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Augustine, Martyrs, and Misery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Peter Iver Kaufman
Peter Iver Kaufman
Affiliation:
Mr. Kaufman is professor of religious studies in the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
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Extract

Augustine said that Rome fell frequently, all too often into “utter moral depravity,” occasionally into the hands of the city's enemies. Maybe Aeneas was to blame. He had shown poor judgment, hauling to Italy the gods that failed to save Troy. Subsequently, when the Gauls came to Rome's gates, those divine and purportedly vigilant protectors did remarkably little protecting. They later offered no resistance when Nero reduced Rome to rubble. Augustine held Aeneas's humiliations all the more demoralizing; Virgil misled citizens, suggesting that Rome would stand forever. Christians should have known better. They had it on higher authority that heaven and earth would pass away.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , March 1994 , pp. 1 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1994

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References

1. Sermones 105.7.10, citing Luke 21:33; Sermones 81.9; and De civitate Dei 1.3 and 2.22 (hereafter DCD). For the sermons, I have used Migne, J. P.'s Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Latina (Paris, 1844—);Google Scholar for DCD and other works cited, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Vienna, 1866—). All translations are mine. I have consulted Doignon, Jean's careful commentary on the sermons in “Oracles, prophéties, ‘on-dit’ sur la chute de Rome (395–410): Les réactions de Jêrome et d'Augustine,” Revue des études augustiniennes 36 (1990): 135–145;Google Scholar but see also Arbesmann, Rudolph, “The Idea of Rome in the Sermons of St. Augustine,” Augustiniana 4 (1954): 308–324;Google Scholar and Zwierlein, Otto, “Der Fall Roms im Spiegel der Kirchenväter,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 32 (1978): 58–76.Google ScholarFor ”Vergilianism,” consult Cochrane, Charles Norris, Christianity and Classical Culture (Oxford, 1957), pp. 27–30, 61–73;Google Scholar and, for Augustine's remarks on fifth-century nostalgia for protective deities, see Lettieri, Gaetano, Il senso della storia in Agostino d'Ippona: Il ‘saeculum’ e la gloria nel ‘De civitate Dei’ (Rome, 1988), pp. 248–253.Google Scholar

2. Compare Markus, , The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge, U.K., 1992), pp. 50–53.Google ScholarAlso consult Cameron, Averil, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire (Berkeley, Calif., 1991), pp. 4–6, 26–27, 42;Google Scholar and, for relevant remarks on Augustine's “pastoral spirituality” and the Donatist controversy, Genn, Felix, Trinität und Amt nach Augustinus (Einsiedeln, Switzerland, 1986), pp. 32–42.Google Scholar

3. Prudentius, Peristephanon 2.465–468, 2.529–584, 12.1–66.

4. Sermones 296.5, 8–9; and compare Sermones 273.7–9 with Contra Faustum 20.21. Augustine marvelled that so much was expected in Rome from Saint Peter's tomb. Alive, Peter lacked courage; he disobeyed Christ, repeatedly denied him, and was caught dissimulating by Paul. Scripture yielded ample evidence against the granite character of Peter's commitments, so much so that Augustine could not finally decide whether Peter was the rock on which Christ pledged to build his church (Retractationes 1.21.1, discussing Matthew 16:18). Augustine conceded that Peter was strong as well as weak, and the church contained both the firm in faith and the infirm. But one conclusion was inescapable after 410: neither Peter nor his tomb protected the stones and citizens of Rome. Consult Saxer, Victor, Morts, martyrs, reliques en Afrique chrétienne aux premiers siècles (Paris, 1980), pp. 128–129;Google Scholarand Eno, Robert, “Forma Petri—Petrus, Figura Ecclesiae,” in Collectanea Augustiniana, 2 vols., eds. Bruning, B., Lamberigts, M., and Van Houtem, J. (Louvain, 1990) 2:675–676.Google Scholar

5. De cura pro mortuis 4.6 (hereafter Cura).

6. Cura 18.22.

7. Cura 2.4–3.5, 9.11; and DCD 1.13.

8. Sermones 296.6.

9. For ebriosi, see inter alia, Enarrationes in Psalmum LIX 15, although here, as elsewhere, Augustine blames Donatist fanaticism as well as paganism. For “sociability and supplication,” MacMullen, Ramsay, Christianizing the Roman Empire (New Haven, Conn., 1984), pp. 75–76, 84–85. The letter to Alypius is particularly informative, Epistolae 29.3–6, 9–10,Google Scholar but also consult Epistolae 17.4 and 22.4.

10. De excidio urbis Romae 8.9. For Radagaisus, DCD 5.23 and Sermones 105.10, 13.

11. DCD 8.26–27, 10.1–7, 19.

12. DCD 12.9, 15.26, 17.3, 13, and 19.27. I agree with Basil Studer who urges, against received opinion, that the tenth book, belongs with “confirmation[s]” such as these rather than with the refutation of philosophers in the City's previous four books. See Studer's, “Zum Aufbau von Augustins De Civitate Dei,” in Collectanea Augustiniana (see note 4), 2:941–943.Google Scholar

13. DCD 22.8.

14. Compare DCD 8.27 and Brown, Peter, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, 1981), pp. 32–39, 61.Google Scholar

15. Cura 20.

16. DCD 10.3, 11.28, 16.2.

17. Lettieri, Senso delta storia, pp. 169–171, citing Enarrationes in Psalmum LXVII 31, and pp. 313–314. Also see DCD 11.28, 19.20; and Sermones 96.2, 169.9, 11.

18. Confessiones 4.4–6.

19. DCD 19.4 and Sermones 80.8. Also see Studer, Basil, “Augustine and the Pauline Theme of Hope,” in Paul and the Legacies of Paul, ed. Babcock, William S. (Dallas, Tex., 1990), pp. 212–214;Google Scholarand Fischer, Norbert, “Augustins Weg der Gottessuche,” Trierer theologische Zeitschrift 2 (1991): 96–98.Google Scholar

20. Ennarationes in Psalmum LXVIII 18; LXXXIII 9.

21. Sermones 354.8–9; DCD 10.29 and 19.25.

22. De peccatorum meritis et remissione 1.33.62.

23. Epistolae 98.5.

24. Actes de la conférence de Carthage en 411, 3 vols., ed. Lancel, Serge (Paris, 1972) 3:1198–1202;Google ScholarContra litteras Petiliani 2.17.14 and 3.38.44; and Contra epistolam Parmeniani 3.22.12. For general assessments of Donatism, Frend, W. H. C., The Donatist Church, 3d ed. (Oxford, 1985);CrossRefGoogle Scholarand Kriegbaum, Bernhard, Kirche der Traditoren oder Kirche der Märtyrer: Die Vorgeschichte des Donatismus (Innsbruck, Austria, 1986).Google ScholarFor Donatists' fascination with martyrdom, Brisson, Jean-Paul, Autonomisme et christianisme dans l'Afrique romaine (Paris, 1958), pp. 292–294, 307, 311;Google Scholarand Grasmück, Ernst Ludwig, Coercitio: Staat und Kirche im Donatistenstreit (Berlin, 1964), pp. 120–130.Google Scholar

25. Epistolae 29.11 and 159.8 Emin Tengström's discussion of the Circumcellions is relevant, for, as the name suggests (circum cellos), they were Donatist partisans particularly attatched to the shrines and cults of martyrs yet prone to anarchy. See Tengström's Donatisten und Katholiken: Soziale, wirtchaftliche und politische Aspekte einer nordafrikanischen Kirchenspaltung (Göteborg, Sweden, 1964), pp. 65–78.Google Scholar

26. De utilitate jejunii 9.11–10.12; Epistolae 88 and 185.13–14.

27. Markus, , The End of Ancient Christianity, pp. 50–53.Google Scholar

28. DCD 2.19.

29. De catechizandis rudibus 31.

30. De baptismo 1.23–25. Also see Mayer, Cornelius, “Augustins Lehre von homo spiritales,” in Homo Spiritales, ed. Mayer, Cornelius and Chelius, Karl Heinz (Würzburg, Germany 1987), pp. 45–50;Google Scholarand Van Oort, Johannes, Jerusalem and Babylon (Leiden, Netherlands, 1991), pp. 123–229.Google Scholar

31. DCD 19.4; and De excidio 8.9. Others celebrated “Roman peace,” but Augustine saw ceaseless war on the empire's frontiers (and in Christians' souls) and gathered that the very conditions of earthly existence precluded lasting peace, which came only to the regenerate and only after death, DCD 19.10–11. He denied that he ever went out of his way to insult Rome, either the city or the empire. He understood that the imperial expansion improved Christianity's prospects, yet he could not forget what underlay the eradication of old frontiers, the relative reduction of tribal hostilities, and the remarkable network of roads, over which Christianity's itinerant preachers as well as Rome's soldiers had marched. Behind it all was the Romans' lust for domination (libido dominandi). See DCD 3.10, 3.14, 4.5–7, 8.24, 15.7; and Sermones 105.9, 12. For Augustine's “patriotism,” see Paschoud, Franois, Roma Aeterna: Études sur le patriotisme romain dans l'Occident latin a l'époques des grandes invasions (Neuchâtel, Switzerland, 1967), pp. 234–236, 249, 256–258;Google Scholar and, for securitas or lasting peace in the City, see Kamlah's, Wilhelm still useful Christentum und Geschichtlichkeit: Untersuchungen zur Entstehung des Christentums und zu Augustins ‘Bürgerschaft Gottes’, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart, Germany, 1951), p. 266.Google ScholarI discuss other literature on the topic in Redeeming Politics (Princeton, N.J., 1990), pp. 130–148, 196–200.Google Scholar

32. DCD 15.4; Cameron, , Christianity, pp. 158–160 (on “the rhetoric of paradox”);Google Scholarand Alici, Luigi, “Interiorita e speranza,” in Interiorità e intenzionalità nel ‘De civitate Dei’ di Sant'Agostino, ed. Piccolimini, Remo (Rome, 1990), pp. 60–67.Google Scholar