were ep. 102, exp. prop. Rm. 60 and 62, and lib. arb. 3.23.66–8. 20 Bruno Czapla, Gennadius als Litterarhistoriker. Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung der Schrift des Gennadius von Marseille “De viris illustribus,” Kirchengeschichtliche Studien 4.1 (Münster: Verlag von Heinrich Schöningh, 1898), 82 notes the textual parallel with Jerome, De uiris illustribus 61. Ambrose himself was the subject of notice 56, in which Jerome mentioned his letters. The comparison of Simplicianus to Ambrose of Alexandria is Gennadius’s invention. To justify the appellation ἐργοδιώκτης, Gennadius inflated the number of Simplicianus’s letters (multis epistulis). The relationship between Simplicianus and Augustine: James  J. O’Donnell, Augustine: Confessions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 3. 7 which notes: “We must not overstate the closeness of the tie, however: div. qu. Simp. and ep. 37 linked with it are the only known contacts with Milan after Augustine left; it was from Paulinus of Nola, for example, that Augustine sought a copy of Ambrose’s de philosophia (ep. 31.8); the arrival of Paulinus of Milan in Hippo years later was a windfall.” Consentius compared Augustine to Origen in ep. 12*.11–12. Norbert Brox, “Consentius über Origenes,” Vigiliae Christianae 36.2 (1982): 141–4 and Carol Quillen, “Consentius as a Reader of Augustine’s Confessions,” Revue des Études Augustiniennes 37 (1991): 87–109 at 100–1.

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about the absolute gratuity of grace—so crucial to Augustine’s late theology as evidenced by De correptione et gratia, De dono perseuerantiae, and De praedestinatione sanctorum—and thus to diminish his status as a theological authority. One of the most brilliant, prolific, and influential theologians of the early church, Origen was a controversial figure: his alleged self-castration was greeted with ambivalence and abuse while his theology fell under suspicion in the decades following his death such that Pamphilus and Eusebius composed an Apology for him.21 In 400, Origen and his writings were condemned, first by Theophilus of Alexandria and then by Anastasius of Rome. While it lasted, the First Origenist Controversy embroiled a number of prominent figures in a public dispute that was far reaching and often rancorous.22 Notwithstanding these condemnations and the divisions wrought by the dispute, Origen’s writings continued to exert a powerful influence upon Christian theology in both the east and the west, but they did so from the shadows: those who read Origen’s writings—including prominent Massilians whose asceticism was rooted in the Christian Platonism of Alexandria—did so cautiously to safeguard their faith and discretely to avoid falling under suspicion.23 Such ambivalence is evident, for example, in Vincent of Lérins’s Commonitorium, which Gennadius knew as Peregrini adversum hereticos.24 Completed c. 434, this treatise was concerned with demonstrating catholicity, which Vincent famously defined as what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.25 As part of that discussion, Vincent addressed the question of respected teachers who led others astray due to their doctrinal errors. Likened to the false prophets of Deuteronomy  13, these teachers “enjoyed 21 Daniel F. Caner, “The Practice and Prohibition of Self-Castration in Early Christianity,” Vigiliae Christianae 51.4 (1997): 396–415, esp. 401. The Apology of Pamphilus and Eusebius: Thomas  P.  Scheck, St. Pamphilus: Apology for Origen with the Letter of Rufinus on the Falsification of the Books of Origen, The Fathers of the Church  120 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 5–8. 22 Elizabeth Clark, The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). 23 Alexandrian roots of Massilianism: Ogliari, Gratia et Certamen, 265–72. 24 Gennadius, De uiris illustribus 65: “Vincentius, natione Gallus, apud monasterium Lerinensis insulae presbyter, vir in Scripturis Sanctis doctus et notitia ecclesiasticorum dogmatum sufficienter instructus, conposuit ad evitanda haereticorum collegia, nitido satis et aperto sermone, validissimam disputationem, quam, absconso nomine suo, adtitulavit Peregrini adversum haereticos. Cuius operis quia secundi libri maximam in schedulis partem a quibusdam furatam perdidit, recapitulato eius paucis sermonibus sensu primo conpegit et in uno edidit.” 25 Vincent of Lérins, Commonitorium 2, ed. R.S. Moxon, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915).

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reputations for sound faith for a considerable time but in the end either fell away into existing sects or established a heresy of their own” (cum aliquamdiu sanae fidei forent habiti, ad extremum tamen aut in alienam decidissent sectam aut ipsi suam haeresim condidissent), due to which they were trials for the church. Of the teachers mentioned, Origen had been the greatest trial because he was held in such high esteem on account of his virtues and scholarship such that a person judged that faith should be placed in all of his assertions automatically (ut inter initia habendam cunctis adsertionibus eius fidem quiuis ille facile iudicaret).26 Vincent described these virtues at great length. Origen possessed great industry, great modesty, patience, and endurance (magna illi industria, magna pudicitia patientia tolerantia); his father had been a martyr; the magnificence of his teaching and all of his erudition was so great that there were few areas of sacred learning and perhaps none of human philosophy that he did not comprehend deeply (tanta doctrinae ac totius eruditionis magnificentia, ut pauca forent diuinae, paene fortasse nulla humanae philosophiae, quae non penitus adsequeretur); he wrote so much that it did not appear possible for everything he had written to be read through or even found (ut mihi sua omnia non solum non perlegi sed ne inueniri quidem posse uideantur). Together these virtues contributed not only to the glory of religion but also to the magnitude of the church’s trial (quae tamen omnia non solum ad religionis gloriam sed etiam ad temptationis magnitudinem pertinebant). Vincent then related how Origen had fallen into error: he insolently abused God’s grace (gratia Dei insolentius abutitur), indulged his own intellect excessively and trusted in himself sufficiently (ingenio suo nimium indulget sibique satis credit), denigrated the ancient simplicity of the Christian religion (parui pendit antiquam christianae religionis simplicitatem), presumed that he knew more than all others (se plus cunctis sapere praesumit), and despising ecclesiastical traditions and the teachings of his predecessors by interpreting certain passages of the scriptures in a novel way (ecclesiasticas traditiones et ueterum magisteria contemnens quaedam scripturarum capitula nouo more interpretatur).27 Vincent softened these criticisms considerably, however, and thereby signaled his own cautious engagement with Origen’s writings when he demonstrated his willingness to attribute their doctrinal errors to interpolators rather than to Origen himself. Still, the ambiguous position that Origen occupied within the church remained because the authority attached to writings

26 27

Vincent of Lérins, Commonitorium 17. Vincent of Lérins, Commonitorium 17.

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circulating under his name continued to persuade individuals to embrace error (ad errorem tamen persuadendum Origenis auctoritas ualere uideatur).28 Gennadius’s ambivalence toward Origen is evident at two points in De uiris illustribus. Placed before the notice devoted to Simplicianus, these passages conditioned how readers would interpret the comparison of Augustine and Origen. The first appears in the notice devoted to Sulpicius Severus (19). When describing the content of the Dialogi, Gennadius purposefully misreported what the bishops assembled in Alexandria had decided about Origen and his writings. According to Sulpicius Severus, the gathered bishops struggled to answer the arguments of Origen’s monastic defenders—namely that objectionable passages had been inserted into Origen’s writings by heretics and could thus be identified as such by the faith of readers—but they nevertheless insisted that Origen and all of his writings (including those deemed above reproach) be condemned; for the bishops, the danger posed by Origen’s writings to the unwise exceeded their potential advantage to the wise.29 Gennadius altered the decision of the assembled bishops—Origen’s writings were to be read, albeit cautiously, by the wise for their virtues but rejected by the less intelligent (minus capacibus) for their demerits—and attributed the more moderate outcome to Sulpicius Severus.30 The second passage is in the notice devoted to John, the Bishop of Jerusalem (31). According to Gennadius, John defended his works against critics by demonstrating that he had followed Origen’s genius, not his faith (ostendit se Origenis ingenium, non fidem secutum).31 Attributing this ambivalent perspective first to a synod of bishops and then to the Bishop of Jerusalem gave the impression that this view of Origen and his writings enjoyed a wide consensus. Considered in light of 28 Vincent, Commonitorium 17. This view was most notably asserted by Rufinus of Aquileia: Clark, The Origenist Controversy, 159–93. 29 Sulpicius Severus, Dialogorum libri II, 1.6.1–3, ed. C. Halm, CSEL 1. 30 Gennadius, De uiris illustribus, 19: “… et Conlationem Postumiani et Galli se mediante et iudice de conversatione monachorum Orientalium et ipsius Martini habitam in dialogi speciem duabus incisionibus conprehendit. In quarum priore refert suo tempore apud Alexandriam synodo episcoporum decretum, Origenem et cautius a sapientibus pro bonis legendum et a minus capacibus pro malis repudiandum.” Readers familiar with the Dialogi might have noticed that Gennadius had misreported events. However, since Gallus (Sulpicius’s speaker) vacillated in his opinion of Origen and expressed disapproval of the assembled bishops, it is possible that readers would have confused his views of the matter with its outcome. For discussion, see Richard Goodrich, “Satan and the Bishops: Origen, Apokatastsis and Ecclesiastical Politics in Sulpicius Severus’ Dialogi,” Adamantius  19 (2013): 84–96. 31 Gennadius, De uiris illustribus, 31: “Iohannes, Hierosolymorum episcopus, scripsit Adversum obtrectatores studii sui librum, in quo ostendit se Origenis ingenium, non fidem secutum.”

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Vincent of Lérins’s Commonitorium and notices 19 and 31, the implicit comparison of Augustine and Origen carries additional meaning: Augustine was an ambiguous figure whose works were to be read cautiously by the wise for the good they contain but avoided by the less intelligent for the dangers they pose. The comparison to Origen with the connotation just outlined forces a reevaluation of De diuersis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum. For Augustine, De diuersis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum marked the critical breakthrough from which his anti-Pelagian theology developed. In Retractationes, De praedestinatione sanctorum and De dono perseuerantiae, Augustine used De diuersis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum to provide evidence of the long-term continuity of his view about the absolute gratuity of grace. Acknowledging the early date of De diuersis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum and the veracity of Augustine’s argument for long-term continuity of thought, Gennadius nevertheless saw the matter differently: of far greater consequence than the continuity of Augustine’s thought was the extent to which it conformed to the established traditions of the church. For Gennadius, De diuersis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum evidenced Augustine’s first obviously novel interpretation of scripture and thus marked a critical point of rupture rather than continuity. III.

Notice 39: Augustine

With the comparison in notice 37, Gennadius sought to influence how readers would respond when they encountered Augustine at subsequent points in De uiris illustribus. Above all, this was true in notice 39, which was meant to communicate “the basic image of what ‘Augustine’ meant within theology.”32 Remarkable for its relative brevity and number of textual variants, notice 39 presents “an image radically different from one formed from studying the recurring themes in Augustine’s writings or the recurring problems in the history of doctrine on which later writers turned to Augustine as a source.”33 It began by identifying Augustine as an African and the Bishop of Hippo Regius (Augustinus Afer, Hipporegiensis oppidi episcopus) who was renowned throughout the world for his theological and secular learning (eruditione diuina et humana orbi clarus), sound in his faith ( fide integer), and pure in his life (uita 32 Thomas O’Loughlin, “Gennadius,” in The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine, ed. Karla Pollman, Willemien Otten et  al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 2. 1030–2 at 1031. 33 O’Loughlin, “Gennadius,” 1031. Textual variants: Alfred Feder, “Die Zusätze im Augustinuskapitel des gennadianischen Schriftstellerkatalogs,” Scholastik 3 (1928): 238–43.

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purus).34 A positive assessment was expedient: to challenge Augustine’s status as a theological authority directly risked exaggerating the considerable differences between the Massilians and Augustine about anthropology, grace, and predestination so as to warrant accusations of Pelagianism.35 It was also consistent with the depiction of Origen in Vincent of Lérins’s Commonitorium, which emphasized his virtuous life, immense learning, and perceived orthodoxy. Gennadius strengthened this connection when he observed that Augustine had written so many things that they could not all be found (scripsit quanta nec inueniri possunt). Seemingly laudatory, the emphasis on the sheer number of writings and the inability for them to be found nevertheless carried a negative connotation due to its association with Origen. Two rhetorical questions enhance the potential negative effect. First, who can boast that he possesses all that Augustine had written? (quis enim glorietur omnia se illius habere); and second, who can read with as much assiduity as that with which he wrote? (quis tanto studio legat, quanto ille scripsit). These statements can, of course, be read entirely positively. Thus, sometime between 432 and 439, Possidius—perhaps influenced by Augustine’s statement in De ciuitate Dei 6.2 about Marcus Terrentius Varro, the great polymath of the late Republic—had posed the second question about Augustine in Vita Augustini 18.6.36 While still a supporter of Origen, Jerome had posed the same question when comparing the scholarly output of the Alexandrian theologian to that of the aforementioned Marcus Terrentius Varro in ep. 33 to Paula.37 But here, referring to Augustine, Gennadius not only alluded yet again to Origen but in so doing insinuated that the volume of Augustine’s writings combined with 34 Gennadius, De uiris illustribus 39: “Augustinus Afer, Hipporegiensis oppidi episcopus, vir eruditione divina et humana orbi clarus, fide integer, vita purus, scripsit quanta nec inveniri possunt. Quis enim glorietur omnia se illius habere, aut quis tanto studio legat, quanto ille scripsit? Edidit etiam senex quos iuvenis coeperat De Trinitate libros quindecim, in quibus, ut Scriptura ait, introductus in cubiculum regis et decoratus veste multifaria sapientiae Dei, ‘exhibuit ecclesiam non habentem maculam aut rugam aut aliquid eiusmodi.’ De incarnatione quoque Domini idoneam edidit pietatem, De resurrectione etiam mortuorum simili cucurrit sinceritate, licet minus capacibus dubitationem de abortivis iecerit.” 35 In his letter to Augustine (ep. 225.7), Prosper regarded Massilians opposed to Augustine’s teachings on these subjects as remnants of the Pelagians (reliquiae Pelagianiorum) and remnants of the Pelagian depravity (Pelagianae priuitatis reliquiae). 36 Erika T. Hermanowicz, Possidius of Calama: A Study of the North African Episcopate in the Age of Augustine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 54–7. 37 Mark Vessey, “Fashions for Varro in Late Antiquity and Christian Ways with Books,” in Being Christian in Late Antiquity: A Festschrift for Gillian Clark, ed. Carol Harrison, Caroline Humfress, and Isabella Sandwell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 253–77 at 264–5. Jerome directed readers of De uiris illustribus 54 (devoted to Origen) to this letter because it contained an extended list of Origen’s writings.

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the inability to find them all (as potential proof texts of nefarious thinking) was a cause for serious concern.38 Gennadius’s approach to Augustine’s literary output challenges the assumption that the quantity of an author’s writings was an indication of orthodoxy. Prosper of Aquitaine, for example, made precisely this claim in his letter to Rufinus when he explained that the Massilians only expressed dissatisfaction with Augustine’s views in private among themselves; in public they remained quiet because they do not doubt that if they raised a question it would be opposed by a hundred volumes of the blessed Augustine (centenis sibi beatissimi Augustini uoluminibus obuiandum).39 Gennadius’s discussion of Augustine’s vast corpus is all the more striking due to the relative brevity of notice 39. With only three works mentioned by name, Gennadius has effectively written nearly all of Augustine’s textual legacy out of Christian literary history. Additionally, each of the works mentioned contributed to Gennadius’s objective of diminishing Augustine’s status as a theological authority. The first work named was De Trinitate. Again, Gennadius effectively employed his knowledge of the work’s compositional history to underscore discontinuity in Augustine’s thought. By paraphrasing Augustine’s letter to bishop Aurelius of Carthage (ep. 174), which had been attached to the completed version of De Trinitate as an epistolary preface, Gennadius noted that Augustine published as an old man the fifteen books of De Trinitate which he had started as a youth (edidit etiam senex quos iuuenis coeperat De Trinitate libros quindecim). Augustine explained the protracted composition of De Trinitate in detail in ep. 174 to which he referred in Retractationes 2.15.40 Establishing a precise chronology of De Trinitate’s compositional phases has proven difficult but several

38

Gennadius’s misgivings about the volume of Augustine’s writings might have been more sharply expressed: Bernoulli and Richardson relegated to the apparatus criticus of their respective editions the words “unde ex multa eloquentia accredit quod Saloman ait: ‘ex multiloquio non effugio peccatum.’” Four years earlier, in the introduction to his English translation of De uiris illustribus for the Post-Nicene Fathers series (593 nt. 2637), Richardson observed “this expression has been the ground of much comment on Gennadius’s Semipelagian bias, but it almost certainly does not represent the original form of the text.” Czapla, Gennadius als Litterarhistoriker, 83–4 concurred. O’Loughlin “Gennadius,” 1031, however, offers a sensible argument for its authenticity: quoted from the Vetus Latina rather than the Vulgate, the verse from Proverbs was used in this same form by Augustine in retr. prol. 2, where Augustine admits that it terrifies him when he looks back upon how much he had written. O’Laughlin contends that Gennadius echoed Augustine’s use of the verse but the passage was subsequently omitted because it was deemed too critical. 39 Prosper, Epistula ad Rufinum 5, PL 51. 40 Other references to the composition of trin. include ep. 120 (to Consentius), ep. 143 (to Marcellinus), ep. 162 and ep. 169 (both to Evodius).

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points are unambiguously clear.41 Augustine considered all of the eventual fifteen books to be linked by a continuous argument such that he had intended for them to circulate together (non enim singillatim sed omnes simul edere ea ratione decreueram, quoniam praecedentibus consequentes inquisitione proficiente nectuntur) even though they were composed over two, perhaps three, decades. To this end, Augustine emphasized the revisions required to prepare it for publication and his frustration that the task could not be completed due to the theft of his unfinished, unchecked, and unpolished manuscripts. He thought to abandon De Trinitate but was convinced to finish it by the spirited requests of many brothers and the command of Bishop Aurelius himself. De Trinitate was completed but not to Augustine’s satisfaction: it had been corrected not as he wished but as he was able (non ut uolui, sed ut potui) so that it did not differ too extensively from the stolen manuscripts that entered circulation several years earlier (ne ab illis, qui subrepti iam in manus hominum exierant, plurimum discreparent). During those years Augustine’s theological development was driven by the Pelagian Controversy when sophisticated theologians opposed to his views compelled him to reconcile the absolute gratuity of grace with its real-world, anthropological consequences. Despite what its title might suggest, De Trinitate (books 8–15) addresses a number of central anthropological issues. In ep. 120, Augustine explained to Consentius that knowledge of the Trinity must proceed from knowledge of its image, the soul, especially the human, rational, and intellectual soul (anima … maxime humana et rationalis atque intellectualis). The soul, specifically its origin, was foremost in Gennadius’s mind when he emphasized the protracted composition of De Trinitate.42 As the point at which original sin was transmitted, the origin of the soul lay at the center of the Pelagian Controversy. Nevertheless, Augustine repeatedly expressed uncertainty about the subject when pressed and even sought advice from Jerome—a fact noted by Gennadius in notice 40 (see Section IV, below). Doubtless a point of some embarrassment, Augustine’s reserve was understandable.43 Each of the four hypotheses about the origin of the soul presented difficulties: 41 Dating trin.: Lewis Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 118–20 with further references. 42 Robert J. O’Connell, The Origin of the Soul in St. Augustine’s Later Works (New York: Fordham University Press, 1987), which takes account of trin.’s protracted composition throughout. Discussion of O’Connell’s influential but controversial thesis: Ronnie J. Rombs, Saint Augustine & the Fall of the Soul: Beyond O’Connell & His Critics (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006). 43 Augustine referred to Vincentius Victor’s disparaging remark that likened him to one of those cattle that lacked knowledge of its own nature and quality at an. et or. 1.26, 4.2, 4.8, and 4.12.

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creationism and the divinely sent soul hypothesis did not account for original sin; traducianism assumed a material soul, which Augustine rejected out of hand; and the fallen soul hypothesis could not be reconciled with the understanding of Romans  9:11 that he had first articulated in De diuersis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum and subsequently developed during the Pelagian Controversy. But Augustine had not always been so circumspect and De Trinitate contained views that he subsequently rejected. Robert O’Connell observed, “one interpretation he gives of the stola prima in the finished work (12.16) remains the ‘circular’ one he rejected in the De Genesi. We may be touching, here, on one motive for Augustine’s anger at the pious theft and premature publication of his work. Begun as early as 404, or even 399, it could well reveal an Augustine tranquilly assuming a Semi-Origenist explanation of the soul’s incarnate condition was an acceptable Catholic view and, indeed, the most plausible of the four hypotheses on the soul’s origin.”44 Thus, for Gennadius, the inadequately revised De Trinitate demonstrated in textually verifiable terms how Augustine’s views about crucial issues had changed over the course of the Pelagian Controversy. The two remaining titles, De incarnatione Domini and De resurrectione mortuorum, are curious. Mentioned in neither Retractationes nor Possidius’s Indiculus, they may refer to now lost florilegia compiled from Augustine’s writings.45 However, it is also possible—and more likely given the allusive nature of De uiris illustribus—that these were subjects that addressed important aspects of Augustine’s theology and established connections to subsequent notices.46 De incarnatione Domini points to the Christological agreement between Augustine and the Massilians as evidenced, for example, by Vincent of Lérins’s Excerpta. Augustine’s Christological thought evinced a special piety (idoneam … pietatem) and lay within the confines of established theological tradition, making it a facet of his theological legacy meriting not just inclusion in De uiris illustribus but also praise—albeit of the most reserved kind. Moreover, with De incarnatione Domini Gennadius connected notice 39 to his discussion of the Leporius Affair in notice 60 (see Section VI, below). Equally significant is the reference to De resurrectione mortuorum, particularly the concessive clause that accompanies it. In that clause, Gennadius demonstrated his detailed knowledge of the Augustinian corpus by noting that 44 O’Connell, Origin of the Soul, 251. 45 Several such collections survive from late antiquity: Joseph  T.  Lienhard, “Florilegia,” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan  D.  Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 370–1. 46 Czapla, Gennadius als Litterarhistoriker, 86–7.

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Augustine had sown doubt concerning the resurrection of the unborn among the less intelligent (licet minus capacibus dubitationem de abortiuis iecerit). Employing the same words used in notice 19 to describe those who were not to read Origen’s writings, Gennadius presented readers of De uiris illustribus with a concrete and textually verifiable example of the dangers posed by Augustine’s writings. As a category, abortiui included miscarriages, premature births, still births, or infants dead in the womb.47 They were of two kinds: formed and unformed, a distinction found in the Septuagint version of Exodus  21:22–23 and Latin translations of it.48 Augustine expressed uncertainty about the fate of unformed abortiui in the context of larger discussions of the resurrection at two points in his extant writings, both late works written 421–22 and 427 respectively.49 In Enchiridion 23.85–6, Augustine remarked that it may be a tolerable position to hold that formed fetuses will be resurrected but he suggested that unformed fetuses may perish entirely like seeds that had not been conceived. He then asked who would dare deny or affirm that the resurrection will supply anything lacking in form before acknowledging the difficulty of determining when life begins in the womb or whether some hidden life exists even though movement cannot yet be detected. He insinuated, but did not say definitively, that those cut out of the womb limb-by-limb (membratim) in order to save the life of their mother have lived and thus will be resurrected. He takes the same position in De ciuitate Dei 22.13. Augustine’s uncertainty about abortiui put him at odds with his fellow Africans. In notice 18, Gennadius related that the Donastist theologian Tichonius—identified like Augustine as an African (natione Afer)—demonstrated that there would be a single resurrection in which all will be resurrected, even the unformed abortiui, so that no part of the human race that was unformed and living may perish (unam et insemel omnium in qua resurgent etiam abortiui, deformati, ne quid humani generis deformatum et animatum substantia intereat, ostendit). However, more than the fate of the abortiui, what was truly at stake was the moment when life began—the origin of the soul. 47 Otto Wermelinger, “Abortus,” in Augustinus-Lexikon, vol. 1, ed. Cornelius Mayer et  al. (Basel: Schwabe & Co. AG, 1986–94), 6–10. 48 J.C. Bauerschmidt, “Abortion,” in Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 1: “While the Hebrew text provided for compensation in the case of a man striking a woman so as to cause a miscarriage, and for the penalty to be exacted if further harm were done, the Septuagint translated ‘harm’ as ‘form,’ introducing a distinction between a ‘formed’ and an ‘unformed’ fetus. The mistranslation was rooted in an Aristotelian distinction between the fetus before and after its supposed ‘vivification’ (at forty days for males, ninety days for females).” 49 Augustine’s uncertainty and its legacy: Zubin Mistry, Abortion in the Early Middle Ages, c. 500–900 (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2015), 266–77.

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Augustine did not link the resurrection of abortiui to the origin of the soul in either the Enchiridion or De ciuitate Dei, but he did make this connection in Quaestionum in Heptateuchum libri VII 2.80 when he addressed Exodus 21:22–3 (the penalty to be exacted for causing a miscarriage) and explained that the presence of a soul within the fetus determined whether its destruction constituted murder. As part of his analysis, Augustine acknowledged the centrality of the great question of the soul (magna de anima quaestio) but nevertheless refused to take a definitive position. The effect of concluding notice 39 with Augustine’s uncertainty about the resurrection of the abortiui was to impress upon readers that despite his episcopal rank, erudition, unblemished faith, purity of life, and prolific pen, his teachings left those of simple faith doubtful and confused. IV.

Notice 40: Orosius

Gennadius made explicit Augustine’s uncertainty about the origin of the soul in notice 40.50 Devoted to the Spanish priest Orosius (presbyter Hispani generis), it identified him as an eloquent man and a judge of history (uir eloquens et historiarum cognitor) before commenting on his principal work, Aduersos quaerulos Christiani nominis, which is known to modern readers as Historiarum aduersum paganos libri VII.51 Gennadius demonstrated his familiarity with this text by describing its central premise and the geographical excursus, which he correctly located in book 1.52 Its relationship to Augustine—announced by the first words of the prologue: I have followed your commands, most blessed father Augustine (praeceptis tuis parui, beatissime pater Augustine)—however, 50 Gennadius, De uiris illustribus 40: “Orosius presbyter Hispani generis, vir eloquens et historiarum cognitor, scripsit Adversus quaerulos Christiani nominis, qui dicunt defectum Romanae reipublicae Christi doctrina invectum libros septem, in quibus totius paene mundi temporis calamitates et miserias ac bellorum inquietudines replicans, ostendit magis Christianae observantiae esse, quod contra meritum suum res Romana adhuc duraret et pace culturae Dei pacatum teneret imperium. Sane in primo libro descripsit positionem orbis Oceani interfusione et Tanais limitibus intercisam, situm locorum, nomina et numerum moresque gentium, qualitates regionum, initia bellorum et tyrannidis exordia finitimorum sanguine dedicata. Hic est Orosius, qui ab Augustino pro discenda animae ratione ad Hieronymum missus, rediens reliquias beati Stephani, primi martyris, tunc nuper inventas, primus intulit Occidenti. Claruit extremo Honorii paene imperatoris tempore.” 51 Orosius as a historian: Peter Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 52 A.H. Merrills, History and Geography in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 35–99.

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received no comment. Also omitted were the Consultatio siue commonitorium ad Augustinum de errore Priscillianistarum et Origenistarum, in which Orosius detailed the errors of the Priscillianists and linked some of them to Origen’s ideas, and Augustine’s response, Liber ad Orosium contra Priscillianistas et Origenistas. Toward the end of the notice, Gennadius observed that Orosius was sent by Augustine to Jerome in order to learn the nature of the soul (ab Augustino pro discenda animae ratione ad Hieronymum missus) and that he returned bearing the recently unearthed relics of Saint Stephen. The textual referent is Augustine’s ep.  166, “a locus classicus for the investigation of his developing views on the origin of the soul.”53 Orosius carried it eastward to its recipient in 415. Part of a larger correspondence driven by the theological queries of Marcellinus, ep. 166 was a public statement of Augustine’s uncertainty about the soul, in which the bishop of Hippo emphasized his willingness to learn from Jerome, a monk and a presbyter.54 Ep. 166 also underscored how much Augustine’s anthropological views had changed as a result of the Pelagian Controversy. At the core of ep. 166 is the question of the soul’s origin. Augustine framed his discussion by first asserting what he believed most firmly about the soul (quid de anima firmissime teneam): it is immortal; it is not part of God; it is immaterial; it fell into sin of its own volition (sua sed propria uoluntate in peccatum esse conlapsam); it can be delivered from the body of this death neither by the strength of its own will or by the death of the body itself but only by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our lord (nec liberari posse de corpore mortis huius uel suae uoluntatis uirtute tamquam sibi ad hoc sufficiente uel ipsius corporis morte sed gratia Dei per Iesum Christum dominum nostrum); and each one that departs this life, regardless of its age, without the grace of the mediator and his sacrament departs to future punishment (quaecumque autem sine gratia mediatoris et sacramento eius in qualibet corporis aetate de corpore exierit, et in poena futuram). With the contours of discussion firmly established, Augustine posed his question to Jerome: I seek to know where did the soul contract the guilt, by which even that of an infant overtaken by death is dragged into condemnation, if the grace of Christ did not come to its aid through the sacrament in which even babies are baptized? (quaero, ubi contraxerit anima 53 O’Connell, Origin of the Soul, 150–67. 54 Augustine’s unsatisfactory reply (ep. 143) prompted Marcellinus to pose the question of the soul’s origin to Jerome, whose own reply (ep. 165) directed him first to his own Apologia contra Rufinum, a copy of which he could obtain from the priest Oceanus, and then to Augustine who could explain Jerome’s view. For Marcellinus: “Fl. Marcellinus 10,” PLRE 2. 711–2. Augustine’s tone in ep. 166: Jennifer Ebbeler, Disciplining Christians: Correction and Community in Augustine’s Letters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 147–8.

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reatum, quo trahitur in condemnationem etiam infantis morte praeuenti, si ei per sacramentum, quo etiam paruuli baptizantur, Christi gratia non subuenerit). To investigate this question, Augustine examined each of the four hypotheses but focused most of his attention on creationism, the solution preferred by Jerome but also Pelagius. In an effort to be conciliatory, Augustine dispensed with several possible objections to this hypothesis but made clear that the suffering of infants was an insurmountable difficulty for him, which he hoped that Jerome would resolve: “but explain what we should respond about the infants, if there are no sins in them requiring chastisement despite such punishments” (de paruulis autem quid respondeamus, edissere, si poenis tantis nulla in eis sunt punienda peccata).55 But his hopes were in vain: Jerome died five years later in 420 without providing an explanation.56 Ep.  166 also showed Augustine adopting an approach later taken up in Retractationes. Augustine’s reflection upon what he had written two decades earlier about the four hypotheses of the soul’s origin in De libero arbitrio revealed how his views had changed as a result of the Pelagian Controversy. In that work, he explained, he had been defending God’s justice and believed it necessary to treat them in such a way that, whichever of them might be true, the decision would not impede his objective (ita putaui esse tractandas, ut, quaelibet earum uera esset, non impediret intentionem meam). At that time, each hypothesis was theoretically viable but by 415 disinterested equivocation had become untenable. To resolve points raised by his opponents, Augustine now asked Jerome which of the four remaining hypotheses ought to be selected (ex quattuor reliquis opinionibus quaenam sit eligenda). When addressing the problem that suffering infants posed for the creationist hypothesis, Augustine referred again to what he had previously written and proceeded to quote De libero arbitrio 3.68 at length to demonstrate exactly what was no longer adequate for the

55 Augustine provided a list of the sufferings experienced by infants in ep.  166.16: “Languescunt aegritudinibus, torquentur doloribus, fame et siti cruciantur, debilitantur membris, priuantur sensibus, uexantur ab inmundis spiritibus.” 56 Counted among his books, ep. 166 was later discussed in retr. 2.45. Augustine explained that he had delayed publication until after Jerome had died, hoping that he would provide an explanation. Additionally, he sought either to dissuade others from investigating the origin of the soul entirely or to admit an answer that was not opposed to the tenets of the Catholic faith regarding the original sin of infants and their damnation should they not be reborn in Christ: “illo autem defuncto ad hoc edidi priorem, ut qui legit admoneatur aut non quaerere omnino, quomodo detur anima nascentibus, aut certe de re obscurissima eam solutionem quaestionis huius admittere, quae contraria non sit apertissimis rebus, quas de originali peccato fides catholica nouit in paruulis, nisi regenerentur in Christo, sine dubitatione damnandis.”

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present discussion (quaestione non sufficiat).57 More specifically, the sentence that had constituted the bulwark of his defense (nam uelut firmamentum eius illud est, quod ibi dixi) was then excerpted from the longer quotation: but who knows what God reserves for the infants by whose sufferings the hardness of parents is crushed, or their faith engaged or their pity tested, therefore who knows what good recompense God reserves for these infants in the secret of his own judgements? (quis autem nouit, quid paruulis, de quorum cruciatibus duritia maiorum contunditur aut exercetur fides aut misercordia probatur, quis ergo nouit, quid ipsis paruulis in secreto iudiciorum suorum bonae compensationis reseruet deus?).58 For infants who suffered for Christ or who were baptized, this was still a viable conjecture. In the case of unbaptized infants, however, Augustine no longer saw it as valid or certain (ualidam firmamque non uideo). He concluded with the brief but not altogether satisfying explanation that he had not raised the subject in De libero arbitrio because it was a different matter (non tamen  … tunc aliquid dicendum putaui, quia non, quod nunc agitur, agebatur). V.

Notice 46: Julian of Eclanum

Responses to Augustine’s late theology are discussed in notice 46.59 Devoted to Julian, bishop of Eclanum, it describes the last phase of the Pelagian Controversy. Gennadius related that Julian was a man sharp in mind, learned in divine scriptures, and educated in Greek and Latin (uir acer ingenio, in diuinis scripturis doctus, Graeca et Latina lingua scholasticus).60 Before he revealed in himself the impiety of Pelagius (prius ergo quam inpietatem Pelagii in se aperiret)—during the summer of 418 he refused to sign the epistula tractoria, Zosimus of Rome’s condemnation of Pelagius and Caelestius, for which he was deposed from his see the following year and forced to take shelter in Cilicia 57 ep. 166.18. 58 ep. 166.20. 59 Gennadius, De uiris illustribus 46: “Iulianus episcopus, vir acer ingenio, in Divinis Scripturis doctus, Graeca et Latina lingua scholasticus, prius ergo quam inpietatem Pelagii in se aperiret clarus in doctoribus ecclesiae fuit. Postea vero, haeresim Pelagii defendere nisus, scripsit adversum Augustinum, inpugnatorem illius, libros quattuor et iterum libros octo. Est et liber altercationis amborum partes suas defendentium. Hic Iulianus eleemosynis tempore famis et angustiae indigentibus prorogatis multos miserationis specie nobilium praecipueque religiosorum inliciens haeresi suae sociavit. Moritur Valentiniano, Constantii filio, imperante.” 60 Julian’s intellectual milieu and method of biblical exegesis: Josef Lössl, Julian von Aeclanum: Studien zu seinem Leben, seinem Werk, seiner Lehre und ihrer Überlieferung (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 74–146 and 147–249, respectively.

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with Theodore of Mopsuestia—Julian was famous among the learned men of the church (clarus in doctoribus ecclesiae fuit).61 Combined with almsgiving in a time of famine for the preservation of the poor (hic Iulianus eleemosynis tempore famis et angustiae indigentibus prorogatis), Julian’s formidable intellect inclined many nobles and ascetics to embrace his heresy (multos miserationis specie nobilium praecipueque religiosorum inliciens haeresi suae sociauit).62 Together these qualities made Julian, in the estimation of Peter Brown, “the most devastating critic of Augustine in his old age.”63 When viewed as a whole, notice 46 was remarkably sympathetic to Julian. It demonstrated that his arguments were constructed within an intellectual tradition universally respected by the learned men of the church—even if several of their more extreme conclusions were heretical. Gennadius made this distinction again when discussing Julian’s writings. Composed later (postea uero) and in defense of Pelagius’s heresy (haeresim Pelagii defendere nisus), they were characterized as written against Augustine (scripsit aduersum Augustinum), whom Gennadius described only as the opponent of Pelagius (inpugnatorem illius). Gennadius mentioned two works but specified neither their titles nor the nature of their contents.64 The first, containing four books (libros quattuor), is the Ad Turbantium of 420/21 (so titled because of its addressee, Bishop Turbantius, who had also refused to sign the epistula tractoria), Julian’s response to Augustine’s De nuptiis et concupiscentia 1 of 418/19. Augustine addressed De nuptiis et concupiscentia 1 to Valerius, a comes at the court in Ravenna and argued in it that the doctrine of original sin does not denigrate Christian marriage. Although instituted prior to the fall, marriage was subsequently marked by sexual desire (concupiscentia), evidenced by humanity’s inability to control its sexual organs.65 Postlapsarian Christian marriage aimed to achieve three positive goals: the production of children (proles), fidelity ( fides), and the sacramental symbol of ecclesial

61 Anthony Dupont, Gratia in Augustine’s Sermones Ad Populum during the Pelagian Controversy: Do Different Contexts Furnish Different Insights? (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 51–9, with further references. See also, Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 383–99. 62 This anecdote is preserved only by Gennadius. Czapla, Gennadius als Litterarhistoriker, 103. 63 Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 383. 64 The Tractatus prophetarum Osee, Iohel et Amos and the Expositio in Iob are now generally attributed to Julian. He is also thought to be the translator of Theodore of Mopsuestia’s commentary on Psalms  1–16 and parts of 17–40. An epitome of the commentary on Psalms 41–150 appears to be based on Julian’s translation. 65 See “Valerius 3,” PLRE 2. 1143–4.

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unity (sacramentum).66 Nevertheless, the presence of original sin, transmitted through sexual desire, meant that children still required baptism. Julian, an ardent opponent of original sin on the basis of God’s justice and goodness as a creator, contended that sexual desire is good because it was created by God as the impetus for producing children.67 Souls are of a different substance than the body and are created by God for each individual. Arguments proposing a mixture of these distinct processes, he considered Manichaean.68 Drawing attention to Augustine’s well-known Manichaean past, this argument implicitly recalled a critical point of rupture in Augustine’s intellectual development.69 When Augustine received extracts (chartulae) of Ad Turbantium in 420 or 421, he responded with De nuptiis et concupiscentia 2, in which he distinguished his view of human nature from those espoused by Manichaeans and Pelagians. At that time, Augustine also responded to a letter by Julian to Pelagians at Rome and to another by eighteen Pelagian bishops (including Julian) to Rufus, the Bishop of Thessolonica, with Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum. Later, after receiving the full text of Ad Turbantium, he responded again and in greater detail with the six-book Contra Iulianum of 422.70 Its first two books are composed of statements from both western and eastern authorities attesting the doctrine of original sin while the remaining four responded to what Julian had written in Ad Turbantium.71 Julian’s response to De nuptiis et concupiscentia 2, which he had received from Florus, another bishop who had refused to sign 66 67 68

69

70 71

Philip Lyndon Reynolds, Marriage in the Western Church: The Christianization of Marriage During the Patristic and Early Medieval Periods (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 241–311. Mathijs Lamberigts, “Julian of Eclanum: A Plea for a Good Creator,” Augustiniana 38.1 (1988): 5–24. Mathijs Lamberigts, “Was Augustine a Manichaean? The Assessment of Julian of Aeclanum,” in Augustine and Manichaeism in the Latin West. Proceedings of the FribourgUtrecht Symposium of the International Association of Manichaean Studies (IAMS), ed. Johannes van Oort, Otto Wermelinger, and Gregor Wurst (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 113–36. Johannes van Oort, “Was Julian Right? A Re-evaluation of Augustine’s and Mani’s Doctrines of Sexual Concupiscence and the Transmission of Sin,” in Mani and Augustine: Collected Essays on Mani, Manichaeism and Augustine, ed. Johannes van Oort (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 384–410. Additionally, Dorothea Weber, “Some Literary Aspects of the Debate between Julian of Eclanum and Augustine,” Studia Patristica 43 (2006): 289–302. Jason David BeDuhn, Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma, Volume 1: Conversion and Apostasy, 373–388 C.E. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009) and Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma, Volume 2: Making a “Catholic” Self, 388–401 C.E. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013) examine Augustine’s lifelong relationship with Manichaeism. A third volume devoted to the last decades of Augustine’s life is in preparation. Augustine explained the matter in ep. 207 (to Claudius). Mathijs Lamberigts, “Augustine’s Use of Tradition in the Controversy with Julian of Eclanum,” Augustiniana 60.1 (2010): 11–61.

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the epistula tractoria, was composed between 423 and 426 and is the second work mentioned by Gennadius in notice 46. Gennadius noted that Ad Florum was the second of Julian’s works written against Augustine (et iterum) and that it contained eight books (libros octo). Among the matters addressed in this lengthy work, Julian underscored that Augustine had refused to answer the question of the soul’s origin that he had raised in Ad Turbantium.72 Since this question lay at the very heart of the debate regarding original sin, Augustine’s inability to provide a satisfactory answer constituted a major vulnerability. Julian’s attention to this question doubtless influenced Gennadius’s own decision to foreground it when portraying Augustine in De uiris illustribus. Gennadius also mentioned a third work and in so doing revealed his own opposition toward Augustine and his late theology. Characterized as a book of dialog (liber altercationis) in which both Julian and Augustine defended their own positions (amborum partes suas defendentium), this work almost certainly refers to Augustine’s Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum.73 Augustine began this second large-scale work against Julian in 427 after receiving the books of Ad Florum from Alypius. Although reviewing his numerous writings for discussion in Retractationes and composing De haeresibus for Quodvultdeus occupied most of his time, Augustine devoted his evenings to this essential task.74 But despite these exertions, he managed to respond only to six of the eight books of Ad Florum before his death in 430. Augustine purposefully formatted the Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum to avoid accusations of misquotation or omission in refuting Julian’s text: Augustine’s responses immediately followed passages from Ad Florum which were quoted verbatim and sequentially.75 With this style of argumentation Augustine sought to meet and to refute each of Julian’s arguments point by point. By leaving the authorship of the Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum ambiguous and describing it as a 72

E.g. Julian of Eclanum, Ad Florum 2.25: “Nam et commemoratam a me formationem corporis et ingressum animae, quam novam in unoquoque a Deo conditam tam ratio quam legis sacrae ecclesiaeque catholicae confirmat auctoritas, ut spero, arte praeteriit.” For discussion, see Mathijs Lamberigts, “Julian and Augustine on the Origin of the Soul,” Augustiniana 46.3 (1996): 243–60. 73 Czapla, Gennadius als Litterarhistoriker, 103. The dialog had developed as an effective genre for Christian polemic: Robin Whelan, Being Christian in Vandal Africa: The Politics of Orthodoxy in the Post-Imperial West (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018), 55–84 with further references. 74 ep. 224.2. 75 The first six books of Ad Florum survive embedded within Augustine’s Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum. For an innovative approach to the format of Augustine’s Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum, see Catherine Conybeare, “Augustine’s Marginalia Contra Julianum,” in this volume, 83–97.

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dialog in which both Augustine and Julian defended their respective views, Gennadius not only placed them on the same level but also refused to take a side. It would be a mistake to assume that Julian’s status as an avowed Pelagian amounted to an implicit endorsement of Augustine’s theology on Gennadius’s part. Indeed, for those who had read notices 37, 39, and 40 carefully, it would be clear that Augustine’s views should be treated with suspicion. Rather, Gennadius’s description of the Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum shows two bad teachers—Augustine and Julian both matching the criteria set forth in Vincent of Lerins’s Commonitorium—whose struggle against one another constituted a trial for the church. VI.

Notice 60: Leporius

Gennadius mentioned Augustine for the final time in notice 60, where he used the bishop of Hippo’s presence not only to enhance the prestige of the Massilians as doctrinal authorities but also to safeguard their views from hostile critics.76 Devoted to Leporius, whom Gennadius identified as having been a monk before he became a presbyter (adhuc monachus, post presbyter), it documented an episode of doctrinal agreement between the Massilians and Augustine in what is known as the Leporius Affair.77 Gennadius followed his chief source, the first book of Cassian’s De incarnatione Christi, in identifying Leporius’s Christological error as the outgrowth of Pelagian heresy.78 Given the brevity of the notices in De uiris illustribus, however, the effect of this 76 Gennadius, De uiris illustribus 60: “Leporius adhuc monachus, post presbyter, praesumens de puritate vitae quam arbitrio tantum et conatu proprio, non Dei se adiutorio obtinuisse credebat, Pelagianum dogma coeperat sequi. Sed a Gallicanis doctoribus admonitus, et in Africa per Augustinum adeo emendatus, scripsit emendationis suae libellum, in quo et satisfacit de errore et gratias agit de emendatione; simul et quod de incarnatione Christi male senserat corrigens catholicam sententiam tulit dicens manentibus in Christo in sua substantia duabus naturis unam credi Filii Dei personam.” 77 Leporius: André Mandouze, Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire, 1. Prosopographie de l’Afrique chrétienne (303–533) (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1982), 634–5. The Leporius Affair: Alois Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, Volume 1: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon (451), 2nd rev. ed., trans. John Bowden (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1975), 464–7, and Brian  E.  Daley, God Visible: Patristic Christology Reconsidered (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 156–8. 78 Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, 465 notes: “The monk of Gaul did not really mean heresy. He merely wished to protect the traditional dogma of the divinity of Christ in his own fashion against doctrines which really or supposedly confused the natures. Cassian is thus unjust in fathering on Leporius an explicit heretical intent, by making the monk a strict adoptionist and a Pelagian in Christology.” Additionally, Jean Plaigneux, “Le grief

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characterization is more extreme and thus of great importance for understanding Gennadius’s portrayal of Augustine. Leporius began to follow the teachings of the Pelagians (Pelagianum dogma coeperat sequi), Gennadius explained, by exhibiting confidence in the purity of his life (praesumens de puritate uitae), which he believed that he had obtained by his own will and effort and not from the help of God (quam arbitrio tantum et conatu proprio, non Dei se adiutorio obtinuisse credebat). For his errors, Leporius was first reprimanded by Massilian scholars (a Gallicanis doctoribus admonitus) and then, having fled across the Mediterranean to Africa, corrected by Augustine (et in Africa per Augustinum adeo emendatus).79 The composition of a short book of his own correction (scripsit emendationis suae libellum) in which he acknowledged his error and expressed gratitude for his correction (in quo et satisfacit de errore et gratias agit de emendatione), was a central part of this process.80 Leporius read the contents of the libellus emendationis aloud in Carthage sometime between May and June 418 before a synod of four bishops (Aurelius, Augustine, Florentius, and Secundus) and with them subscribed to its contents.81 The libellus emendationis was sent back to Gaul along with Augustine’s ep. 219 (to Proclus and Cylinnius), which provided its own account of the matter and confirmed Leporius’s return to orthodoxy. From the text of the libellus emendationis and Augustine’s ep. 219 it is clear that the nature of Leporius’s error was Christological and that his confusion lay with the communicatio idiomatum.82 Alois Grillmeier styled him “the forerunner of Nestorius in the West.”83 While Gennadius mentioned the correction of Leporius’s Christological error (quod de incarnatione Christi male senserat corrigens), he did so only after already noting that Leporius had been reprimanded and corrected. Sed, which Gennadius used to join Leporius’s association with Pelagianism to his censure and correction, gives the impression that his doctrinal error was anthropological in nature. Without explaining the nature of de complicité entre erreurs nestorienne et pélagienne d’Augustin à Cassien par Prosper d’Aquitaine,” RÉAug 2 (1956): 391–402. 79 Leporius was excommunicated by Proclus, the bishop of Marseilles. 80 Leporius, Libellus emendationis, ed. R.  Demeulenaere, CCSL 64, 111–23. For discussion: Francis de Beer, “Une tessere d’orthodoxie: le ‘Libellus emendationis’ de Leporius, (vers 418–421)” RÉAug 10 (1964): 145–85. Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, 466 asserts “It is Augustine who speaks in this libellus,” but his role in its composition is a matter of dispute. 81 For the date: Jean-Louis Maier, “La date de la rétractation de Leporius et celle du ‘sermon 396’ de saint Augustin,” RÉAug 11 (1965): 39–42. 82 E.g. ep. 219.1. 83 Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, 464.

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the error, Gennadius addressed the resolution of the affair by stating simply that Leporius had adopted the catholic opinion (catholicam sententiam tulit) that the Son of God was a single person with two natures remaining in Christ in his own substance (dicens manentibus in Christo in sua substantia duabus naturis unam credi Filii Dei personam). By not explaining the theological link between Leporius’s Pelagianism and his Christological error (as Cassian had in De incarnatione Christi), Gennadius obscured the actual theological content of the affair. The wording of the notice leaves unclear whether Leporius had been censured by the Massilians primarily for adhering to a Pelagian anthropology (as sed suggests) or for the Christological error mentioned afterward. While the other sources provide an unequivocal answer, Christology is not the obviously dominant topic of notice 60. In fact, Gennadius devoted almost the same number of words to Leporius’s foray into Pelagianism (20) as he did to Christological matters (26). Closely related to the ambiguous treatments of the affair’s theological content is the way “Gennadius (re)personalizes the process of the heretic’s amendment, drawing attention to the individuals involved in the affair of Leporius and to their personal authority in matters of the faith.”84 Whereas Cassian stated that Leporius had been reprimanded by us and corrected by God (a nobis admonitus, a deo emendatus) before assigning the ultimate approval of his confession first to the unanimous decision of bishops in Africa (omnes Africani episcopi, unde scribebat) and then in Gaul (et omnes Gallicani, ad quos scribebat), Gennadius instead identified the agents of Leporius’s reproach and correction as Massilian scholars and Augustine respectively (a Gallicanis doctoribus admonitus, et in Africa per Augustinum adeo emendatus) and omitted the decisions of bishops entirely.85 This alteration of Cassian’s account had a twofold effect. First, by placing the Massilian scholars—a “class of expert theologians constituted independently of the ecclesiastical hierarchy” that included ascetics and members of the presbyterate, notably Cassian, Vincent, Salvian, and presumably Gennadius himself—alongside Augustine as equals in matters of doctrinal correction, it implicitly rejected arguments that attributed special authority either to Augustine as an individual or to his writings.86 And second, due to the ambiguous treatment of the Leporius Affair’s theological 84 Vessey, “Peregrinus Against the Heretics,” 539. 85 Cassian, De incarnatione Christi 1.4, 1.6, ed. Michael Petschenig, CSEL 17. 86 Vessey, “Peregrinus Against the Heretics,” 539. Roberto Alciati, “Eucher, Salvien et Vincent: Les Gallicani Doctores,” in Lérins, une île sainte de l’Antiquité au Moyen Âge, ed. Yann Codou and Michel Lauwers (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 105–19.

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content, it extended the scope of cooperation between the Massilian scholars and Augustine beyond Christology (notice 39 having already demonstrated Gennadius’s approval of Augustine’s views in this area) to include opposition to Pelagius.87 To be sure, the Massilian’s rejection of teachings associated with Pelagius was never in doubt: Pelagius, Caelestius, and Julian are all identified as heretics in De uiris illustribus. However, opposition to Augustine’s emphasis on original sin, the absolute gratuity of grace, and predestination still made Massilian views vulnerable to accusations of Pelagianism, such as those voiced by Prosper. Gennadius’s portrayal of the Leporius Affair as an episode of doctrinal cooperation was intended to shield the Massilians and their views from such charges. VII.

Conclusion

The portrait of Augustine revealed by considering notices 37, 39, 40, 46, and 60 of De uiris illustribus sequentially and in relation to one another is nothing short of remarkable. Writing among and for fellow Massilian scholars, Gennadius employed subtle suggestion, omission, deliberate ambiguity, and textually verifiable details to portray Augustine as an ambivalent figure whose intellectual brilliance and theological doubts were a source of danger and confusion; he was not an extraordinary authority to whom doctrinal deference was owed. Despite acknowledging Augustine’s prodigious literary output, Gennadius made few references to individual works of Augustine. These references cast Augustine in a distinctly negative light either by identifying significant points of rupture and uncertainty in his thought or by mischaracterizing their content in order to diminish their effect and his authority. Nevertheless, while De uiris illustribus certainly found a well-disposed and sufficiently erudite readership in Marseilles and its surrounding environs, its attempt to make Augustine wild by subverting his status as a theological authority was largely but not entirely (if the number and nature of textual variants in notice 39 is any indication) unsuccessful.

87 Augustine’s Christology: Brian  E.  Daley, God Visible, 150–72. Additionally, Christopher  A.  Beeley, The Unity of Christ: Continuity and Conflict in Patristic Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 225–55.

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Works Cited I. Primary Sources

Augustine of Hippo. Augustine: Confessions, edited by James J. O’Donnell. 3 volumes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Gennadius. Hieronymus und Gennadius: De viris inlustribus, edited by Carl Albrecht Bernoulli. Freiburg im Breisgau: Akademische Buchhandlung von J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1895. —. De uiris illustribus, edited by Ernst Cushing Richardson. TU 14.1a. Leipzig: J.  C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1896. Pamphilus. St. Pamphilus: Apology for Origen with the Letter of Rufinus on the Falsification of the Books of Origen, translated by Thomas P. Scheck. The Fathers of the Church 120. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010. Vincent of Lérins. The Commonitorium of Vincent of Lérins, edited by Reginald Stewart Moxon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915.

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Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Brox, Norbert. “Consentius über Origenes.” Vigiliae Christianae 36.2 (1982): 141–4. Caner, Daniel F. “The Practice and Prohibition of Self-Castration in Early Christianity.” Vigiliae Christianae 51.4 (1997): 396–415. Casiday, Augustine. “Vincent of Lérins’s Commonitorium, Objectiones, and Excerpta: Responding to Augustine’s Legacy in Fifth-Century Gaul.” In Grace for Grace: The Debates After Augustine and Pelagius, edited by Alexander Y. Hwang, Brian J. Matz, and Augustine Casiday, 131–54. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014. Clark, Elizabeth. The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Courcelle, Pierre. Late Latin Writers and their Greek Sources, translated by Harry Wedeck. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969. Czapla, Bruno. Gennadius als Litterarhistoriker. Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung der Schrift des Gennadius von Marseille “De viris illustribus.” Kirchengeschichtliche Studien 4.1. Münster: Verlag von Heinrich Schöningh, 1898. Daley, Brian E. God Visible: Patristic Christology Reconsidered. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Dulaey, Martine. “Augustin en Provence dans les premières décennies du Ve s.: le témoignage des Formulae d’Eucher.” Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum 90 (2004): 121–46. Dupont, Anthony. Gratia in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum during the Pelagian Controversy: Do Different Contexts Furnish Different Insights? Leiden: Brill, 2012. Ebbeler, Jennifer. Disciplining Christians: Correction and Community in Augustine’s Letters. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Feder, Alfred. “Die Entstehung und Veröffentlichung des gennadianischen Schriftstellerkatalogs.” Scholastik 8 (1933): 217–32. —. “Der Semipelagianismus im Schriftstellerkatalog des Gennadius von Marseille.” Scholastik 2 (1927): 481–514. —. “Zusätze des gennadianischen Schriftstellerkatalogs.” Scholastik 8 (1933): 380–99. —. “Die Zusätze im Augustinuskapitel des gennadianischen Schriftstellerkatalogs.” Scholastik 3 (1928): 238–43. Goodrich, Richard. Contextualizing Cassian: Aristocrats, Asceticism, and Reformation in Fifth-Century Gaul. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. —. “Satan and the Bishops: Origen, Apokatastsis and Ecclesiastical Politics in Sulpicius Severus’ Dialogi.” Adamantius 19 (2013): 84–96. Grillmeier, Alois. Christ in Christian Tradition, Volume 1: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon (451). 2nd revised edition. Translated by John Bowden. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1975.

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Hermanowicz, Erika T. Possidius of Calama: A Study of the North African Episcopate in the Age of Augustine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Hwang, Alexander Y. Intrepid Lover of Perfect Grace: The Life and Thought of Prosper of Aquitaine. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009. —. “Reception of Augustine in Hadrumetum and Southern Gaul.” In Augustine in Context, edited by Tarmo Toom, 238–45. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Lamberigts, Matthijs. “Augustine’s Use of Tradition in the Controversy with Julian of Eclanum.” Augustiniana 60.1 (2010): 11–61. —. “Julian and Augustine on the Origin of the Soul.” Augustiniana 46.3 (1996): 243–60. —. “Julian of Eclanum: A Plea for a Good Creator.” Augustiniana 38.1 (1988): 5–24. —. “Was Augustine a Manichaean? The Assessment of Julian of Aeclanum.” In Augustine and Manichaeism in the Latin West. Proceedings of the Fribourg-Utrecht Symposium of the International Association of Manichaean Studies (IAMS), edited by Johannes van Oort, Otto Wermelinger, and Gregor Wurst, 113–36. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Lambert, David. “The Making of Authority: Patterns of Augustine’s Reception, 430–c. 700.” In The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine, edited by Karla Pollman, Willemien Otten et al., 15–23. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Lienhard, Joseph T. “Florilegia.” In Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald, 370–1. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Lössl, Josef. Julian von Aeclanum. Studien zu seinem Leben, seinem Werk, seiner Lehre und ihrer Überlieferung. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Maier, Jean-Louis. “La date de la rétractation de Leporius et celle du ‘sermon 396’ de saint Augustin.” RÉAug 11 (1965): 39–42. Mandouze, André. Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire, 1. Prosopographie de l’Afrique chrétienne (303–533). Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1982. Mathisen, Ralph. “For Specialists Only: The Reception of Augustine and his Teachings in Fifth-Century Gaul.” In Presbyter Factus Sum, edited by Joseph  T.  Lienhard, Earl C. Muller, and Roland J. Teske, 29–41. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. McLynn, Neil. Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Merrills, Andrew H. History and Geography in Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Mistry, Zubin. Abortion in the Early Middle Ages, c. 500–900. Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2015. O’Connell, Robert  J. The Origin of the Soul in St. Augustine’s Later Works. New York: Fordham University Press, 1987. O’Donnell, Jame J. “The Authority of Augustine.” AugStud 22 (1991): 7–35.

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Abbreviations

Reference Works, Series, and Periodicals

AugLex AugStud BA CCL CSEL JECS JThS PCBE 1

PL PLRE 2 RÉAug WSA



Works by Augustine of Hippo

an. et or. an. quant. ciu. conf.

Augustinus-Lexikon, edited by Cornelius Mayer, Robert Dodaro, et al. Basel: Schwabe, 1986–. Augustinian Studies. Villanova, PA: Villanova University Press, 1970–. Bibliothèque augustinienne. Œuvres de saint Augustin. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1948–. Corpus christianorum, series latina. Turnhout: Brepols, 1953–. Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum. Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1865–. Journal of Early Christian Studies. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993–. Journal of Theological Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1899– Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire. Vol. 1. Edited by André Mandouze. Paris: Editions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1982. Patrologia cursus completus, series latina. Edited by Jean-Paul Migne. Paris, 1841–1855. The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire. Vol. 2. Edited by J. R. Martindale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Revue des études augustiniennes (et patristiques). Turnhout: Brepols, 1955– The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. New York: New City Press, 1990–2019.

De anima et eius origine, edited by C. F. Urba and Joseph Zycha. CSEL 60. Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1913. De animae quantitate, edited by Wolfgang Hörmann. CSEL 89. Vienna: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1986. De civitate dei, edited by B. Dombart and A. Kalb. CCL 47–8. Turnhout: Brepols, 1955. Confessiones, 3 vols., edited by James J. O’Donnell. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.

Abbreviations corrept.

213

De correptione et gratia, edited by G. Folliet. CSEL 92:219–80. Vienna: Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2000. cura mort. De cura pro mortuis gerenda, edited by Joseph Zycha. CSEL 41:621–660. Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1900. diu. qu. De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum, edited by Almut Mutzenbecher. CCL 44A:11–249. Turnhout: Brepols, 1975. doctr. chr. De doctrina christiana, edited by J. Martin. CCL 32. Turnhout: Brepols, 1982. perseu. De dono perseverantiae, edited by Jean-Paul Migne. PL 45 :993–1034. Paris: In Via Dicta D’Amboise, Près la Barrière D’Enfer, 1845. en. Ps. Enarrationes in Psalmos, CSEL 93/1A (expos. 1–32, edited by Clemens Weidmann), 93/1B (sermones 18–32, edited by Clemens Weidmann), 94/1–2 (51–70, edited by Hildegund Müller), 95/1–5 (101–150, edited by Franco Gori). Vienna: Österreichen Akademia der Wissenschaften, 2001–2020. ep. Epistulae 1–270, edited by A. Goldbacher. CSEL 34/1 (epp. 1–30), 34/2 (epp. 31–123), 44 (epp. 124–84), 57 (epp. 185–270), 58 (praefatio et indices). Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1895–1923; ep. 1*–29* appear as Lettres 1*–29*, translated and edited by Johannes Divjak. BA 46B. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1987. c. ep. Pel. Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum libri quattuor, edited by C. F. Urba and Joseph Zycha. CSEL 60. Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1913. exp. prop. Rm. Expositio quarundam propositionum ex epistula apostoli ad Romanos, edited by Johannes Divjak. CSEL 84:3–52. Vienna: Hoelder-PichlerTempsky, 1971. f. et symb. De fide et symbolo liber unus, edited by Joseph Zycha. CSEL 41, 2–32. Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1900. Gaud. Contra Gaudentium, edited by M. Petschenig. CSEL 53:207–74. Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1910. Gn. litt. De Genesi ad litteram, edited by Joseph Zycha. CSEL 28/1:3–435. Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1894. gest. Pel. De gestis Pelagii liber unus, edited by C. F. Urba and Joseph Zycha. CSEL 42, 51–122. Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1902. haer. De haeresibus, edited by R. Vander Plaetse and C. Beukers. CCL 46:286–345. Turnhout: Brepols, 1969. c. Iul. imp. Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum libri 1–3, edited by Michaela Zelzer after Ernest Kalinka. CSEL 85/1. Vienna: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1974.; libri 4–6, edited by Michaela Zelzer. CSEL 85/2. Vienna: Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2004.

214 lib. arb.

Abbreviations

De libero arbitrio, edited by W. M. Green. CCL 29:211–321. Turnhout: Brepols, 1970. mag. De magistro, edited by K.-D. Daur. CCL 29:157–203. Turnhout: Brepols, 1970. mus. De musica libri sex, edited by Jean-Paul Migne. PL 32, 1079–1194. Paris: In Via Dicta D’Amboise, Près la Barrière D’Enfer, 1841. nat. et gr. De natura et gratia liber unus, edited by C. F. Urba and Joseph Zycha. CSEL 60, 233–99. Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1913. nupt. et conc. De nuptiis et concupiscentia ad Valerium libri duo, edited by C. F. Urba and Joseph Zycha. CSEL 42, 211–319. Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1913. pecc. mer. De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo parvulorum ad Marcellinum libri tres, edited by C. F. Urba and Joseph Zycha. CSEL 60, 1–151. Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1913. perf. iust. De perfectione iustitiae hominis liber unus, edited by C. F. Urba and Joseph Zycha. CSEL 42, 1–48. Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1902. praed. sanct. De praedestinatione sanctorum, translated and edited by Jean Chéné. BA 24. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1962. retr. Retractationes, edited by Almut Mutzenbecher. CCL 57. Turnhout: Brepols, 1984. s. Sermones, CCL 41 (1–50, edited by S. Lambot), 41Aa (51–70A, edited by P.-P. Verbraken et al.), 41Ab (71–94, edited by L. De Coninck et al.), 41Ba (151–156, edited by G. Partoens), 41Bb (157–183, edited by S. Boodts). Turnhout: Brepols, 1961–2020; for other sermones, see The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine, s.v. “Sermones,” edited by Karla Pollmann and Willemien Otten. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Simpl. Ad Simplicianum libri duo = diu. qu. trin. De trinitate, edited by W. J. Mountain and F. Glorie. CCL 50. Turnhout: Brepols, 1968. uera rel. De vera religione, edited by K.-D. Daur. CCL 32:187–260. Turnhout: Brepols, 1962. uid. deo De videndo deo [= ep. 147], edited by A. Goldbacher. CSEL 44:274–331. Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1904.

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General Index abortion 195–6 Adam descendants of 14, 84–5, 98, 102–3, 105–8 and Eve 56, 58, 98–9, 102, 104, 107 punishment of 5, 99, 105–6 as type 85, 99–101, 105–6 adjudication, clerical 16, 152, 166, 169–70 affordances 11, 26–8, 30–1, 39, 41 Africa 1–4, 7, 15–7, 93–4, 140–1, 146–56, 158–63, 166–74, 190, 195, 203n76, 204–5 Alypius of Thagaste 16, 26, 69, 148, 152, 159, 163, 202 Ambrose (bishop of Milan) 27, 40–1, 68, 85, 93, 125, 156, 185–6 anamnesis, see knowledge anthropology 11, 51–62, 181, 193, 201, 205 Platonic 51–2, 57–9, 61–2 Antoninus (bishop of Fussala) 146–7, 170–3 appetite, see desire Apiarius (presbyter of Sicca) 147–8, 151, see also Carthage, Council of (419) Apostolic Constitutions 152, 157 Augustine (bishop of Hippo) De ciuitate dei 2, 4, 14–5, 24, 34–5, 111, 114–5, 120–1, 123–4, 126–35 body and soul in 58–9, 61–2 and citizenship 10 composition of 80 the Fall in 111 purpose of 39 resurrection of abortiui in 195–6 Varro in 191 see also Lucretia; women, Sabine conversion of 23, 26–7, 38n45, 48–9, 185 death of 9, 23, 28–9, 31, 49 De doctrina christiana 3–4, 9–10, 39–44 completion of 41 and Confessiones 39–40, 44 as metatext 41–2 and teaching 43–4 early period of 6, 28, 39–41, 48, 51–2, 54–7, 80, 98–100, 110n74

Enarrationes in Psalmos, see Psalms Contra Gaudentium 3, 16, 87, 140 De Genesi ad litteram 3, 50, 54, 58–9, 61 De haeresibus 4, 9–10, 13, 49, 64–81, 202 composition of 66–7 scholarship on 64–5 later period of 3–7, 14, 28, 48–51, 54–6, 58–9, 61–2, 64, 80–1, 100n7, 105, 114, 185–6, 198–200 modern influence of 6–7, 60n32 old age of 4, 9, 16–7, 23, 85, 94, 184, 200 Opus imperfectum contra Iulianum 4, 9–10, 13, 49, 53, 84–6, 202 composition of 86–7, 91–2 genre of 85–91 invective in 86, 89–91, 92–3 manuscript history of 91–2 reception of 29–30, 48, 58, 181–5, 190–2 Retractationes 4, 7, 9–11, 30–2, 39–41, 44, 48–58, 61–2, 80, 83–4, 182, 184–5, 190, 192–4, 198, 202 purpose of 50 scholarship on 52 self-fashioning of 33, 65–70, 73–4 Speculum 4, 9–11, 31–9, 44 De trinitate 43–4, 51, 54, 56, 191n34, 192–4 wildness of 3–6, 9, 17, 23, 27, 30–2, 38, 41, 44, 206 Aurelius (bishop of Carthage) 40, 140–4, 146–7, 159, 163, 166, 173–6, 192–3, 204, 219 Ballerini, Girolamo and Pietro 141, 149, 160, 174n97 baptism 14, 23, 28n17, 93, 101n13, 104–5, 110, 140, 185 of infants 94, 98–9, 104, 152n38, 197–9, 201 barbarians 15, 113n2, 124–7 Berger, John 83–4, 95 Berzon, Todd 65, 79, 80n57

236 body 6, 7n27, 24n5 of Augustine 29–30 mortality of 5, 85, 98–9, 111, 197 resurrection of 57–9, 61–2, 110, 191n34, 194–6 soul and, see anthropology spiritual 58–61 see also Christ, body of; desire; sex; vision Burnaby, John 50, 52 Caelestius (follower of Pelagius) 14, 100, 102, 105–6, 199, 206 Canones in causa Apiarii, see Carthage, Council of (419) Carthage 24, 40, 67–8, 100, 105, 141, 144, 147–8, 161 Conference of (411) 16, 138–40, 146–7, 159, 161, 164, 167–74 Council of (418) 104, 139–40, 169–70, 199–200, 204 Council of (419) 15–6, 140, 170–2 manuscript tradition of 147–66 Celsus 12, 71–2, 75 Christ 11, 44, 56, 98, 194, 197, 205–6 body of 36–7, 58, 101 conception and birth of 99, 102, 108 death of 94 as savior 94, 98–9, 101–2, 110, 197 see also Adam; christology christology 182, 194, 203–6 church 3, 67, 98, 124, 126n62, 138–41, 167, 173–4, 188, see also Donatus, Donatists, Donatism; law, canon; property, ecclesiastical; Rome, church of codex 9–11, 23–5, 32, 35–6, 38–42, 92 ecology of 26–7, 29, 31–2, 44 Codex Theodosianus 32, 121–2 Codex Veronensis LX 148n22, 152–8 commentary 13, 48, 50–1, 88–9, see also marginalia community, textual 10, 27, 37 concupiscence 101, 103–5, 108–11, 200–1, see also desire Constantine 15, 32, 121–3, 131, 168 Constantinople 148, 151 Council of (381) 160–2, 173 (self-)correction 8n36, 49–53, 87–8, 90–1, 94–5, 135, 204–5

General Index councils, ecclesiastical, see Carthage; Constantinople; Hippo Regius; Nicaea; Serdica Cross, F. L. 149–50, 164–6 Cyprian (bishop of Carthage) 40–1, 93, 146 desire 59, 98–9, 101–4, 108–12, 200–1 dialogue 6, 13, 51, 85–6, 133, 163, 189, 202 Dionysius Exiguus 140, 142n11, 149–50, 155–63 Donatus, Donatists, Donatism 2–3, 100–1, 138–40, 146, 148n22, 167–74 Elm, Susanna 132, 134 encyclopedism 12, 65–6, 70–1, 79–80 Epiphanius of Cyprus 12, 66–9, 71–7, 79, 81 epistemology, see knowledge eschatology 34–5, 52, 57–62, 138 ethics 51, 56–7, 62, 90 Eusebius of Caesarea 78, 187 Evans-Grubbs, Judith 113n2, 117–8, 122, 134n101 excommunication 142–3, 145, 153–4, 162, 164–6, 175–6, 204n79 exemplum, exemplarity 14–5, 32, 106, 114, 120–1, 133–5 Fall, the 85, 95, 111, 200, see also Adam; paradise; sin, original Filastrius of Brescia 12, 66–9, 73–7, 79, 81 Final Judgment, the, see eschatology fornication, see sex freedom 15, 99–100, 104, 107n49, 108, 113n2, 116–9, 123–36, 143, 145, 161–2 Galen 12, 65, 70, 74 Galla Placidia 125–6 games 115–6, 119–20 garden of Eden, see paradise Gaudentius of Timgad 3, 16, 87, 139–40 Gaul 4, 16, 181–206 Gennadius of Marseilles 16, 182–97, 199–206 genre 5, 9, 11, 31, 36, 39, 41, 79, 85, 88, 94 grace 4–5, 11, 16–7, 50–1, 85, 90, 92, 94–5, 106, 181–2, 185–8, 190–1, 193, 197, 206 graffiti 90–2, 94 gynecology 53–4

237

General Index Harnack, Adolf von 52 heresiology 12–3, 16–7, 64–81 and definition of heresy 68, 72–3 Hippo Regius 1–2, 93, 139, 141, 144n13, 190 Council of (427) 15–6, 140–8, 150–1, 155, 157, 160–1, 163–6, 170–6 Hilary of Poitiers 36–7, 41, 100n11, 156, 186n19 Holy Spirit 84, 110 Honorius 124–5, 167–8 index 29, 33, 88, 91 infants 99–100, 195, 198–9, see also baptism, of infants (Ps.-)Jerome 74n38, 77, 80, 103n26, 113, 120, 183–4, 186n20, 191, 193, 197–8 Jews, Judaism 35, 68, 98, 110, 143, 145, 165 John Gospel of 99–102 Letter of 99–100, 102 Julian (bishop of Eclanum) 3–7, 9, 13–4, 39, 69, 84–98, 100n7, 105–8, 111, 139, 199–203, 206 justice, divine 14, 98, 102, 107–8, 111, 127, 198, 201 knowledge 5, 10–11, 35, 37, 42, 54–5, 62, 66, 70, 76–80, 102–3, 106–8, 111, 193, see also encyclopedism; heresiology; soul, rational Krauss, Rosalind 91–2 language 83–5, 94–5 law canon 140–5, 151–2, 173–4 divine 27, 32, 98, 103, 108–9, 116 against heresy 169 of marriage 15, 114–7, 118n22, 120–5, 132–4 of Moses 103–4, 106, 110 of sin 102–3, 108–9 of war 124, 131 Leporius 194, 203–6 letters 24, 39–41, 49, 66–9, 71, 73, 80–1, 146, 168, 186, 191–2, 201 love and Augustine 6

of body 56, 62 divine 95, 103, 109–11 of family 8n36, 56 Lucretia 15, 114, 133–5 Manichaeism 33, 40, 87, 93, 201 Marcellinus, tribunus et notarius 4, 49, 100, 140, 167–8, 197 marginalia 13–4, 89–92, 94–6 marriage 200 abduction marriage 117–30 see also law, of marriage Miles, Gary B. 115–6 Milton, John 89–90, 94 Munier, Charles 141, 147, 149, 152n43, 174 Nicaea, Council of (325) 144, 147–8, 151–2 Numidia 1, 94, 146, 159 O’Donnell, James 6, 39–40, 43–4 orality 85–8, 163 Orgel, Stephen 89–90, 94 Origen of Alexandria, Origenism 16, 111, 186–91, 194–5, 197 Orosius (Spanish priest) 196–7 paradise 56, 58, 95, 101–2, 106, see also Fall, the paratext 29–33, 36–7, 39, 41, 44 Paul of Samosata 75–6 Paul of Tarsus 26, 37–8, 85, 93 1 Corinthians 37, 56, 99–101, 106, 135n104 Galatians 104 Hebrews 106, 108n59, 152 Romans 5, 14–5, 26, 34, 51, 60, 65–6, 79, 85, 94, 99–111, 185n17, 194 Pelagius, Pelagians, (semi-)Pelagianism  2–4, 6–7, 50–2, 77, 84, 98, 100–12, 139, 181, 183, 184n11, 190–4, 197–206, see also Caelestius; Julian of Eclanum perception 4, 53–5, 58–60, 62, 65, 89 Photinus of Sirmium 75–6 Pliny the Elder 12, 65, 70, 79 Possidius (bishop of Calama) 9, 16, 23–31, 34, 36, 39, 42, 139, 159, 191, 194 preaching 3, 8, 27–9, 36–9, 43, 99–100, 102, 114, 184 predestination 4, 181–2, 191, 206

238 pride 39, 102, 112, 116 procreation 56–7, see also sex property, ecclesiastical 16, 138–40, 142–7, 150, 154–6, 161, 164–73 Psalms 9, 23–5, 28–9, 33–9, 41, 200n64 quires (quaterniones) 9, 23–5, 29, 39 Quodvultdeus of Carthage 12, 67–73, 78–81, 202 rape 14, 113–4, 119, 122, 125, 134n101, see also marriage, abduction marriage; Lucretia; women, Sabine reason, rationality 53–4, 57–62, 105, 111, see also knowledge; soul, rational resurrection, see body, resurrection of rhetoric 12, 17, 65–7, 69–71, 79, 81 Rome bishop of 125–6, 147–8, 150 church of 16, 147–50, 152, 159, 173–4 citizenship in 115–6, 131–3 city of 105, 151 empire 8–9, 114, 121, 123, 132, 183 foundation of 128–9, 131–2 sack of (410) 2, 114–5, 124, 133–5 see also women, Sabine Scott-Warren, Jason 90 Seneca the Younger 113 Serdica, Council of (343) 148, 151, 158n62 sex 53, 56–7, 99, 101–3, 105–6, 108, 114, 117–8, 200–1, see also desire; procreation sin inherited 14–15, 56–7, 84–5, 94–5, 98–112, 181, 193–4, 197–8, 200–2, 206 transmission of 101–2, 104–6, 108–10, 114, see also Adam, descendants of

General Index slaves, slavery 2, 8n36, 15, 113–6, 119, 121–33, 135–6, 143, 145, 161–2, 164 Soranus of Ephesus 53–4 soul animal 53–4, 62 bible as mirror of 33 origin of 14, 104–5, 110–11, 193–4, 197–8 rational part of 58–9 see also anthropology; reason, rationality; will status, legal (condicio) 15, 114, 116, 118, 122, 128, 131–5 Sulpicius Severus 189 Theodore of Mopsuestia 199–200 Theodosius I 1–2, 32, 120 Turner, C. H. 157–8, 160 Twombly, Cy, frontmatter 13, 83–4, 90–1, 95 Tyconius of Carthage 34–5, 195 Vessey, Mark 5 Vincent of Lérins 182, 184, 187–90, 194, 203 vision corporeal 61 of God 10, 17, 38–9, 59–61 of ideas 55 will 16–7, 50, 59, 102–3, 107, 108–11, 122–3, 134, 181–2, 186, 197, 204, see also freedom; Pelagius women, Sabine 14–15, 114–21, 126–33, see also Galla Placidia; Lucretia Zosimus (bishop of Rome) 199

Notes on Contributors Christopher M. Blunda is assistant professor of history at the Virginia Military Institute. He studies the history of the late Roman Empire. Johannes Brachtendorf is Professor of Philosophy (Department of Catholic Theology) at the University of Tübingen (Germany). He is author of Die Struktur des menschlichen Geistes nach Augustinus. Selbstreflexion und Erkenntnis Gottes in “De Trinitate” (2000), and of Augustins Confessiones (2006). He has also published a translation with commentary of Augustine’s De libero arbitrio (2006) and a translation with introduction and commentary of Thomas Aquinas‘ On happiness (Summa Theologiae I–II q. 1–5). Many of his articles treat philosophical problems in Augustine. He is also editor of the Latin-German edition of Augustine’s complete works. In 2002, he held the Augustinian Chair in the Thought of Augustine at Villanova University. J. Patout Burns is  Edward  A.  Malloy  Professor of Catholic Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, emeritus. He is currently Guest Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. His most recent book, Christianity in Roman Africa: The Development of its Practices and Beliefs, was written with Robin M. Jensen and a team of collaborators and published by Eerdmans in 2014. Catherine Conybeare is Leslie Clark Professor in the Humanities at Bryn Mawr College. She works on the Latin texts of late antiquity, with a particular interest in Augustine of Hippo; her most recent book is Classical Philology and Theology: Entanglement, Disavowal, and the Godlike Scholar ed. with Simon Goldhill (Cambridge 2020), and she is now preparing a monograph entitled Augustine the African. She is also fascinated by Latin and Latinities over the longue durée, and has recently started a book series on that theme with Cambridge University Press, Cultures of Latin from Antiquity to the Enlightenment. Susanna Elm is Sidney H. Ehrman Professor of History and Classics in the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley. She specializes in the social

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and cultural history of the later Roman Empire and is currently working on a monograph entitled Augustine the Economist: Slavery, Taxation, and Original Sin. Her publications include Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome (Berkeley, 2012); Antioch II: The Many Faces of Antioch, edited  with Silke-Petra Bergjan (Tübingen, 2018); and she is preparing a book tentatively entitled The Emperor’s Eunuch: Manliness and Imperial Representation in the Early Theodosian Age for publication with UC Berkeley Press in 2022. Richard Flower is  Associate Professor in Classics and Late Antiquity at the University of Exeter. He specializes in the construction of imperial and ecclesiastical authority, particularly in late-antique invective, and is currently pursuing a project on heresiology and its relationship with classical technical literature. His publications include Emperors and Bishops in Late Roman Invective (Cambridge, 2013) and  Imperial Invectives against Constantius II  (Liverpool, 2016). With Morwenna Ludlow, he has recently edited a volume entitled  Rhetoric and Religious Identity in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2020). Erika T. Hermanowicz is associate professor of classics at the University of Georgia. She studies the legal and economic aspects of North African Christianity. Her first book was Possidius of Calama (2008), and forthcoming is a translation and commentary of the 411 conference. Darcy Tuttle is a student in the Graduate Group in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology at University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the lives and voices of women and non-elites in the Roman empire Mark Vessey is Principal of Green College and Professor of English Literature at the University of British Columbia. He has published widely on topics in the literary history of Latin late antiquity, and on Erasmus. Recent work includes a student edition of Erasmus’ hermeneutical and literary-theoretical handbook, the Ratio verae theologiae (1518/19), forthcoming from University of Toronto Press. He is the editor of the Blackwell Companion to Augustine (2012).