The Bible in Christian North Africa. Volume 2 The Bible in Christian North Africa: Part II: Consolidation of the Canon to the Arab Conquest (Ca. 393 to 650 CE) 9783110492613, 9783110494457

Citation preview

The Bible in Christian North Africa

Handbooks of the Bible and Its Reception

Volume 4.2

The Bible in Christian North Africa Part II: Consolidation of the Canon to the Arab Conquest (Ca. 393 to 650 CE) Edited by Jonathan P. Yates and Anthony Dupont

ISBN 978-3-11-049445-7 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-049261-3 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-049170-8 ISSN 2330-6270 Library of Congress Control Number: 2023934707 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: Portrait: The earliest portrait of Saint Augustine in a 6th century fresco, Lateran, Rome. The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Foto. Map: “The Tabula Peutingeriana,” seg. IV, by Castorius (ed. Konrad Miller, 1887), public domain. Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Contents List of Abbreviations

VII

Map of Early Christian Nortn Afrika

XIV

Jonathan P. Yates and Anthony Dupont Part Two: A General Introduction and Overview

1

Raúl Villegas Marín 1 Scripture and the North African Conciliar Canon Lists Marie Pauliat 2 Scripture in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum Alden Bass 3 The Bible in Anonymous African Sermons

31

61

Johannes Brachtendorf 4 Scripture in Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram Hildegund Müller 5 Scripture in Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos Allan D. Fitzgerald O.S.A. 6 Augustine and John the Evangelist

13

89

115

139

Isabelle Bochet 7 Augustine’s Use of Scripture against the Manichaeans after 400 CE Adam Ployd 8 Scripture in Augustine’s Polemics against the Donatists David Meconi 9 Scripture in Augustine’s De ciuitate Dei

219

Giulio Malavasi 10 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 411–418 CE

241

193

167

VI

Contents

Mathijs Lamberigts 11 Scripture in the Debate between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine, 418–430 CE 267 Brian J. Matz 12 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 425–430 CE Thomas Clemmons 13 Quodvultdeus and Victor Vitensis

303

335

Aäron Vanspauwen 14 Scripture among Augustine’s Circle (Alypius, Evodius, Possidius): The Beginnings of Augustinianism? 361 Francis X. Gumerlock 15 Scripture in Fulgentius of Ruspe

387

Éric Fournier 16 Exegesis, Exempla, and Invective: The Use of Scripture in Facundus of Hermiane’s In Defense of the Three Chapters 413 Paul M. Blowers 17 Scripture and Its Interpretation in the Works of Maximus the Confessor from His North African Monastic Exile 451 David Vopřada 18 Scripture and the Arians of North Africa

475

Robin M. Jensen 19 The Bible in the Pictorial Art of Late Antique North Africa

503

Jonathan P. Yates and Anthony Dupont 20 Summary, Conclusions, and Avenues for Further Research

531

Subject Index

545

Ancient Sources Index

559

Biblical Citations Index to Volume Two

585

Bible and Related Literature Index to Volume One

597

List of Abbreviations Works of Augustine Adim. Agon. An. Orig. Arian. Bapt. Brev. coll. C. du. ep. Pelag. C. Jul. C. Jul. op. imp. C. litt. Petil. C. mend. Catech. Cath. fr. Civ. Coll. Max. Conf. Cons. Corrept. Cresc. Div. quaest. LXXXIII Div. quaest. Simpl. Doctr. chr. Enarrat. Ps. Ep. Exc. urb. Exp. Gal. Exp. quaest. Rom. Faust. Fel. Fid. symb. Fort. Fund. Gen. imp. Gen. litt. Gen. Man. Gest. Pelag. Grat. Grat. Chr. Haer. Leg. Mor. eccl. et mor. Manich. Nat. b. Nat. grat. Nupt.

Contra Adimantum De agone christiano De anima et eius origine Contra sermonem Arrianorum De baptismo contra Donatistas Breviculus conlationis cum Donatistis libri tres Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum Contra Iulianum Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum Contra litteras Petiliani Contra mendacium De cathecizandis rudibus Ad catholicos fratres liber unus De civitate Dei Conlatio cum Maximino Arrianorum episcopo Confessiones De consensu evangelistarum De correptione et gratia Ad Crescronium Grammaticum partis Donati De diversis quaestionibus LXXXIII De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum De doctrina christiana Enarrationes in Psalmos Epistulae De excidio urbis Romae Expositio in epistulam ad Galatas Expositio quarumdam quaestionum in epistula ad Romanos Contra Faustum Manichaeum Contra Felicem Manicheum De Fide et symbolo Contra Fortunatum Contra epistulam Manichaei quam vocant Fundamenti De Genesi ad litteram liber unus imperfectus De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim De Genesi contra Manichaeos De gestis Pelagii De gratia et libero arbitrio De gratia Christi et de peccato originali De haeresibus ad Quodvultdeum Contra aduersarium legis et prophetarum De moribus ecclesiae catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum De natura boni De natura et gratia De nuptiis et concupiscentia ad Valerium

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-203

VIII

List of Abbreviations

Parm. Pecc. Merit. Perf. Persev. Praed. Psal. Don. Retract. Secund. Serm. s. Dolbeau s. Mai s. Morin Serm. Dom. Spir. et litt. SPM Tract. ep. Jo. Tract. Ev. Jo. Trin. Unic. bapt. Util. cred. Ver. rel.

Contra epistulam Parmeniani De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo paruulorum ad Marcellinum De perfectione iustitiae hominis De dono perseuerantiae De praedestinatione sanctorum Psalmus contra partem Donati Rectractationes Contra Secundinum Manicheum Sermones Sermones edited by F. Dolbeau Sermones edited by A. Mai Sermones edited by G. Morin De sermone domini in monte De spiritu et littera ad Marcellinum Stromata patristica et mediaevalia. Edited by Cyrille Lambot. Utrecht: Spectrum, 1950–56. In epistulam Iohannis ad Parthos tractatus In Iohannis evangelium tractatus De Trinitate De unico baptismo contra Petilianum ad Constantinum De utilitate credendi De vera religione

General Abbreviations Acced. ACO Acta Conc. Aquil. ACW Adv. Eutych. Adv. Man. Adv. Pel. Cael. Aen. Aleat. Alterc. ANF AQH ATAE Aug AugLex AugStud AW

De accedentibus ad gratiam Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum. Edited by Eduard Schwartz. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1914–1984. Acta Concilii Aquileiensis Ancient Christian Writers Adversus Eutychetem Adversus Manichaeos Commonitorium lectori adversum haeresim Pelagii et Caelestii vel etiam scripta Juliani Aeneid De aleatoribus Altercatio Augustini cum Pascentio Arriano Ante-Nicene Fathers. Rev. ed. 10 vols. 1885–97. Reprint. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994. Adversus quinque haereses Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopaedia Augustinianum Augustinus-Lexikon, ed. C. Mayer et al., 5 volumes (Basel: Schwabe & Co. 1986-2019) Augustinian Studies Athanasius-Werke

General Abbreviations

BA BCNA I

BEFAR BEHEH Bib BJRL BnF C. Fab. C. Fast. C. s. Fastid. C. Sab. et Phot. C. Varim. CA Cat. cat. nos. CCSG CCSL Chron. CIL CJPA CN CNRS Coll. Carth. Com. nom. Cael. Comm. Ep. Paul. (Rom.) Comm. Ep. Paul. (Fil.) Comm. Job CPG CPL CPPM CSEL Def. Tri. Cap. Dem. De orat. dom. De princ. De schism. Dicta Dim. temp. Disp. Pyrrh. EAA EHR EME Ep. ad Alex. Ep. ad Eus.

IX

Bibliothèque Augustinienne Jonathan P. Yates and Anthony Dupont, eds. The Bible in Christian North Africa, part I: Commencement to the Confessiones of Augustine (ca. 180 to 400 CE). HBR 4.1 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020. Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome Bibliotheque de l’Ecole des hautes etudes: Sciences historiques et philologiques Biblica Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester Bibliothèque nationale de France Contra Fabianum Contra sermonem Fastidiosi Ariani Contra sermonem Fastidiosi Dialogus contra Arrianos, Sabellianos, et Photinianos Contra Varimadum Collectio Armamentarii De cataclysmo catalog numbers Corpus Christianorum: Series Graeca Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina Chronicon Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Berlin 1862–. Contra Judaeos, Paganos et Arrianos De cantico novo Centre national de la recherche scientifique Gesta collationis Carthaginensis [411] Commonitorium super nomine Caelestii Ambrosiaster, Commentarius in epistulas Paulinas (ad Romanos) Ambrosiaster, Commentarius in epistulas Paulinas (ad Filippenses) Commentarius in Job Corpus Patrum Graecorum Clavis Patrum Latinorum. Edited by Eligius Dekkers. 2nd ed. Steenbrugis: Abbatia Sancti Petri, 1961. Clavis Patristica Pseudepigraphorum Medii Aevi. Edited by. John Machielsen. Brepols, 1990– Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Pro Defensione Trium Capitulorum Ad Demetriadem De oratione dominica De principiis De schismate Donatistarum adversus Parmenianum Dicta regis Trasamundi et in ea responsionum liber unus Dimidium temporis Disputatio cum Pyrrho Collection des Études augustiniennes. Série Antiquité The English Historical Review Early Medieval Europe Epistula ad Alexandrum Byzantinum Epistula ad Eusebium

X

List of Abbreviations

Ep. Ad Rufum EstEcl FC Fid. Fid. ad Pet. GCS Greg. GSanc HBR Hist. pers. Hom. Exod. Hom. spir. HPVA HTB HTR Idol. ILCV Inc. ad Scar. Inst. Inst. IPM JECS JEH JTS Laps. LCL LCPM LFC Lib. apol. LP MA

MGH AA Mort. NASB NDPAC Nov. NRSV NRTh NTS ÖNB Or. PCBE Pelag.

Epistula ad Rufum Estudios eclesiasticos Fathers of the Church De fide De fide ad Petrum Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten [drei] Jahrhunderte Gregorianum Gloria Sanctorum Handbooks of the Bible and Its Reception Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae Homiliae in Exodum Homilia spiritualis Histoire de la persécution vandale en Afrique. Edited by Serge Lancel. Paris: Les belles lettres, 2002. Histoire du texte biblique. Lausanne, Éditions du Zèbre, 1996–. Harvard Theological Review De idololatria Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres. Edited by Ernst Diehl. 2nd ed. Berlin: Hildebrand, 1961. De incarnatione Filii Dei et vilium animalium auctore ad Scarilam liber unus Divinarum institutionum (Lactantius) Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum (Cassiodorus) Instrumenta patristica et mediaevalia Journal of Early Christian Studies Journal of Ecclesiastical History Journal of Theological Studies De lapsis Loeb Classical Library Letture Cristiane del Primo Millenio Liber fidei Catholicae Liber Apologeticus Liber promissionum et praedictorum Dei Miscellanea agostiniana; testi e studi, pubblicati a cura del-l’Ordine eremitano di s. Agostino nel XV centenario dalla morte del santo dottore. 2 Volumes. Edited by Germain Morin and Antonio Casamassa. Roma, Tipografia poliglotta vaticana, 1930-31. Monumenta Germaniae historica. Auctores antiquissimi De mortalitate New American Standard Bible Nuovo dizionario di patristica ed antichità cristiane Novellae New Revised Standard Version La nouvelle revue théologique New Testament Studies Österreichische Nationalbibliothek De oratione Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire Adversus Pelagianos dialogi III

General Abbreviations

PG PL PLS Praed. Praed. grat. Princ. Quaest. Thal. Quaest. Theop. Quinq. haer. QVC RAC RBén REA REAug REB RechAug RET RH RHE RHR Rom. RomBarb RSPT RSR RTL SacEr SAEMO SC Scorp. SEAug Serm. Arrian. Serm. Dom. Sibyl Or. SLA StAmbr StPat StPatr Symb. 1–2 Temp. barb. Tras. Trin. TU Turb. UQF Util. eccl. VC

XI

Patrologia Graeca [= Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Graeca]. Edited by Jacques-Paul Migne. 162 vols. Paris, 1857–1886. Patrologia Latina [= Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina]. Edited by Jacques-Paul Migne. 217 vols. Paris, 1844–1864. Patrologia Latina Supplementum Praedestinatus Ad Johannem et Venerium de veritate praedestinationis et gratiae De principiis (Peri archõn) Quaestiones ad Thalassium Quaestiones ad Theopemptum Adversus quinque haereses De quattuor virtutibus caritatis Reallexikon fur Antike und Christentum. Edited by Theodor Klauser et al. Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1950–. Revue bénédictine Revue des etudes anciennes Revue des études augustiniennes Revue des études byzantines Recherches Augustiniennes Revista espanola de teologia Revue historique Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique Revue de l’histoire des religions In Romanos Romanobarbarica Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques Recherches de science religieuse Revue théologique de Louvain Sacris erudiri Sancti Ambrosii Episcopi Mediolanensis Opera Sources chrétiennes. Paris: Cerf, 1943–. Scorpiace Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum Sermo Arrianus De sermone Domini in monte Sibylline Oracle Studies in Late Antiquity Studia Ambrosiana Studia Patavina Studia Patristica De symbolo De tempore barbarico Ad Trasamundum De Trinitate Texte und Untersuchungen Ad Turbantium De ultima quarta feria De catholicae ecclesiae unitate Vigiliae Christianae

XII

Ver. rel. Virg. Vit. Aug. VL Vulg. WSA ZAC

List of Abbreviations

De vera religione De virginibus velandis Vita Augustini Vetus Latina manuscripts The Vulgate Bible. See https://www.academic-bible.com/en/online-bibles/bib lia-sacra-vulgata/read-the-bible-text/ The Works of Saint Augustine. New City Press, 1992–. Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum/Journal of Ancient Christianity

Map of Early Christian Nortn Afrika Political and Ecclesial Boundaries in North Africa in 411

Jonathan P. Yates and Anthony Dupont

Part Two: A General Introduction and Overview All students of Historical Theology know that North African Christians – especially figures such as Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine – played a crucial role in the development of western Christian theology.1 Likewise, students of Historical Theology know that, if anything, the Bible has proven to be more constant and more central than any individual thinker in the development of Christian theology and in the edification of Christian faith communities. However, the roles played by North African Christians in the formation of the biblical canon, in the traditions of western exegesis, and in applying the Bible to particular concerns of the Christian community have been and remain understudied domains. These lacunae explain why we called these relationships a “mystery” in the introduction to Volume 1.2 It is our hope that this two-volume handbook will both begin the process of addressing these questions and, perhaps, inspire others to continue researching and reporting on these crucial intersections. Volume 2 picks up chronologically where Volume 1 left off, i.e., ca. 400 CE, a year in which Augustine of Hippo may well have still been at work on the landmark that is his Confessiones,3 pursues Augustine’s growth as a biblical exegete, and then, via the lives and works of important figures who flourished in the two hundred years after his death, traces North African Christianity’s relationship to her sacred texts down to

 For historical background, theological foundation, and terminological discussions about North African Christianity in Late Antiquity we refer the reader to the introduction of BCNA I and the concise status quaestionis it contains.  J. P. Yates, A. Dupont, and D. L. Riggs, “Introduction,” in BCNA I, 2.  For more on the role played by the Bible at that pivotal juncture in Augustine’s life, see the chapter “Scripture in Augustine’s Confessiones” by A.-M. Kotzé in BCNA I. ✶

Jonathan Yates is a Professor of Historical Theology at Villanova University (Villanova, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.) and an alumnus (Ph.D./S.T.D.) of the KU Leuven (Belgium). His research focuses on North African Christianity’s relationship to its sacred texts. He has published numerous peer reviewed articles, book chapters, and edited volumes in addition to editing the scholarly journal Augustinian Studies for a decade. With David G. Hunter of Boston College, he recently co-edited Augustine and Tradition: Influences, Contexts, Legacy: Essays in Honor of J. Patout Burns, a volume published in 2021 by William B. Eerdmans. Anthony Dupont is Research Professor in Christian Antiquity at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven (Belgium). His research focuses on divine grace and human freedom in ancient North Africa in general, and more particularly in the writings of Augustine of Hippo and in the Pelagian controversy. More broadly, Dr Dupont is interested in Christian sermons as an emerging literary genre, and in the history of the idea of original sin. Currently, he serves the journal Augustiniana as its chief-editor.

Jonathan P. Yates and Anthony Dupont, Villanova University and KU Leuven https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-001

2

Jonathan P. Yates and Anthony Dupont

the establishment of Islam in North Africa. While Christianity did not die out entirely, it did cease to be the dominant force in the region. In short, then, the aim of these two volumes is to offer the interested student the means to begin to reconstruct the history of the crucial relationship that ancient North African Christians had with the texts that ultimately comprised the Christian Bible. After all, it was this collection and how it was read and applied that, more than anything else, distinguished these Christians – both ideologically and practically – both from other North Africans and, in several important ways, from other Christians in and beyond the larger Mediterranean world. Students of Historical Theology also know that the extraordinarily-gifted Augustine of Hippo dominates the story of North African Christianity and, according to many, much of the story of western Christianity.4 Volume 2 endeavors to trace the mature Augustine’s relationship to the Bible via ten chapters, all of which treat important aspects of his exegesis and/or important works – whether exegetical or homiletical or polemical – all of which were composed between ca. 400 and his death in 430 CE. At the same time, we have striven toward comprehensiveness by including nine other chapters dedicated to other prominent authors with a connection to North Africa and who proved influential for the development of western theology and western biblical exegesis. These chapters deal with African authors and sources such as the group of anonymous sermons (possibly) stemming from North Africa; canonical lists drawn up by African councils ca. 400; Maximus Confessor’s African exile; the (Vandal) Arian presence in North Africa; and the role played by the Bible in North Africa’s extra-literary material culture. We also provide treatments of North African biblical scholars who are too often forgotten in contemporary research such as Quodvultdeus of Carthage, Victor Vitensis, Alypius of Thagaste, Evodius of Uzalis, Possidius of Calama, Fulgentius of Ruspe, Facundus of Hermione, and Fastidiosus. By proceeding chronologically, Volume 2 also aims to provide ways to clearly distinguish exegetical patterns and lines of influence – both inside and outside North Africa – while also permitting readers to draw a few boundaries and distinctions both diachronically and synchronically. Volume 1 began with a study of the material presence of the Bible in Roman North Africa via the Old Latin and Vulgate manuscript traditions. Relatedly, Volume 2 begins with the formation of the Bible into a coherent entity or collection of sacred texts, paying particular attention to the metes and bounds of that collection and how it evolved into its (more or less) final form. In Chapter 1, Raúl Villegas Marín meticulously studies the North African conciliar canon lists: which books were considered to be canonical, which were considered to

 E.g., in the assessment of Robert L. Wilken, “Augustine towers over all. It is not hyperbolic to say during his lifetime he was the most intelligent man in the Mediterranean world. Between Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece and Thomas Aquinas in the high Middle Ages, he has no peer.” For this see his Bradley Lecture of Jan. 9, 2006, which was entitled “Augustine’s Enduring Legacy.” It is accessible at: http://www.aei.org/research-products/speech/augustines-enduring-legacy/.

Part Two: A General Introduction and Overview

3

be edifying but not canonical, and which were not recommended by African Councils in the late-fourth and early-fifth centuries CE? The African synods’ pronouncements on the canon of the Bible (393, 397, and 419 CE) are explicable primarily by dynamics internal to North African Christianity. Although it cannot be ruled out that in 397 and 419 the confirmation by the African bishops of the canonicity of the additions to the Septuagint should be interpreted – at least in part – as a response to Jerome’s rejection of their canonicity, Jerome’s position likely played a secondary role. Villegas Marín observes that the main objective of the African bishops seems not to have been to defend the inclusion of the Old Testament deuterocanonical books as canonical, but, rather, to ensure the exclusion from the canon of any writing – both the “heretical” apocrypha and, perhaps, other less “dangerous” works such as The Shepherd of Hermas – which were not explicitly mentioned in their list of canonical books. We know that the books that the African Catholic bishops excluded from the canon circulated widely in the Christian milieus of North Africa, milieus in which the boundaries between “orthodoxy” and “heterodoxy” were sometimes blurred. We also know that these books were read not only in private but also (occasionally) in public in Catholic basilicas. Villegas Marín argues that the North African canon lists were aimed primarily at eradicating the use of non-canonical books from liturgical settings. Alden Bass engages with anonymous African sermons, a long-neglected collection of sources that offers insight into quotidian North African biblical exegesis, for which scientific interest has increased exponentially the last decade. This collection has proven to be one of the most important and abundant sources of information for the use of the Bible in late-antique North Africa, despite the fact that a significant number remain anonymous. This collection offers historical and theological insight into Augustine’s hermeneutical legacy as well as extra-Augustinian sources, both “orthodox” and “heterodox.” Through these sermons scholars can begin to discern ordinary liturgical uses of the Bible outside the heated polemical context which has often dominated the study of the role played by Scripture in the region. This chapter surveys the liturgical context of African preaching and explains the many challenges of working with anonymous material, especially authorship, sectarian affiliation, and chronology. The most significant ancient and medieval collections of these sermons are also described. Given the facts that these anonymous sermons derive from every late-ancient homiletic genre and that they were written over the course of three centuries by a variety of authors from at least three major sects (Catholic, Donatist, and Arian), it is impossible to make general statements about the way(s) Scripture is used in them. Depending upon their purposes and goals, the preachers behind these compositions utilized Scripture in a wide range of ways – from blunt “proof texting,” to logical argumentation, to engaging storytelling, to light commentary and embellishment. Nevertheless, fruitful comparisons can be made within genres (catechetical, dominical, etc.) in order to reconstruct the range of interpretive possibilities for a given pericope. Moreover, the sermons illuminate aspects of church life which might otherwise be concealed or distorted by exclusive emphasis on theological and polemical treatises, including

4

Jonathan P. Yates and Anthony Dupont

identity formation, community building, and pastoral care. Bass concludes that further work on these sermons is sure to yield a fuller picture of how the Bible was understood and used by both the people and their pastors in this period. Marie Pauliat continues this line of inquiry by surveying (some of) the extant homiletic efforts of the most famous North African preacher of them all: Augustine of Hippo. Her chapter studies the group of sermons that Augustine did not edit himself: the sermones ad populum. That the Bible plays a preponderant role in Augustine’s sermones is, given the genre and its purpose, self-evident. Because they were preached in different historical, geographical, and liturgical contexts, Pauliat’s main research question is whether and, if so, how Augustine adapted his exegeses to a variety of particular homiletic contexts. Pauliat shows that Augustine did adapt his exegeses before presenting four contexts in which such homiletic adaptations occurred. First, the personality of Augustine and his rhetorical and exegetical training shaped both his biblical preferences and the functions he assigns to biblical quotations. Second, the organization of the liturgical year and the structure of the Eucharistic celebration impacted both the biblical quotations Augustine chose to comment on as well as the explanations and applications he made of them in his sermons. Third, even though the biblical commentaries in the polemical sermons are usually identical to those found in his treatises, they have a different tone and serve different functions: the former are not primarily intended to refute opponents, but, rather, aim to fortify Augustine’s African audiences against inevitable doctrinal errors. Fourth, as the sermones also contain traces of reactions by particular audiences, they echo the relationship between the preacher and his congregation(s). Augustine the preacher frequently develops an inclusive exegesis or a “totalizing discourse” in order to address each and every one of his listeners, often transforming and adapting his biblical comments according to the feedback he receives from the assemblies in real time. The interpretation of Genesis occupied Augustine throughout his life and De Genesi ad litteram undoubtedly constitutes the apex of his attempts to interpret the first Book of Moses. Johannes Brachtendorf combines a reflection on Augustine’s methodology for interpreting the creation narrative of Genesis with an examination of both his appropriation and his critique of Platonism in his formulation of a doctrine of creation as he constructs an extensive commentary on Gen 1–3. According to Augustine, the biblical text exhibits two levels of meaning: an obvious or “literal” meaning and another that reflects the text’s deeper reality. Augustine suggests that the initial and simpler level of meaning is intended for those who know only material reality, whereas the second and more profound meaning reveals itself to the readers informed by Platonic philosophy. Following the Apostle Paul’s distinction of the spiritales from the carnales found in 1 Cor 3:1–2, Augustine frames this double-hermeneutic as a form of instruction intended to lead the carnales to the invisible realities that Genesis often exhorts its readers to under the names of visible things. Although Augustine’s hermeneutical approach to Genesis relies on the thesis that intelligible reality represents the reality that the apostle

Part Two: A General Introduction and Overview

5

Paul claims is accessible only to the spiritales, this hermeneutic ultimately transforms Platonism via Augustine’s rigid distinction between the Creator and creation. The Psalms played a crucial role in both the spirituality and the theology of early Christianity. This was certainly the case with Augustine of Hippo, who frequently quoted, interpreted, and applied them throughout his oeuvre. The bishop also generated Christianity’s first comprehensive commentary on the Psalms, a collection known as the Enarrationes in Psalmos. This work, which is analyzed in detail by Hildegund Müller, is comprised of discreet works that were originally sermons, either actually preached by Augustine himself or composed as sample sermons for others. The Enarrationes marks both a turning point and an acme for Augustine’s exegesis, while also providing us with important clues for our broader understanding of his preaching and interpretive techniques. His preferred version of the Psalter was a Vetus Latina text closely resembling a Veronese version that is datable to the seventh century. Rather than deploring the complex and chaotic situation of the early Latin Bible that was marked by the circulation of numerous versions – to say nothing of the attempts to resolve it – Augustine exploited this chaos for his own exegetical ends, often comparing several different Latin and Greek translations in order to better understand a passage or combining two different versions in his reading in order to make a particular point. Augustine’s exegesis of the Psalter was allegorical and was deeply shaped by the liturgical use of the Psalms as prayers and communal songs. His preaching draws his listeners in and makes them part of a multilayered shared experience. This technique can be directly connected to a concept central to both his theology and his biblical exegesis, the Totus Christus. Totus Christus unites preacher, listeners, and the church in one grand transtemporal sweep, with Christ as the head of the church’s body and believers as that body’s members, with both occasionally tapped to serve as the speakers of particular portions of the Psalms. Augustine explained the verses of each Psalm sequentially and he typically connected them with numerous other biblical passages with similar wording, an approach that creates a rich, Bible-based tapestry marked throughout by terms and images drawn from Scripture. While he did not treat the majority of the Psalms in any particular order, a few that were clearly planned as homiletic series nevertheless highlight Augustine’s attempts at liturgical reform. It is sometimes assumed that Augustine – because of his commitment to his doctrine of grace – mainly based his theology on Paul’s letters. Allan D. Fitzgerald shows that John and 1 John were just as influential for the bishop’s theology as was Paul. At the same time, Fitzgerald argues that we can only fully understand Augustine’s theology by thoroughly incorporating his sermons into our study of his thought, a point that he demonstrates here via Augustine’s In Evangelium Johannis tractatus and In epistulam Johannis ad Parthos tractatus decem. For Augustine, reflecting and commenting on John proved significant for the development of a biblical mindset and, in fact, he followed this approach even while still a priest in Hippo (i.e., prior to 395/6 CE). After describing some significant changes in his understanding of and approach to

6

Jonathan P. Yates and Anthony Dupont

the Johannine corpus, Fitzgerald pays special attention to the time and circumstances surrounding the commentaries Augustine preached on John and 1 John, books in which Christological and Pneumatological elements are prominent. In doing so, Augustine publicly preaches what he had absorbed from personal reading and reflection. Augustine’s awareness of the Johannine corpus enabled him to provide his listeners with a coherent sense of their identity as Christians: men and women who are in solidarity with Christ and who are united to their neighbors by the love of the Holy Spirit. Because of his own long-standing affiliation with the Manichaean movement, the refutation of the Manichaean worldview and Manichaean doctrine occupied Augustine throughout his life. He particularly rejected Manichaean biblical hermeneutics. Isabelle Bochet offers an overview of his recourse to the Bible against the Manichaeans after 400 CE. Manichaean exegesis emphasized the incompatibility between the Old and the New Testament, denounced the Catholic Scriptures as a “hybrid monster” which betrayed both the Gospel and the freshness of its revelation. Against this total rejection of Jewish scriptures, Augustine constructed a truly systematic interpretation of the Catholic Scriptures, one that simultaneously encompassed both their historical and symbolic senses. He also argued that it is only when viewed in light of this hermeneutic that the Gospel’s full meaning becomes clear. The religious and historical status of the Jewish people stands at the heart of the debate between Augustine and the Manichaeans. Faustus had only contempt for the Jews. He attributed to them grotesque representations of an ignorant, jealous, and cruel deity; he denounced the immoralities of the patriarchs and the prophets; he caricatured Jewish cultural practices; and he condemned Jewish Law. Augustine, by contrast, assigned a crucial role to Israel, claiming that she has always been “a prophetic nation” and, moreover, that she will remain such for the remainder of her history. Augustine also emphatically insists that the Jewish people have continually provided a crucial service to the church as the guardians and guarantors of the church’s sacred texts: they have always been and, even today, remain an essential “witness” to and for the church. Moreover, he believes that “the essential conviction” of the Christian religion is that “history and prophecy attest to the ways that divine providence accomplishes the redemption of humanity in time.” A second fierce and long-running theological controversy that occupied Augustine was the so-called Donatist controversy. Adam Ployd examines Augustine’s anti-Donatist treatises from the period 400–411 CE, including the decisive Conference of Carthage of 411. Proceeding chronologically through several anti-Donatist works, Ployd identifies an impressive level of continuity in Augustine’s scriptural arguments against the Donatists. In addition to privileging certain texts, Augustine applies a consistent set of exegetical principles that undergird his scriptural polemic. These principles include the assumed unity of Scripture and the consequent need to resolve ambiguities by reading one text in light of another. This approach often results in identifying a central theme that recurs throughout Scripture, and Augustine just as often elucidates this theme by quoting passages from Genesis to Revelation. Apart from establishing clusters and constellations of verses and/or passages from Scripture, Augustine brings a moral principle to bear

Part Two: A General Introduction and Overview

7

against “false” Donatist interpretations: love must serve as the basis for all biblical exegesis, and it is precisely the Donatists’ failure to love that prevents them from reading and applying Scripture correctly. David Meconi demonstrates that, in his De civitate Dei, Augustine asserts the need for knowledge of scriptural truths if one is to read the significance of earthly events rightly. In fact, the very title of this sweeping account of how Christianity is to be delineated and developed within the temporal order of the here and now comes directly from the Bible: “Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God” (Ps 87:3). This city cannot be equated with any political organization; rather, it must be viewed as transcending all forms of temporal citizenship. In other words, the ultimate answer to the puzzle that is the history and trajectory of humanity will come from neither Greece nor Rome, but from the God who created and, in the fullness of time, walked this earth. This explains why Augustine relies on the Bible to tell the history of the world, ensuring that the truths of God’s sovereignty and providence, of the goodness of creation, of the proper understanding of the human person as both body and soul, of the true nature of sacrifice, and a myriad of other concerns form the lens through which Christ’s pilgrim church attempts to traverse “the earthly city” (civitas terrena) rightly and, having done so, to attain the eternal “city of God” (civitas Dei), that eternal community for which all things and all times have been brought into being. Because the Bible was at the core of the debates of the so-called Pelagian controversy, three chapters of this Handbook outline the role it played in this heated and long-running debate about the relationship between human free will and divine grace. These three chapters are delineated according to the chronology that scholars typically used to tell that quarrel’s story. Giulio Malavasi deals with the initial phase: 411–418 CE. First he offers an historical presentation of this first phase, starting with the theological debate that broke out in Rome at the beginning of the fifth century regarding the nature of Adam’s sin and concluding with the formal condemnation of Pelagianism in 418. Malavasi then investigates both Pelagius’s and Caelestius’s relationship with Scripture. The Bible was obviously important for Pelagius even before the controversy with Augustine, a fact witnessed by the commentary on the Pauline epistles that he produced during the first decade of the fifth century. At the same time, and as he indicated in his exhortatory letter to the virgin Demetrias, Pelagius urges her to read Scripture with moderation in order to avoid living an unbalanced spiritual life. In his view, any spiritual life would be unbalanced were it to be marked by excessive study and/or by insufficient attention to authentic ascetic practice. In the third section of his chapter, Malavasi presents four detailed case studies that highlight the controversy’s main theological issues: Rom 5:12 concerning original sin; Phil 2:13 concerning the intersection of divine and human willing; Luke 1:6 concerning human righteousness; and Rom 7:18–20 concerning carnal concupiscence. The opposing interpretations offered by Augustine and Pelagius show that the Pelagian controversy was not primarily an abstract theological debate; rather, it was an exegetical debate that revolved around the correct interpretation and application of a set of

8

Jonathan P. Yates and Anthony Dupont

biblical passages that were repeatedly invoked. And this set stemmed primarily, though not exclusively, from Paul’s letters. In the debate between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine the focus was on original sin and the implications of this doctrine for the goodness of both the creator and his creation; on the impact of Adam’s sin upon humanity; and on the justice of God. According to Julian, the goodness of the creator rules out original sin in the Augustinian sense since a good God would never create a human being born subject to it. Julian situates sin on the level of the soul and considers it to be limited to the rational acts of adult human beings. In Julian’s view, God is the only creator of the soul. Thus, if babies, who can neither think rationally nor act ethically, are born with original sin, then original sin must be attributed to God. And it is impossible to reconcile this idea with a God who is both a good creator and a just judge who both punishes and rewards human beings only according to their individual ethical decisions and deeds. Mathijs Lamberigts critically analyzes the appeals of these two antagonists to Scripture and the ways they used it to support and to defend their respective views. He examines their lengthy exegeses of Rom. 5, showing how this text was read either pro (Augustine) or contra (Julian) the doctrine of original sin. Both Julian and Augustine also make ample use of Old Testament texts in order to show either that God’s justice follows the same rationale as does that of human beings (Julian) or that God’s justice must be considered as other or different when compared to human conceptions (Augustine). Lamberigts also shows how both antagonists make use of Scripture in order to support the views that they already hold, not necessarily in order to refine or to develop their ideas in light of what Scripture teaches. Brian Matz examines the role that Scripture played in elucidating Augustine’s theology of grace in the four compositions he penned on this subject between 425–430 CE, a period often referred to as the third (albeit concurrent) phase of the Pelagian controversy, despite this phase being neither overtly controversial nor particularly “Pelagian.” Augustine wrote these texts years after his initial exchanges with Pelagius in order to address debates going on both within a Christian community at Hadrumetum and between several monastic communities in southern Gaul. In these compositions Augustine explores the role of human will, the inscrutability of God’s predestinating activities, and the necessity of grace for true faith. Although the writings examined here cite widely from across the biblical canon, only a few biblical books – and, indeed, often only a chapter or two within them – receive extended treatment by Augustine for their contributions to his doctrine of grace. Yet, once these ideas were established, hundreds of other biblical citations were invoked to tease out the implications of the initial ideas into a more fulsome theology of grace. These included: (1) distinguishing between the beginning of faith and the ongoing faith in the life of a believer; (2) distinguishing between sin and its effects; and (3) distinguishing between ideas of divine and human synergy, cooperation, divine sovereignty, and divine election. Importantly, these compositions also included a theology of pastoral care that required a believer to have equal regard for everyone else since no one knows who is (and who is not) included among God’s elect.

Part Two: A General Introduction and Overview

9

In his contribution Aäron Vanspauwen summarizes the role the Bible played in the lives and extant works of three of Augustine’s close friends: Alypius of Thagaste, Evodius of Uzalis, and Possidius of Calama. Together they comprise a circle of influential, early fifth-century North African bishops. Their literary legacy is quite uneven: very few of Alypius’s writings have been preserved, but posterity has been kinder to both Evodius and Possidius. This important detail requires Vanspauwen to study each author from a specific perspective. The co-authored letters of Alypius and Augustine demonstrate how polemical contexts (e.g., anti-Pelagian and anti-Arian) influenced both their selection and their interpretation of biblical passages. In his letters to Augustine, Evodius discusses biblical exegesis in some detail, while in his anti-Manichaean treatise, he employs specific exegetical strategies that he saw as polemically beneficial. Possidius, in the Vita Augustini, a biography he penned shortly after Augustine’s death, uses biblical language and imagery to portray Augustine as an exemplary Christian leader and fellow believer. Vanspauwen highlights both the common tendencies of this group’s interpretive approach to the Bible and the diverse ways in which each author employed biblical language. Thomas Clemmons introduces the reader to both Quodvultdeus of Carthage and Victor Vitensis, two North African bishops writing during the time of the Vandal occupation of North Africa. Thirteen homilies are securely attributed to Quodvultdeus from the period before his exile (439 CE). Nine of the thirteen homilies were offered to Carthaginian catechumens prior to their baptism. These homilies are noteworthy for the ways in which Quodvultdeus used Christological figurative exegesis to illuminate catechetical instruction. The two sermons De tempore barbarico exhibit Quodvultdeus’s emphasis on biblical exempla and demonstrated how he, like Augustine, invoked Scripture in order to respond to critiques of the “Christian era” (Christiana tempora) by non-Christians. The Liber promissionum et praedictorum is a massive multi-part treatise gathering scriptural passages/testimonia from Genesis to Revelation. In this work Quodvultdeus gathers 153 promissiones/praedicta to exposit the threefold “sacred dispensation” of ante Legem, sub Lege, and sub gratia. This includes his interpreting the events of both his own day and the near future, such as the Vandals’ rise to dominance and the destruction of the Roman Empire, as fulfilling prophesies found in Ezekiel, Daniel, and Revelation. Victor Vitensis is known thanks to his Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae (circa 484 CE). This history is a rare testament to the period of the Vandal invasion of and settlement in North Africa. The work also offers striking examples of how the exegete might wed biblical prophecies to the events of his own era. Victor’s apocalyptic interpretation of recent and current events proves to be remarkably distinctive among North African assimilations of the Bible. After reviewing the life and writings of Fulgentius of Ruspe – including recent editions and important secondary literature – Francis X. Gumerlock discusses Fulgentius’s biblical canon, which included many of the deutero-canonical books, his relationship to and use of a particular version of the Vetus Latina, and his view of the relationship of the two Testaments as figure and reality, promise and fulfillment. Fulgentius penned no commentaries on books of the Bible. Instead, he mainly used Scripture theologically in

10

Jonathan P. Yates and Anthony Dupont

order to verify established doctrines and the standards of faith regarding the Trinity, Christology, and grace, while also using it to defend that faith against heresies such as Arianism, Nestorianism, and Pelagianism. He often used the lives of biblical characters such as Abraham, Jacob, Susanna, Judith, Hezekiah, and David as illustrations both of divine truths and of the righteous acts that (should) flow from them. To solve various biblical difficulties, Fulgentius employed the “analogy of faith,” interpreting obscure biblical passages through the lens of clearer ones. Fulgentius’s interpretations of the Bible also often went beyond the literal sense as he attempted to elucidate the spiritual meanings that Scripture contained. Gumerlock also demonstrates that, while Fulgentius was heavily influenced by the works of Augustine, he was also an independent exegete who both expanded upon and departed from the interpretations offered by his mentor. Eric Fournier unravels Facundus of Hermione’s use of Scripture in his In Defense of the Three Chapters. Recent publications, such as those by Leslie Dossey, have argued that the North African theologians’ response to Justinian’s position regarding the Three Chapters controversy amounted to a defense of their right to interpret Scripture for themselves as trained exegetes and as experts in divine Law. Building on that argument, Fournier shows that Facundus also responded specifically to Justinian’s attempts during this controversy to arrogate the role of exegete for himself. Fournier also argues that Facundus’s use of Scripture supported his view that Justinian had intervened inappropriately in church affairs instead of deferring to bishops and councils. This contribution highlights the political elements of Facundus’ exegesis by showing how he deployed specific passages of Scripture in order to oppose Justinian’s take on the Three Chapters. The first important use of Scripture in In Defense of the Three Chapters is theological. Facundus defends his decision both to support the Three Chapters and to oppose the emperor’s condemnation of the three dead theologians, not to mention Justinian’s opposition to a holy ecumenical council. The second important use of Scripture is as invective against Justinian for not deferring to the bishops in theological matters. This is particularly the case in Book 12, where Facundus uses a combination of historical (Marcian and Leo) and scriptural (mostly from Numbers, 2 Chronicles and 2 Samuel) exempla that, when read as critiques of Justinian, are clearly more critical of the emperor than has been previously acknowledged, especially with respect to his usurpation of the primary role in establishing the metes and the bounds of the faith, something that Facundus saw as the exclusive prerogative of the episcopate. Although he was not native to North Africa, and despite his insulation from the region’s pre-Byzantine Catholic Christian culture, Maximus the Confessor’s monastic exile in North Africa in the early seventh century proved to be a period of prolific activity. While in North Africa he produced no less than three entire works on biblical interpretation: his Questions and Responses for Thalassius, the Libyan abbot who took up scriptural difficulties raised by monks in his charge, his Questions and Uncertainties (addressee unknown), and his Questions and Responses for Theopemptus, a lawyer and friend. Paul M. Blowers shows that, in these extensive compositions Maximus

Part Two: A General Introduction and Overview

11

demonstrates an “Origenian hermeneutics for Africans,” which runs the gamut between literal and non-literal meanings of the biblical text while also integrating substantial spiritual reflections and ascetical insights. Blowers reviews these works, but his chapter also explores Maximus’s use of scriptural admonitions in intimate letters with various addressees (including secular ones), and the development of Maximus’s theological exegesis in the doctrinal Opuscula that he drafted during his stay in Africa. While it is typically associated with other intellectual and theological contexts, Arianism, which was introduced to North Africa via Vandals who served in the Roman army, in fact played a significant role in the region’s history. In his chapter, David Vopřada carefully documents the fragmentary sources relevant for understanding Arian biblical exegesis in North Africa. He begins his study at the end of the 420s, covers the period of Vandal rule in Africa, and culminates with the Byzantine reconquest of the imperial provinces in the 530s. While witnesses to the Arian Vandals’ use of the Bible in the liturgy or in everyday life have not been preserved, the Arian Vandals clearly respected Scripture, claiming that it was the sole source of their theological views and arguments. The use of the Bible in the North African debates between Arians and (Nicene) Catholics reveals a lack of genuine dialogue: the two sides consistently spoke past one another. Both sides used standard sets of scriptural testimonia and, as a result, the public discussions that were allegedly based on Scripture never amounted to genuine theological exchanges. On the contrary, these discussions quickly devolved into (and remained) little more than empty displays. Volume 2’s final chapter transcends literary sources. In it, Robin M. Jensen documents and discusses the impact of the Bible on pictorial art in Roman North Africa. Pictorial representations of certain biblical stories were commonly featured on various North African artifacts dated to the fourth and fifth centuries CE. Unlike the painted biblical narrative iconography found on the walls of the Roman catacombs and carved in relief on early Christian stone sarcophagi, the North African artifacts are mainly found on everyday ceramic objects (e.g., lamps, bowls, platters, and pottery tiles) designed for use in the home or, less commonly, on polychrome mosaic tomb covers. The most popular biblical themes and subjects adorning these objects include: Abraham offering Isaac (Gen 22); Daniel in the lions’ den (Dan 6); the three Hebrews consigned to the fiery furnace (Dan 3); Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead (John 11); and Christ’s Ascension (Acts 1). Many of these images offer significant parallels to the ways these same stories were interpreted in literary sources as instances of divine deliverance, fortitude in the face of persecution, or obedience to God’s commands. However, above and beyond these iconographic themes, North African artwork is primarily distinguished from other early Christian artifacts by the modesty of their material (for example, pottery), their domestic function (for example, lamps and bowls), and their mode of production insofar as most were mass produced in workshops for both local and export markets.

Raúl Villegas Marín

1 Scripture and the North African Conciliar Canon Lists Introduction On 8 October 393 CE, a plenary council of Africa presided over by Aurelius of Carthage assembled in the secretarium of the Basilica Pacis at Hippo.1 With the exception of five canons discovered by Charles Munier in the Codex Vercellensis 165 and two more included in their entirety in the acts of the Council of Carthage that took place in 525, the original minutes from the Council of Hippo have not survived.2 However, an abbreviated version of the other decisions adopted by the Council of Hippo, the so-called Breviarium Hipponense, a document prepared during the first session of the Council of Carthage held in August 397, is extant. Summoned to this synod, the bishops of Byzacena appeared in Carthage fifteen days prior to the arrival of their colleagues from other provinces and took advantage of the occasion to report to Aurelius the fact that the reformist-leaning canonical resolutions that had been approved at Hippo four years earlier were consistently being breached. According to the bishops of Byzacena, the reason for the widespread infringement of the canons of Hippo was a general ignorance of them. The Byzacenians believed that an abbreviated version of these canons would improve their circulation and observance, which is why, on 13 August 397 CE, during the first session of the council, they produced – under the direction of their primate, Mizonius,3 and with Aurelius’s

 On what follows, see C. Munier, “La tradition manuscrite de l’Abrégé d’Hippone et le canon des Écritures des églises africaines,” SacEr 21 (1972–1973): 43–46.  C. Munier, “Cinq canons inédits du concile d’Hippone du 8 octobre 393,” Revue de droit canonique 12 (1968): 16–29.  On Mizonius, see A. Mandouze, Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire, 1. Afrique (303–533) (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1982): 756–7, s.v. Mizonius. Throughout the remainder of this chapter, this work will be abbreviated as PCBE, 1. ✶

Raúl Villegas Marín is currently Ramón y Cajal Researcher at the University of Barcelona (RyC-201723402). He is a foreign associate researcher of the Laboratoire d’études sur les monothéismes (UMR 8584) and HALMA (UMR 8164). His main research interests are the making of religious identities in Late Antiquity; the dialectic between orthodoxy and heterodoxy in ancient Christianity; and the Pelagian Controversy and its late antique and early medieval aftermath.

Raúl Villegas Marín, Universidad de Barcelona https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-002

14

Raúl Villegas Marín

support – a complete summary of the Hipponian decisions.4 In the second session of the council, which took place fifteen days later – albeit without the Byzacenians, who had returned to their sees – approximately forty bishops from the provinces Africa Proconsularis, Numidia, and Mauritania approved the Breviarium that the Byzacenians had produced. This Breviarium Hipponense includes a list of the books of the Old and New Testaments acknowledged as canonical both by the bishops who had gathered in 393 at Hippo and by those who, four years later, convened at Carthage. Apparently, in the original acts of the Council of Hippo, this canonical list complemented a canon, preserved in the Codex Vercellensis 165. This canon stipulates that the content of preaching offered in a liturgical context must consist exclusively of commentary on passages of the canonical Scriptures or on the passions of the martyrs that were allowed to be read prior to the homily.5 The text of the canon that concerns us here specified which books were canonical Scripture. Any book whose title was not explicitly mentioned in the list should be excluded from the canon and, consequently, should not be used in the Catholic liturgy, with the sole exception of the passions of the martyrs, which could be read on their dies natales (“spiritual birthdays,” i.e., the days of their martyrdoms). The exclusion from the canon of the Bible of particular books seems to have been the main concern of the bishops who authorized this canon: That beyond the canonical Scriptures nothing should be read in church under the name of the Divine Scriptures. The canonical Scriptures are: Genesis. Exodus. Leviticus. Numbers. Deuteronomy. Joshua. Judges. Ruth. Of Reigns, four books [i.e., 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and 2 Kings]. Of Paralipomenon, two books. Job. Psalter. Of Solomon, five books. The book of the Twelve Minor Prophets. Also, Isaiah. Jeremiah. Ezekiel. Daniel. Tobit. Judith. Esther. Of Ezra, two books. Of Maccabees, two books. And of the New Testament: Gospels, four books. Of the Acts of the Apostles, one book. Of the apostle Paul, fourteen epistles. Of Peter, two. Of John, three. Of Jude, one. Of James, one. The Apocalypse of John. That the church across the sea should be consulted to confirm this canon. It is also permissible to read the passions of the martyrs, when their anniversary days (anniuersarii dies) are celebrated.6

 See the Letter of Aurelius and Mizonius to the bishops of Numidia and Mauritania in CCSL 149:28–29.  Council of Hippo (393), c. 5 (CCSL 149:21): “Ab universis episcopis dictum est: omnibus placet ut scripturae canonicae quae lectae sunt, sed et passiones martyrum, sui cujusque locis, in ecclesiis praedicentur.”  Breviarium Hipponense, c. 36 (CCSL 149:43; English translation with commentary by E. L. Gallagher and J. D. Meade, The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017]: 222–25, slightly modified): “Ut praeter scripturas canonicas nihil in ecclesia legatur sub nomine divinarum scripturarum. Sunt autem canonicae scripturae: genesis. exodus. leviticus. numeri. deuteronomium. jesu nave. judicum. ruth. regnorum libri iiii. paralipomenon libri ii. job. psalterium. salomonis libri v. liber xii prophetarum minorum. item isajas. hieremias. ezechiel.

1 Scripture and the North African Conciliar Canon Lists

15

There are, however, small textual variants among the manuscripts which transmit the canon about the Scriptures of the Breviarium. Thus, for example, while some versions of it attribute the authorship of only three books to Solomon, others grant him five. Such differences led Charles Munier to wonder whether there was a version of the Breviarium drawn up by the Byzacenian bishops on 13 August 397, containing a list of canonical Scriptures that was identical to the one approved at Hippo four years earlier, and another version approved during the second session of the council of Carthage on 28 August 397, when these slight changes were introduced. This hypothesis, however, was ruled out by Munier himself on the grounds that at the session on 28 August, Bishop Epigonius of Bulla Regia stated that the Breviarium drafted by the Byzacenians could be approved in its entirety, without any modification.7 In Munier’s view, the variants in the text of the canon that lists the Scriptures that occur in the different manuscript traditions of the Breviarium are due to interpolations introduced in the canonical list after 397 CE.8 After Munier’s work was published, Anne-Marie La Bonnardière revisited the issue by drawing attention to the fact that the second book of Augustine’s De doctrina christiana, which dates to 396, includes a list of canonical writings that credits Solomon with three books (Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes), attributing Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus to Sirach.9 According to La Bonnardière, from Augustine’s testimony it might be inferred that the manuscripts of the Breviarium that reduce the books of Solomon to three transmit the recension made by the Byzacenian bishops on 13 August 397, which, in turn, would coincide with the canonical list approved in 393 at Hippo, and later used by Augustine when writing the second book of De doctrina christiana. This canon on the canonical Scriptures would have been later amended. This adjustment could well be the result of an appeal the African Church made to the Roman see in either 397 or in 419.10 In May 419, approximately two hundred North African bishops met in Carthage under the leadership of Aurelius to discuss the case of Apiarius, the priest excommunicated by

danihel. tobias. judith. esther. esdrae libri ii. machabeorum libri ii. Novi autem testamenti: evangelia libri iiii. actus apostolorum liber i. pauli apostoli epistolae xiiii. petri ii. johannis iii. jude i. jacobi i. apocalipsis johannis. Ita ut de confirmando isto canone transmarina ecclesia consulatur. Liceat etiam legi passiones martyrum, cum anniversarii dies eorum celebrantur.”  See Registri ecclesiae Carthaginensis excerpta (CCSL 149:183): “Epigonius episcopus dixit: in hoc breviario, quod decerptum est de concilio Hipponensi, nihil arbitramur emendandum vel adsuendum.” On Epigonius, see PCBE 1:354–5, s.v. Epigonius.  Munier, “La tradition manuscrite,” 46–55. See also C. Munier, “Les conciles africains (a. 345–525) « revisités »,” in I concili della cristianità occidentale, secoli III–V. XXX Incontro di studiosi dell’antichità cristiana. Roma, 3–5 maggio 2001, SEAug 78 (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 2002), 147–65, esp. 158–60.  Augustine, Doctr. chr. 2.8.13 (CCSL 32:39–40).  A.-M. La Bonnardière, “Le canon des divines Écritures,” in Saint Augustin et la Bible, ed. A.-M. La Bonnardière (Paris: Beauchesne, 1986), 287–302.

16

Raúl Villegas Marín

bishop Urbanus of Sicca Veneria who had subsequently appealed to Pope Zosimus.11 Zosimus welcomed Apiarius’ appeal and sent legates to Africa to manage the matter. Once there, the legates asserted before the leadership of the North African church the right of the Roman See to constitute itself as a court of appeal in cases such as Apiarius’s, a right supposedly recognised in the council of Nicaea.12 On 25 May 419, following Zosimus’s death, the North African bishops gathered in Carthage to discuss this matter and, together with the Roman legates, passed a series of canons, one of which confirmed again the list of canonical writings approved at Hippo in 393 and Carthage in 397. This canon concluded with an explicit mention of the need to make this canon of Scripture known to Boniface of Rome and other bishops, so that it might be confirmed by them.13 Taken together, this opens up the possibility that, sometime between August 397 and the period immediately after May 419, the consultations opened by the North African church with the Roman See led to a slight modification of the text of the canon that listed the canonical Scriptures that were approved at Hippo in 393.14 However, it should be noted that in 427, when Augustine was compelled to defend the canonicity of Wisdom, he did not mention in support of it any intervention of the Roman See confirming the canonical list approved by the North African synods, a fact to which we will return below. In any case, these hypothetical modifications would have concerned secondary issues: the North African church (in their resolutions of 393, 397, and 419), the Roman See (at least, since the pontificate of Innocent I), and the churches from the Latin West in general were all in full agreement regarding the contents of the canon of Scripture. For these churches, the Septuagint constituted the highest authority for defining the canon of the Old Testament, with the result that they accepted the canonicity of Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus. Although, as we have seen, there may have been differences regarding the authorship of these last two writings, the crucial point was to acknowledge their canonicity. The Western churches distanced themselves at this point from the Eastern Christian tradition, which considered the Hebrew Bible to be the highest authority for defining the Old Testament canon. Therefore, it rejected the canonicity of the deuterocanonical books,15 a position that in this era in the West

 On Apiarius, see PCBE 1:82–83, s.v. Apiarius; S. Adamiak, Presbyters in the Late Antique West, Presbyter Record 105, last edited Jan 04, 2020 (http://www.presbytersproject.ihuw.pl/index.php?id=4&Pres byterID=105).  In fact, Zosimus mistook a canon of the Council of Serdica as Nicene.  Canones in causa Apiarii, c. 24 (CCSL 149:108): “Hoc etiam fratri et consacerdoti nostro Bonifatio vel aliis earum partium episcopis pro confirmando isto canone innotescat, quia et a Patribus ita accepimus in ecclesia legenda.”  Indeed, the list of canonical Scriptures included by the Roman Bishop Innocent I in a letter to Exuperius of Toulouse, dated February 405, attributes to Solomon the authorship of five books, a claim that is at odds both with Doctr. chr. 2.8.13 and with one of the manuscript traditions of the Breviarium (see Innocent, Ep. 6.7.13 [PL 20:401–502] and Gallagher and Meade, The Biblical Canon Lists, 232–5).  See, for instance, the Old Testament canon lists in Melito of Sardis, Eclogae, in Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.26.14 (E. Schwartz ed., Eusebius Werke 2.1: Die Kirchengeschichte, Die Bücher I bis V, GCS 9.1

1 Scripture and the North African Conciliar Canon Lists

17

was defended by Rufinus of Aquileia, Jerome, and certain Western churches and monastic communities who had been influenced by Eastern thought.16 As for the New Testament canon, in the Latin West it had been essentially closed by the second half of the fourth century, although doubts continued to exist regarding Hebrews and whether it had been penned by Paul or not.17

Why this Canon List? An Historiographical Overview Many have speculated on what might have prompted the North African bishops to address the question of the canon of Scripture several times between 393 and 419. The fact that the first of the North African councils at which the question was discussed was held at Hippo has led some scholars to suggest that it was Augustine, although still just an Hipponean priest in 393, who was primarily responsible. From his years among the North African Manicheans, he was well aware of their positions on the Christian Scriptures, and these scholars presume he deemed it necessary to promote the production and approval by the North African episcopate of a scriptural canon list that should be interpreted in an anti-Manichaean light.18 However, the stricto sensu anti-Manichean bias of this canon list is at least questionable. On the one hand, apart from the fact that the North African Manicheans would not have granted authority to a canon approved by the Catholic Church, their approach to the Christian Scriptures exceeded the framework of the debates around the canon that seems to have been behind the decisions of 393. After all, the Manichaeans comprehensively rejected the Old Testament (not just this or that book) and

[Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1903]: 388), which includes Wisdom; Origen, Sel. Ps. 1, in Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.25.2 (E. Schwartz ed., Eusebius Werke 2.2: Die Kirchengeschichte. Die Bücher VI bis X. Über die Märtyrer in Palästina, GCS 9.2, [Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1908]: 572–6); Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 4.35 (W. C. Reischl ed., S. Patris Nostri Cyrilli Hierosolymorum archiepiscopi opera quae supersunt omnia, v. 1 [München: Lentner, 1848]: 128); and Athanasius of Alexandria, Epistula festalis xxxix, 17 (P.-P. Joannou ed., Fonti, IX. Discipline generale antique (IVe–IXe s.), t. II. Les canons des Pères Grecs [Roma: Tipografia Italo-Orientale “S. Nilo”, 1963]: 72–4).  O. Wermelinger, “Le canon des latins au temps de Jérôme et d’Augustin,” in Le canon de l’Ancien Testament. Sa formation et son histoire, eds. J.-D. Kaestli and O. Wermelinger (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1984), 153–210; R. Hennings, Der Briefwechsel zwischen Augustinus und Hieronymus und ihr Streit um den Kanon des Alten Testaments und die Auslegung von Gal. 2, 11–14, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 21 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 131–217.  See B. M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament. Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 143–64 and 229–38; Gallagher and Meade, The Biblical Canon Lists, 30–56.  See F. L. Cross, “History and Fiction in the African Canons,” JTS NS 12 (1961): 227–47; C. P. Mayer, “Garanten der Offenbarung. Probleme der Tradition in den antimanichäischen Schriften Augustins,” Aug 12 (1972): 65; Metzger, The Canon, 237–8.

18

Raúl Villegas Marín

only selectively read the books of the New Testament. They, for instance, not only rejected the “Catholic” Acts of the Apostles and Hebrews, but also the passages from other books of the Catholic New Testament that they regarded as interpolations introduced by the “sower of tares.”19 At the same time, it seems plausible that the Manichean appreciation of Christian writings considered “apocryphal” by the Catholic hierarchy and the circulation of these writings within formally “Catholic” milieu might have motivated, at least in part, the definition of a scriptural canon by the North African Catholic hierarchy. As the wording of Breviarium Hipponense, canon 36 makes clear, the primary concern for the conciliar fathers who passed this canon was to exclude from the canon of Scripture some “apocryphal,” unnamed books and to forbid the reading of them “in church under the name of the Divine Scriptures.” On the other hand, the fact that the works of Augustine constitute our main source of information on the local dynamics which might have motivated the composition of a canon of Scripture by the North African Catholic bishops should not lead us to overestimate the role he actually played in this initiative. As Karl-Heinz Ohlig has pointed out, Augustine was active during the final phase of the formation of the canon and his position on the subject was fully consistent with that of the North African tradition.20 And yet, even if Augustine’s views might not have been instrumental in shaping the content of the canon list of Hippo, it is very likely that he managed to convince the conciliar fathers that a clear statement on the canon of Scriptures was necessary. After all, his intellectual trajectory prior to his ordination as presbyter had been characterized by the quest for sources of authority. The fact that, shortly after the Council of Hippo, he felt it necessary to include a canon list in the second book of his De doctrina christiana, might perhaps indicate that he had been behind the council’s initiative. Regarding this North African tradition, there is general consensus that in the debate between the Catholics and the Donatists, the question of the canon of Scripture was largely insignificant.21 The “Donatist Bible” and the “(African) Catholic Bible” were essentially the same: the Bible of Saint Cyprian, “the patron saint and hero” of both the Donatists and the Catholics.22 Cyprian’s Bible, at least as far as the Old Testament is concerned, was a Latin version of the Septuagint.23 The Donatists, like the Catholics, accepted the deuterocanonical books, especially the books of the Maccabees, whose exaltation of

 On the North African Manichaeans’ approach to the Old and New Testaments, see F. Decret, Aspects du Manichéisme dans l’Afrique romaine. Les controverses de Fortunatus, Faustus et Felix avec saint Augustin (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1970), 123–82. See also J. D. BeDuhn, “Scripture in Augustine’s Early Anti-Manichaean Treatises,” in BCNA I, 268–70.  K.-H. Ohlig, “Canon Scripturarum,” in AugLex 1:713–24.  Wermelinger, “Le canon,” 179; Hennings, Der Briefwechsel, 202.  M. A. Tilley, The Bible in Christian North Africa: The Donatist World (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 28.  See also A. Bass, “Scripture in Optatus of Milevis,” in BCNA I, 189–212, 194.

1 Scripture and the North African Conciliar Canon Lists

19

martyrdom aligned perfectly with the Donatist ethos. Still, there could be discrepancies. For example, Hebrews, which had apparently been rejected as canonical by Cyprian, was ignored by both Tyconius and a Donatist stichometric list.24 In any case, these discrepancies were of little importance and completely incidental to the larger Donatist-Catholic debate. Indeed, the essential agreement between Donatists and Catholics with regards to the canon of the Scripture was even emphasised by the Catholics for polemical purposes: “In sum, there is a single ecclesiastical intercourse between both us and you, common readings (communes lectiones), the same faith, the same sacraments of faith, the same mysteries.”25 Moreover, it goes without saying that a canon from a Catholic council would never have been perceived as binding by the Donatist church. Jerome’s project to translate the Old Testament into Latin according to the Hebraica veritas and strictly adhering, therefore, to the canon of the Hebrew Bible, has been alleged by some authors to be another reason for the North African bishops to position themselves on the content of the canon of the Bible, affirming – against Jerome – the canonicity of the deuterocanonical books and of a Latin Old Testament version translated from the Septuagint. As early as 387, in his preface to the Hexaplaric version of the books of Solomon, Jerome had denied the canonicity of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus.26 Indeed, the inclusion of the deuterocanonical books as part of the Old Testament is primarily what separated the North Africans and Jerome on the question of the canon. And yet – as noted above – the wording of Breviarium Hipponense, canon 36 seems to suggest that the main objective of the North African bishops in 393,  The latter is usually known as the “Cheltenham List.” Cf. J. A. Hoover, “Scripture in Tyconius,” in BCNA I, 296. On the “Cheltenham List” (which also omits James and Jude) specifically, see Gallagher and Meade, The Biblical Canon Lists, 188–93.  Optatus, De schism. 5.1.11 (M. Labrousse ed., Optat de Milève: Traité contre les Donatistes, SC 413 [Paris: Cerf, 1996]:116; English translation by M. Edwards, Optatus: Against the Donatists, Translated Texts for Historians 27 [Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1997]: 98): “Denique et apud vos et apud nos una est ecclesiastica conversatio, communes lectiones, eadem fides, ipsa fidei sacramenta, eadem mysteria.”  Wermelinger, “Le canon,” 186–90. According to this scholar, Letter 27* in Augustine’s epistolary (Jerome’s letter to Aurelius of Carthage, dated c. 391/392 or 392/393) would show that, around the time of the council of Hippo, Augustine was already closely following the literary activity of Jerome, and that he was perhaps not unaware of his project of translating the Old Testament from the Hebrew (Wermelinger, “Le canon,” 172; see also Hennings, Der Briefwechsel, 204–5). In fact, approximately one year after the council of Hippo, Augustine wrote to Jerome to let him know about the North African concern regarding this translation project, which, Augustine insisted, should not be detrimental to the authority of the Septuagint (Augustine, Ep. 28.2 [CSEL 34/1:105–7]). However, there is no direct evidence that, as early as in 393, or even in 397, the North Africans were aware of Jerome’s stance regarding the non-canonicity of the deuterocanonical books. See I. Bochet, “Note complémentaire 11. Le Canon des Écritures, la Septante et l’Itala,” in La doctrine chrétienne (De doctrina christiana), Œuvres de Saint Augustin 11/2, Bibliothèque Augustinienne (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1997), 509: “Si vraiment les affirmations théoriques de Jérôme relatives au Canon étaient connues d’Augustin en 397, on s’étonne de n’y trouver aucune allusion dans le De doctrina christiana, alors qu’il n’hésite pas à exprimer clairement ses réserves devant les traductions faites sur l’hébreu.”

20

Raúl Villegas Marín

397, and 419, was not inclusion but exclusion: that is to say, not to reaffirm the inclusion of the deuterocanonical books in the biblical canon, but to ensure that any book whose title was not explicitly mentioned in the council approved list was excluded from the canon (“that beyond the canonical Scriptures nothing should be read in church under the name of the Divine Scriptures”). Since the titles of the deuterocanonical books were included in the list which accompanies the canon, we may conclude that the liturgical reading of these books in church was allowed by the conciliar fathers, but it was not imposed in any way. By contrast, the canon explicitly forbad the liturgical reading of any book whose title was not included in the list: this seems to be the main interest of the conciliar fathers. In the following section we will try to determine what these books excluded from the Catholic liturgy might have been.

The Canon and the Liturgical Reading of the Scripture in North African Catholic Churches What seems to lie behind this canon is the concern of the ecclesiastical hierarchy about the reading in Catholic basilicas and in liturgical contexts of gospels and acts of the apostles which, despite not being part of the traditional canon of the North African Catholic Church and despite being frequently associated with heresies such as Manichaeism, were seen by some Catholic ecclesiastics as divinae scripturae. Thus, for example, the reading of apocryphal books in a liturgical context seems to have been the cause of the excommunication of the priest Quintianus by Aurelius of Carthage. This can be inferred from a passage in the letter that Augustine wrote to Quintianus at Christmas in 401, which was intended as a response to a now lost missive from Quintianus: As for you, do not first throw the Church into a scandal by reading to the people writings that the ecclesiastical canon has not accepted. After all, heretics, and especially the Manichees, often use these writings to throw the minds of the unlearned into confusion, and I hear that they like to hide out in your territory. I am, therefore, surprised that . . . you do not remember that the council determined (in concilio institutum) which are the canonical writings that ought to be read to the people of God.27

 Augustine, Ep. 64.3 (CSEL 34/2:231; WSA II/1:253, trans.Teske [slightly modified]): “Vos ipsi prius nolite in scandalum mittere ecclesiam legendo in populis scripturas, quas canon ecclesiasticus non recepit; his enim haeretici et maxime Manichaei solent inperitas mentes evertere, quos in campo vestro libenter latitare audio. Miror ergo prudentiam tuam . . . et tu non memineris in concilio institutum, quae sint scripturae canonicae, quae in populo dei legi debeant.”

1 Scripture and the North African Conciliar Canon Lists

21

This same letter addresses the case of Privatio, who in his capacity as lector for the church of Vegesela on at least one occasion read passages from extra-canonical books.28 Although we do not know the exact date of either Quintianus’s excommunication or of Privatio’s erroneous reading(s), cases like these could explain the complaint presented by the Byzacenian bishops before Aurelius of Carthage in August 397, a complaint in which they asserted that the canons approved at Hippo four years earlier, including the one specifying the canonical Scriptures, were not being respected due to widespread ignorance of them and their contents. Be that as it may, on the one hand, the public reading in some North African Catholic churches of apocryphal books that were also used by the Manicheans could have been a relatively widespread phenomenon. Cases such as that of Victorinus of Malliana (in Mauritania Caesariensis), a Catholic subdeacon who allegedly was also a Manichean auditor and who was denounced by Augustine to his bishop Deuterius,29 sufficiently demonstrate that the “confessional boundaries” between “Catholicism” and “Manichaeism” in North Africa were more porous than many late antique Catholic bishops, and some modern scholars, would like to admit.30 On the other hand, it is possible that many North African Catholic bishops ordered the preservation of apocryphal books in the archives of their dioceses not because they questioned their heterodox character, but so that they could be used in polemical writings and oral debates with the heretics. It is notable the case of Bishop Mensurius of Carthage, who, during the persecution of Diocletian, managed to deceive the imperial officials who appeared in the Basilica Novarum demanding the Christian Scriptures. Instead, he hid the true sancti codices and left only heretical works (reproba scripta haereticorum) in the basilica, which the duped officials took.31 Obviously, in these cases there was a danger that an under-trained cleric would take these heretical codices as divinae

 Cf. Ep. 64.3 (CSEL 34/2:231; WSA II/1:253, trans.Teske): “Miror enim, utrum jam potest lector deputari, qui non nisi semel scripturas etiam non canonicas legit. Si enim propterea jam ille lector ecclesiasticus, profecto et illa scriptura ecclesiastica est; si autem illa scriptura ecclesiastica non est, quisquis eam quamvis in ecclesia legerit, ecclesiasticus lector non est.” “I wonder whether he can be regarded as a lector, since he read the Scriptures only on one occasion, and they were non canonical books. If he may be considered an ecclesiastical lector, then what he read on that occasion has to be considered ecclesiastical Scripture. If that book is not ecclesiastical, then whoever reads it, even in the church, is not an ecclesiastical lector.” In fact, both Quintianus and Privatio were from Vegesela, which may well have been a diocese of the ecclesiastical province of Byzacena. See PCBE 1:939, s.v., Quintianus and 1:919, s.v., Privatio. However, Adamiak, Presbyters in the Late Antique West, PR317, last edited June 14, 2016 (http:// presbytersproject.ihuw.pl/index.php?id=4&PresbyterID=317), locates the ecclesia Badesilitana or Vegesilitana in Africa Proconsularis.  See PCBE 1:1199, s.v. Victorinus 12; 275–6, s.v. Deuterius 4.  See R. Lim, “The Nomen Manichaeorum and Its Uses in Late Antiquity,” in Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 119, eds. E. Iricinschi and H. M. Zellentin (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 154–6 for the case of Victorinus of Malliana.  See Augustine, Brev. coll. 3.13.25 (CSEL 53:73–74).

22

Raúl Villegas Marín

scripturae and put them to liturgical use, a danger probably increased in Augustine’s time, when the right to preach in the churches was extended to the presbyters.32 The conciliar fathers of Hippo and Carthage might also have aimed at preventing the liturgical use in the churches of other books that they did not associate with heresies and whose private reading by the faithful would have not posed problems to them, such as the Shepherd of Hermas. An anonymous late third-century sermon of African provenance, the so-called De aleatoribus, refers to the Shepherd as scriptura divina,33 a bit of data that prevents us from ruling out the possibility that this was one of the books alluded to by the African bishops who stated in both Hippo and Carthage that “beyond the canonical Scriptures nothing should be read in church under the name of the Divine Scriptures” (sub nomine divinarum scripturarum). It is worth remembering here that the Canon Muratori recommended the private reading of the Shepherd, but explicitly forbade public, i.e., liturgical, reading of it in the churches on the grounds of its late date of composition.34 Athanasius of Alexandria’s Festal Letter 39 also distinguished between the canonical books; the apocryphal, heretical ones; and those “which have not been canonized, but have been prescribed by the ancestors to be read to those who newly join us and want to be instructed in the word of piety.” He included the deuterocanonical books and the Shepherd in the latter category.35

 Here it is worth recalling that Quintianus of Vegesela had been a presbyter. For the evidence on the preaching of the presbyters in late antique North Africa, mostly provided by Augustine’s works, see the database Presbyters in the Late Antique West, Evidence Records 423, 464, 759, 796, 825, 827, 958, and 1363, consulted July 13, 2021 (http://presbytersproject.ihuw.pl).  Aleat. 2 (CSEL 3/3:93–94); Metzger, The Canon, 163–4; H. A. G. Houghton, “Scripture and Latin Christian Manuscripts from North Africa,” in BCNA I, 15–50, here 26.  Muratorian Fragment, lines 73–80 (English translation and Latin text in Gallagher and Meade, The Biblical Canon Lists: 181–2): “Pastorem vero nuperrime temporibus nostris in urbe Roma Herma conscripsit, sedente cathedram urbis Romae ecclesiae Pio episcopo fratre ejus, et ideo legi eum quidem oportet, se puplicare vero in ecclesia populo neque inter prophetas conpleto numero, neque inter apostolos in fine temporum potest.” “But Hermas wrote the Shepherd very recently, in our times, in the city of Rome, while bishop Pius, his brother, was occupying the chair of the church of the city of Rome. And therefore, it ought indeed to be read; but it cannot be read publicly to the people in church either among the prophets, whose number is complete, or among the apostles, for it is after [their] time.”  Athanasius of Alexandria, Epistula festalis xxxix, 20 (Joannou:75; English translation by D. Brakke, “A New Fragment of Athanasius’ Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter: Heresy, Apocrypha, and the Canon,” HTR 103 [2010]: 47–66, 61): Ἔστι καὶ ἕτερα βιβλία τούτων ἔξωθεν, οὐ κανονιζόμενα μέν, τετυπωμένα δὲ παρὰ τῶν πατέρων ἀναγινώσκεσθαι τοῖς ἄρτι προσερχομένοις καὶ βουλομένοις κατηχεῖσθαι τὸν τῆς εὐσεβείας λόγον· Σοφία Σολομῶντος καὶ Σοφία Σιρὰχ καὶ Ἑσθὴρ καὶ Ἰουδὶθ καὶ Τωβίας καὶ Διδαχὴ καλουμένη τῶν ἀποστόλων καὶ ὁ Ποιμήν.

1 Scripture and the North African Conciliar Canon Lists

23

The African Canon List and the Private Reading of the Bible in North Africa In the fourth of his Pre-baptismal catecheses, Cyril of Jerusalem offered his listeners a list of the canonical books from the Old and New Testaments, exhorting them to read these books in private and asking them to stay away from those that are apocryphal, false, and harmful. He particularly warned of the danger of the Gospel of Thomas, which had been “written by the Manicheans.” To discern between canonical and apocryphal books, Cyril asks the catechumens to memorise the titles of the former. The criterion they were to follow when choosing their readings was “Whatever books are not read in the churches, ought not to be read when you are on your own.”36 Cyril’s catechesis, together with other testimonies such as the Muratorian Fragment quoted in the previous section, show that the earliest lists of canonical Scriptures had a mainly liturgical purpose, but also a “private” perspective: to guide the pious faithful in the selection of domestic readings. In this sense, one might question whether the African bishops who dealt with the issue of the scriptural canon in 393, 397, and 419, also had the question of private Scripture readings in mind and felt the need to distinguish precisely between licit and edifying readings versus “dangerous” ones. Augustine was a great promoter of the private reading of the Bible, a habit which would serve the faithful as a guide for their daily life.37 But perhaps the bishop of Hippo was not exceptional among his African colleagues. In Augustinian preaching, we find repeated allusions to the possibility that the African faithful can and should buy codices of the Scriptures in bookstores. Although it has been claimed that the tabernae librariae would not have

 Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 4.36 (Reischl:130; English translation by L. P. McCauley and A. A. Stephenson, The Works of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, 1, The Fathers of the Church 61 [Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1969]: 137, modified): Καὶ ὅσα [μὲν] ἐν ἐκκλησίαις μὴ ἀναγινώσκεται, ταῦτα μηδὲ κατὰ σαυτὸν ἀναγίνωσκε; see also Id., Catechesis 4.35 (Reischl:128; McCauley and Stephenson: 136): Ταύτας μόνας μελέτα σπουδαίως, ἃς καὶ ἐν Ἐκκλησίᾳ μετὰ παρρησίας ἀναγινώσκομεν. (“Study earnestly only those books which we read openly in Church.”).  As Pamela Bright has pointed out, “for Augustine, the ‘actualising’ of the text, that is, the application of the reading to the daily realities of life, was an integral part of the reading, indeed the heart of the process of ‘reception’ of Scripture.” P. Bright, “Augustine and the Ethics of Reading the Bible,” in The Reception and Interpretation of the Bible in Late Antiquity: Proceedings of the Montréal Colloquium in Honor of Charles Kannengiesser, 11–13 October 2006, eds. L. DiTommaso and L. Turcescu, Bible in Ancient Christianity 6 (Leiden: Brill, 2008): 63. On the private reading of the Bible and the “individualisation of Christianity,” see G. G. Stroumsa, “Reading Practices in Early Christianity and the Individualisation Process,” in Reflections on Religious Individuality: Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian Texts and Practices, Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten 62, eds. J. Rüpke and W. Spickermann (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), 175–92; Id., “The New Self and Reading Practices in Late Antique Christianity,” Church History and Religious Culture 95 (2015): 1–18.

24

Raúl Villegas Marín

played an important role in the dissemination of Christian literature,38 an exception could be made for the reproduction and commercialization of the books of the Old and New Testaments, at least in the specific case of North Africa at the end of the fourth and early fifth centuries.39 Augustine, as noted above, repeatedly observed that the Christian Scriptures are readily available. On one occasion, for example, he urged devotees of the goddess Juno to purchase a manuscript of (some of) the Scriptures, apologetically underlining that they could be easily acquired on the open book market: Our manuscripts are put on sale in public: the daylight does not blush for shame. Let them buy them, read them and believe them; or let them buy them, read them and laugh at them. Scripture knows how to call to account those who read and do not believe. A manuscript is carried around for sale, but the one whom its pages proclaim is not for sale . . . Buy a manuscript and read it: we are not ashamed.40

On another occasion, commenting on the Gospel of Luke’s claim that the Lord will return at the end of time, Augustine pointed out to his listeners that, if they want to know what these last days will be like, then they can learn it well from the lips of the lectores in the churches, or by buying codices dominici and reading them in private: “The Lord’s manuscripts are daily on sale, and readers read them; buy one for yourself and read it when you have time – in fact, make time for it: it is better to have time for this than for trifles.”41

 G. Cavallo, “Libri, lettura e biblioteche nella tarda antichità: un panorama e qualche riflessione,” Antiquité Tardive 18 (2010), 13: “nella tarda antichità le tabernae librarie man mano scompaiono, tanto che minimo è il ruolo che esse giocano nella diffusione delle letture cristiane; ed invece la produzione di libri o resta affidata – ma sempre meno – a copisti di mestiere che lavorano a prezzo per committenze private, o si configura, suprattutto nella vita cenobitica o nelle cerchie vescovili, come impegno comunitario per ricavarne sostentamento.”  It was also the case in other geographical areas and eras. In sixth-century Arles, for example, Bishop Caesarius frequently encouraged his flock to read the Scriptures at home, statements which at least imply that Christian sacred texts were available in the Arlesian bookshops (cf., e.g, Sermons 6.2 [CCSL 103:31]; 7.1 [CCSL 103:38]; 8.1–2 [CCSL 103:41–3]).  Augustine, S. Dolbeau 26.20 (ed. F. Dolbeau, “Nouveaux sermons de saint Augustin pour la conversion des païens et des donatistes (IV),” RechAug 26 [1992]: 105–6; English translation of this passage by H. A. G. Houghton, Augustine’s Text of John. Patristic Citations and Latin Gospel Manuscripts [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008]: 24): “Codices nostri publice venales feruntur: lux non erubescit. Emant, legant, credant; aut emant, legant, irrideant. Novit scriptura illa reos tenere qui legunt et non credunt. Circumfertur venalis codex sed ille qui praedicatur in codice non est venalis . . . eme tu codicem et lege, nos non erubescimus.”  Augustine, S. Dolbeau 5.14 (ed. F. Dolbeau, “Nouveaux sermons de saint Augustin pour la conversion des païens et des donatistes (V),” REAug 39 [1993]: 85; Houghton, Augustine’s Text: 23): “Cottidie codices dominici venales sunt, legit lector; eme tibi et tu lege quando vacat, immo age ut vacet: melius enim ad hoc vacat quam ad nugas.” See also Enarrat. Ps. 36, Serm. 1.2 (CCSL 38:339; WSA III/16:93, trans. Boulding): “Arguat quisque, murmuret, si non per totum orbem haec scriptura recitatur atque cantatur; si cessat etiam venalis ferri per publicum.” “Anyone would have a right to complain and

1 Scripture and the North African Conciliar Canon Lists

25

As Hugh Houghton has pointed out, “statements such as this contrast with the relatively small proportion of members of ancient society who were able to read. Even so, while there is undoubtedly some hyperbole in these exhortations, their force would be entirely lost if they bore no relation to everyday life.”42 In addition to this, the so-called “Cheltenham canon” might also provide corroborating evidence for the books of the Bible being sold in the bookshops of late antique North Africa. In this canon list, produced in Donatist circles, each entry is followed by an indication of the number of lines of the book in question, measured in stichoi (units of sixteen syllables). As scholars have long noted, in antiquity the cost of copying and, consequently, the sale price of books in the open market was calculated based on the number of stichoi it contained.43 Could codices of Scriptures considered canonical by both the Catholic and the Donatist churches be purchased in the same North African bookshops? Was it also possible to obtain copies of books that one or both of these churches rejected as apocryphal or otherwise non-canonical? The answer to both questions seems to be “yes.” This becomes especially plausible in those provinces in which Manichaeism and other heterodox Christian movements were widespread. We may surmise that there existed a demand for these “apocryphal” gospels and acta of various apostles, and that the demand, in turn, led to an increased production. Harry Gamble has drawn attention to the fact that a good number of late-antique small-format codices or “pocket books” that have survived, certainly intended for private use, contain Christian writings considered apocryphal by the Catholic leadership, such as the Acts of John, the Acts of Peter or the Acts of Paul and Thecla. According to Gamble, “this underscores the popular nature of the apocryphal literature by showing its use for edifying private reading, and it also shows that official efforts to control what was read privately, whether by drawing lists or formulating a general principle, were responses to the currency, especially in private hands, of apocryphal books.”44 Cyril of Jerusalem’s canonical list in his fourth Pre-baptismal catechesis illustrates this well and does so in a way that probably makes it applicable to the North African context. Given the enormous diversity of Christianity in late-antique Roman North Africa, we may surmise that, well before the rise of the Priscillian controversy in Hispania, the African Catholic church was conscious of the threat that the private reading of apocryphal books posed to the defense of orthodoxy and the fight against religious

find fault if this passage of Scripture were not proclaimed and sung all over the world, if indeed it ceased to be hawked about publicly even for gain.”  H. A. G. Houghton, The Latin New Testament. A Guide to its Early History, Texts, and Manuscripts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 22.  See Houghton, “Scripture,” 44–49.  H. Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church. A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 236.

26

Raúl Villegas Marín

dissent.45 The bishops who approved and/or confirmed the North African Catholic canon of Scripture in 393, 397, and 419 CE very likely were primarily concerned with guiding their flocks toward orthodoxy via recommendations for what ought to be read privately.

Summary and Conclusion Although the African councils of 393, 397, and 419 CE feature prominently in the “great narrative” about the formation of the canon of the Bible,46 the attention these synods paid to the issue is fundamentally explicable by dynamics internal to North African Christianity. Although it cannot be ruled out that, if not already by 393, then at least by 397 and 419, the confirmation by the African bishops of the canonicity of the additions to the Septuagint should be interpreted, at least in part, as a response to Jerome views against their canonicity, it would, at best, play only a secondary role. The main objective of the council fathers of Hippo and Carthage seems not to have been to defend the inclusion of the Old Testament deuterocanonical books in the canon, but to ensure the exclusion from the canon of any writing whose title was not explicitly mentioned in the list of canonical books. The position adopted by Augustine, now in the final years of his life, regarding the canonicity of Wisdom may be significant in this context. In the letter that Hilary of Marseille sent to Augustine in ca. 427 CE, informing him of the criticisms that the Augustinian theology of predestination had aroused in the ascetic circles of Marseille, Hilary pointed out that one of the passages invoked by Augustine to demonstrate the gratuity of the gift of perseverance in faith until the hour of death (Wis 4:11) was rejected by the Massilians as non-canonical.47 From this it would seem to follow that in the ascetic circles of Marseille to which Hilary refers, circles that were highly influenced by Eastern

 Priscillian of Avila’s defense of the reading of apocryphal writings (see, most notably, his Liber de fide et de Apocryphis, translated by M. Conti, Priscillian of Avila. The Complete Works [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010], 82–99), has been advanced by some scholars as one of the underlying causes of the North African official pronouncements about the canon: see, e.g., Wermelinger, “Le canon,” 170; Hennings, Der Briefwechsel, 205. Yet, the private reading of apocryphal books may well have been a relatively widespread phenomenon in Late antiquity, one that went beyond the clear-cut boundaries between “orthodoxy” and “heresy” (e.g., “Priscillianism” or “Manicheism”) that heresiologists strove to set.  See, for instance, Hennings, Der Briefwechsel, 142: “Im lateinischen Westen ist, zuerst mit dem Kanonbeschluss der Synode zu Hippo 393, ein Grossteil der Septuaginta-Zusätze offiziell in den Kanon des alten Testaments aufgenommen worden.” As we shall see below, however, Augustine did not believe it appropriate to invoke the canons of Hippo and Carthage to defend the canonicity of Wisdom against the Massilian monks who denied it, no doubt because he regarded these canons as binding only on the North African churches.  Hilary of Marseille, Letter (inter Augustinianas) 226.4 (CSEL 57:473; WSA I/26:62, trans. Teske): “Illud etiam testimonium, quod posuisti: raptus est, ne malitia mutaret intellectum ejus, tamquam

1 Scripture and the North African Conciliar Canon Lists

27

ascetic spirituality, the Greek tradition regarding the Old Testament canon, which excluded the deuterocanonical books, prevailed. In the work that Augustine produced in response to his Provençal critics, the De praedestinatione sanctorum/De dono perseverantiae, Augustine reaffirmed his position on the interpretation of the aforementioned passage of Wisdom. At the same time, while still noting that the canonicity of this book was evidenced by its traditional public reading in churches,48 he avoided discussing this question in depth. In his opinion, even if the canonicity of Wisdom was rejected, the veracity of what is expressed in Wis 4:11 remained indisputable: I too cited that passage, and you said that those brothers rejected it on the grounds that it was not drawn from a canonical book, as if without the testimony of this book the matter which we wanted to teach by it is itself not clear. For what Christian would dare to deny that, if a righteous man is taken by an early death, he is in a place of rest? What person of sound faith will suppose that anyone who said this must be resisted?49

Here, apparently, Augustine implicitly admitted that the question of including the deuterocanonical books in the Old Testament canon remained unresolved in the West as late as 427 CE. It is also worth noting here that, in his defense of the canonicity of Wisdom, Augustine did not mention any pronouncement of the Roman See that would have endorsed the canon list approved by the African synods of 393, 397, and 419, which, as we have seen, explicitly included Wisdom and the rest of the deuterocanonical books. Again, the internal dynamics of the Christian movement(s) in late antique Roman North Africa constituted the main reason for the North African conciliar decisions regarding the scope of the canon of Scripture. North African Christianity of this period was, as previously mentioned, deeply heterogeneous, and the boundaries between orthodoxy and heterodoxy were often blurred even within the Catholic clergy itself, as the case of Victorinus of Malliana, who had been both a Manichean auditor and a Catholic subdeacon, demonstrates. Consequently, the circulation of “apocryphal” gospels and acts of the apostles may have been important. Indeed, they may have been important enough to be read occasionally in the liturgical celebrations of some of the

non canonicum definiunt omittendum.” (“That testimony which you cited, namely, He was carried off so that evil would not change his mind (Wis 4:11), they declare should be omitted as non-canonical.”).  Augustine, Praed. 14.27 (PL 44:980; WSA I/26:171, trans.Teske): “Quae cum ita sint, non debuit repudiari sententia libri Sapientiae, qui meruit in ecclesia Christi de gradu lectorum ecclesiae Christi tam longa annositate recitari, et ab omnibus Christianis, ab episcopis usque ad extremos laicos fideles, poenitentes, catechumenos, cum veneratione divinae auctoritatis audiri.” “Since this is so, the statement from the Book of Wisdom ought not to have been rejected, for that book has merited to be proclaimed by the rank of lectors in the Church of Christ for so many years and merited to be heard by all Christians, from bishops to the least of the lay believers, penitents, and catechumens, with veneration for the authority of God.”  Praed. 14.26 (PL 44:979; WSA I/26:170, trans. Teske): “Quod a me quoque positum, fratres istos ita respuisse dixistis, tanquam non de libro canonico adhibitum: quasi et excepta hujus libri attestatione res ipsa non clara sit, quam voluimus hinc doceri. Quis enim audeat negare christianus, justum, si morte praeoccupatus fuerit, in refrigerio futurum? Quilibet hoc dixerit, quis homo sanae fidei resistendum putabit?”.

28

Raúl Villegas Marín

North African Catholic basilicas. If so, this was done contrary to a North African tradition regarding the canon of Scripture, which, by the late fourth century, was already of venerable antiquity, and was one that had been generally accepted among the Catholic churches, even if it had never been explicitly endorsed by a plenary council of Africa until 393 CE. Even after this date, as the case of Quintianus of Vegesela attests, it was enormously difficult to get all the Catholic churches in North Africa to conform to this exact scriptural canon and to exclude from their liturgies the reading of books that the councils had explicitly omitted. If preventing the public reading of apocrypha in the Catholic basilicas themselves was complicated, eradicating the circulation of these writings in private settings would surely have been even more so. Augustine’s encouragement of the domestic reading of the Scriptures required that the Catholic faithful know how to clearly discern between the writings that belonged to the Catholic canon and those which should be rejected as apocryphal. The inclusion of a list of canonical books in his De doctrina christiana served exactly that purpose.50 The typical Carthaginian Catholic, for instance, who probably had been repeatedly invited by his bishop to proceed to a bookshop in order to buy codices dominici, also had to be instructed about how to distinguish between the “orthodox wheat” and the “heretical chaff” from within the wide range of gospels and acts of the apostles that were then in circulation.

Further Reading Primary Sources Augustine: De Doctrina Christiana, edited and translated by Roger P. H. Green. Oxford Early Christian Texts. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995. Augustine. “The Predestination of the Saints.” In Answer to the Pelagians IV, translated by Roland Teske, 149–90. Part I, vol. 26, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, edited by Boniface Ramsey. Hyde Park: New City Press, 1999.

 See Doctr. chr. 2.8.12 (CCSL 32:38–39; trans. by R. P. H. Green, Augustine: De Doctrina Christiana [Oxford: Clarendon, 1995]: 67): “Erit igitur divinarum scripturarum sollertissimus indagator, qui primo totas legerit notasque habuerit, et si nondum intellectu, jam tamen lectione, dumtaxat eas quae appellantur canonicae. Nam ceteras securius leget fide veritatis instructus, ne praeoccupent inbecillum animum et periculosis mendaciis atque phantasmatibus eludentes praeiudicent aliquid contra sanam intellegentiam.” “The most expert investigator of the divine Scriptures will be the person who, firstly, has read them all and has a good knowledge –a reading knowledge, at least, if not yet a complete understanding– of those pronounced canonical. He will read the others more confidently when equipped with a belief in the truth; they will then be unable to take possession of his unprotected mind and prejudice him in any way against sound interpretations or delude him by their dangerous falsehoods and fantasies.” See also T. Toom, “Scripture in Augustine’s De doctrina christiana,” in BCNA I, 321–42.

1 Scripture and the North African Conciliar Canon Lists

29

Gallagher, Edmon L., and John D. Meade, eds. The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Secondary Sources Cross, Frank L. “History and Fiction in the African Canons.” Journal of Theological Studies, New Series 12 (1961): 227–47. Gamble, Harry Y. Books and Readers in the Early Church. A History of Early Christian Texts. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Hennings, Ralph. Der Briefwechsel zwischen Augustinus und Hieronymus und ihr Streit um den Kanon des Alten Testaments und die Auslegung von Gal. 2, 11–14. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 21. Leiden: Brill, 1994. La Bonnardière, Anne-Marie. “Le canon des divines Écritures.” In Saint Augustin et la Bible, edited by AnneMarie La Bonnardière, 287–302. Paris: Beauchesne, 1986. Mandouze, André. Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire, 1. Afrique (303–533). Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1982. Metzger, Bruce M. The Canon of the New Testament. Its Origin, Development, and Significance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Munier, Charles. “La tradition manuscrite de l’Abrégé d’Hippone et le canon des Écritures des églises africaines.” Sacris Erudiri 21 (1972–1973): 43–55. Munier, Charles. “Les conciles africains (a. 345–525) « revisités ».” In I concili della cristianità occidentale, secoli III–V. XXX Incontro di studiosi dell’antichità cristiana. Roma, 3–5 maggio 2001, 147–65. Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum 78. Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 2002. Mayer, Cornelius, ed. Augustinus-Lexikon. 5 vols. Basel: Schwabe AG, 1986–1994. Stroumsa, Guy G. “The New Self and Reading Practices in Late Antique Christianity.” Church History and Religious Culture 95 (2015): 1–18. Wermelinger, Otto. “Le canon des latins au temps de Jérôme et d’Augustin.” In Le canon de l’Ancien Testament. Sa formation et son histoire, edited by Jean-Daniel Kaestli and Otto Wermelinger, 153–210. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1984.

Marie Pauliat

2 Scripture in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum Introduction Throughout late antiquity, sermons served as a primary means of religious education. Through them, leaders in the Christian church aimed at transmitting both knowledge and moral standards.1 Whether these sermons dealt with polemical, disciplinary, philosophical, or doctrinal questions, they were usually based on a biblical text which, via exegesis and commentary, was applied to the daily, concrete realities of the audience. This is certainly the case with Augustine’s Sermons for the People (Sermones ad populum). The title Sermones ad populum represents a collection of some 600 sermons delivered by Augustine in various African cities over the course of some forty years (391–430 CE).2 They were thematically classified and published by the Benedictines of Saint-Maur in 1683.3 The Maurists’ categories included the sermons De Scripturis (Serm. 1–183), all of which take a verse or passage of Scripture as their point of departure. At the same time, Scripture is ubiquitous in the sermons of the other Maurist categories such as the sermons De Tempore, on the liturgical seasons (Serm. 184–272), the sermons De Sanctis, on the saints (Serm. 273–340), and the sermons De Diversis, on various topics (Serm.

 J. Leemans, “Religious Literacy and the Role of Sermons in Late-Antique Christianity,” in Preaching in the Patristic Era. Sermons, Preachers, and Audiences in the Latin West, eds. A. Dupont, S. Boodts, G. Partoens and J. Leemans (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 3–7.  For more on the Sermones ad populum, see F. Dolbeau, “Sermones (ad populum),” AugLex 5:244–399; and M. Pellegrino, “Introduzione generale,” in S. Agostino, Discorsi, t. 1 (Rome: Citta’ Nuova, 1979). These sermons are usually distinguished from the Enarrationes on the Psalms (see infra, H. Müller, 115–138) and the Tractatus on the Gospel and the First Epistle of John (infra, A. Fitzgerald, 139–166), whose publication Augustine planned and organized. Cf. S. Boodts and A. Dupont, “Augustine of Hippo,” in Preaching in the Patristic Era, 178. Together, these preserved sermons represent just 10% of all the sermons that Augustine is thought to have preached.  Sancti Aurelii Augustini Hipponensis episcopi Operum tomus quintus, continens Sermones ad populum . . ., Opera et studio monachorum Ordinis S. Benedicti è Congregatione S. Mauri, Parisiis, printed by Francisus Muguet . . . 1683, reproduced in PL 38. The thematic classification was introduced in previous editions. ✶

Marie Pauliat is post-doctoral fellow at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium). Her research focuses on late antique Latin homiletics. In her monograph Augustine exégète et prédicateur dans les Sermons sur Matthieu (Paris, 2020) she analyzed the relationship between the preacher and his audience and showed that Augustine adapts his biblical commentaries to the specific historical and liturgical contexts of the sermons.

Marie Pauliat, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-003

32

Marie Pauliat

341–395).4 Whether Augustine intended to comment on a particular reading, to solve an exegetical question, or to deal with a theological, moral, or topical issue, Scripture is omnipresent in his sermons. Prior to outlining the research questions raised by the use of the Bible in the Sermones ad populum, two methodological challenges that confront every serious student of them deserve mention: (1) the history of the sermons’ transmission; and (2) the difficulty of dating (most of) the sermons with precision.

The Transmission of the Sermones ad populum The Sermones ad populum that we read today are the result of a centuries-long chain of transmission.5 Most of them were stenographically recorded as Augustine was preaching, but only some were revised by Augustine for publication. Worse still, we have almost irretrievably lost the actio or “non-verbal aspects” of the sermons that have been preserved. This sometimes makes it difficult to understand the meaning of a particular comment or claim.6 We also know that in the Middle Ages many sermons were pared down, interpolated, reworked, or even recomposed.7 In the case of these texts, the role played by the Bible often gives us as much information about the customs, liturgies, or the preferences of the medieval world as they do about the customs, liturgy, or preferences of their original late antique contexts.

The Dating of the Sermones ad populum Even though it was not the custom at the time, Augustine, whose reputation as a professional rhetorician preceded him, was permitted to preach in 391 CE soon after he was ordained to the priesthood.8 Four years later, in 395, he was made bishop of

 M. Pellegrino, “Introduzione,” X. On exegesis in Augustine’s sermons, including the Enarrationes and the Tractatus, see M. Pontet, L’exégèse de saint Augustin prédicateur (Paris: Aubier, 1946), a work that is yet to be superseded.  R.J. Deferrari, “Saint Augustine’s Method of Composing and Delivering Sermons,” American Journal of Philology 43 (1922): 97–123 and 193–219; and P.-M. Hombert, “Sténographie et transmission des prédications,” in BA 59/B:684–8.  The actio designates all the elements of “non-verbal communication” (e.g., rhythm, intonation, hand gestures, body language, etc.). Though they cannot be noted down, they remain necessary for the elaboration and specification of meaning. F. Dolbeau, “Seminator uerborum. Réflexion d’un éditeur de sermons d’Augustin,” in Augustin prédicateur (395–411), ed. G. Madec, EAA 159 (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1998), 95–111, here 97–8.  F. Dolbeau, “Sermones (ad populum),” 290–5.  Possidius, Vit. Aug. 5 (H. T. Weiskotten, ed., Sancti Augustini Vita Scripta a Possidio Episcopo [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1919], 49–51). See also G. Bardy, “Tractare, tractatus,” RSR 33 (1946): 217.

2 Scripture in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum

33

Hippo Regius. Between 395 and his death in 430, Augustine’s literary production expanded immensely. And the sheer size of the Augustinian literary corpus poses a problem for dating its constituent opera. The majority of the extant sermons are exceedingly difficult to date accurately.9 Nonetheless, the issues related to the appearance and use of Scripture in the Sermones ad populum remain consistent regardless of the period – to say nothing of the exact year – in which a particular sermon may have been preached. Therefore, to respect the chronological limits of this volume, this chapter will focus on the sermons that can plausibly be dated after 400. At the same time, when they are deemed helpful, what follows will also incorporate select passages culled from sermons thought to have been preached before 400.

Research Questions The Sermones ad populum were delivered in different contexts. Therefore, they offer an intriguing opportunity to study the relationship between biblical interpretation, the context in which a particular sermon was preached, and the audience to which it was delivered.10 One of the main challenges of the research on the sermons is to know whether Augustine comments on the Scriptures in them in the same way as he does in his treatises and letters, or whether the biblical exegeses we find in his sermons have been adapted to the liturgical and historical contexts, and/or to the different audiences. Scholarly opinions differ. While some argue in favor of homiletic specificity,11 specificity possibly explained by the liturgical context in which most  There are several methods for dating a sermon. The best method, and the only one accepted by H. R. Drobner, “The Chronology of St. Augustine’s Sermones ad populum,” AugStud 31 (2000): 211–8, is when an event that is independently datable is mentioned in the sermon. Nevertheless, with caution, it is also possible to use the position of the sermons in the manuscripts. See, e.g., F. Dolbeau, REAug 49 (2003): 424–8, which reviews Augustinus von Hippo, Predigten zu den Büchern Exodus, Könige und Job (Sermones 6–12). Einleitung, Text, Übersetzung und Anmerkungen, ed. H. R. Drobner (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2003). Finally, some use a thematic method based on the conviction that certain ideas or biblical quotations can be shown to be characteristic of a particular period. See, e.g., A.-M. La Bonnardière, Recherches de chronologie augustinienne, EAA 23 (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1965); and P.-M. Hombert, Nouvelles recherches de chronologie augustinienne, EAA 163 (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2000). This last method is also not above critique. See, e.g., B. Meunier, RSPT 88 (2004): 116–9, which reviews P.M. Hombert, Nouvelles recherches.  For a methodological proposal see W. Mayer, “John Chrysostom. Extraordinary Preacher, Ordinary Audience,” in Preacher and Audience. Studies in Early Christian and Byzantine Homiletics, eds. M. B. Cunningham and P. Allen (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 122–34. It is impossible to be exhaustive with Augustine’s Sermons. These references are only intended to provide illustrative examples of frequently recurring phenomena.  E.g. G. Nauroy, “Formes de l’exégèse pastorale chez Ambroise et Augustin,” in Saint Augustin et la Bible, eds. G. Nauroy and M.-A. Vannier (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008), 102; and A. M. Kleinberg, “De Agone Christiano. The Preacher and his Audience,” JTS 38 (1997): 16–33.

34

Marie Pauliat

preaching is conducted,12 others argue against it.13 Additionally, some wonder if the same or nearly the same expositions of biblical passages in compositions of diverse literary genres function in the same way.14 Suffice it to say that the question of adapting biblical commentaries to preaching continues to be debated. Nevertheless, these debates raise additional questions which this chapter will address including: (1) Questions related to Augustine’s personality as an exegete and preacher: What training did he receive for Bible-based homiletics and what were his favorite verses? (2) Questions related to the liturgical context: Did the version of the biblical text commented on and the organization of the liturgy in Africa have any influence on the homiletical commentaries? (3) Questions related to the polemical context: Did Augustine use the Bible in the same way in his sermons and in his polemical treatises? (4) Questions related to interaction with the audience: How did biblical commentaries deal with the diversity of the audience and how did the audience and the preacher interact?

The Personality of Augustine the Exegete and Preacher The role of the Bible in the Sermones ad populum is naturally linked to Augustine’s personality. We will discuss: (1) his rhetorical and exegetical training; (2) his scriptural preferences; and (3) the function of (some of) the verses and passages that he quotes most frequently.

Augustine’s Training: Rhetoric and Exegesis Rhetorical Training Augustine received the traditional rhetorical training of antiquity,15 training that he never denies and only rarely downplays when commenting on the Bible in Serm. He  I. Bochet, “De l’exégèse à l’herméneutique augustinienne,” REAug 50 (2004): 368.  Analyzing Serm. Dolbeau 11 (90A), J. Lagouanère, “La notion de prochain chez Augustin au début de son épiscopat. Le rôle matriciel du sermon De dilectione Dei et proximi [Sermon Dolbeau 11],” SacEr 54 (2015): 79–110, concluded that, over the course of Augustine’s career, the differences between sermons, treatises, and letters tends to fade to the point of irrelevance.  M. Pauliat, “Mt 12, 46–50 dans la prédication d’Augustin. Exégèse inclusive et questions de genre,” REAug 65 (2019): 73–98.  C. Harrison, “The Rhetoric of Scripture and Preaching. Classical Decadence or Christian Aesthetic?,” in Augustine and His Critics. Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner, eds. R. Dodaro and G. Lawless (London: Routledge, 2000), 214–30.

2 Scripture in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum

35

explains the reasons for this in the De doctrina christiana (Doctr. chr.):16 in his view, the Christian preacher can legitimately use the knowledge received during his non-Christian education, both to understand the content of Scripture and to deliver his discourse.17 To paraphrase Augustine: Why should truth not use the same tools as error so that truth might triumph over error?18 Augustine thus takes the rhetorical categories of Cicero and Quintilian and repurposes them.19 Indeed, the impact of Augustine’s rhetorical formation on his homiletic exegesis has long been noted. For example, the three parts of Serm. 165 correspond to the three genera dicendi presented in Doctr. chr. Book 4.20 The first part (§§ 1–5) is a technical explanation of Eph 3:13–18 in genus submissum (simple style). The second part (§§ 6–9) is an excursus in genus temperatum (ornate style). Finally, the third part (§9) is like a hymnic meditation in the genus grande (grand style) based on Eph 3:18.21 However, even if a preacher did not receive rhetorical training, he could still

 Doctr. chr. sheds light on the relationship between the Bible and Augustine’s preaching. Augustine here deals first with the interpretation of the Scriptures (i.e. the modus inveniendi in Books 1 to 3) by establishing hermeneutical principles that are valid for sermons. He then deals with preaching itself (i.e. the modus proferendi in Book 4). See T. Toom, “Scripture in Augustine’s De doctrina christiana,” 321–42. Principles of interpretation can be found elsewhere: C. Basevi, San Agustin. La interpretación del Nuevo Testamento. Criterios exegéticos propuestos por S. Agustín en el De doctrina christiana, en el Contra Faustum y en el De consensu euangelistarum (Pamplona: Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, 1977); and F. Van Fleteren, “Augustine’s Principles of Biblical Exegesis, De Doctrina Christiana Aside. Miscellaneous Observations,” AugStud 27 (1996): 109–30.  Doctr. chr. 2.39.58 (CCSL 32:72). According to Augustine’s interpretation of the “spoils of the Egyptians” (Doctr. chr. 2.40.60–61 [CCSL 32:73–4]), whatever truths are contained in secular knowledge also belong to Christians. Secular knowledge is used, among other things, to compare the readings of the manuscripts (Serm. 23.8 [CCSL 41:314–5]; Serm. 169.1 [CCSL 41Bb:401]; Serm. 319.3 [PL 38:1441]), and to elucidate the meaning of the words. In Serm. 74.1 (CCSL 41Ab:152; WSA III/3:299, trans. Hill) he says: “I mean, we shouldn’t come to school in vain; we ought to know in what sense to take the words of the scriptures. Otherwise, when something is heard from the bible which is normally understood in another secular sense, hearers may be misled, and by taking for granted what they have been used to, may fail to understand what they have heard.” See M. Marin, “Retorica ed esegesi in Sant’Agostino. Note introduttive,” in L’Umanesimo di Sant’Agostino, ed. M. Fabris (Bari: Levante, 1988), 215–33.  Doctr. chr. 4.2.3 (CCSL 32:117–8).  For more on the relationship between classical and Augustinian rhetoric, see E. Fortin, “Augustine and the Problem of Christian Rhetoric,” AugStud 5 (1974): 85–100; and K. Pollmann, Doctrina christiana. Untersuchungen zu den Anfängen der christlichen Hermeneutik unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Augustinus (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1996).  This sermon has traditionally been dated to September / October 417. See P.-P. Verbraken, Études critiques sur les sermons authentiques de saint Augustin, Instrumenta patristica 12 (Steenbrugge-The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), 94; and G. Partoens, “La collection de sermons augustiniens De verbis Apostoli. Introduction et liste des manuscrits les plus anciens,” RBén 111 (2001): 330n48, both of which provide further bibliography.  G. Partoens, “Augustine on Predestination, Immortal Babies, and Sinning Foetusses. A Rhetorical Analysis of Sermon 165,” AugStud 45 (2014): 29–48. For other examples, see A. Verwilghen, “Rhétorique et prédication chez Augustin,” NRTh 120 (1998): 233–48; T. Martin, Rhetoric and Exegesis in Augustine’s Interpretation of Romans 7:24–25A (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001); and L. Mechlinsky, Der

36

Marie Pauliat

learn something about it by immersing himself in the Scriptures and the works of welleducated Christian authors.22 In fact, the styles of Paul,23 Amos,24 Cyprian, and Ambrose25 all hold their own when they are compared to that of Cicero or Quintilian. In short, not only does Augustine consistently use his rhetorical training to explain the Bible in his sermons, but he also urges other preachers to do the same.

Exegetical Training Augustine also received training in biblical exegesis. This is linked to preaching for two reasons: (1) While he had turned to Manichaeism in part because he did not understand some passages in the Old Testament,26 it was while listening to the preaching of Ambrose in Milan in 384 (when he was 30 years old) that Augustine “rediscovered” Scripture.27 He then trained himself in biblical exegesis by reading the works of his exegetical predecessors.28 (2) After his ordination to the priesthood, Augustine famously asked

modus proferendi in Augustins Sermones ad populum (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 2004), about Serm. 12, 266, 240, 181. See also M. Glowasky, Rhetoric and Scripture in Augustine’s Homiletic Strategy. Tracing the Narrative of Christian Maturation (Leiden: Brill, 2021).  Doctr. chr. 4.3.4 (CCSL 32:117–9).  Doctr. chr. 4.7.11–14 and 4.20.39–44 (CCSL 32:123–7 and 144–51).  Doctr. chr. 4.7.15–21 (CCSL 32:127–31).  Doctr. chr. 4.21.45–50 (CCSL 32:151–7).  Serm. 51.6 (CCSL 41Aa:16–7; WSA III/3:24, trans. Hill): “Yes, brothers; if you have no qualms about believing, there is nothing you need be ashamed of. I am speaking to you as one who was myself caught out once upon a time, when as a lad I wanted to tackle the divine Scriptures with the techniques of clever disputation before bringing to them the spirit of earnest inquiry. In this way I was shutting the door of my Lord against myself by my misplaced attitude; I should have been knocking at it for it to be opened, but instead I was adding my weight to keep it shut. I was presuming to seek in my pride what can only be found by humility. How much more fortunate are you people now! How serenely you learn, how safely, those of you who are still little ones in the nest of faith, being fed with spiritual food. But I, poor wretch, fondly imagining I was ready to fly, left the nest and fell to the ground before I could fly. The Lord, though, in his mercy, to save me from being trampled to death by the passers–by, picked me up and put me back in the nest.”  Conf. 6.4.6 (CCSL 27:77).  About Augustine’s exegetical training, see especially M. Dulaey, “L’apprentissage de l’exégèse biblique par Augustin,” REAug 48 (2002): 267–95; 49 (2003): 43–84; and 51 (2005): 21–65. Augustine also used Jerome’s work, especially on Hebrew names (Doctr. chr. 2.39.59 [CCSL 32:72–3]). Some questions still need to be answered about the sources of the Augustinian sermons, e.g., To what extent did Augustine borrow homiletic comments from others? If so, did he alter them so as to give his sources new meanings? Research would also benefit from a deeper analysis of the reception of Augustine’s homiletic interpretations in the centuries following his death. See, e.g., J. N. Hart-Hasler, “Bede’s Use of Patristic Sources. The Transfiguration,” in StPatr 28:197–204; and F. Dolbeau, “Bède, lecteur des sermons d’Augustin,” Filologia Mediolatina 3 (1996): 105–33.

2 Scripture in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum

37

his bishop, Valerius, for time to study the Bible on his own in order “to tap its wisdom for ministry.”29 The place of the Bible in Serm. is thus shaped by these two trainings: the initial one in rhetoric and the later one in exegesis.

The Biblical Preferences of Augustine the Preacher By his own admission, Augustine only learned quite late in life to appreciate the Bible and the art of interpreting it. He also noted that for several years following his reconversion to Christianity he knew the classical Latin authors, especially Virgil, Cicero, and Sallust – all of whom he read with care in his youth – better than he knew the Scriptures.30 This detail helps to explain the statistical data scholars have collected regarding the presence of the Bible in the sermons. Among the Sermones de Scripturis, the most extensive section is that of the Sermons on the Gospel of Matthew (Serm. 51–91).31 This is followed by several sermons on John’s Gospel (Serm. 117 to Serm. Denis 12 [147A]) and a handful dedicated to Psalms (Serm. 13–34). These sermons have been preserved alongside the In Evangelium Johannis tractatus (Tract. Ev. Jo.) and the Enarrationes in Psalmos (Enarrat. Ps.). Additionally, the Sermons on the Pauline Epistles also form a distinct group (Serm. 151–178). Hence, when considering not the lemmas of the sermons but, rather, the quotations that a particular liturgical reading or the pursuit of a particular theme brought to Augustine’s mind, the same passages tend to recur. This means that the books of the New Testament are cited more frequently than those of the Old. Psalms, Genesis, Exodus, Wisdom, and the books attributed to Solomon (Proverbs, Qohelet, Song of Songs) were cited with more frequency than the books of the prophets (except Isaiah) and the historical books.32 However, studying the frequency of biblical citations in the sermons raises other important questions.

 Ep. 21.3–4 (CSEL 34.1:51–52). Cf. M. Cameron, “Valerius of Hippo: A Profile,” AugStud 40 (2009): 16.  Serm. Dolbeau 23 (374 auct.).19 (ed. F. Dolbeau, Vingt-six sermons au peuple d’Afrique, EAA 147 [Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1996], 610).  Cons. 1.3 (CSEL 43:3). Augustine regards Matthew as the oldest of the Synoptics; thus, he treats Mark and Luke more briefly. See P.-M. Bogaert, “Ordres anciens des évangiles et tétraévangiles en un seul codex,” RTL 30 (1999): 298.  These comments are based on the Sermons on Matthew (M. Pauliat, “Les citations bibliques dans les Sermones in Matthaeum d’Augustin d’Hippone,” unpublished communication at the Seminar “BIBLindex,” Laboratoire HiSoMA, Lyon, 2014). Nevertheless, pending an exhaustive study, studies of entire biblical books suggest that these conclusions can be extended, with caution, to all the Sermones ad populum. See especially the volumes of the Biblia Augustiniana published by A.-M. La Bonnardière; T. G. Ring, Der Jakobusbrief im Schrifttum des heiligen Augustinus (Würzburg: Augustinus-Verlag, 2003); J. P. Yates, The Reception and Use of the Epistle of James in the Writings of St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430), Ph.D. Dissertation, KU Leuven, 2005; and N. Potteau, Augustin, lecteur et interprète du livre d’Isaïe, Ph.D. Dissertation, Centre Sèvres, 2019.

38

Marie Pauliat

The Functions of Biblical Quotations in Augustine’s Sermones ad populum What functions do these quotations serve? For Augustine, the objective of these quotations was one “of a psycho-pedagogical order: how does one take into account the word [of God] such that one draws closer to him?”33 The tria officia (three tasks) of rhetoric, with which Augustine the rhetorician was familiar, offers some practical guidance. (1) The comments on the Bible can be a source of teaching (docere; “to instruct”). For instance, one of the recurrent techniques for teaching an audience without boring them is to present a subject in the form of a quaestio.34 This technique is especially prominent when dealing with two verses that appear to contradict each other. For Augustine, this cannot be since he was convinced that Scripture cannot contradict itself. A good example is provided by Serm. 54.35 In it, Augustine shows that the following precepts are not contradictory. Good works are to be done in order to give glory to your Father who is in heaven (Matt 5:16). Therefore, the man who seeks only to serve God can act with confidence before men (Matt 6:1).36 (2) Biblical verses are often inserted into contexts in which God is to be praised (placere; “to please” or “to satisfy”). In these cases, these verses are inserted using an ornate style. They tend to be featured on feast days and on occasions that stress the believer’s relationship with Christ. The sermons’ organization, style, and rhythm also tend to correspond with the mystery being explained.37 (3) Nevertheless, the functions of docere and placere are subordinated to the allimportant movere (“to move/persuade”), which is the third duty of the speaker.38 Some quotations of Scripture support an exhortation that aims at transforming the listeners by convincing them that earthly life prepares them for eternity and that inner rebirth is necessary for salvation. Scripture provides the believer with a practical, moral standard of behavior which the preacher can, in turn, strive to

 F. Dolbeau, “Sermones (ad populum),” 257.  A. Olivar, La predicación cristiana antigua (Barcelona: Herder, 1991), 825–7.  This sermon’s date is uncertain (see CCSL 41Aa:127–8).  See also, e.g., Serm. 24, which treats Ps 82:2: “O God, be neither silent nor meek,” and Matt 11:29: “Learn from me that I am meek and humble of heart”; Serm. 51, which treats both genealogies of Christ; Serm. 70, which treats the “light yoke” of Christ (cf. Matt 11:28–30) and Christians’ trials (cf. 2 Tim 3:12; Matt 20:4; 2 Cor 6:45; 2 Cor 11:24); and Serm. 149.11, which treats four exegetical questions.  P.-M. Hombert, “La prédication sur le Verbe incarné dans les sermons d’Augustin pour Noël et l’Ascension. Rhétorique et théologie,” in Tractatio Scripturarum. Philological, Exegetical, Rhetorical and Theological Studies on Augustine’s Sermons, eds. A. Dupont, G. Partoens and M. Lamberigts (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 271–333.  Doctr. chr. 4.12.27 (CCSL 32:135).

2 Scripture in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum

39

instill in his listeners.39 Interior attitudes, like humility40 and interiority,41 both of which are rooted in charity,42 are translated into concrete acts, such as prayer,43 fasting,44 and almsgiving45 (cf. Matt 6:1–18) to which the congregation is then exhorted.46 These actions also include rejecting avarice,47 doing penance,48 refraining from speaking ill of others,49 rebuking a sinner in private,50 and continence.51 To exhort his listeners to practice these virtues, Augustine often uses biblical characters as exempla. For example, Augustine invokes the figure of Job as part of a call for patience in sermons that followed the sack of Rome (in the summer of 410 CE),52 and in sermons describing Christ’s humanity and/or some of his typological predecessors.53 Thus, Augustine’s personality and training shape both his choice of biblical passages and the functions he assigns to the passages he has chosen. Another factor – the one to which we now turn – is the sermons’ liturgical context.

 For lists of recurring themes, see M. Pellegrino, “Introduzione. VI. La vita cristiana,” LIV–LX, and F. Dolbeau, “Sermones (ad populum),” 255–63.  E.g., Serm. 70 and Serm. Mai 127 (70A) on Matt 11:28; Serm. 160 and Serm. Dolbeau 26 on Col 2:8. See also A. Verwilgen, “Jesus Christ: Source of Christian Humility,” in Augustine and the Bible, ed. P. Bright (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999), 301–12 (on Phil 2:6–11), and C. Mayer, “Humiliatio, humilitas,” AugLex 3:443–56.  P.T. Sanlon, Augustine’s Theology of Preaching (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014).  Serm. Dolbeau 11 (90A).3 (CCSL 41Ab:548) on Matt 22:40.  Serm. 56–59 on Matt 6:9–13; Serm. Mai 26 (60A) on Matt 7:6–8; 80 on Matt 17:18–20. See also M. Pauliat, “Accorder Mt 6, 7–8 avec Mt 7, 7 et Lc 18, 1? Le Sermo 80 d’Augustin d’Hippone sur la prière dans la tradition patristique,” Cristianesimo nella Storia 41 (2020): 9–41; and T.J. van. Bavel, The Longing of the Heart. Augustine’s Doctrine on Prayer (Leuven: Peeters, 2008).  B. Ramsey, “Ieiunium,” AugLex 3:474–81; and B. Marotta, “Il digiuno in alcuni Sermones di Agostino: modi e significati,” Auctores nostri 4 (2006): 590–7.  Si 29:15 in Serm. 14.1 (CCSL 41:185); Matt 7:7–11 in Serm. 61; Matt 25:35–36 in Serm. 37.29 (CCSL 41,472); 178.4 (PL 38:962–3); 236.3 (PL 38:1121); Serm. Denis 13 (305A).7 (MA 1:61–2); Serm. Morin 5 (358A).2 (MA 1:607); Serm. Morin 11 (53A).6 (CCSL 41Aa:116–8). See A. Kessler and J. U. Krause, “Eleemosyna,” AugLex 2:752–67.  Especially in Lent. See Serm. 206–210.  Serm. 86 on Matt 19:21.  Serm. 351–352 on Ps 50:11. See also R. Meßner, “Paenitentia,” AugLex 4:413–6.  Serm. 55 on Matt 5:22.  Serm. 82 on Matt 18:15–18, Pr 10:10 (LXX), and 1 Tim 5:20.  Serm. Dolbeau 12 with Matt 19:3–12 and 1 Cor 7:3–7, 27–33. See also A. Zumkeller, “Abstinentiacontinentia,” AugLex 1:33–40.  Serm. 81.4 (CCSL 41Ab:305–7); etc. See A.-M. La Bonnardière, Livres historiques, EAA 11 (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1960).  Serm. 81.4 (CCSL 41Ab:305–7); etc. See W. Geerlings, Christus Exemplum. Studien zur Christologie und Christusverkündigung Augustins (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1978).

40

Marie Pauliat

Scripture and the Liturgical Contexts of the Sermones ad populum Most of the Sermones ad populum are linked, in one way or another, to a liturgical context. Often the starting point of a sermon is a biblical verse or theme as it is invoked during a particular Eucharistic liturgy.54 This observation raises three questions: (1) Which Latin version of the biblical text did Augustine comment on? (2) How were the readings organized? (3) Does the presence of multiple readings influence either the nature or the number of the biblical comments that we find in Augustine’s homilies?

The Biblical Text The first question is that of the biblical text. It is worth recalling that Augustine was familiar with many ancient Latin biblical translations which are collectively known as the “Old Latin.”55 Among these, Augustine preferred the one known as the Itala for its (relative) clarity and for its fidelity to the original Greek.56 In 403 CE, Augustine learned of Jerome’s recent (and ongoing) efforts to translate the Bible into Latin, efforts that would eventually provide the basis for the Vulgate. Augustine’s adoption of Jerome’s version was a gradual process.57 It must also be borne in mind that medieval copyists sometimes replaced Old Latin quotations with the wording of the Vulgate simply because they were more familiar with the latter. An important question thus becomes: Which version of the Latin Bible is found in the Sermones ad populum?58 The answer depends on the status of the quotations. Some quotations we find there stem directly from the liturgical readings. Thus, even those sermons preached after 403 CE often comment on an Old Latin translation if such was still in use in the particular church in which Augustine was preaching. These Old Latin translations sometimes contained distinctly African motifs.59 At the  The sermons on the Gospels were certainly preached during the liturgy. See M. Dulaey and M. Klöckener, “Euangelium,” AugLex 2:1144–50.  P.-M. Bogaert, “La Bible d’Augustin. État des questions et application aux sermons Dolbeau,” in Augustin prédicateur, 33–47; H. A. G. Houghton, “Scripture and Latin Christian Manuscripts from North African,” in BCNA I, 15–50. Regarding the biblical canon, see T. Toom, “Scripture in Augustine’s De doctrina christiana,” in BCNA I, 321–42, esp. 324–9; and supra, R.V. Marin, “Scripture in the North African councils of 393, 397, and 418,” 13–29.  Doctr. chr. 2.15.22 (CCSL 32:47–8). P.-M. Bogaert, “Les bibles d’Augustin,” RThL 37 (2006): 513–31; and T. Toom, “Scripture in Augustine’s De doctrina christiana,” 327.  H. A. G. Houghton, “Augustine’s Adoption of the Vulgate Gospels,” NTS 54.3 (2008): 450–64.  See H. A. G. Houghton, “Scripture and Latin Christian Manuscripts,” and H. A. G. Houghton, Augustine’s Text of John. Patristic Citations and Latin Gospel Manuscripts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).  H. A. G. Houghton, “Scripture and Latin Christian Manuscripts,” 44–45; and P.-M. Bogaert, “La Bible d’Augustin. État des questions et application aux sermons Dolbeau,” in Augustin prédicateur, 33–47.

2 Scripture in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum

41

same time, not all of the biblical quotations we find in the sermons are drawn from the liturgical readings. Moreover, Augustine often quoted the Bible from memory in order to better explain the liturgical reading or the theme of that day’s homily. These latter quotations have often undergone a double process of “flattening” and “conflation” before being fixed in Augustine’s memory. Consequently, they give us access to what scholars sometimes call Augustine’s “mental text.” This mental text, originally based on the Old Latin versions, was gradually replaced in Augustine’s memory by a new mental text based on the Vulgate. Nevertheless, it is rare (a priori) that a particular version of a quotation, whether from a codex or Augustine’s “mental text,” provokes a detailed comment.60

The Organization of the Readings for the Liturgy The organization of the readings and feasts of the liturgy also had an influence on the selections from the Bible that we find in the sermons. During Augustine’s lifetime, there was not yet a lectionary that grouped scriptural readings into a set liturgical order.61 Nonetheless, the ordo was beginning to be fixed for the feasts of the temporale (i.e., the liturgical feasts related to Christ, such as Christmas and Easter).62 On the feasts of the martyrs, the reading of their passion or a story of a miracle performed by the martyr often necessitated a short sermon.63 On other days, the readings were freely chosen by the preacher,64 or by the lector.65 A given biblical book might also be

 For Matt 10:16b, the lesson astutus explains why the content of Augustine’s commentaries on the verse are different from those of authors familiar with the prudens reading (cf., e.g., Gaudentius of Brescia, Serm. 18.33 [CSEL 68:162]).  A.-G. Martimort, Les lectures liturgiques et leurs livres (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992); and J.-P. Bouhot, “La lecture liturgique des Épitres catholiques d’après les sermons d’Augustin,” in La lecture liturgique des Épîtres catholiques dans l’Église ancienne, eds. C.-B. Amphoux and J.-P. Bouhot, HTB 1 (Lausanne: Éditions de Zèbre, 1996), 269–75.  M. Margoni-Kögler, “Lectio,” AugLex 3:919–20.  Serm. 94, 274, and 281. M. Margoni-Kögler, Die Perikopen im Gottesdienst bei Augustinus. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung der liturgischen Schriftlesung in der frühen Kirche (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010), 143–70.  E.g. Augustine asked that a passage be reread because he had not finished explicating it. See Serm. Wilmart 12 (61A).1 (CCSL 41Aa:282), and Serm. Mai 126 (68 auct.).1 (CCSL 41Aa:437). Connections between the readings and the circumstances suggests that Augustine sometimes chose his readings. See, e.g., Serm. 62, according to M. Pauliat, “Non inueni tantam fidem in Israel: la péricope de l’acte de foi du centurion (Mt 8, 5–13) interprétée dans les Sermones 62 et Morin 6 d’Augustin d’Hippone,” in StPatr 98:91–102.  Augustine sometimes waited until he knew which passage was going to be read (Serm. 52.1 [CCSL 41Aa:58]); sometimes he even chose the theme of the sermon during the reading (Serm. 71.8 [CCSL 41Ab:24]).

42

Marie Pauliat

the object of continuous reading and commentary.66 Often a passage from the New Testament (and less frequently one from the Old) was read first, a psalm was sung, and the Gospel was read. Margoni-Kögler has listed the information provided by the sermons that are relevant to the readings that preceded them.67 From an exegetical point of view, it often proves interesting to specify the reading that the preacher has chosen to explain, the reasons for his choice,68 and the way in which his commentary was influenced by the joint explanation of the liturgical readings,69 and/or by the feast being celebrated.70 Some Sermones ad populum were delivered in extra-Eucharistic contexts. These included the Liturgy of the Hours,71 catechetical instruction to those preparing for baptism,72 and occasional events conducted apart from the liturgy in the strict sense such as “lectures.”73 Even in these sermons, however, biblical quotations are numerous. The organization of the liturgical year and the structure of the Eucharistic celebration therefore had a clear and definite impact both on which biblical texts were commented upon and on the scope of the comments provided.

The Organization of Biblical Quotations As noted above, in the sermons, not all the quotations are taken directly from the liturgical readings. Another important question is: How are these quotations organized? In the Sermones ad populum, continuous, verse-by-verse expositions of a

 M. Schrama, “Prima lectio quae recitata est: The Liturgical Pericope in Light of Saint Augustine’s Sermons,” Augustiniana 45 (1995): 151–2n57.  M. Margoni-Kögler, Die Perikopen, who helpfully observes that the precise readings were not always easy to identify. E.g., thanks to similar wording and/or conflation it can be difficult to know which Synoptic Gospel the preacher has in mind. See M. Pauliat, “Les Sermones Mai 25 et Morin 7 d’Augustin d’Hippone, des Sermones in Matthaeum?,” in Le livre scellé, ed. L. Mellerin, Cahiers de Biblindex 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 251–71.  M. Pellegrino “Introduzione,” XXIII–VII.  E.g., in Serm. 78 on the Transfiguration the exegesis of Matt 17:1–9 is influenced by the reading of 1 Cor 13:1–12, which had preceded it, and Psalm 18, which had probably been sung.  M. Pontet, L’exégèse, 157.  A. Zwinggi, “Der Wortgottesdienst im Stundengebet,” Liturgisches Jahrbuch 20 (1970): 129–40.  M. Pignot, The Catechumenate in Late Antique Africa (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 210–20. In no way does this imply that the Bible is absent. On the contrary, during the Traditio of the Pater Noster, Matt 6 was commented on.  E.g., Serm. 10 (a quaestio) and Serm. 240–242 about Porphyry. See I. Bochet, “Résurrection et réincarnation. La polémique d’Augustin contre les platoniciens et contre Porphyre dans les Sermons 240–242,” in Ministerium Sermonis. Philological, Historical and Theological Studies on Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum, eds. G. Partoens, A. Dupont and M. Lamberigts (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 267–98, esp. 280.

2 Scripture in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum

43

passage are rare.74 It is also rare that Augustine explains all of that day’s liturgical readings in his sermon.75 Typically, he brings together the response of the psalm or some verses from the readings of the day with other biblical passages. The goal of this technique is to provide a spiritual exegesis, similar to what the Alexandrians often did.76 It also freely associates a wide variety of different exegetical approaches, including the search for: (1) the literal meaning, which is often treated very quickly; (2) the typological, Christological, or ecclesiological meanings; (3) one or more concrete and moral applications; and (4) the eschatological import (if any). These groups of quotations are sometimes referred to as “scriptural orchestrations.”77 In these “scriptural orchestrations,” the verses echo each other because: (1) they deal with the same theme; (2) they form part of the same liturgical mystery;78 or (3) they use identical “hook words” that suggest a connection or that make a proposed connection easy to follow. These scriptural orchestrations may also be characteristic of a given period or a particular controversy. Thus, they are sometimes used by scholars to establish a terminus post/ante quem for a particular sermon’s date. While this method presents several risks,79 the liturgical context of the sermons had an impact on the role played by the Bible. Furthermore, the scriptural orchestrations allow for an easy transition to another dimension of the use of the Bible in the sermons, namely, the quotations and the comments that appear in overtly polemical contexts.

The Bible in the Polemical Sermons Many sermons refute heresies because the preacher takes on the role of “the defender of the right faith and the hammer of error.”80 Several chapters of the present volume are dedicated to elucidating the role played by Scripture in various controversies.

 The case of Serm. 153–56 is unique. The different ways that Phil 3:3–16 was treated in Serm. 169, which offers a verse-by-verse commentary, and Serm. 170, which is structured as an answer to a quaestio, is, according to A. Eelen, “Augustine and Phil. 3,3–16: One bible fragment, several exegetical approaches,” SacEr 50 (2011): 227–63, best explained by the fact that a more sophisticated audience was in attendance for Serm. 169.  E.g. Serm. 112 and 308. Augustine sometimes observes that it is necessary to choose which readings he will comment on. See, e.g., Serm. 45.1 (CCSL 41:515); Serm. Denis 25 (72A).1–2 (CCSL 41Ab:108–11); Serm. Wilmart 12 (61A).1 (CCSL 41Aa:282); as well as Serm. 266.8 (PL 38:1229) and 347.1 (PL 39:1524).  M. Simonetti, “Sulla tecnica esegetica di alcuni sermones vetero testamentari di Agostino,” Augustinianum 25 (1985): 185–203; and A. Isola, “L’esegesi biblica del Sermo 286 di Agostino,” VetChr 23 (1986): 267–81.  F. Châtillon, “Orchestration scripturaire,” Revue du Moyen Âge latin 10 (1954): 210–9.  M. Pontet, L’exégèse, 157.  Cf. n.9 supra.  Doctr. chr. 4.4.6 (CCSL 32:119; WSA I/11:302, trans. Hill). For details, see F. Dolbeau, “Sermones (ad populum),” 259–60 and 317–65.

44

Marie Pauliat

Thus, what follows is limited to the question of the frequency with which these emphases recur as Augustine switched from one literary genre to another.81 In Augustine’s extant corpus, some polemical interpretations are found only in polemical treatises; they do not occur in the sermons. For example, the young Augustine used the pericope that records the cursing of the barren fig tree (Matt 21:18–22) against the Manicheans. The Manicheans believed that trees have a “rational soul” (anima rationalis) that is capable of hearing and seeing. Based on these principles, the Manicheans claimed that “the suffering Jesus” (Jesus patibilis) hangs from any wood that may be found in nature, including trees.82 Consequently, the Manicheans were forbidden to kill or injure any plant or small animal. For his part, Augustine emphasized the literal meaning of this pericope. He argues that, since Jesus himself made the fig tree wither, killing a tree is not homicide. Therefore, for Augustine, the Manicheans belief in “the seal of the hands” has no basis.83 This specific interpretation was not developed in any sermon that has been preserved.84 Nevertheless, most of the exegeses that occur in the polemical compositions are also found in sermons. This is largely because Augustine did not soften his discourse against opponents of the Catholica.85 However, while the themes in Augustine’s treatises and sermons are very similar, they often do have a different tone and/or serve different functions. This is because the polemical comments in the sermons were not only intended to refute opponents – even if heretics were sometimes in the congregation.86 Augustine’s sermons also aimed at fortifying and equipping his audience against doctrinal errors.87 This is true for his polemics against Manichaeans, Donatists, Pelagians, Jews, and various pagans.

Sermons Against the Manicheans The Manicheans rejected the Old Testament and, from the New Testament, focused only on those passages that they considered divinely inspired.88 They also explicitly rejected “contradictory” passages of Scripture. This is precisely what the Manichean

 The volumes of the Biblia Augustiniana also make it possible to compare exegeses.  Faust. 20.2 (CSEL 25/1:536). About the “seal of the hands,” see F. Decret, Aspects du manichéisme dans l’Afrique romaine: les controverses de Fortunatus, Faustus et Felix avec saint Augustin, EAA 41 (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1970), 302–3.  Mor. eccl. et mor. Manich. 2.17.54–55 (CSEL 90:136–7); and Adim. 22 (CSEL 25.1:181).  For additional examples, see M. Pauliat, Augustin exégète et prédicateur, 570–1.  Serm. Dolbeau 4 (299A auct.).3 (ed. Dolbeau, Vingt-six, 513–4); and Serm. Dolbeau 26 (198 auct.).45 (ed. Dolbeau, Vingt-six, 401).  Serm. Guelf. 17 (229O).4 (MA 1:498); Serm. Dolbeau 25 tit. (ed. Dolbeau, Vingt-six, 248); and Possidius, Vit. Aug. 15 (H. T. Weiskotten, ed., 74–77).  See, e.g., Serm. 12.2 (CCSL 41:165–6) and 126.8 (RBén 69 [1959]:186).  In this sense Manichean exegetical principles represent one of the earliest attempts at biblical criticism. See M. Tardieu, “Principes de l’exégèse manichéenne du Nouveau Testament,” in Les règles de

2 Scripture in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum

45

Adimantus does in his Disputationes. Notably, in Serm. 1, 2, 12, 50, 71, and 82 Augustine refutes Adimantus in the same way and by using the same techniques as those he employed in his anti-Manichaean treatises.89

Sermons Against the Donatists The anti-Donatist sermons are distinguishable from the anti-Donatist treatises and letters more by their tone than by their content or their biblical exegesis.90 Three illustrative examples are: (1) The exegesis of Matt 12:33 (“Either make the tree good, and the fruit will be good; or make the tree evil, and the fruit will be evil. Because the tree is recognized by its fruit”). Donatist exegetical principles helped to further the conceit that biblical trees signified the church’s ministers. Similarly, they saw in biblical fruit images of the baptized.91 For Augustine, by contrast, a tree represents the human person and a tree’s fruit a person’s deeds. A person’s fruit will be good if she chooses the good and it will be bad if she chooses evil.92 (2) The numerous commentaries on pericopes which evoke the idea of the ecclesia permixta (e.g. Matt 13:24–30’s image of the tares among the wheat,93 or Luke 5:1–11’s miraculous catch of fish).94 While the Donatists defended the purity of the true church, Augustine comments on these pericopes to show that the church is already thoroughly mixed since its membership is so obviously composed of both the good and the wicked. This mixed membership will only be sorted at the Last Judgment. (3) The Song of Songs. In sermons as well as in treatises and in letters, contrary to the standard Donatist reading and application of the

l’interprétation, ed. M. Tardieu (Paris: Cerf, 1987), 123–46. On the Manichean presence in North Africa, see V. H. Drecoll, “Manichaei,” AugLex 3:1132–59.  Retract. 1.22.1 (CCSL 57:63–4). See J. A. van den Berg, Biblical Argument in Manichaean Missionary Practice. The Case of Adimantus and Augustine, Nag Hammadi and Manichaean studies 70 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 75–95 and 119–21.  P. Monceaux, Histoire littéraire de l’Afrique chrétienne depuis les origines jusqu’à l’invasion arabe, t. 7. Saint Augustin et le Donatisme (Paris: Culture et civilisation, 1923), 146–88, which is focused on the sermons. See also I. Tholen, Die Donatisten in den Predigten Augustins. Kommunikationslinien des Bischofs von Hippo mit seinen Predigthörern (Berlin: Lit, 2010).  Chrysostomus latinus, Serm. 18 (RBén 107 [1997]: 260).  C. litt. Petil. 1.8.9 (CSEL 52:8–9); 2.6.12–13 (CSEL 52,26–27); Cresc. 3.11.14 (CSEL 52:420); and Serm. 292.5–7 (PL 38:1323–6). See M. Pauliat, “L’arbre et ses fruits (Mt 12, 33),” in BA 77/B:419–22. The answer here is the same as that given to the Manicheans, who understood the verse differently (M. Simonetti, “Matteo 7, 17–18 (= Luca 6, 43) dagli gnostici ad Agostino,” Aug 16 [1976]: 271–90).  C. E. Straw, “Augustine as Pastoral Theologian. The Exegesis of the Parables of the Field and Threshing Floor,” AugStud 14 (1983): 129–51.  John 21:1–14; cf. Serm. 251.

46

Marie Pauliat

Song of Songs, Augustine affirms that the church is not limited to Africa but is spread throughout the entire world.95

Sermons Against the Pelagians Regarding the anti-Pelagian sermons, A. Dupont writes that “other contexts do not offer fundamentally different insights . . . although they do exhibit differences in the representation and thematization of the same insights.”96 This is also true of the many biblical comments through which Augustine seeks to correct those who, like Pelagius, would exalt human ability at the expense of divine grace.97 For example, in Serm. 55, which probably dates to ca. 415 CE, Augustine refutes the exegesis of Jas 3:8 that Pelagius offered in his De natura.98 In Serm. 55, Augustine repeats an idea that he already expressed in De natura et gratia (Nat. grat.) – his polemical response to De natura – but he applies it differently: here man’s inability to stop swearing is used to inspire fear (i.e., pathos), before Augustine goes on to conclude with a prayer for the grace that is essential for obeying (any of) God’s commandments.99

 See M. Cameron, “Augustine’s Use of the Song of Songs Against the Donatists,” in Augustine, Biblical Exegete, 99–127; A. Dupont and M. Dalvit, “From a martyrological ‘tabernacula pastorum’ towards a geographical ‘in meridie’. Augustine’s Representation and Refutation of the Donatist Exegesis of Sg. 1,6–7,” RHE 109/1–2 (2014): 5–34. In the latter, the authors offer a possible reconstruction of the Donatist interpretation of in meridie (Ct 1:6–7). This new reading is different from that presented by Augustine in Serm. 46 and places the question of martyrdom at the heart of the Donatist movement. Mutatis mutandis, Augustine’s anti-Pelagian sermons also become more understandable through the identification of this doctrine. See. e.g., A. Dupont, Gratia in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum during the Pelagian Controversy. Do Different Contexts Furnish Different Insights? (Leiden: Brill, 2013), and A. 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), both of which argue this thesis.  A. Dupont, Gratia in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum, 641; M. Pauliat, “Sermons,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Pelagian Controversy and Pelagianism: History, Theology, Exegesis, Rhetoric and Reception, eds. A. Dupont, G. Malavasi and B. Matz (Oxford; Oxford University Press), to be published.  E.g. M.-F. 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’,” RechAug 16 (1981): 101–96; P.-M. Hombert, “Augustin, prédicateur de la grâce au début de son épiscopat,” in Augustin prédicateur, 217–45; and V. H. Drecoll, “Gratia,” AugLex 3:226–33. The latter includes a list of biblical verses that were prominent in the controversy as well as details about how and where they were commented on.  M. Pauliat, Augustin exégète et prédicateur, 481–502. The demonstration remains valid even if we retain the traditional dating of this sermon to sometime “before 411.” Two studies have shown that it anticipates anti-Pelagian themes: P.-M. Hombert, “Augustin, prédicateur de la grâce,” 218 and 240; and J. P. Yates, “Is the Tongue Tamable? James 3:8 and the Date of Augustine’s Sermo 180,” REAug 63 (2017): 81–98.  As with the anti-Donatist sermons, a study of anti-Arian sermons would probably yield a similar result. Such study remains to be done, but see S. González, La preocupación arriana en la predicación de San Agustín (Valladolid: Estudio Agustiniano, 1989); U. Heil, “Antiarianisches in den neutestamentlichen Predigten von Augustinus. Eine Problemanzeige,” in Tractatio Scripturarum, 373–403; and H. J. Sieben,

2 Scripture in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum

47

Sermons Against Jews and Pagans Regarding his polemics against Jews100 and pagans,101 it is worth noting that Augustine’s taste for antithesis led him to develop an exegesis built on the opposition between the “two groups of people.”102 Examples of this opposition include: (1) the donkey and the ox in Isa 1:3;103 (2) the Good Shepherd’s two flocks in John 10:16;104 (3) the synagogue official’s daughter and the hemorrhagic woman in Matt 9:18–26;105 and (4) the two blind men in Matt 20:30–34.106 Also important for him are Matt 15:24 (“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”), which maintains the pre-eminence of Israel over the nations,107 and Eph 2:20 (Christ as the “cornerstone”), which recalls the bond between Jews and Gentiles that Christ made possible.108 For the most part, then, the biblical exegeses and commentary that we find in the polemical sermons are identical to what we find in the treatises, even though they do sometimes have a different tone or function precisely because they are addressed to a specific congregation or assembly.

“Augustins Auseinandersetzung mit dem Arianismus außerhalb seiner explizit antiarianischen Schriften,” in Augustinus. Studien zu Werk und Wirkgeschichte (Münster: Aschendorff, 2013), 191–228.  On references to the Jews in Serm., see J. van. Oort, “Jews and Judaism in Augustine’s Sermones,” in Ministerium Sermonis, 243–65. For a more comprehensive analysis of the place of the Jews in Augustine’s thought and theology, see P. Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews. A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008); and A. Massie, Peuple prophétique et nation témoin. Le peuple juif dans le Contra Faustum manicheum de saint Augustin, EAA 191 (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2011).  Concerning Augustine’s arguments against the pagans, with particular attention to the biblical verses used, see I. Bochet, “Résurrection et réincarnation.”  Serm. 137.6 (PL 38:757–8).  Cf. Serm. 375.  Cf. Serm. 138.5 (PL 38:765–6); Serm. Mai 26 (60A).2 (CCSL 41Aa:255); and Exp. Gal. 31 (CSEL 84:96–99). See M.-F. Berrouard, “Deux peuples, un seul troupeau, un unique Pasteur. Ecclésiologie de saint Augustin et citations de Jean 10:16,” in Augustine. Second Founder of the Faith, eds. J. C. Schnaubelt and F. Van Fleteren (New York: Peter Lang, 1990), 275–301.  Cf. Serm. 62.5–7 (CCSL 41Aa:299–302); 77.6–8 (CCSL 41Ab:203–6); Serm. Mai 25 (63A).3 (CCSL 41Aa:338–9); Serm. Mai 95 (375C).6 (MA 1:345); Serm. Morin 7 (63B).1–3 (CCSL 41Aa:345–6); Serm. Guelf. 23; Serm. Guelf. 24; Qu. 7.49.26 (CCSL 33:372); and C. mend. 27 (CSEL 41:507–8). See M. Dulaey, “La guérison de l’hémorroïsse (Matt 9, 20–22) dans l’interprétation patristique et l’art paléochrétien,” REAug 35 (2007): 103–8.  Matt 20:30–34; cf. Serm. 88.10 (CCSL 41Ab:474–6).  Serm. 77.8 (CCSL 41Ab:205) and Serm. Mai 26 (60A).2 (CCSL 41Aa:254).  Serm. 4.18 (CCSL 41:33) and Serm. Mai 26 (60A).2 (CCSL 41Aa:255). See also P. Borgomeo, L’Église de ce temps dans la prédication de saint Augustin, EAA 48 (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1972), 75–86.

48

Marie Pauliat

The Interaction between Biblical Commentary and the Audience The interaction between the preacher and the congregation is another important point that impacts the role played by the Bible in Augustine’s sermons. This interaction raises three questions: (1) When offering biblical comments, how does Augustine deal with the diversity of the audience? (2) How does he position himself relative to the audience? (3) How does Augustine the preacher take into account the feedback he receives from the audience?

Biblical Commentary and Audience Diversity Augustine’s audience included a wide variety of people: men and women, young and old, rich and poor, dedicated Christians and nominal Christians (i.e., those who remained open to the arguments of other religious groups or of heretics, etc.).109 Augustine believes that both the sermons and the biblical commentary they contain must be addressed to everyone in the audience. Moreover, Augustine believed that sermons are also to be oriented towards the edification of the ecclesial community.110 He expressed this conviction via the following principle: “If it seems to you that you have understood divine Scriptures, or any part of them, in such a way that by this understanding you do not build up (ita ut non aedificet) this twin love of God and neighbor, then you have not yet understood them.”111 The verb aedificare seems to allude to Eph 4:15–16, a passage in which Paul claims that the church (as the Body of Christ) builds itself up in charity. To participate in this “ecclesial construction project,” Augustine develops several distinct exegetical strategies.112

Inclusive Exegesis When a verse seems to be addressed only to a part of the audience (the elderly, the rich, women, etc.), Augustine would often develop an inclusive exegesis of it that, after he addressed one faction, he could then extend in order to apply to everyone in attendance. For instance, when a verse calls for conversion, younger people may  M. Pontet, L’exégèse, 55–62.  M. Pauliat, “Commenter l’Écriture pour construire la communauté ecclésiale. L’exemple des Sermones ad populum d’Augustin d’Hippone,” Augustiniana 72 (2022): 33–66.  Doctr. chr. 1.36.40 (CCSL 32:29; WSA I/11:124, trans. Hill).  N. Kamimura, “Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum and the Relationship Between Identity/ies and Spirituality in North African Christianity,” in Praedicatio Patrum. Studies on Preaching in Late Antique North Africa, eds. G. Partoens, A. Dupont and S. Boodts, IPM 75 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 429–60.

2 Scripture in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum

49

think that they have time to convert, that conversion is urgent only for the old. Augustine, however, reminds both the young and the old of the urgency of conversion and the danger of procrastination: even if the Lord, in his benevolence, accepts the workers until the eleventh hour,113 no one knows which hour will be his last. And, even if God has promised forgiveness to everyone who turns to him, he has promised no one that he will live to see tomorrow.114 In this way, Augustine shows both the rich and the poor that God is their commonwealth. Moreover, he shows them that humility is the true way to live in poverty and that everybody, whether rich or poor, will know death. These differences do not, however, exempt the rich from almsgiving or the poor from being patient.115 Augustine also exhorts both men and women to imitate Mary’s motherhood.116 They can do so provided they understand this exhortation spiritually: the “virginity of their faith” will result in a “spiritual motherhood,” one that leads other Christians to the baptismal font.117

Totalizing Discourse To gather the assembly – especially the less fervent Christians who remained open to the arguments of pagans and heretics – Augustine resorts to a “totalizing discourse:” a discourse in which Christian interpretations of the world and Scripture subjugates or excludes others.118 This is especially the case with regard to the sack of Rome (cf. supra).119 Augustine’s biblical expositions aimed at building a community in opposition to the perils that surrounded it. To this end, through the sermons preached after

 Serm. 87 on Matt 20:1–16.  Serm. Caillau 2, 5 (73A).2 (CCSL 41Ab:141); and Serm. 82.14 (CCSL 41Ab:3423–5).  Serm. 85.6 (CCSL 41Ab:394–6). See also H. Rondet, “Richesse et pauvreté dans la prédication de saint Augustin,” in Saint Augustin parmi nous, eds. H. Rondet, C. Morel, M. Jourjon and J. Lebreton (Le Puy: Éditions Xavier Mappus, 1954), 114–34; and P. Vismara Chiappa, Il tema della povertà nella predicazione di Sant’Agostino (Milano: A. Giuffrè, 1975).  In some African churches, they were segregated. See, e.g., Civ. 2.28 (CCSL 47:63) and Serm. Dolbeau 2 (359B).5 (ed. Dolbeau, Vingt-six, 330, and comments on 320 and 633).  Serm. Denis 25 (72A) on Matt 12:46–50. See M. Pauliat, “Mt 12, 46–50 dans la prédication d’Augustin. Exégèse inclusive et questions de genre,” REAug 65 (2019): 73–98.  A. Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire. The Development of Christian Discourse (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 2–3, 57–58, and 217–21. Through this “totalizing discourse,” Christians interpret reality by assuming within the discourse all other interpretations “to achieve a totalizing interpretation in which secular discourse could be subsumed and brought within the universal Christian interpretative field” (p. 58).  Five sermons were certainly preached relatively soon after the sack of Rome in 410: Serm. Denis 24 (113A); Serm. 81; 105; 296; and Exc. urb. (Saint Augustin, Sermons sur la chute de Rome, trans. J.-C. Fredouille [Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2004], 9–17). Three others (Serm. Denis 21 [15A], Serm. Denis 23 [33A], and Serm. 25) mention difficult situations and were perhaps preached at the

50

Marie Pauliat

news of Rome’s fate reached North Africa, Augustine integrated the objections of the pagans in order to better refute them, and in order to urge the faithful to disassociate themselves from the values of the pagans.120 In sum, according to Augustine, the Bible contributes to the edification of the audience in charity. The biblical comments in the sermons extend this mission in two different ways: either inclusive exegesis or a totalizing discourse.

Augustine’s Positioning as a Preacher in Relation to the Audience If we now turn to consider Augustine’s position in relation to his audience, it quickly becomes clear that the bishop sees himself as a disciple of Christ who is actively listening to the Word of God along with his audience. As he does so, he also actively teaches them how to interpret Scripture for themselves.

The Preacher as a Member of the Audience The church, as a school of faith, sees Christ as her teacher. As members of this school, Augustine and his hearers are fellow students.121 Nevertheless, among the believers, the preacher bears such heavy responsibilities that Augustine can state publicly that would have preferred to lay his burden down.122 He is the servant who is responsible for the salvation of his brothers,123 and, more particularly, for the distribution of the

same time (T. S. de Bruyn, “Ambivalence within a ‘Totalizing Discourse’. Augustine Sermons on the Sack of Rome,” JECS 1 [1993]: 405–21).  T. S. de Bruyn, “Ambivalence,” (discussing Serm. 81, 105 and 296).  Serm. 134.1 (PL 38:742–3; WSA III/4:341, trans. Hill): “Your graces know that all of us have one Teacher, and that under him we are fellow disciples, fellow pupils. And the fact that we bishops speak to you from a higher place does not make us your teachers; but it’s the one who dwells in all of us that is the Teacher of us all. He was talking to all of us just now in the gospel, and saying to us what I am also saying to you; he says it, though, about us, about both me and you: ‘If you remain in my word’ – not mine, of course, not Augustine’s, now speaking, but his, who was speaking just now from the gospel: ‘If you remain in my word,’ he says, ‘you are truly my disciples.’” Cf. Serm. 23.2 (CCSL 41:309); 261.2 (SPM 1:88); etc.; G. Madec, “L’école du Christ. Menus propos sur la prédication d’Augustin,” La Maison-Dieu 227 (2001): 67–78.  Serm. 82.15 (CCSL 41Ab:345–6). See I. Bochet, “L’expérience spirituelle du prédicateur selon saint Augustin,” Connaissance des Pères de l’Église 74 (1999): 46–53.  Serm. 46.2 (CCSL 41:530; WSA III/2:264, trans. Hill): “We bishops . . . are also in charge of you, and as such will render God an account of our stewardship.” And Doctr. chr. 4.30.63 (CCSL 32:167; WSA I/ 11:249, trans. Hill): “when you are toiling in word and teaching for the people’s eternal salvation (qui pro aeterna hominum salute in verbo et doctrina laborat);” cf. Ep. 261.2 (CSEL 57:618).

2 Scripture in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum

51

“bread of the Word” (cf. John 6).124 Hence, for Augustine, if his teaching conforms with the church’s faith,125 then the preacher’s words may be said to come from God.126 The preacher receives his authority from Christ’s authority, and this authority is granted to the preacher regardless of whether his life confirms to what he preaches or not (cf. Matt 23:2–3).127 He is like the sower who sows and waters, but he must also be keenly aware that it is God alone who causes the growth and who generates the harvest.128 In this regard, Augustine willingly applies 1 Cor 3:7 (“He who plants is nothing, he who waters is nothing: only God counts, he who makes it grow”) to his preaching.129 For Augustine, a sermon is ineffective if the “Inner Teacher” does not “teach inwardly” when the preacher’s words strike the ears of the listeners.130 For Augustine, the preacher, like all other Christians, is a hearer of the Word long before he is its dispenser.

 Serm. 95.1 (PL 38:581; WSA III/4:19, trans. Hill): “When I expound the holy Scriptures to you, it’s as though I were breaking bread to you. . . . So, what I am dishing out to you is not mine. What you eat, I eat; what you live on, I live on.” See also Y. Congar, “Les deux formes du pain de vie dans l’Évangile et dans la Tradition,” in Sacerdoce et laïcat devant leurs tâches d’évangélisation et de civilisation (Paris: Cerf, 1962), 123–59; W. M. Gessel, “Gemeinschaft durch die Speise des Wortes nach Augustinus,” REAug 12 (1966): 241–5; and J. Pintard, “Presencia del único pastor en la predicación, según san Agustín,” Augustinus 26 (1981): 221–6.  Doctr. chr. 4.15.32 (CCSL 32:138–9).  Serm. 51.1 (CCSL 41Aa:9; WSA III/3:24, trans. Hill): “While we may safely assume that what I have to say to you is God’s word and not mine.” See also Serm. 71.38 (CCSL 41Ab:70–71); 93.1 (CCSL 41AB:598–9); etc. For further discussion see W. Wieland, Offenbarung bei Augustinus (Mainz: MatthiasGrünewald-Verlag, 1978), 202–5; D. Dideberg, “Inspiratio,” AugLex 3:634; and F. Schnitzler, Zur Theologie der Verkündigung in den Predigten des hl. Augustinus (Freiburg: Herder, 1968), 107. Nevertheless, Augustine also explicitly distinguishes his own words from those of inspired Scripture, See, e.g., Ep. 147.39 (CSEL 44: 313–4) and Ep. 148.15 (CSEL 44:345). See also C. Horn, “Numerus,” AugLex 4:226–36.  M. Pauliat, “Cathedram Moysi sedent (Mt 23, 2). La représentation de l’autorité du prédicateur dans les Sermones in Matthaeum d’Augustin d’Hippone,” in Les mises en scène de l’autorité dans l’Antiquité, ed. Laboratoire ERAMA (Nancy: ADRA, 2015), 201–13.  Serm. 73.3 (CCSL 41Ab:129; WSA III/3:292, trans. Hill) explains Matt 13:4–30 with: “Yes of course, it’s the Lord who sows the seed, but we are his workmen. But be good soil.”  C. litt. Petil. 3.54.66 (CSEL 52:220–1). See also P.-M. Hombert, Nouvelles recherches, 242. The image of fruitfulness that results from the combination of grace and preaching recurs frequently, particularly when verses referencing agriculture are being considered. Cf. M. Pauliat, Augustin exégète et prédicateur dans les Sermons sur Matthieu, EAA 205 (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2020), 337–51.  Tract. ep. Jo. 3.13 (BA 76:174–8). See also I. Bochet, “Grâce et médiations humaines,” in BA 11/ 2:433–8.

52

Marie Pauliat

The Preacher as a Teacher of Scriptural Interpretation Augustine considers his preaching to be an extension of the Scriptures.131 Like the Word of God itself, preaching is an act of mediation that is designed to pass away;132 in heaven, there is neither book nor teaching. Preaching is also not an end in and of itself. Therefore, in his sermons, Augustine not only comments on the Bible, but he also explains the rules and techniques that will enable the listeners to interpret the Scriptures for themselves. As he explains in the Prologue to Doctr. chr., it is commendable for a teacher to read stories to his pupils, but it is even better if he teaches them how to read.133 The Sermones ad populum testify to this pedagogical approach: Augustine consistently exhorts his listeners to engage the Scriptures for themselves.134 This is the case, for example, in Serm. 89, 133, and Serm. Dolbeau 10 (162C).135 This three-sermon series was most probably preached ca. 396–398 CE.136 Rather than forming part of a cycle of liturgical readings, they are related to Augustine’s tense dispute with Jerome over the absolute truthfulness of the Scriptures.137 In these sermons, Augustine teaches hermeneutical principles he took to be fundamental,138 including: (1) the absolute truthfulness of the Scriptures (i.e., that their divine author cannot lie); (2)

 A. D. R. Polman, The Word of God according to St. Augustine, trans. A. J. Pomerans (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1961); D. Pirovano, “La parola di Dio come ‘Incarnazione’ del Verbo in Sant’Agostino,” Aug 4 (1964): 77–104; and F. Schnitzler, Zur Theologie der Verkündigung.  Ep. 266.3 (CSEL 57:649). For Augustine, in the economy of salvation, both Scripture and explanations of it are mediations willed by God (Doctr. chr., Proem.6 [CCSL 32:4]). However, like all other mediations, they are destined to disappear. Cf. Doctr. chr. 1.39.43 (CCSL 32:31; WSA I/11:125, trans. Hill): “People supported by faith, hope and charity, and retaining a firm grip on them, have no need of Scriptures except for instructing others.” See also I. Bochet, “L’Écriture et le Maître Intérieur selon Augustin,” RSR 72 (1998): 20–37.  Doctr. chr., Prooemium.9 (CCSL 32:5–6).  Tract. Ev. Jo. 34.1 (CCSL 36:311). Indeed, it does not seem that it was simply either humility or a rhetorical topos that compelled Augustine to conclude sermons on difficult issues by saying that he leaves it to his listeners to do better. He was convinced that, after hearing good sermons and being helped by the Holy Spirit, some listeners will be able to find better and more profound meanings in Scripture. Cf., e.g., Serm. 51.35 (CCSL 41Aa:49–50).  In the Mainz Lectionary as well as in the Indiculum, these three sermons follow one another: 133 = Mainz 26 = X6. 112; Dolbeau 10 (162C) = Mainz 27 = X6. 113; and 89 = Mainz 28 = X6. 114. They were, however, preached in an order different from the one in which they were copied. See F. Dolbeau, “Quatre sermons prêchés par Augustin au début de son épiscopat,” Augustiniana 66 (2016): 7–62.  See the chronological discussion in F. Dolbeau, “Quatre sermons,” 12–30, in which he refutes the effort of P.-M. Hombert, Nouvelles recherches, to date these sermons to 405. For Serm. 133, see 341–6; for Serm. Dolbeau 10, 347–54; and for Serm. 89, 355–8.  According to F. Dolbeau “Quatre sermons,” 15–21, these homilies should be read in connection with the De mendacio, which dates to 394–395.  M. Pauliat, Augustin exégète et prédicateur, 279–300.

2 Scripture in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum

53

the sincerity of the biblical characters; and (3) the criteria used to discern when one should transition from the literal to the figurative sense.139 Beyond these hermeneutical principles, several secondary principles were explained in the sermons. Some are theological: (1) that comments on biblical passages must align with the regula fidei;140 (2) that Scripture must be understood “spiritually” (spiritaliter), not “carnally” (carnaliter);141 (3) that Scripture must be explained by Scripture since, despite their obvious differences, all the books of the Bible form a unity because they were all written by the same divine author;142 (4) that the Old Testament is united to the New Testament in the mystery of Christ;143 (5) that the Old Testament, since it is fulfilled by Christ,144 must be understood in an allegorical or typological way;145 (6) that the Gospels also have a spiritual meaning;146 and (7) that, when the Scriptures speak about Christ, some passages speak about Christ before the Incarnation, i.e., according to his divinity (e.g., John 1), others speak about Christ incarnate, i.e., according to his assumed humanity (e.g., John 14:28; and 20:17), and still others speak about the whole Christ (totus Christus), i.e., about the church as Christ’s body, with Christ as the head and with believers collectively comprising his members (e.g., Gen 2:24; and Isa 61:10).147 Augustine holds to still other hermeneutic principles that are philological. These include: (1) respect for the letter of the text;148 (2) taking into account the presence of literary devices such as metonymy149 and arithmology,150

 Serm. 89.4 (CCSL 41Ab:513; WSA III/3:442–3, trans. Hill): “So then, brothers and sisters, I have to tell you, and suggest to you to the best of my ability, which the Lord endows me with for your sakes, and convince you about something you must hold on to as a kind of rule in all the scriptures. Everything that is said or happens is either to be taken in its proper sense (aut per proprietatem cognoscitur), or it signifies something symbolically (aut significat aliquid figurate), or at all events it has each: both its proper sense and its symbolic meaning (aut certe utrumque habet, et propriam cognitionem, et figuratam significationem). I have proposed three possibilities, and I must give you examples, taken of course from the holy scriptures.”  Serm. 7.3–4 (CCSL 41:71–73); 41.6 (CCSL 41:500–1); and 265.9 (PL 38:1222–3).  Serm. 6.1 (CCSL 41:62) and 25.1–2 (CCSL 41:335).  Serm. 170.1 (CCSL 41:335–6).  Serm. 300.3–5 (PL 38:1377–8).  Serm. 2.7 (CCSL 41:14–16) and 8.1 (CCSL 41:79–80). See also M. Dulaey, “Sur quelques points d’exégèse figurée de l’Ancien Testament dans les sermons de Mayence,” in Augustin prédicateur, 247–66.  Serm. Dolbeau 31 (272B).1 (REAug 44 [1998]:196) and Serm. Mai 14 (350A).2 (MA 1:293).  Serm. 98.3 (PL 38:592–3) and 124.1 (PL 38:686–7).  Serm. Dolbeau 22 (ed. Dolbeau, Vingt-six, 553–78).  Serm. 2.7 (CCSL 41:14–16) and 252.1 (PL 38:1171).  Serm. 12.2 (CCSL 41:165–6).  Serm. 8.17 (CCSL 41:95–96); 51.32–35 (CCSL 41Aa:46–49); 125.7–10 (PL 38:694–7); and Serm. Denis 25 (72A).2 (CCSL 41Ab:110). See M. Pontet, L’exégèse, 278–303; A. Quacquarelli, “Le scienze e la numerologia in St. Agostino,” Vetera Christianorum 25 (1988): 359–79; and C. Horn, “Numerus,” AugLex 4:234–6.

54

Marie Pauliat

in the Bible; and (3) making allowance for variation in the spiritual sense of the Scriptures.151 At the same time, Augustine is convinced that intellectual knowledge alone is not sufficient for interpreting Scripture. He often insists that the exegete must have faith.152 This is particularly the case when he interprets Isa 7:9 (LXX; “Unless you believe, you shall not understand”).153 For Augustine, faith is not hyper-critical of the biblical text.154 On the contrary, faith is expressed when one humbly prays to understand Scripture. This faith is often also expressed in the course of sermons dedicated to verses such as Matt 7:7b (“seek, and you shall find”).155 Additionally, faith must be completed by a life that is congruent with the texts being commented on.156 This principle aligns with both Plotinus157 and the Fathers.158 However, if the interpreter seeks to understand Scripture with faith and humility (as well as to build up and to live by charity) he may pursue his exegeses without fear of falling into error.159 In sum, Augustine the preacher sees himself as a Christian just like the other members of the congregation. However, he also sees himself as a Christian who is at

 Serm. 73.2 (CCSL 41Ab:128–9; WSA III/3:292, trans. Hill): “In parables and comparisons one thing can be called by many names. . . . Isn’t Christ a lamb? Isn’t Christ also a lion? Among animals, wild and domesticated, what is a lamb is a lamb, what’s a lion is a lion; each is Christ. . . . More than that, it can happen in comparisons that things which are miles apart from each other are called by the same name. What could be further apart from each other than Christ and the devil? Yet Christ is called a lion, and so is the devil. Christ as a lion: The lion has conquered, from the tribe of Judah. The devil as a lion: Do you not know that your adversary the devil goes about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. So, he’s a lion and he’s a lion; he’s a lion for its courage, he’s a lion for its ferocity; he’s a lion to conquer, he’s a lion to harm.”  Serm. 43.1 (CCSL 41:508).  Serm. 89.4 (CCSL 41Ab:512; WSA III/3:442, trans. Hill): “Let’s say what the evangelist wrote, and when we’ve said it, let us understand it. But in order to understand, let us first believe. For unless you believe, you shall not understand (Isa 7:9 [LXX]), said the prophet.” See E. TeSelle, “Crede ut intellegas,” AugLex 2:116–9.  Serm. 6.8 (CCSL 41:66–67).  Serm. 51.1 (CCSL 41Aa:9–10) and 66.1 (CCSL 41Aa:408; WSA III/3:210, trans. Hill): “May the Lord help me to solve [this question] for you, as he has solved it for me.” Cf. Serm. Morin 15 (306C).4 (MA 1:649). For more on Augustine’s use of Matt 7:7, see M. Pauliat, “Quaerite, et inuenietis. Recherches sur l’exégèse augustinienne de Matt 7, 7,” in Nihil veritas erubescit, eds. J. Delmulle, C. Gerzaguet and C. Valette, IPM 74 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 73–87.  Doctr. chr. 1.10.10 (CCSL 32:12) and Serm. 91. See also M.-F. Berrouard, “Mores perducunt ad intellegentiam,” in BA 72:733, and I. Bochet, “Herméneutique platonicienne ou herméneutique chrétienne?,” in BA 11/2:471–3.  Plotinus, Enn. I 1.6.9 (LCL 440:260–1): “You must become first all godlike and all beautiful if you intend to see God and beauty;” cf. Enn. 1.2.1 (LCL 440:126–31).  L. Perrone, “Iniziazione alla Bibbia nella letteratura patristica,” Cristianesimo nella storia 12 (1991): 1–27.  Doctr. chr. 1.35.39–37.41 (CCSL 32:28–30). See also G. Madec, “Le principe Charité,” in BA 11/ 1:237–41 and I. Bochet, “Le cercle herméneutique,” in BA 11/2:438–49.

2 Scripture in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum

55

the service of his sisters and brothers. As a result, he often shows his audience how they too can interpret the Bible.

Reactions of the Audience to the Biblical Comments The sermons do not preserve only the words of the preacher. They also preserve the reactions of the audience. These reactions tell us both whether the listeners understood Augustine’s explanations and how Augustine responded to their reactions.

Did the Congregation Understand Augustine’s Biblical Commentary? Some of the exegetical comments in the sermons are complex.160 Nevertheless, Augustine did not hesitate to try to explain difficult biblical passages when he thought his comments might be profitable to his congregation. In his view, when the Scriptures seem opaque it is sign of a deeper and more salutary mystery which is an integral part of the divine economy. Such scriptural darkness stimulates closer reading and deeper study of the Scriptures while also fostering a sense of humility in the interpreter.161 Moreover, Augustine will occasionally offer exegetical explanations about which he himself is uncertain.162 Were his hearers able to comprehend these nuanced efforts? R. MacMullen claimed that the difficulty of the sermons was due to the quality of the assemblies, which consisted mainly of the rich and the educated.163 This assertion has failed to convince many scholars (including this chapter’s author), not least because it is at odds with what we now know about that era’s oral culture.164 Moreover,

 Serm. 52 on Matt 3:13–17 and the Trinity; Serm. 71 on sin against the Spirit in Matt 12:31–32; and Serm. 151–6 on Rom 7–8. See also E. TeSelle, “Exploring the Inner Conflict: Augustine’s Sermons on Romans 7 and 8,” in Collectanea Augustiniana. Augustine, Biblical Exegete, eds. by F. Van Fleteren and J. C. Schnaubelt (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 313–45.  Serm. 8.18 (CCSL 41:97–98); 51.5–6 (CCSL 41Aa:15–17); Serm. Mai 26 (60A).1 (CCSL 41Aa:253); 71.10 (CCSL 41Ab:27); 270.7 (PL 38:1243–4); Serm. Dolbeau 22 (341 auct.).22 (ed. Dolbeau, Vingt-six, 574); etc.  Serm. 265.9 (PL 38:1222–3).  R. MacMullen, “The Preacher’s Audience (AD 350–400),” JTS 40 (1989): 503–11.  E.g. W. Kelber, “Language, Memory, and Sense Perception in the Religious and Technological Culture of Antiquity and the Middle Ages,” Oral tradition 10 (1995): 409–50; and M.-Y. Perrin, Civitas confusionis. De la participation des fidèles aux controverses doctrinales dans l’Antiquité tardive (début IIIe s. – c. 430) (Paris: Nuvis, 2017), 168n510. For further references, see S. Rosenberg, “Beside Books. Approaching Augustine’s Sermons in the Oral and Textual Cultures of Late Antiquity,” in Tractatio Scripturarum, 426–7. According to P. 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), 339–58, the term pauperes covers two different social realities: beggars and a “class.” Poverty is thus defined in relative terms: whenever one group possesses fewer assets than others, the former can be said to be in poverty.

56

Marie Pauliat

many of the sermons make Augustine’s concern for his less educated listeners clear when one observes the care with which he employed various pedagogical tools,165 stylistic devices – e.g., repetition, images, sententiae, puns – and linguistic variations.166 In fact, if we are to believe the reactions preserved by the stenographers, Augustine’s profound care and concern for the less educated in his audiences was sometimes integral to his more complex sermons.167

How Does the Preacher Adapt His Comments to the Audience’s Feedback? It seems that most of the audience understood Augustine’s sermons and reacted commensurately. It also seems that Augustine took these reactions into account in adapting his sermons and biblical commentaries “on the fly.” In the categories of rhetoric, this adaptation is labeled aptum (or decorum). According to Cicero, aptum was the marker of a good, forensic speech.168 This concept is related to ethics (i.e., the relationship with the audience), aesthetics (i.e., the dispositio and the organization of discourse), and rhetoric (i.e., the adaptation of a style to the genre and purpose of the discourse). Along with these formal aspects, to be aptum requires certain congruencies including: the one between the subject (res) and the words (verba), the one between the speaker and the audience, and the one between the style of discourse, the demands of the audience, and the circumstances.169 Hence, aptum as a quality is difficult to measure because it resides neither in the words nor in the text but in the interaction between the speaker and the audience.170

 Serm. Dolbeau 11 (90A).3 (ed. Dolbeau, Vingt-six, 60).  M. Banniard, “Variations langagières et communication dans la prédication d’Augustin,” in Augustin prédicateur, 73–93; M. Banniard, Viva voce. Communication écrite et communication orale du IVe au IXe siècle en Occident latin, EAA 25 (Paris: Institut des Études Augustiniennes, 1992), 65–104; and E. Auerbach, Lingua letteraria e pubblico nelle tarda antichità latina e nel Medioevo (Milano: Feltrinelli, 19743), 33–79 (on sermo humilis).  E.g. Serm. 52.20 (CCSL 41Aa:77; WSA III/3:60, trans. Hill): “Really and truly, I’m telling your graces, I undertook to discuss this matter and put it across with the greatest trepidation; I was afraid, you see, that I might delight the wit of the clever, and bore the less clever to tears. But now I can see that you have not only grasped what I have said, listening so attentively and understanding so readily, but you have also flown ahead of what I was going to say. The Lord be thanked.”  Cicero, Orat. 70–71, 123 (LCL 342:356 -59, 396 -99) and Augustine, Ep. 138.5 (CSEL 44:129–30).  R. Dodaro, “Literary decorum in Scriptural Exegesis. Augustine of Hippo, Epistula 138,” in L’esegesi di Padri latini. Dalle origini a Gregorio Magno, SEAug 68 (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 2000), 159–74.  R. Dodaro, “Quid deceat uidere (Cicero, Orator 70). Literary Propriety and Doctrinal Orthodoxy in Augustine of Hippo,” in Orthodoxie, christianisme, histoire, ed. S. Elm, Collection de l’École française de Rome 270 (Rome: École française de Rome, 2000), 57–81.

2 Scripture in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum

57

Concerning the Bible, Augustine’s sermons are aptum in two ways or on two levels: (1) in the choice of verses and themes treated;171 and (2) in the treatment those chosen verses and themes receive. In this regard, Augustine assigns prayer the primary role, and regards it as even more important than preaching.172 From this perspective, the audience is no longer simply the target of the preacher’s comments. Rather, in a given context, the audience provides feedback, and the preacher attends to this feedback in order to maximize the impact of his arguments and of his comments on the biblical text. For example, after the sack of Rome, the agony of Jesus is no longer a lesson in patience to be imitated, but, rather, a consolation granted to those who suffer.173 Furthermore, scandals are no longer defined a priori. Instead, a painful situation becomes scandalous if and only if the one who undergoes it consents to sin. Otherwise, a painful situation becomes a positive opportunity for purification and spiritual growth.174 Consequently, Augustine often sees in new situations new opportunities to walk alongside his congregation as their needs change and develop. As he does so, Augustine also takes advantage of these opportunities to develop new expositions which he otherwise may never have elaborated.

Conclusion The role of the Bible in Augustine’s Sermones ad populum encompasses numerous aspects. Even though Augustine’s techniques and interests are often far removed from our own, “one can be struck by Augustine’s ability to weave links between the texts and bring them to life.”175 The central issue is the adaptation of biblical commentaries to homiletical contexts. Although this issue is still being debated by scholars, the points developed in this chapter offer some important indicators: if a given adaptation is not always to be located in the themes discussed, it usually can be located in how those themes are treated. Indeed, Augustine’s rhetorical training and his pastoral sensitivity lead him to take the congregation that was listening to him seriously: he does not dilute his

 A.M. Kleinberg, “De agone christiano: the preacher and his audience,” JTS 38 (1997): 16–33. Some of these choices have already been characterized and discussed (cf. supra, “Bible, Preaching and Faith: Polemical Sermons”).  Doctr. chr. 4.15.32 (CCSL 32:138–9).  Matt 26:36–46 in Serm. 31.3 (CCSL 41:392–3) and Serm. Guelf. 27 (313D).3 (MA 1:533–4). See also É. Rebillard, “Interaction between the Preacher and his Audience. The Case-Study of Augustine’s Preaching on Death,” in StPatr 31:86–96.  Matt 18:7 in Serm. 81. See M. Pauliat, “Si manus tua scandalizat te, amputa! L’exégèse de Mt 18, 7–9 dans le Sermo 81 d’Augustin d’Hippone,” in Cristianesimo e violenza: gli autori cristiani di fronte a testi biblici ‘scomodi’, SEAug 44 (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 2018), 351–9.  F. Dolbeau, “Sermones (ad populum),” 258 (trans. from Dolbeau’s French is my own).

58

Marie Pauliat

explanations by choosing simple topics; rather, he makes every effort to ensure that he is understood by everyone; he gives his listeners enough data to refute heretics; he takes into account the diversity of the audience in order to build up the congregation as a whole; he pays attention when they provide feedback in medias res; and he explains to them how to interpret Scripture for themselves. Perhaps this final point is the most striking when one reflects on the place of the Bible in Augustine’s sermons: Augustine knows that his role as a preacher is important, but he also knows that his role is not an end in itself. For him, preaching is an extension of Scripture. In other words, the Bible is not only the topic of the sermons, but it is also the matrix that shapes them.176 Like the Bible, sermons belong to the economy of salvation; like the Bible, they will disappear when everyone has unmediated access to the Word. For Augustine, even the most beautiful biblical interpretation in an ideal sermon has only one purpose: to advance the relationship between the listener and God in the here and now even as it fades away as that relationship advances toward eternity.

Further Reading Primary Sources Augustine. De catechizandis rudibus liber unus, edited by J. B. Bauer et al. Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina 46. Turnhout: Brepols, 1969. Augustine. De doctrina christiana. L’istruzione cristiana, edited by Manlio Simonetti. Verona: Fondazione L. Valla, 1994. Augustine. La doctrine chrétienne/De doctrina Christiana, translated by Madeleine Moreau. Oeuvres de Saint Augustin 11/2, Bibliothèque Augustinienne. Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1997. Augustine. La première catéchèse/De catechizandis rudibus, translated by Goulven Madec. Oeuvres de Saint Augustin 11/1, Bibliothèque Augustinienne. Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1991. Augustine. Sermons, 9 volumes, translated by Edmund Hill. Part III, vols. 1–9, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, edited by John E. Rotelle. New York: New City Press, 1990–1997. Augustine. Teaching Christianity: De doctrina christiana, translated by Edmund Hill. Part I, vol. 11, The Works of Saint Augustine. A Translation for the 21st Century, edited by Boniface Ramsey. New York: New City Press, 1996.

 Catech. 4.8 (CCSL 46:128–9, trans. R. Canning, Instructing Beginners in Faith, The Augustine Series 5 (Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City Press, 2006), 70 and 72): “. . . on the two commandments of love for God and neighbor hinge not only the whole law and the prophets . . . but also all the other books of divine writings which were later set apart for our salvation and handed down to us. . . . Keeping this love before you then as a goal to which you direct all that you say, recount every event in your historical exposition in such a way that your listener by hearing it may believe, by believing may hope, and by hoping may love.” Cf. Doctr. chr. 1.35.39–1.40.44 (CCSL 32:28–32).

2 Scripture in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum

59

Secondary Sources Glowasky, Michael. Rhetoric and Scripture in Augustine’s Homiletic Strategy. Tracing the Narrative of Christian Maturation. Leiden: Brill, 2021. Margoni-Kögler, Michael. Die Perikopen im Gottesdienst bei Augustinus. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung der liturgischen Schriftlesung in der frühen Kirche. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010. Partoens, Gert, Anthony Dupont, and Shari Boodts, eds. Praedicatio Patrum. Studies on Preaching in Late Antique North Africa. Ministerium Sermonis 3. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017. Partoens, Gert, Anthony Dupont, and Mathijs Lamberigts, eds. Ministerium Sermonis. Philological, Historical and Theological Studies on Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009. Partoens, Gert, Anthony Dupont, and Mathijs Lamberigts, eds. Tractatio Scripturarum. Philological, Exegetical, Rhetorical and Theological Studies on Augustine’s Sermons. Ministerium Sermonis 2. Turnhout: Brepols, 2012. Pauliat, Marie. Augustin exégète et prédicateur dans les Sermons sur Matthieu. Collection des Études Augustiniennes, Série Antiquité 205. Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2020. Pontet, Maurice. L’exégèse de saint Augustin prédicateur. Paris: Aubier, 1946. Pellegrino, Michele. “Introduzione generale.” In S. Agostino, Discorsi, t. 1. Rome: Citta’ Nuova, 1979, IX–CII. Rebillard, Éric. “Interaction between the Preacher and his Audience. The Case-Study of Augustine’s Preaching on Death.” In Augustine and his Opponents, Jerome, other Latin Fathers after Nicaea, edited by Elisabeth A. Livingstone, 86–96. Studia Patristica 31. Leuven: Peeters, 1997. Schnitzler, Fidelis. Zur Theologie der Verkündigung in den Predigten des hl. Augustinus. Freiburg: Herder, 1968.

Alden Bass

3 The Bible in Anonymous African Sermons Introduction Since Christians began meeting together, the sermon has been the chief medium for the communication and interpretation of the Bible. “Liturgy,” wrote François Dreyfus, “has always been a privileged place for the actualization of Scripture. . . . In Christian tradition, throughout the patristic period the liturgical homily constituted by far the most important form of exegetical literature.”1 Each week, sometimes multiple times a week, North African Christians assembled to hear the Word proclaimed by their bishop in a homily lasting anywhere from ten minutes to an hour.2 Given the nearly 750 dioceses across the Maghreb in the age of Augustine, something around five million sermons were preached in Africa in the fifth century alone.3 As oral events, the majority of sermons preached disappeared as soon as they were delivered. Yet some sermons, especially those given by respected preachers, were recorded and preserved. In later generations, these sermons were collected and transmitted to Europe for monks and scholars to preach and study even into the modern period. Augustine’s corpus of approximately five hundred Sermones ad populum is best known, yet hundreds of others have also survived. The majority of these have been separated from their original author and context. This essay will introduce the anonymous homilies and consider the ways they mediate Scripture for the people of late-ancient North Africa. An anonymous sermon is a text which “may or may have not received one or several attributions to given writers over their manuscript transmission, but that which

 Quoted by A.-M. La Bonnardière, “Augustine, Minister of the Word of God,” in Augustine and the Bible, ed. P. Bright (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1999), 245–6. F. Young likewise places liturgy and preaching at the very center of ancient biblical interpretation. See Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2002), 219–20.  In the third century, Cyprian reported that “the precepts and the gospel of the Lord” were read daily in Carthage (Ep. 39 [33].4.1 [CCSL 3/2:583–4]). During normal weeks Augustine probably preached two or three times; but he preached every day immediately before and just after Easter (Enarrat. Ps. 88.2.1 [CCSL 39:1220]). On the duration of sermons, see A. Olivar, Predicación cristiana antigua (Barcelona: Herder, 1991), 696–7.  So estimates B. Shaw in Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 412. ✶ Alden Bass is an Associate Professor of Theology and Bible at Oklahoma Christian University. He has written on the Donatist controversy and the works of Tyconius and Optatus of Milevis. His research has focused on preaching and biblical interpretation in North Africa, with an emphasis on anonymous material.

Alden Bass, Oklahoma Christian University https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-004

62

Alden Bass

have not, at present, received a secure and widely accepted attribution and, therefore, do not belong to the corpus of authentic texts of any late antique author.”4 Anonymous African sermons can date anywhere from the fourth century to the seventh, though most are concentrated in the fifth and sixth. The sermons reflect, albeit unevenly, the theological diversity of the region. Sermons from Donatists, Homoians, and Pelagians sit peaceably alongside sermons from Nicene Catholics. Ironically, the centuries they have spent in monastic libraries have enabled the homilies to do what their writers never could. Homiletic texts are among the most challenging literary sources for historians because of the ambiguities surrounding attribution, dating, redaction, and transmission. Even the sermons of well-known figures such as John Chrysostom and Augustine present significant challenges to the scholar.5 The whole field of early Christian preaching has been slow to develop, coming into its own only in the 1990s.6 Augustine’s homiletic corpus has received scholarly attention since the seventeenth century, but most of the energy has been devoted to technical questions of dating and authenticity. Sermons deemed inauthentic and labeled “pseudo-Augustinian” were largely neglected. The value of such anonymous sermons has only lately been recognized as part of the ongoing search for new sources for the study of late-ancient North Africa. For instance, Leslie Dossey made extensive use of anonymous sermons in her monograph on peasants in Christian Africa.7 Brent Shaw also consulted these texts in his magisterial treatment of sectarian violence in North Africa, Sacred Violence. Recent monographs on Christianity in the Vandal era have likewise drawn on the anonymous material.8 A new edited collection on the anonymous sermons of Africa promises to open the field even further.9 The prodigious and prolific Augustine casts a long shadow over the study of North African Christianity; the reader need only observe the contents of this and the previous

 M. Pignot, “The Catechumenate in Anonymous Sermons from the Late Antique West,” StPat 77 (2017): 18–19.  For more on the difficulties of working with homiletic material, see F. Dolbeau, “‘Sermonator verborum’: Réflexions d’un editeur de sermons d’Augustin,” in Augustin et la prédication en Afrique: Recherches sur les divers sermons authentiques, apocryphes ou anonymes (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2005), 71–86.  W. Mayer, “Homiletics,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, eds. D. Hunter and S. Harvey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 565.  L. Dossey, Peasant and Empire in Christian North Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).  J. Conant, Staying Roman: Conquest and Identity in Africa and the Mediterranean, 439–700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), and R. Whelan, Being Christian in Vandal Africa: The Politics of Orthodoxy in the Post-Imperial West (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018). Most texts from Vandal Africa are anonymous (cf. Whelan, Being Christian, 46–53 and 86–89).  M. Pignot, ed., Latin Anonymous Sermons from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (AD 300–800), Classification, Transmission, Dating Ministerium Sermonis 4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021). Special thanks to Matthieu Pignot for an advanced copy of some of this volume’s essays.

3 The Bible in Anonymous African Sermons

63

volume. Study of anonymous African sermons began as an offshoot of Augustinian studies, and the fields remain closely aligned. Yet, as many have noted, the sheer gravity of his work warps the space around it, distorting all other historical research. These anonymous sermons, of which there are many and which continue to be discovered, may provide something of a counterweight to Augustine and the branch of African Catholicism which is his legacy. The sermons preserve the voices of those declared dissidents and heretics, as well as the orthodox who did not share Augustine’s renown. The sermons offer insight into ordinary liturgical uses of the Bible outside the heated polemical context which has often dominated the study of Scripture in the region. Festal sermons reveal how African preachers interpreted seminal moments in the life of Jesus: his birth, presentation, death, resurrection, and ascension. Catechetical preaching preserves some skeleton of the narrative framework used to interpret the Bible as a whole, as well as directed instruction on the Lord’s Prayer, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Creed. Above all, the sermons are a testament to the ways in which Scripture was communicated ad populum, to the ordinary Christians of North Africa. Alexandre Olivar lamented that “we lack the material to recreate the teaching that would have taken place in normal parishes, in so far as this may have existed.”10 Anonymous sermons would seem to offer a view onto the educational efforts of the typical North African parish, a context to which we have scant access otherwise.

Preaching in Late Ancient North Africa The exposition of Scripture known as the sermo or homilia had been a part of the Christian assembly since the apostolic period.11 Tertullian provides the earliest evidence for liturgical preaching in Africa.12 Preaching remained informal in this period, a matter of “exhortations, rebukes, and sacred censures” following the Scripture readings.13 Preaching was closely connected to the public reading of Scripture, and preaching in Africa likely developed out of the practice of spontaneously translating into Latin the Greek text of the Septuagint and the writings of the New Testament, parallel

 A. Olivar, “Reflections on Problems Raised by Early Christian Preaching,” in Preaching and Audience: Studies in Early Christian and Byzantine Homiletics, eds. M. Cunningham and P. Allen (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 26.  The best survey of early Christian preaching is A. Olivar, Predicación Cristiana Antigua. See also D. Dunn-Wilson, A Mirror for the Church: Preaching in the First Five Centuries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005); and H. O. Old, The Reading and Preaching of Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church, Volume 2: The Patristic Age (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998).  De anima 9 (CSEL 20:310).  Apologeticum 39.4 (CSEL 69:91).

64

Alden Bass

to the practice of targum in the synagogue.14 The earliest surviving African sermons date to the late second century and are preserved in the pseudo-Cyprianic materials.15 It is not surprising that these anonymous sermons were attributed to Cyprian, the first celebrity preacher in North Africa.16 In Africa, as across the rest of the empire, Christian preaching exploded in the fourth century. Preaching increased in quality and quantity as Christianity expanded into the public square. Churches swelled with new converts, many from the educated classes, and the people clamored for sophisticated sermons. John Chrysostom reported from Antioch that “a passion for sermons has burst in upon the minds of Christians nowadays.”17 As more literate men entered the priesthood, the Christian homily came increasingly under the influence of classical rhetorical technique. Sermons became longer as the influx of catechumens brought about a clear distinction between the liturgy of the word and the liturgy of the faithful, thus providing liturgical space for an extended homily. Sermons also became more frequent. Sermons were preached on Sundays, feast days, special occasions, and daily during Lent.18 The development of the cycle of fixed feasts (sanctorale) in the sixth century further multiplied opportunities for preaching.19

Liturgical Context Unlike other types of texts, sermons are records of an oral performance situated in a particular time and space. In late antiquity the sermon was usually delivered in a basilica, but sometimes in a pilgrim church, a martyrium, around a baptismal font, or even in the open air. These spaces typically were adorned with a variety of symbols, images, and other allusions to biblical stories. Thus before the word was spoken, it was materially depicted in the art and architecture of the sacred space.20 Preachers  G. Quispel, “African Christianity before Minucius Felix and Tertullian,” in Actus: Studies in Honor of H. L. W. Nelson, eds. J. den Boeft and A. H. M. Kessels (Utrecht: Instituut voor Klassieke Talen, 1982), 270–1.  See L. Ciccolini, “Scripture in the North African Treatises of Pseudo-Cyprian,” in BCNA I, 142–67.  According to his biographer, Pontius, Cyprian “preached often” (Vita Cypriani 3 [CSEL 3/1:xciv]). Though no sermon of Cyprian’s survives, several of his treatises have homiletic characteristics, including De mortalitate, De bono patientiae, and De zelo et livore.  Quoted by J. Maxwell, “Sermons,” in A Companion to Late Antique Literature, eds. S. McGill and E. Watts (Hoboken: Wiley, 2018), 353.  W. Mayer, “At Constantinople: How Often Did John Chrysostom Preach? Addressing Assumptions About the Workload of a Bishop,” Sacris Erudiri 40 (2001): 83–105.  The martyriological calendar developed early in Africa. See V. Saxer, Morts, martyrs, reliques en Afrique chrétienne aux premiers siècles: Les témoignages de Tertullien, Cyprien et Augustin à la lumière de l’archéologie africaine (Paris: Editions Beauchesne, 1980), 105. For a critical edition of the calendar of Carthage, see “Kalendarium Antiquissimum Ecclesiae Cathaginensis,” in Vetera Analecta, ed. J. Mabillon (Paris: Apud Montalant, 1723).  See the work of R. Jensen, especially Christianity in Roman Africa: The Development of Its Practices and Beliefs (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 87–163. Also, J. Dresken-Weiland, “Visual Art and

3 The Bible in Anonymous African Sermons

65

sometimes alluded to features of the interior as they preached.21 A famous sermon by the Donatist Bishop Parmenian in the Basilica of Peace in Carthage is best understood in the context of the altar, the martyrial candle, and the episcopal throne of Cyprian to which the preacher gestures throughout the sermon.22 Parmenian, and later Optatus, used imagery from Song of Songs to describe these artifacts, reminding us that the sermon, the Scripture, and the physical context cannot easily be disentangled. Early Christian sermons were also the product of a liturgical time ordered by God’s work in history, primarily the biblical narrative but also the lives of the saints. The Christian calendar memorialized these events with its annual commemorations of Easter, Pentecost, Christmas, Epiphany, and lesser feasts. From an early period, certain biblical texts were linked to these days to form a cycle of readings known as the lectionary. The eucharistic liturgy would have begun with the peace and then a psalm.23 Originally, there were three readings: one from the Old Testament, one from the Epistles, and one from the Gospels.24 By the fifth century, the Old Testament reading was dropping out of the dominical lectionary in conformity with Roman practice.25 On certain days the three readings were prescribed, but on others the bishop could indicate to the lector the passage to be read.26 The full annual cycle was still evolving in this period, and Africa may not have enjoyed a complete lectionary (like the Gallican lectionary) prior to the period of the Arab conquest. Nevertheless, the major feasts were well established by the fourth century, and other patterns were emerging across the western world: Genesis during Lent, Acts during Easter, and the Gospel of John during the Easter Octave. Readings differed from place to place. Holy Week readings at Hippo were completely different from those in Milan for instance.27 Augustine once tried to introduce the Good Friday reading from Rome (rather than Hippo’s traditional reading from Matthew) and

Iconography,” in Preaching in the Patristic Era. Sermons, Preachers, Audiences in the Latin West, eds. A. Dupont, S. Boodts, G. Partoens, and J. Leemans (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 59–86.  Examples of Augustine doing so include s. Mai 126 (PLS 2:503–04) and Serm. 198 (PL 38:1024–26).  So argues D. Wilhite in “True Church of True Basilica?: The Song of Songs and Parmenian’s Ecclesiology Revisited,” JECS 22.3 (2014): 399–436.  W. C. Bishop, “The African Rite,” JTS 50 (1912): 253.  There have been various attempts to reconstruct Augustine’s lectionary, for which we have the most information. G. G. Willis, St. Augustine’s Lectionary (London: SPCK, 1962); V. Saxer, Saint Augustin. L’année liturgique (Paris: 1980); S. Poque, Augustin d’Hippone. Sermons pour la Pâque, SC 116 (Paris: Cerf, 1966); A.-M. La Bonnardière, “La Bible liturgique de saint Augustin,” in Jean Chrysostome et Augustin, ed. C. Kannengiesser (Paris: Beauchesne Éditeur, 1975), 147–60; M. Schrama, “Prima Lectio Quae Recitata Est. The Liturgical Pericope in Light of Saint Augustine’s Sermons,” Augustiniana 45 (1995): 141–75; M. Margoni-Kögler, Die Perikopen im Gottesdienst bei Augustinus (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010).  Willis, St. Augustine’s Lectionary, 5.  Augustine, Serm. 145.1 (PL 38:791).  Willis, St. Augustine’s Lectionary, 13.

66

Alden Bass

was met with protest from the people.28 Within Africa, Donatists and Catholics almost certainly diverged in their lectionaries given the fact that their liturgical calendars did not align.29 In the Vandal period, Homoian bishops likely brought in their own lectionaries as well. Even within the Nicene Catholic community, the readings were not totally aligned: for example, Hippo and Carthage differed in their Ascension texts.30 In major cities like Hippo, sermons were delivered every Saturday and Sunday, on feast days, and whenever the Eucharist was celebrated, which was daily in some places. In smaller dioceses, the frequency of sermonizing is unknown. By the fifth century, however, many parishioners only attended on important feast days. On several occasions, Augustine noted that his church was unusually crowded on holidays.31 By the sixth century, some bishops were preaching only on major holidays.32 This explains why the majority of anonymous sermons from late antiquity are festal homilies.

Preparation, Publication, and Transmission Preachers usually wrote their sermons in advance of delivery.33 Some, like Augustine, preferred to preach extemporaneously, though this still required diligent study prior to preaching.34 Preparation for a sermon would have involved meditation on the biblical text as well as consultation with any magisterial teaching available. While the Donatists’ biblical texts were more or less identical to those of the Catholics,35 the Donatists were known to have their own version organized with chapter headings which would have guided their interpretation of Scripture.36 Episcopal libraries would have contained a range of auxiliary materials, from theological treatises (Tertullian and Cyprian were popular in Africa), letters and encyclicals, collections of sermons, and biblical study aids. One such study aid, known as the “Donatist Compendium,” contains a spiritual overview of history (the Liber genealogus), onomastic texts, an inventory of prophets,

 Serm. 232.1.1 (SC 116:260). The people’s objections may have also come from the increased length of the reading.  For instance, Donatists did not celebrate Epiphany, which they considered a Caecilianist innovation (Augustine, Serm. 202.2.2 [PL 38:1034]).  Willis, St. Augustine’s Lectionary, 68.  See F. van der Meer, Augustine the Bishop (London: Sheed and Ward, 1961), 169–70.  According to Caesarius of Arles (Serm. 1.10.3 [SC 175:243]): “solum in majoribus festivitatibus.”  N. Lipatov-Chicherin, “Preaching as the Audience Heard it: Unedited Transcripts of Patristic Homilies,” StudPat 64 (2013): 277–97.  M. Pelligrino, “General Introduction,” in WSA III/1:16.  Granting differences between Jerome’s edition, which was gradually adopted for liturgical use, and the VL.  P.-M. Bogaert, “Les particularités éditoriales des bibles comme exégèse implicite ou proposée: Les sommaires capitula donatistes,” in Lectures bibliques (Brussels: Institutum Iudaicum, 1980), 7–21.

3 The Bible in Anonymous African Sermons

67

and a stichometric list of Scripture.37 Preachers borrowed previous material liberally, sometimes lifting whole passages verbatim or simply reorganizing material into what Clemens Weidmann has called “patchwork sermons.”38 Augustine himself copied material from other preachers, and he in turn became one of the most plagiarized preachers in history.39 Fidelity to the tradition was encouraged in preaching. John Chrysostom, one of the greatest and most prolific preachers of antiquity, boasted that during his tenure at Antioch he had preached nothing new. Sermons were recorded by professional stenographers (notarii) who were either provided by the church or privately hired. The transcripts were stored in the episcopal library, where they were available for consultation and duplication by individuals.40 The sermons of popular preachers were published and circulated.41 The Catholic bishop Optatus spoke of the sermons of the Donatist bishop Parmenian in the mid-360s as being “in the mouths” and “in the hands” of many.42 Before publishing, the preacher would revise the transcript. In the case of Ambrose of Milan, where the stenographic record can be compared with the edited version of one his sermons, the bishop smoothed out his oral style, reorganizing the contents into a more coherent account and adding classical and exegetical proofs.43 Augustine intended to revise all of his sermons before his death, according to a statement in the Retractationes (Retract.), even though some collections of his homilies were already in circulation.44 These published sermons became raw material to be remixed into new sermons, or in some cases scripts to be read in place of an original sermon. Educated clergy such as Maximinus and Leo in Italy, Chromatius in Gaul, and Augustine in Africa produced original sermons, but not every pastor was gifted or trained in this area. Those with the rhetorical training to expound Scripture publicly comprised an elite group

 R. Rouse and C. McNelis, “North African Literary Activity: A Cyprian Fragment, the Stichometric Lists and a Donatist Compendium,” Revue d’histoire des textes 30 (2001): 189–238.  C. Weidmann, “Patchwork Sermons: An Unstudied Genre of Late Antique Latin Literature,” in Latin Anonymous Sermons, ed. M. Pignot (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), 83–109.  Examples include Serm. 1.6.22, 26, and 2.6.17 (PL 44:655, 658, and 685).  For more on personal transmission of texts, see H. Marrou, “La technique de l’edition a l’epoque patristique,” VC 3 (1949): 208–24.  H. Gamble describes the process of publication and distribution using Augustine as an example. See Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 132–40.  De schismata 1.4 (SC 412:178–180): “Sed quoniam et accesssum prohibent et aditus intercludeunt et consessum vitant et colloquium denegant, vel tecum mihi, frater Parmeniane, sit isto modo collatio, ut, quia tractatus tuos, quos in minibus et in ore multorum esse voluisti.”  S. M. Oberhelman, Rhetoric and Homiletics in Fourth-Century Christian Literature: Prose Rhythm, Oratorical Style, and Preaching in the Works of Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), 108.  Retract. 2.93.2 (CSEL 36:204).

68

Alden Bass

within the African clergy.45 It was a challenge even to find qualified lectors to read Scripture.46 Skilled bishops would sometimes create resources for rural bishops and lower clergy.47 Augustine actually dictated whole sermons to be used as scripts.48 One anonymous preacher known as Pseudo-Fulgentius stated explicitly that his sermons were published as models for lower clergy.49 Not every preserved sermon was intended as a model, some may have simply been associated with a popular or authoritative preacher, yet in time even these served as models. As Dossey explains: The needs of subordinate clergy may help explain the themes of the anonymous sermons; they tend to be designed for those occasions when the services of the subordinate clergy were most necessary. A host of the anonymous sermons were addressed directly to catechumens or neophytes at various stages in the process of conversion. . . . The Collectio Armamentaria would have carried a preacher through the demanding Easter week. . . . The Pseudo-Fulgentian collection contained the necessary preaching for an entire year, including sermons for catechumens, the major holy days, saints’ days (Perpetua, Cyprian, Vicentius), and ordinary Sundays.50

When Augustine counseled these under-resourced preachers to learn by heart and preach the sermons of acknowledged masters, he likely had in mind the sermon collections which had begun to circulate.51 These sermons were not only useful to the unskilled: for example, even Aurelius, the Primate of Africa, requested permission to use Augustine’s sermons.52 By the early fifth century, collections of Cyprian’s works were common, as were translations of popular eastern preachers such as “superstar” John Chrysostom, Severian of Gabala, and others. Augustine was familiar with one such collection which has survived in several manuscripts, called the Collection of 38 Homilies.53 Within Augustine’s lifetime, collections of his own sermons were circulating in Africa and abroad. The next two generations witnessed a decline in original preaching across the West

 Note, however, that Dossey helpfully cautions us not to assume that all preachers came from the urban elite. See Peasants and Empire, 153–5 and 171.  There was a general shortage of clergy in the fifth century. The council of 401 deplored the fact that “many churches have no clergy at all, not even an illiterate deacon.” (Concilia Africae a. 345 – a. 525 [CCSL 149:194]).  For instance, Flavian of Antioch. See J. Maxwell, “Sermons,” 348.  Augustine, Ep. 41.1–2 (CSEL 34/2:81–2). Augustine produced at least one such model sermon for his diocesan priests, Serm. 214. See P. Verbraken, “Le sermon CCXIV de saint Augustin pour la tradition du Symbole,” RBén 72 (1962): 14–21.  Pseudo-Fulgentius, Praefatio (PL 65:855): “Exhortamur caritatem vetram, dilectissimi fratres, ut impigre et vigilanter verbum Dei ministrantibus fratribus et compresbyteris, vos audire non pigeat.”  Dossey, Peasants and Empire, 170.  Doctr. chr. 4.29.62; trans. Green, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 144: “If [men who cannot compose a good sermon] borrow from others something composed with eloquence and wisdom and commit it to memory and then bring that to their audience, they are not doing anything wrong.”  Augustine, Ep. 16.1 (CSEL 88:86) and Ep. 23A.3 (CSEL 88:122).  See below.

3 The Bible in Anonymous African Sermons

69

and an increase in the compilation of sermons by the likes of Caesarius of Arles (d. 542) in Italy, Faustus of Riez (d. 490) and the Gallican Eusebius in Gaul, and Pseudo-Fulgentius in North Africa. It is these collections which contain the majority of the anonymous sermons which have survived, though they are frequently mislabeled as Augustinian or Chrysostomian, the names under which the manuscripts were filed in the Middle Ages. After the Vandal invasion in 430, the contents of African episcopal libraries, including much homiletic material, began migrating north to Spain, Italy, and Gaul, borne by exiled African bishops and their retinues.54 This is vividly illustrated by the story of a monk named Donatus who was pushed out of Africa by Berber raids in 570 and “crossed the sea to Spain with around seventy monks and a great collection of books.”55 Once relocated, African sermons continued to be copied and distributed through European networks. The original authors of these sermons were quickly forgotten, and most of the homilies were re-associated with a well-known African name, preponderantly that of Augustine.56 The confusions were sometimes drastic, as when for centuries Pelagius’s Pauline commentary was attributed to Augustine or when a Homoian sermon collection passed under the name of the Nicene bishop Maximinus of Turin. In a collection made by Caesarius of Arles called Fifty Sermons of Saint Augustine, fewer than half of the sermons are actually Augustine’s.57

Identifying Anonymous African Sermons The identification of anonymous African sermons began with the observation that some “Augustinian” texts were not Augustinian. The original editors of Augustine’s sermons, the Benedictines of St. Maur, sorted through hundreds of manuscripts of sermons attributed to Augustine, separating the authentic (genuinii) material from the non-Augustinian spurii and later composites of Augustinian material called dubii.58 Since their work in the seventeenth century, more manuscripts of Augustinian sermons have been discovered and published, notably several eleventh century homiliaries from Monte Cassino

 See S. Graham, “The Dissemination of North African Christian and Intellectual Culture in Late Antiquity” (PhD diss., University of California, 2005).  A. T. Fear, Lives of the Visigothic Fathers, Translated Texts for Historians 26 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1997), 111.  S. Boodts, “A Critical Assessment of Wolfenbüttel Herz.-Aug.-Bibl. Cod. Guelf. 237 (Helmst. 204) and its Value for the Edition of St. Augustine’s Sermones ad populum,” StPat 18 (2013): 465–76.  G. Morin, Caesarii Arelatensis Sermones (CCSL 103), lxxv–lxxxiv.  Their edition of Augustine’s sermons was taken over unchanged in PL 38 and 39; PL 46 added sermons discovered after the Maurist edition.

70

Alden Bass

edited by Armand-Benjamin Caillau and Angelo Mai in the nineteenth century.59 The majority of these sermons proved to be dubious or spurious.60 In the 1930s Germain Morin revised the Maurist edition of the sermons and updated it with the new findings; it was he who gave the label “African” to many of the spurious sermons.61 Scholars such as Jean Leclercq, Raymond Étaix, Jean-Paul Bouhot, and Cyrille Lambot continued to identify and classify anonymous sermons.62 Morin’s identifications became the basis for the Répertoire général des auteurs ecclésiastiques latins, which lists 127 individual sermons thought to be late-antique North African.63 Gryson’s Répertoire – an updated version of Bonifatius Fisher’s 1949 Verzeichnis der Sigel für Kirchenschrifsteller – is currently the best and most efficient tool for working with the anonymous material. The other main works are the Clavis Patrum Latinorum (CPL) of Ernest Dekkers and the Clavis Patristica Pseudepigraphorum Medii Aevii of John Machielsen, which extends the CPL up through the year 1300. While these repertories are foundational, they are not easily accessed and are both frequently flawed and difficult to navigate.64 In addition to the individual anonymous sermons preserved in Augustinian manuscripts, several unattributed collections have been labeled as “African.” A few of these collections have been assumed to be late antique collections composed of the works of a single author. Such homogenous collections are called “sermonaries.” Several of these sermonaries have survived, including Augustinian collections that were transmitted under titles such as De alleluia, De paenitentia, Campanian, Sessorian, as well as the homiletic collections of Gaudentius of Brescia, Zeno of Verona, and Maximus of Turin.65 Unfortunately, most of the anonymous collections are neither homogeneous nor late antique; rather, these “homiliaries” date to the Middle Ages and include miscellaneous

 On all of the pseudo-Augustinian sermons published after the Maurists, see Machielsen, CPPM, 267–468.  Pignot, “Introduction,” 3n10.  G. Morin, MA 1:721–69. See also G. Ghysens, P. Verbraken, La carrière scientifique de dom Germain Morin (1861–1946) (Steenbrugge-La Haye: 1986).  For a selected bibliography of their work, see Pignot, “Introduction,” 4n13.  R. Gryson, B. Fischer, and H. J. Frede, Répertoire général des auteurs ecclésiastiques latins de l’antiquité et du haut Moyen Âge (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2007). Pignot provides the whole list of anonymous sermons in “Introduction,” 12n39. He rightly warns – echoing Dolbeau (“Sermons ‘africains’, 13n13) – that many of these attributions are based on the weak criterion of Morin and others and require reevaluation. Dossey provides an expansive list of 381 sermons in her bibliography to Peasant and Empire, 293–6 (cf. 167). Shaw’s bibliography lists sermon titles and equivalencies for the major collections (Sacred Violence, 842–9).  Pignot provides an excellent overview of these tools. See “Introduction,” 7–13. Additionally, Brepols is developing an integrated digital database dubbed the Clavis Clavium which promises to bring clarity to the research (https://about.brepolis.net/clavis-clavium).  For more on the Augustinian collections, see P.-P. Verbraken, Études critiques sur les sermons authentiques de Saint Augustin, Instrumenta Patristica 12 (Steenbrugge-La Haye: 1976), 198–210 and 32–33.

3 The Bible in Anonymous African Sermons

71

texts from a variety of locations and periods compiled by monastic editors.66 The following collections are those which appear most frequently in the literature on anonymous African sermons: – The earliest surviving collection, known as the Collection of 38 Homilies or the Wilmart Collection, consists of thirty-eight sermons attributed to John Chrysostom compiled in the Carthage region.67 Some are translations of authentic Chrysostomian sermons, others are African originals in the style of Chrysostom.68 The collection was arranged in liturgical order, as is characteristic of all such liturgical collections. We know that the Wilmart Collection was circulating in Africa by 420, since Augustine quoted two of the collection’s sermons in his Against Julian of 421. Bouhot has argued that the collection was assembled in Africa between 410 and 420, perhaps by the Pelagian scholar Anianus of Celada.69 – Another pseudo-Chrysostomian set, the Morin Collection (earliest witness is the ninth-century Paris, BnF Lat. 13347) is linked to the Wilmart Collection.70 These thirty sermons have a strong Augustinian influence and are anti-Homoian. Dolbeau and Bouhot argue for an African provenance; Mutien Lambert and Dossey have made a case for a Southern Italian setting but acknowledge that the preacher may have been an exiled North African.71

 On the distinction between sermonaries and homiliaries, see F. Dolbeau, “A propos d’un agraphon: Réflexions sur la transmission de l’homilétique latine antique, avec édition du sermon ‘Sermo Sacerdotis Dei,’” Classical Philology 98.2 (2003): 166.  A. Wilmart, “La collection des 38 homélies latines de Saint Jean Chrysostome,” JTS 19 (1918): 305–27. W. Wenk, Zur Sammlung der 38 Homilien des Chrysostomus Latinus (mit Edition der Nr. 6, 8, 27, 32 und 33) (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1988).  See J. P. Bouhot, “Les traductions latines de Jean Chrysostome du Ve au XVIe Siècle,” in Traduction et traducteurs au Moyen Âge, ed. G. Contamine (Aubervilliers: Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes, 1989), 31–39; S. Voicu, “Le prime traduzioni latine di Crisostomo,” in Cristianesimo latino e cultura greca sino al sec. IV: XXI Incontro di studiosi dell’antichità Cristiana. Roma, 7–9 Maggio 1992 (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1993); and S. Voicu, “Latin Translations of Greek Homilies,” in Preaching in the Patristic Era, 294–326. For more on Latin Chrysostom see C. Baur, “L’éntrée littéraire de Saint Chrysostome dans le monde latin,” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 8 (1907): 249–65; B. Altaner, “Altlateinische Übersetzungen von Chrysostomusschriften,” in Kleine Patristische Schriften (Berlin: 1967).  K. Cooper, “An(n)ianus of Celeda and the Latin Readers of John Chrysostom,” StPat 27 (1993): 249–55.  Sermones 30 collectionis Morin dictae (CPL 915; PLS 4:653ff and 741–834). See G. Morin, “Étude sur une série de discours d’un évêque (de Naples?) du VIe siècle,” RBén 11 (1894): 385–402; and J. P. Bouhot, “La collection homilétique découverte par Dom Morin,” REAug (1970): 144–6. In Gryson, Répertoire, 2007, these are listed under John of Naples (JO-N), to whom they were originally attributed by Morin.  J. P. Bouhot, “Une ancienne homélie catéchétique pour la tradition de l’oraison dominicale,” Aug 20 (1980): 69–78, 72n22; F. Dolbeau, “Une collection méconnue de Sermons sur les psaumes,” in Tractatio Scripturarum. Philological, Exegetical, Rhetorical, and Theological Studies on Augustine’s Sermons, eds. A. Dupont, G. Partoens, and M. Lamberigts (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 26–28; and M. Lambert, Une collection homiletique du sixième siècle (Italie du sud): contribution à l’étude de l’histoire de la catéchèse d’adultes (Louvain: Institut supérieur des sciences religieuses, 1968), 16–24. Dossey’s counter-argument was

72

–

–

–

Alden Bass

The Armamentarii Collection, also known as the Arsenal (Paris, Arsenal 175), is a medieval collection of fifteen sermons on Holy Week, many of which likely derived from fifth or sixth century Africa.72 It was originally thought to be a homogenous late-ancient collection, but has since been shown to be a miscellaneous medieval Italian compilation.73 Attributed to Chrysostom, some of the sermons are identifiably African Catholic, while others are associated with the Vienna Collection, a source linked to the Donatists. The Vienna Collection, known from a single manuscript (ÖNB m. lat. 4147), consists of sixty sermons and includes the earlier-discovered Escorial Collection (El Escorial R. III. 5).74 The collection has been identified as Donatist, though only one sermon (Serm. 37) can be confirmed as such.75 Unusually, the collection is not festal, but mainly biblical; about half the sermons cover the Old Testament and half the New, with a few topical sermons on prayer, mercy, peace and other topics. The Verona Collection, known from a unique sixth-century manuscript (Vérone LI [49]) contains fifteen sermons on the gospels and two lengthy apologetic sermons.76 The collection was attributed to Maximinus of Turin, but has since been attributed to a Homoian bishop, perhaps from Carthage.

made in the unpublished paper “The Morin Sermons of Pseudo-Chrysostom (PLS 4:741–834): What their Liturgy, Textual Borrowings, and Purpose Can Tell Us about Their Original Context,” delivered at the Ministerium Sermonis Colloquium, 10 April 2015.  AN h. Arm (=Collectio Armamentarii [CA]). PLS 2:1124–51 (CA Serm. 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 15) and PLS 4:656–68 (CA Serm. 1, 5, 6, 12, 14) and PL 54:477–522 (CA Serm. 13). For the original description, see J.-P. Bouhot, “Version inédite du sermon ‘Ad neophytos’ de S. Jean Chrysostome, utilisée par S. Augustin,” REA 17 (1971): 27–41.  S. Boodts and N. de Maeyer, “The Collectio Armamentarii (Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 175). Status Quaestionis and New Avenues of Research,” in Praedicatio Patrum: Studies on Preaching in Late Antique North Africa, eds. G. Partoens, A. Dupont, and S. Boodts (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 95–134.  AN h. Esc. (=Collectio escurialiensis). F. Leroy, “Vingt-deux homélies africaines nouvelles attribuables à l’un des anonymes du Chrysostem latin (PLS 4) (Vienne Ö.N.B. Ms. Lat. 4147),” RBén 104 (1994): 123–47; and “Les 22 inédits de la catéchèse Donatiste de Vienne: Une Édition Provisoire,” Recherches Augustiniennes 31 (1999): 149–234.  A. Schindler, “Du nouveau sur les Donatistes au temps de Saint Augustin?,” in Augustinus Afer: Saint Augustin, Africanité, et Universalité: Actes du Colloque International, Alger-Annaba, 1–7 Avril 2001, eds. P.-Y. Fux, J.-M. Roessli, and O. Wermelinger (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires Fribourg Suisse, 2003), 149; J. Alexander, “Criteria for Discerning Donatist Sermons,” StudPatr 38 (2001): 3–7; and M. Tilley, “Donatist Sermons,” in Preaching in the Patristic Era: Sermons, Preachers, and Audiences in the Latin West, eds. A. Dupont, S. Boodts, G. Partoens, and J. Leemans (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 373–402. P. Marone also asserts, on lexical grounds, that the collection is neither Donatist nor catechetical: “I Sermones del corpus di Vienna ÖNB MS LAT. 4147,” Ager Veleias 15.08 (2020) [www.veleia.it].  AN Ver Serm. (=De solemnitatibus; CSEL 87:47–92). See B. Capelle, “Un homiliare de l’évêque arien Maximin,” RBén 34 (1922): 81–108; R. Gryson, Scripta Arriana Latina, 1: Collectio Veronensis (Turnhout: Brepols, 1987), vii–xxvi; and R. Gryson, Le recueil arien de Vérona (MS. LI de la Bibliothèque capitulaire et feuillets inédits de la collection Giustiniani Recanati (Steenbrugge: Sint Pietersabdij, 1982). See also R. Gounelle, “Les Sermons Ariens (Pseudo-Maximinus),” in Preaching in the Patristic Era, 168–76. On

3 The Bible in Anonymous African Sermons

–

–

–

–

–

73

The pseudo-Fulgentian Collection contains eighty sermons, mainly liturgical, compiled in Africa in the Vandal period.77 It includes a few genuine sermons of Augustine and Jerome. Morin has argued that most of the sermons were composed by the same African preacher in either the fifth or the sixth century. Réginald Grégoire proposed that one manuscript transmits the sermons in their original African order, including a preface by the editor.78 The Vienna Homiliary (Vienna, ÖNB m. lat. 1616) is book of sermons created in the eighth or ninth century and composed mostly of African sermons from the fifth and sixth centuries.79 It contains forty-six liturgical homilies. The Homiliary of Fleury, compiled in Gaul in the eighth century and surviving in multiple manuscripts, contains a mixture of at least twenty anonymous African sermons alongside Augustinian and non-African material.80 The Laon Collection (Laon, Bibliothèque municipale 113) contains fourteen sermons, at least six of which are sixth-century African. Some of the sermons refer to the persecution of Nicene Christians under the Vandals.81 The Olomouc Collection (Olomouc, Státní vědecká knihovna, M II 205) contains seven sixth-century sermons probably by the same preacher. The sermons are influenced by Augustine and Fulgentius, and some of the passages seem anti-Homoian.82

A homogenous late ancient sermonary from Africa would be the holy grail for researchers, and several of these collections, including the Armamentarii and the Vienna Collections, were initially declared to be such. Further research has shown, however, that nearly every collection is mixed (with the possible exceptions of the Morin, Verona, and

the strong influence of Cyprian in these sermons, see D. Riggs, “Contesting the Legacy and Patronage of Saint Cyprian in Vandal Carthage,” StPat 92 (2017): 357–69.  PS-FU Serm. (CPL 844; PL 65:855–954; tituli, PLS 3:1363–68). See G. Morin, “Notes sur un manuscrit des homélies du Pseudo-Fulgence,” RBén 26 (1909): 223–8. See also A. Isola, I Cristiani dell’Africa vandalica nei Sermones del tempo (429–534) (Milan: Editoriale Jaca Books, 1990), passim.  R. Grégoire, Les Homéliaires du Moyen Âge. Inventaire et analyse des manuscits (Rome: Herder, 1966), 89–125.  AN h. Vind. (=Homiliae vindobonenses; PLS 1:297–30; 2:1031–3; 3:1370–6; 4:1911–22; PL 47:1155–6 [Sermons 5A, 11, 12, 14, 19, 20, 20A, 21A, 22, 23, 24, 36]). See C. Lambot, “Sermon inédit de saint Augustin pour une fête de martyrs dans un homiliaire de type ancien,” RBén 68 (1958): 187–99 ; and R. Grégoire, Homéliaires du Moyen Âge, 132–41.  Serm. Le. (PLS 2:1412–24 [6 sermons]). See J. Leclercq, “Les inédits africains de l’homiliaire de Fleury,” RBén 58 (1948): 53–72.  The contents of the manuscript are described in G. Morin, “Un traité priscillianiste inédit su la Trinité,” RBén 26 (1909): 255–7. For a list of titles, see F. Dolbeau, “Une compilation morale africaine, formée d’extraits de Saint Augustin,” Recherches augustiniennes et patristiques 34 (2005): 143–93. Texts numbered 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, and 11 (at least) are of African origin.  F. Dolbeau, “Sept sermons antiques, tirés d’un homéliaire latin d’Olomouc,” RBén 111 (2001): 353–98; and F. Dolbeau, “A propos des sermons d’Olomouc: un post-scriptum,” RBén 112 (2002): 236–45.

74

Alden Bass

Olomouc Collections) and most are medieval.83 Each sermon within these collections must be evaluated independently, and not as part of an “African collection” (though transmission history can help in identification). In an important study of these anonymous collections Dolbeau concludes: “In the current state of research, it would therefore be useful to reconsider all anonymous or pseudepigraphal sermons held to be African in order to verify, on a case-by-case basis, the relevance of the criteria used, often without explanation.”84 The strongest evidence for African provenance is explicit reference to African sites, to historical events, such as the Vandal incursion, to local controversies, such as Donatism, or to local saints. For instance, the pseudo-Fulgentian Serm. 56 expressly states that it was preached at the Mensa Cypriani in Carthage.85 The preacher of a sermon on Zacchaeus mentions that “sycamores do not grow here in Africa.”86 The anonymous Altercatio Pascasii alludes to the barbarians of Africa and mockingly quotes Vandal speech.87 Vienna Homily 39 uses the Donatist watchword traditor multiple times. Weaker evidence includes a history of manuscript transmission with confirmed African material, biblical citations from the Vetus Latina (which was often preferred in North Africa), liturgical details such as local forms of the Creed,88 and lexical or doctrinal dependence on African sources such as Apuleius, Tertullian, or Cyprian. Morin, Leclercq, Étaix, and other pioneers in the field had privileged language and style in identification of the sermons, but Dolbeau has shown that these criteria are too weak to securely identify a sermon as African.89 In addition to establishing the provenance of anonymous sermons, scholars have also sought to identify specific authors. After careful study, some sermons have been

 The best example of this research is the work of Boodts and Maeyer, “The Collection Armamentarii,” 95–134.  F. Dolbeau, “Sermons ‘africains’: critères de localisation et exemple des sermons pour l’Ascension,” in Praedicatio Patrum: Studies on Preaching in Late Antique North Africa, eds. G. Partoens, A. Dupont, and S. Boodts (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 22.  PL 65:928.  Vienna Homily 40 (=h. Esc. 19). See F. Leroy, “Les sermons africains pseudo-augustiniens Caillau S. Y. I, 46 et Scorialiensis 19 (Chrysostomus latinus) sur l’épisode de Zacchée (Luc 19),” Wiener Studien 106 (1993): 215–22.  Ps-Augustine, Altercatio cum Pascentio Ariano (PL 33:1160 and 1162).  For instance, L. H. Westra has argued for an African form of the Creed in the ps-Fulgentian Sermo de Simbolo (PLS 3:1370–6; Cf. Morin, RBén 35 [1923]: 236). See The Apostles Creed: Origin, History and some early Commentaries (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), 441–7.  Not only weak, but built on racist assumptions about African rhetoric, which was long considered flamboyant in relation to the “hot blood” of Africans. For a critique of africitas, see S. Lancel, “Y a-t-il une Africitas?,” Revue des Études latines 63 (1985): 161–82. However, there may be more to the regional lexical differences than Dolbeau acknowledges; see J. N. Adams, The Regional Diversification of Latin 200 BC–AD 600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 516–28.

3 The Bible in Anonymous African Sermons

75

securely attributed to known figures.90 The pseudo-Augustinian Sermo contra Judaeos, paganos, et Arianos and a dozen or so catechetical sermons were identified by Morin as the work of Quodvultdeus.91 Similarly, two pseudepigraphal sermons were later identified as belonging to Augustine’s successor, Heraclius.92 One has been reassigned to Maximinus of Siniti, a convert from Donatism.93 Other sermons have also been tentatively identified. Three sermons have been attributed to Optatus of Milev, though at least one has now been shown to be Donatist (and attributed to either Optatus of Thamugudi or Tyconius).94 Leroy conjectured Severian of Ceramussa to be the preacher behind at least one of the Armamentarii sermons.95 Two sermons from the Morin Collection have been tentatively classified as Fulgentian.96 Some sermons originally deemed pseudepigraphal have even been reclassified as Augustinian.97 Relatedly, it may be possible to recognize the work of a single author without knowing their name or precise context. Mixed homiliaries such as the Vienna Collection or the Fleury Homiliary may contain a core of sermons by the same author.98 Analysis of style and vocabulary – particularly if augmented with stylometric software – may help solidify such identifications. Likewise, some authors have been identified across sermon collections, even though they remain anonymous. Lambot observed similarities between the pseudo-Fulgentian homilies and the anti-Donatist tract Adversus Fulgentius.99 Joseph Lemarié proposed that some of the fragmented sermons of PseudoFulgentius may have composed the anonymous sermon H. Vind. 20. He argues that the preacher was a contemporary of the bishop Fulgentius of Ruspe and was influenced by

 On the temptation to ascribe attribution on inadequate grounds, see F. Dolbeau, “Critique d’attribution, critique d’authenticité. Réflexions préliminaires,” Filologia Mediolatina 6/7 (1999/2000): 33–61.  G. Morin, “Pour une future édition des opuscules de S. Quodvultdeus évêque de Carthage au Ve siècle,” RBén 31 (1914): 156–62.  P. Verbraken, “Les deux sermons du pretre Eraclius d’Hippone,” RBén 71 (1961): 9–21.  See F. Dolbeau, “Par qui et dans quelles circonstances fut prononcé le Sermon 360 d’Augustin?,” RBén 105 (1995): 293–307.  F. S. Barcellona, “L’interpretazione dei doni dei Magi nel sermone natalizio di (Pseudo) Ottato di Milevi,” Studi Storico-Religiosi 2 (1978): 129–49; and E. Romero Pose, “Ticonio y el sermone ‘In natali sanctorum innocentium’ (Exeg. De Matt. 2),” Gregorianum 60 (1979): 513–44.  Serm. 9 of the collection. See Leroy, “Compléments et retouches à la 3 édition de la Clavis Patrum Latinorum: l’homilétique africaine masquée sous le Chrysostomus Latinus, Sévérien de Céramussa et la catéchèse donatiste de Vienne,” RHE (2004): 425–34, 431n5; see also, Boodts and Maeyer, “The Collection Armamentarii,” in Praedicatio Patrum, eds. G. Partoens, A. Dupont, and S. Boodts (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 117–8.  Dolbeau, “Sept sermons antiques,” 393–8.  C. Weidmann, “Sermo Mai 10. Eine authentische Predigt des Augustinus?,” Augustiniana 60 (2010): 173–92.  For instance, Vienna Homilies 24 (PLS 4:696–9), 25 (=ps-Aug Serm. 43; PL 39:1830–32), 26 (= Ps-Aug Serm. 46; PL 39:1830–32) seem to derive from an exegetical series on 2 Kings by a single author.  C. Lambot, “L’écrit attribué à saint Augustin Adversus Fulgentium donatistam,” RBén 58 (1948): 184.

76

Alden Bass

him.100 Similarly, another sermon preserved in the pseudo-Fulgentian collection may share an author with a sermon from the Olomouc collection. This preacher was theologically distinct from Fulgentius.101 Étaix thought two pseudo-Chysostomian sermons in the Beneventan homiliary may have had the same author as Serm. 12 (Stabat Moyses) in the Vienna Homilies.102

The Bible in Anonymous Sermons Given that the anonymous sermons described here derive from every late-ancient homiletic genre and were written by a variety of authors spread over three centuries from at least three major sects (Catholic, Donatist, and Arian), it is impossible to make general statements about the use of Scripture in these texts. According to their purpose, preachers utilized Scripture in a range of ways – from blunt proof texting, to logical argumentation, to engaging storytelling, to mere embellishment. Nevertheless, late-ancient preachers, regardless of education level or confessional commitment, shared a set of exegetical approaches rooted in common assumptions about the Bible. Theologically, the sermon was not an “exposition” of a text, but a proclamation of God’s living word. The preacher’s voice was a mere instrument for the amplification and application of God’s written word; the Latin praedico has a passive sense of notifying or announcing. Especially in Africa, the voice of the preacher was perceived to be prophetic, perhaps even oracular. Cyprian’s words were venerated by later generations as tantamount to Scripture, and the preaching of Donatus and Augustine were treated similarly even in their lifetimes.103 The goal of preaching was to fuse the horizons of the biblical and contemporary worlds, temporally and narratively. The linkage is particularly clear in festal sermons such as this one on Pentecost: “On holy Easter Christ is resurrected, and today on Pentecost the Holy Spirit comes to us.”104 The word of the preacher coupled past and present, transporting the congregation back to the moment of God’s action and bringing  J. Lemarié, “Un sermon inédit sur Mathieu 16, 13–19 de l’école de Fulgence de Ruspe,” REAug 18 (1972): 116–23; also, “Nouveaux fragments de sermons attribuables à un Pseudo-Fulgence,” RBén 104 (1994): 191–203.  F. Lifshitz, Religious Women in Early Carolingian France: A Study of Manuscript Transmission and Monastic Culture (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 132. Lifshitz goes so far as to call the author of this sermon a “feminist,” an epithet not likely to be bestowed on Fulgentius by anyone.  R. Étaix, “Textes Inédits tirés des Homiliaires de la Bibliothèque Capitulaire de Bénévent,” RBén 92 (1982): 324–57, 343.  Optatus claimed that Donatus was considered a prophet (De Schismata 3.3 [SC 413:28]). In at least one instance, Augustine’s words were read in place of Scripture (=Dolbeau 10/Mainz 27.15). See Verbraken, “Les fragments conservés de sermons perdus de saint Augustin,” RBén 84 (1974): 256.  Sermon 4 (Leclercq, “Les inédits africains de l’homiliaire de Fleury,” 61): “In sanctam enim Pascha Christus nos [. . .]rrexit, in Pentecosten hoc est hodie Spiritus Sanctus nobis advenit.”

3 The Bible in Anonymous African Sermons

77

that moment into the present. Stories within the text are likewise overlaid so that there is no gap between the forty-day fasts of Moses, of Elijah, of Jesus, and of the sixth-century observers of Lent.105 Preachers assimilated listeners into the biblical world by identifying them with characters in the text. In a sermon for the Easter Octave, congregants are transported into the upper room with St. Thomas, feeling the wounds of Christ and confessing his divinity.106 As Francis Young observed, this method cannot adequately be described as literal, typological, or allegorical. Rather, it is “a ‘taking over’ of the language of Scripture. The language is made ‘one’s own’.”107 This method assumes the Bible to be a unified book authored by the Holy Spirit.108 Texts coinhere and nestle into one another, the latter Testament fulfilling the first and the Gospels perfecting all. Stories are not merely literary echoes, but events which, when read spiritualiter, are actually co-present. As one anonymous sermon states, “in the spiritual sense, the events of the Decalogue contain the perfection of the gospels.”109 Intertextual reading established a connection between two events or persons in such a way that the first signifies not only itself but also the second, while the second involves or fulfills the first. The heavenly ascensions of Enoch and Elijah prefigure (praefiguraverunt) Christ’s ascension.110 The cloud on which he ascended is inseparable from the clouds at the Transfiguration, the thunderheads girding Mount Sinai and the nebulous pillar in the wilderness. A single catchword – such as “fire” in a sermon on Pentecost – could trigger a cascade of references to other fires mentioned elsewhere in Scripture.111 In one sermon, typological readings of the Old Testament were introduced with the repeated phrase “see the mystery” (vide mysterium).112 All Scripture contains a hidden depth. The preacher’s task, as noted in a fifth-century sermon, is to lay bare what is “hidden” (clausus or involutus).113

 Verona Homily 14 (PLS 2:1913). See also Lambot, RBén 65 (1958): 192.  Sermon Mai 42 (PLS 2:1142): “Respondeamus ergo et nos et fateamur cum Thoma id quod miraculum divinae virtutis exposcit. Nobis enim ille dubitavit, nobis exploravit, nobis credidit, nobis in illo dominus manus et lateris vulnera contrectanda permisit.”  Young, Biblical Exegesis, 230.  In Augustine’s words, the “one true teacher” (Doctr. chr. 4.29.63 [CCSL 32:167]): “Multi praedicatores veritatis fiunt, nec multi magistri, si unius veri magistri idipsum dicant omnes, et non sint in eis schismata.”  Vienna Homily 11 (Leroy, “Les 22 inédits de la catéchèse Donatiste de Vienne,” 166–68): “Ut perfectio evangelii etiam decalogi secum spiritualiter gesta contineat.”  PLS 3:1413–24.  PLS 3:1414–16: e.g., Luke 13:49; Ps 119:140; Ps 26:2; Ps 17:3; and Isa 6:5.  Gounelle, “Les sermons ariens,” 171.  Cited by Dolbeau in “A Propos d’un Agraphon: Réflexions sur la Transmission de L’homilétique Latine Antique, avec Édition du Sermon Sermo Sacerdotis Dei,” Classical Philology 98 (2003): 160–74, here 165. This is a standard patristic idea, explained, for example, in the prologue of Tyconius’s Liber Regularum.

78

Alden Bass

Community Maintenance and Pastoral Care Preachers used biblical citations and interpretations to accomplish a variety of pastoral purposes: building communal identity, instructing neophytes, defending against rivals, creating a meaningful moral and intellectual framework for believers, and generally encouraging the faithful. Many sermons simply explained the biblical text by means of a running commentary. For example, Serm. 15 of the Armamentarii Collection, delivered on the Easter Octave, moves through the story of Doubting Thomas (John 20:25–31) in this fashion, quoting a line of text, elaborating on it, and moving to the next line.114 Nothing outside the pericope is cited. Similarly, a sermon “On the Samaritan Woman” explains John 4:7–42 by posing a series of rhetorical questions about the text: Why is the Savior weary? Because of the Samaritans’ unbelief. Why does the Savior ask for water and not drink? Because he did not truly desire water, but her heart. And so on.115 Exegetical comment of the type developed in GraecoRoman schools and practiced by elite preachers such as Chrysostom and Augustine is not as common in anonymous sermons, but some sermons approached this level of scholasticism. For example, the Arian Verona Homily 15 treats the spiritual panoply of Eph 6:12–18, proceeding verse by verse and explaining each weapon in detail.116 Extended series of exegetical sermons (probably delivered at daily Mass) were sometimes collated into commentaries like the anonymous Arian Job commentary.117 Undoubtedly more popular were vernacular re-tellings of biblical stories. One such sermon on Jonah, delivered on a day of penance, is a lively paraphrase punctuated by occasional brief quotes from the text.118 Though relatively rare in the preserved record, sermons addressing ordinary pastoral issues must have been common. Preachers would have routinely faced questions such as the one posed in Sermo sacerdotis dei: “Why are the prayers of sinners answered more quickly and mercifully than those of the righteous?”119 The preacher illustrates the query with a collage of citations about the difficulty of prayer in the lives of biblical figures such as David, Paul, and Habakkuk. After using these texts to

 PLS 2:1141–43.  PLS 2:318–20. See also, Leclercq, RBén 59 (1949): 110.  Collection Veronensis 15 (CCSL 87:88–89). For a more detailed breakdown of the preacher’s method, see Gounelle, “Les sermons ariens,” 171.  Anonymi in Iob Commentarius (CSEL 96). The material has long been associated with Africa, a position defended by L. Dossey and R. Whelan. See Dossey, “Last Days of Vandal Africa: An Arian commentary on Job and Its Historical Context,” JTS 54 (2003): 60–138; and Whelan, Being Christian in Vandal Africa, 87–88. K. Steinhauser rejects the claim of African provenance, arguing instead for latefourth century Milan, for which see CSEL 96:14 and 31.  Sermo in Letania (CPL 935; PLS 4:846–50). See R. Grégoire, Les Homéliaires du Moyen Âge, 186–7.  F. Dolbeau, “A Propos d’un Agraphon: Réflexions sur la Transmission de L’homilétique Latine Antique, avec Édition du Sermon Sermo Sacerdotis Dei,” Classical Philology 98 (2003): 160–74.

3 The Bible in Anonymous African Sermons

79

establish the quandary, the preacher employs theological reasoning to clear up the difficulty – and does so without citing Scripture anywhere else in the sermon. Preachers also encouraged certain moral behaviors through parenetic sermons. Vienna Homily 55 De Misericordia utilized a variety of texts to warn parishioners against envy and hatred, especially fraternal hatred.120 The sermon was based on 1 John 3:15 (“all who hate their brothers are murders”). Ps 37:7 connects murder with envy, and the sermon concludes with Jesus’s teaching on enemy love from Matt 5. More practical communal issues also had to be addressed, such as tithing. The pseudoAugustinian sermon De Decimis Dandis utilized a variety of texts to develop a clear argumentum: a) all things belong to God (Ps 24:1); b) humans perpetually forget God’s ownership (Isa 1:3); c) tithing is a means of acknowledging God’s ownership which was enjoined on God’s people (Exod 22:29; Deut 26:2–12; Lev 17:11); d) failure to tithe is like robbing God (Mal 3:8).121 Within these sermons are distinctly North African interpretive motifs. Their interpretations sometimes follow North African masters such as Tertullian and Cyprian. For instance, an anonymous sermon on Genesis follows Tertullian in identifying the spiritus of Gen 1 as wind rather than the Holy Spirit, the more common patristic interpretation.122 A pseudo-Chrysostomian pascal homily on Mary Magdalene (John 20:11–18) discusses baptism using the Song of Songs, a Cyprianic locus classicus.123 Sometimes the genealogy of a distinctive homiletic theme can be traced across centuries. Cyprian understood the massacre of the children in Matt 2 to be a sign that no Christian should expect to escape persecution, since even innocent babes were martyred for Christ. The same theme is echoed in an anonymous Donatist sermon on Holy Innocents from the fourth century, as well as later homilies.124 Using a similar method, Henri Barré has traced recurring Augustinian motifs of Marian devotion through anonymous Vandalera sermons.125 Further study may reveal more of these privileged texts and traditional interpretations, which can then be compared with non-African traditions to identify which are unique to Africa.

 Leroy, “Les 22 inédits de la catéchèse Donatiste de Vienne,” 215–7.  SC 243:486–93.  Observed by Pignot in “The Catechumenate,” 23–25.  V. Saxer, “Un sermon médiéval sur la Madeleine. Reprise d’une homélie antique pour Pâques attribuable à Optat de Milève,” RBén 80 (1994): 17–50.  A. Wilmart, “La lettre LVIII de saint Cyprien parmi les lectures non bibliques du lectionnaire de Luxeuil,” RBén 28 (1911): 228 and 230; and A. Wilmart, “Un sermon de saint Optat pour la fête de noel,” Revue des sciences religieuses 2 (1922): 282–91. See also F. S. Barcellona, “La celebrazione dei Santi Innocenti nell’omiletica latina dei secoli IV–VI,” Studi Medievali 15 (1974): 705–67, who identifies twelve pre-seventh-century sermons for their feast. J. Lemarié, “Nouvelle édition du sermon pour les saints innocents,” AnBoll 99 (1981): 135–8, edits a further sermon of probable late-ancient African origin.  Henri Barré, “Le culte marial en Afrique après saint Augustin,” REAug 13 (1967): 285–317.

80

Alden Bass

Community Formation and Catechetical Instruction Remarkable in all these sermons is the amount of biblical knowledge assumed by the audience. Éric Rebillard has called preaching an “interactive dialogue,” in which the African audience freely responded to the preacher.126 Augustine’s congregation was able to finish his quotation of 1 Tim 1:5.127 Similarly, they cheered when he began to quote the familiar Ps 147:14 (“he grants peace within your borders”), a text he often used to try to sway the Donatists.128 Not only did they know particular verses, but the audience was also familiar with biblical stories. Once Augustine spoke about a man who was on his way to court his bride when he was attacked by a lion and strangled it, and immediately the audience shouted: “Samson!”129 Similarly, the audience sometimes knew in advance the typological interpretation given to certain passages. The audience at Hippo knew, for example, that Augustine saw a symbol of the church in the woman described in Prov 31 “who wove a twofold garment for her husband,” meaning that she praised her Bridegroom both as God and man.130 Augustine’s home congregation does not seem to be exceptional. When he preached in other churches, he received similar responses. For instance, he once closed a sermon at the Restoration Basilica in Carthage with the words domini exitus mortis – “to the Lord belongs escape from death” – and immediately the audience cheered in recognition of three words from Ps 68.131 In anonymous sermons, many of these marks of orality have vanished, likely redacted by medieval editors; however, it is reasonable to expect the same sorts of behavior. Churches were a type of “textual community” organized around the shared internalization of certain authoritative texts.132 Anonymous preachers routinely alluded to biblical characters without providing any explanation; they expected the audience to already know the context. As Richard Hays observed, “The concept of allusion depends . . . on the assumption that the reader will share with the author the requisite ‘portable library’ to recognize the source of the allusion.”133 Late-ancient Christian communities, which were mostly illiterate, were socialized into the biblical text by listening to sermons. The most intense period of formation occurred through the process of pre-baptismal catechetical instruction. In contrast to Eastern preachers such as Cyril of Jerusalem, whose catechesis was framed by the Creed, and John Chrysostom, who based his lectures on the sacraments,  É. Rebillard, “Interaction between the Preacher and the Audience: The Case-Study of Augustine’s Preaching on Death,” StPat 31 (1997): 96.  Serm. 358.4 (SPM 1 [1950]:144–9).  Enarrat. Ps. 147.15 (CCSL 40:2149).  Enarrat. Ps. 88.1.10 (CCSL 39:1220).  Serm. 37.12.17 (CCSL 41:460).  Serm. 19.4 (CCSL 41:253).  The phrase was coined by Brian Stock and applied to the North African context by L. Dossey. See Peasant and Empire, 174.  R. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 29.

3 The Bible in Anonymous African Sermons

81

African catechists drew their instruction from the pages of the Bible. African catechetical sermons tended to come from the Old Testament, whose patriarchs, prophets, and kings served as mimetic models.134 By the fifth century, a syllabus of texts had emerged which mirrored the traditional Greco-Roman catalogs of heroes. The roots of this syllabus no doubt can be traced back to New Testament lists, such as Saint Stephen’s narrative in Acts 7 and the long list of examples of true faith found in Heb 11. Clement of Rome covered the same figures, and by the fourth century Ambrose was using a similar curriculum in his catechetical materials.135 These figures were more than mere exemplars of virtue; rather, they were synecdoches of a biblical worldview whose purpose was to cultivate what Zachary Guiliano calls an “allegorical imagination.”136 The process of Christian initiation involved intensive instruction. Those interested in the faith (accedentes) were invited to an introductory lecture which provided an overview of the biblical narratio, the essential framework for understanding Scripture.137 After committing to baptism, the competentes received more in-depth instruction in the faith, perhaps given daily over the course of the Lenten season.138 Several anonymous collections are likely compilations of these sermons, and the collections can be used to (cautiously) reconstruct an ancient African catechetical syllabus. The fifthcentury sermonary from Lorsch offers one strong example.139 Likewise, the Vienna Collection contains a series of narrative retellings of Old Testament sermons in roughly

 Outside of catechesis, the Old Testament received less homiletic attention, at least among African Catholics in the fourth and fifth centuries. Even Augustine seems to have followed the Italians in relatively neglecting the Old Testament. After reconstructing Augustine’s lectionary, Willis reports that “in Africa in St Augustine’s day the Old Testament was in the process of disappearance” (St. Augustine’s Lectionary, 5). This may not have been the case for the Donatists, who closely identified with ancient Israel; see M. Tilley, “Sustaining Donatist Self-Identity: From the Church of the Martyrs to the Collecta of the Desert,” JECS 5 (1997): 21–35.  On Ambrose, see W. Harmless, Augustine and the Catechumenate (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995), 94–95.  Z. Guiliano, “Patristic Allegorical Preaching as a Mimetic Technology: An Exploration and Proposal,” in Preaching and the Theological Imagination, eds. Z. Guiliano and C. Partridge (London: Peter Lang, 2015), 77–104.  Augustine’s Catech. (CCSL 46:121–78) preserves his two-discourse overview of the Christian faith. For more on how Augustine used narratio to form neophytes, see M. Glowasky, Rhetoric and Scripture in Augustine’s Homiletic Strategy: Tracing the Narrative of Christian Maturation (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 61–80.  Practices undoubtedly differed from place to place. Ambrose gave instruction Monday through Friday at 9am and 3pm. Likewise in Jerusalem during this period, lectures were given daily through the forty-day period of Lent. In Africa, however, catechetical instruction sometimes occurred on Sunday in the presence of the faithful, as demonstrated by the anonymous fifth century homily De catechismo: F. Dolbeau, “Une ancienne catéchèse latine, peut-être originaire d’Afrique,” in Chartae caritatis. Études de patristique et d’antiquité tardive offerts à Yves-Marie Duval, eds. B. Gain, P. Jay, and G. Nauroy (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2004), 300.  F. Dolbeau, “Sur deux sermonnaires latins, jadis conservés à Lorsch,” RBén 107 (1997): 270–9.

82

Alden Bass

canonical order, beginning with the fall of humanity, Abraham, the Exodus, and the prophets.140 A similar pattern is manifest in the fifth-century homilies of the pseudoFulgentian collection.141 Situated between festal sermons on Epiphany and Easter, in the period corresponding to Lent, a series of homilies on Abraham, Solomon, Joseph, the Exodus, Jonah, Elijah, and Elisha. Most of these sermons are not explicitly exegetical but straightforward narrative retellings or paraphrases. Many include no direct quotations of Scripture at all. The following table compares the catechetical sermons from three collections in order to show what parts of the Heilsgeschichte narrative were emphasized in the African narratio. Both the pseudo-Fulgentian and Vienna Collections also contain New Testament sermons which are not included here. Table 1: Comparison of Lorsch, pseudo-Fulgentian, and Vienna collections. Lorsch

pseudo-Fulgentian

Vienna On the Dignity of the Human Condition (Serm. ) On the Forbidden Tree (Serm. ) On the Fall (Serm. )

On the Flood (Serm. ) On Abraham (Serm. )

On Abraham (Serm. )

On Abraham’s Hospitality to the Angels (Serm. ) On Sarah’s Pregnancy (Serm. ) On Abraham and Isaac (Serm. ) On Abraham’s Faith (Serm. )

 F. Leroy, “Vignt-deux homélies africaines nouvelles,” 134, claimed that the collection was catechetical: “Comme nous l’avons découvert, c’est un sermon indubitablement donatiste! Si la collection est bien globalement homogène, ainsi qu’il semble jusqu’à plus amble informé, nous nous trouverions donc pour la première fois en possession de la catéchèse d’un évêque de la célèbre Église africaine.”  The possibly African anonymous sermons described in A. Canellis, Zénon de Vérone et 11 sermons ps.-Augustiniens (Lyon, 1988) follow a similar syllabus. Dolbeau, RechAug 20 (1985): 15 and 53, attributes them to Zeno, who may himself have been African.  Dolbeau, “Sur deux sermonnaires latins,” 273–5. Throughout this Table, the titles of the sermons have been translated and lightly edited for the sake of comparison.  PLS 3:1363–8.  Leroy, “Vingt-deux homélies africaines nouvelles,” 129–37.

3 The Bible in Anonymous African Sermons

Table 1 (continued) Lorsch

pseudo-Fulgentian

On Esau and Jacob (Serm. )

Vienna On Esau and Jacob (Serm. )

On Jacob’s Struggle with God (Serm. ) On Joseph (Serm. )

On Joseph, Sold by Brothers (Serm. ) Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife (Serm. )

On the Exodus (Serm. )

On the Exodus (Serm. , , and )

On the Feeding in the Wilderness (Serm. )

On the Cruelty of Pharoah (Serm. ) On Moses and the Amalekites (Serm. )

On Joshua (Serm. ) On Rahab and Joshua (Serm. ) On Joshua, when the Sun Stood Still in Gabao (Serm. ) On Gideon (Serm. ) On David and Goliath (Serm. ) On Absalom (Serm. ) On Solomon (Serm. )

On the Judgement of Solomon (Serm.  and )

On Elijah (Serm. ) On Elijah and Ahab (Serm. )

On Elijah’s Prayer (Serm. ) On Elijah and Elisha (Serm. )

On Elisha and the Widow (Serm. )

On Elisha, when He Increased the Widow’s Oil (Serm. ) On Elisha and Syrians (Serm. )

On Elisha and the Shulamite Woman (Serm. )

On Elisha (Serm. )

On Naaman the Leper (Serm. ) Elisha and the Samarian Famine (Serm. )

83

84

Alden Bass

Table 1 (continued) Lorsch

pseudo-Fulgentian

Vienna

On [Hezekiah and] the Cake of Figs (Serm. ) On Jonah (Serm.  and )

On Jonah (Serm. ) On the Three Boys (Serm. )

On the Three Boys (Serm.  and ) On Job (Serm. )

Community Defense and Polemics Preachers also used Scripture to define and maintain the bounds of the community against outgroups such as Jews, pagans, and Manichaeans.145 As Christians divided over doctrine and practice, sermons also became the arena for sectarian competition. From the fourth century onward the African church was racked with schism, resulting in the multiplication of dioceses and the phenomenon of dueling preachers vying for the allegiance of the local populace. Preachers used biblical texts to call out opponents deemed heretical or schismatic. Jesus’s words from Matt 10:16–18 – “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves . . .” – were invoked regularly to warn of heretics and schismatics.146 While the basic biblical narrative of creation, fall, and redemption through Jesus was common across sects, different aspects of the story were emphasized depending on the context. For instance, the Vienna Homilies contain a number of sermons featuring fraternal pairs in conflict (Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers), a feature which may reflect the internal divisions of the African church in the fourth and fifth centuries.147 Marginalized communities threatened by state sanctions – Donatists in the fourth and fifth centuries, Nicenes under Vandal rule – tended to play up texts on persecution and martyrdom, as well as texts about oppressive rulers. At one point, the Vandal king Geiseric threatened to exile bishops who implicitly critiqued Vandal rule using references to Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar in their

 F. Dolbeau, “Un témoignage inconnu contre des Manichéens d’Afrique,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 150 (2004): 228–9. See also the two Homoian sermons condemning pagans and Jews, Contra paganos and Contra Iudaeos in R. Gryson, Scripta arriana Latina 1 (CCSL 87:93–141).  Willis observes its place in Augustine’s lectionary. Augustine’s Lectionary, 40 and 71. On this process of “animalization” in the sectarian rivalries of the fifth century, see Shaw, Sacred Violence, 332–9.  Interest in fraternal pairs, which mirror the “bipartite body” of Christ, is also a significant feature of the Donatist Tyconius’s hermeneutics in his Book of Rules.

3 The Bible in Anonymous African Sermons

85

sermons.148 This may also explain the prominence of the prophets Elijah and Elisha – both highly critical of kings – in the catechetical collections listed in Table 1. Augustine, by contrast, downplayed and domesticated such “revolutionary” texts.149 Some differences may have run deeper. At least some Donatists in the fifth century continued to read Scripture through an apocalyptic lens, well after teachers like Augustine had adopted a more immanent eschatology. The anonymous Liber Genealogus preserves something of this apocalyptic narratio, hints of which can also be found in the other documents of the fifth-century Donatist Compendium.150 Donatist sermons, such as Cavete a pseudoprophetis in the Vienna Collection, reflect this alternative eschatology.151 Nevertheless, as Elena Zocca has argued, the sects did not differ to the point of heiresis, or different schools of interpretation.152 Far more often, sectarian rivals disputed particular interpretations which supported their position within the shared narratio. Donatists and Catholics, for instance, had a longstanding dispute over the correct reading of the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares and the global diffusion of the church.153 After the Vandal invasion in 428, the polemics narrowed to the finer points of the diphthong as Homoian and Homoousian Christians debated texts like Prov 8:22 (“The Lord created me in the beginning . . .”).154 The more defensive these polemical sermons (the Verona sermons are a good example), the less sophisticated their use of Scripture.155 Frequently, they devolved to prooftexting, asserting rather than arguing and leveraging the authority of Scripture to legitimate their positions. These sermons were used to convince the audience of their opponents’ error and brand them as haeretici worthy of punishment by the authorities.

 Conant, Staying Roman, 171. Ps-Fulgentius also preached on these figures: see, e.g., Serm. 8 (PL 65:868 and 950).  See C. de Wet, “Domesticating Suffering in North Africa: Augustine and the Preaching of the Psalms on the Feast Days of the Martyrs,” Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae 38 (2012): 1–19.  J. Hoover, The Donatist Church in an Apocalyptic Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 182–208.  W 39 (PLS 4:707–10). See Hoover, The Donatist Church in an Apocalyptic Age, 184.  E. Zocca, “La voce della dissidenza: omiletica donatista fra testo, contesto e metatesto,” Auctores nostri 14 (2014): 337–54.  Unfortunately, only the Catholic side of most of these disputes has survived. Careful analysis of those texts – especially Augustine’s – has, however, allowed some insight into the Donatist arguments. See Hoover, The Donatist Church in an Apocalyptic Age, 26–39. In at least two preserved anonymous Catholic sermons, the preachers emphasized that the apostles were sent to the whole world (Acts 1:8), and not only to Africa (Dolbeau, “Sermons ‘Africains’,” 26). On competing Donatist-Catholic interpretations of the Gospel of John, see J. Grabau, “John 4:23–24 in North African Preaching,” Scrinium 13 (2017): 136–53.  Ps-Au Serm. 246 (PL 39:2198–200).  Whelan, Being Christian in Vandal Africa, 62–65. See also Conant, Staying Roman, 170–9.

86

Alden Bass

Conclusion Sermons are one of the most important and abundant sources of information for the use of the Bible in late-antique North Africa, and a significant number of those sermons are anonymous. Unlike biblical treatises, sermons are records of the “living word” proclaimed in the assembly and thus arguably representative of a more common or popular understanding of Scripture. These sermons have the potential to expand our understanding of African biblical interpretation beyond well-known preachers such as Augustine, Quodvultdeus, and Fulgentius and to include sectarian leaders as well as minor Catholic figures (many of whom may remain unnamed). Transcending sectarian division, the sermons may also help us describe an African “canon within the canon” and to discern local traditions of interpretation. Significant advances have been made in the past decade which help sort and clarify these diverse texts, but much work remains to be done. Many manuscripts have not even been edited and it is likely that many have yet to be discovered. While Dolbeau has outlined criteria for classifying sermons as African, his standard has not yet been methodically applied by scholars. The creation of a digital database could help track this huge and confusing mass of sermons, which often appear in multiple manuscripts under different titles.156 It could also help identify borrowings between sermons, which would in turn allow for more accurate dating, or at least sequencing, of sermons. Besides comparing sermons within these anonymous collections, sermons could be compared with other Latin preachers, both Africans like Augustine and contemporary Europeans such as Zeno, Chromatius and Peter Chrysologus. Ultimately, African sermons were the primary vehicle of transmission for African theology and biblical interpretation into Europe. Western Christianity’s debt to all North Africa, and not only Augustine, will become clearer as these sermons are identified and analyzed. To study these anonymous sermons is to begin to acknowledge the contributions of forgotten African preachers, and, thereby, to dignify both the preachers and the vocation itself.

 The PASSIM project (https://applejack.science.ru.nl/passimproject), a digital database of patristic sermons under the direction of Shari Boodts, has already made some progress in this direction.

3 The Bible in Anonymous African Sermons

87

Further Reading Primary Sources There are hundreds of anonymous sermons edited and preserved in numerous locations. Convenient access to the primary literature is available through the bibliography in Dossey’s Peasant and Empire and the appendix to Shaw’s Sacred Violence (see n. 62 above). The most recent and comprehensive list can be found in Pignot’s “Introduction” to Latin Anonymous Sermons.

Secondary Sources Boodts, Shari, and Nicolas de Maeyer. “The Collectio Armamentarii (Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 175). Status Quaestionis and New Avenues of Research.” In Praedicatio Patrum: Studies on Preaching in Late Antique North Africa, edited by Gert Partoens, Anthony Dupont, and Shari Boodts, 95–134. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017. Dolbeau, François. Augustin et la prédication en Afrique: Recherches sur les divers sermons authentiques, apocryphes ou anonymes. Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiennes, 2005. Dolbeau, François. “Sermons ‘africains’: critères de localisation et exemple des sermons pour l’Ascension.” In Praedicatio Patrum: Studies on Preaching in Late Antique North Africa, edited by Gert Partoens, Anthony Dupont, and Shari Boodts, 9–36. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017. Pignot, Matthieu, ed. Latin Anonymous Sermons from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (AD 300–800): Classification, Transmission, Dating. Minesterium Sermonis 4. Turnhout: Brepols, 2021.

Johannes Brachtendorf

4 Scripture in Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram Introduction: De Genesi ad litteram in the Context of Classical Cosmologies Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram (Gen. litt.) is the most important work of Christian cosmology in antiquity and the Middle Ages. Prior to Martin Luther, there was no other interpretation of the biblical account of creation comparable to it either in aspiration or in impact. As late as the early 17th century, Galileo referred to Gen. litt. during his dispute with the Inquisition to support his claim that Scripture would never be interpreted contra the current state of knowledge in the empirical sciences.1 Characteristic for the cosmology of Augustine, as well as for the entirety of classical Christianity, is the attempt to interpret the biblical creation account with the help of philosophical cosmology as first explicated by Plato and developed in Neoplatonism. Indeed, it was the connection between religious authority and philosophical reflection that first truly generated the particularly effectual power of Christian cosmology. This connection was only possible because the basic understandings of both the Christians and the Platonists with respect to cosmology were quite similar, despite some significant differences in detail. For example, Christians held that the world did not emerge accidentally, but was made by their god. The world is not merely a given but was created according to a reasonable plan. From this, it follows that its materiality is good, not bad. The Creator did not make infinitely many worlds, but just this one, and it is the best of all possible worlds. In it, humans enjoy a special position as intellectually endowed, corporeal animate beings, who can do good or evil. Because of these convergences, the Christian authors saw themselves as justified in their recourse to the conceptual means of the pagan philosophers in order to defend Genesis from the attacks of Gnostics, Manicheans, fatalists, and materialists, all of whom sought to discredit faith in creation as irrational.

 Galileo refers to Gen. litt. 1.19.39 (CSEL 28/1:28–29). Cf. Galileo Galilei, Schriften, Briefe, Dokumente 2, ed. A. Mudry (Berlin: Rütten und Loening, 1987), 168–77. ✶ 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 on Augustine’s De libero arbitrio (2006) as well as numerous articles on philosophical topics in Augustine. He is editor of the Latin-German edition of Augustine’s complete works.

Johannes Brachtendorf, Universität Tübingen https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-005

90

Johannes Brachtendorf

The oldest author of this tradition is the Jewish scholar Philo of Alexandria (ca. 15 BCE–40 CE), whose work De opificio mundi represented the first attempt at interpreting Genesis in a Platonic framework.2 The first explicitly Christian cosmology was composed by Origin of Alexandria (185–254 CE). He composed a Genesis commentary in twelve books, which covered Gen 1:1–5:1. Unfortunately, this work is lost and has only been partially reconstructed.3 However, his homilies on the Hexateuch, the first of which treated Gen 1, and his systematic work De principiis have been preserved.4 From Basil of Caesarea (330–379 CE), nine homilies on Hexaemeron have been preserved.5 Gregory of Nyssa (335/340–ca. 394 CE) wrote an Apologia in Hexaemeron (Gen 1:1–19) and Ambrose of Milan (339–397 CE) composed another Hexaemeron (Gen 1:1–2:4).6 Augustine’s Gen. litt., which is comprised of twelve books and which covers Gen 1:1–3:24, is the pinnacle in this series. Although Augustine frequently discusses the interpretations of others, in Gen. litt., he never names names. Nevertheless, in Books 11–14 of the somewhat later De civitate Dei (Civ.), which also treat the topic of creation, he explicitly refers to Epicurus, Porphyry, Plato’s Timaeus, and Cicero’s translation of the Timaeus.7 In these books, he also engages with Origen by name.8 Augustine’s discussion also makes it clear that he is familiar with the teaching of the middle Platonist Atticus.9 Therefore, he finds himself in discussion with the most important representatives of the Platonic and Christian cosmologies of antiquity.

 Philo, De opificio mundi, in: Philonis Alexandrini opera qui supersunt, vol. 1, ed. L. Cohn (Berlin: Berolini G. Reimeri, 1896).  Origen, Die Kommentierung des Buches Genesis, in: Werke mit deutscher Übersetzung, vol. 1, trans. K. Metzler (New York/Berlin: DeGruyter, 2010).  Origen, Die Kommentierung des Buches Genesis.  Basilius, Homiliae in Hexaemeron (GCS NF 2 Mendieta/Rudberg [Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1997]).  Ambrosius, Exameron (CSEL 32:3–261).  For Epicurus, see Civ. 11.5 (CCSL 48:325–6); 14.2 (CCSL 48:414–6); for Porphyry, see Civ. 12.21 (CCSL 48:376–9); 12.27 (CCSL 48:383–4); for Plato’s Timaeus, see Civ. 11.21 (CCSL 48:339–40); 12.13 (CCSL 48:366–8); 12.19 (CCSL 48:375–6); 12.25 (CCSL 48:381); 12.27 (CCSL 48:383–4); and for Cicero’s translation of Timaeus, see Civ. 13.16 (CCSL 48:396–8).  See Civ. 11.23 (CCSL 48:341–3).  See Civ. 12.16 (CCSL 48:370–2). Atticus speculates that there is a pre-cosmic time engendered by chaotic movements of the world soul or intellectual beings.

4 Scripture in Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram

91

The Place of De Genesi ad litteram within Augustine’s Oeuvre The interpretation of Genesis occupied Augustine throughout his ecclesiastical career. In fact, Gen. litt. stands as the capstone for a series of efforts at interpreting Genesis by Augustine. All of these differ both with regard to the extensiveness of the text he interprets and with regard to his method of interpretation. At the beginning of this series is De Genesi aduersus Manichaeos (Gen. Man.; 388/ 89). In this work, with its anti-dualistic orientation included in its title, Augustine interprets Gen 1:1–3:24. He interprets Gen 1:1–27 essentially ad litteram (“to the letter”; cf. infra for discussion) but transitions increasingly to an allegorical method.10 De Genesi ad litteram liber unus imperfectus (Gen. imp.), an aborted project, which treats Gen 1:1–26 ad litteram, follows soon thereafter in 393. Augustine rediscovered this manuscript as he was compiling his Retractationes (Retract.; 427). By his own testimony, he only published it in order to illustrate his own thinking process, as the contents of this fragmentary effort were largely rendered obsolete once Gen. litt. was published.11 Books 11–13 of Confessiones (Conf.; ca. 400 CE) comprise Augustine’s third attempt at interpreting Genesis. The eleventh book contains his reflections on the meaning of “In the beginning” (Gen 1:1a), while the twelfth book offers an interpretation for the rest of the first verse, paying special attention to the expression “heaven and earth” (Gen 1:1b). In both books, he uses the interpretative method ad litteram. The thirteenth book encompasses Gen 1:2–2:3. After an introduction, which may be understood as interpretation ad litteram, Augustine interprets the text in a prophetic-allegoric manner.12 His fourth and most significant attempt is the substantial work Gen. litt. (ca. 401–415 CE).13 It is connected to Gen. Man. insofar as Augustine again interprets Gen 1:1–3:24, but this time he does so extensively in twelve books. He is explicit that it is his intention to use the method ad litteram exclusively. While he had already interpreted the six days of work (Gen 1:1–27) in this manner in both Gen. Man. and Gen. imp., he now interprets the stories of paradise and the fall into sin (Gen 2:8–3:24) in a literal sense for the first time. Gen. litt. undoubtedly constitutes the apex of Augustine’s interpretations of Genesis, but it was not his last effort. In Books 11–14 of Civ., Augustine reengages with Gen 1–3. His perspective in this work, however, is not that of an exegete who explicates his

 Cf. Gen. Man. 1.1.1–1.18.29 (CSEL 91:67–96).  Cf. Retract. 1.17 (CCSL 57:52–54).  The interpretation is clearly prophetic-allegorical from Conf. 13.7.8 (CCSL 27:245) onward, where Augustine explains the hovering of the spirit over the water (cf. Gen 1:2).  There is a variety of views regarding the dating of Gen. litt. Most conclude that Augustine began writing ca. 401 CE and finished ca. 415. For an overview, see P.-M. Hombert, Nouvelles Recherches de Chronologie Augustinienne (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2000), 8; and E. Moro, Agostino Commenti alle Genesi (testo latine a fronte), prefazione e note al testo latino di Giovanni Catapano, introduzione ai singoli commenti, traduzione, note e apparati di Enrico Moro (Florence: Bompiani, 2018), 325–5.

92

Johannes Brachtendorf

text verse for verse, but rather that of a systematic theologian. His concern is with the divine origin and order of created reality, particularly with respect to the beginning of both the civitas dei and the civitas terrena in the realm of the angels.14 Here too, his method of interpretation is ad litteram. Finally, there is Augustine’s Quaestiones in Heptateuchum (begun 419 CE). The object of Augustine’s interpretation in the Quaestiones is not the creation account in Gen 1–3. Instead, he begins with Genesis 4. In a sense, this work continues the work of Gen. litt., not only with regard to interpreting the Bible but also with regard to his method of interpretation. In this final effort, Augustine maintains an interpretation of the Bible ad litteram.

The Structure of Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram In his interpretation of Genesis 1–3, Augustine does not give equal consideration to every verse. The following overview in Table 1 makes this imbalance explicit. The left column shows which verses of Genesis Augustine interprets in which book of Gen. litt. The middle column describes the content of the relevant Bible verse, while the right column offers an indication of the systematic theology questions Augustine discusses in light of those Bible verses. Augustine sometimes meshes larger portions of the text together in one book, for example in the second and eleventh books. Occasionally, however, he treats just a few words or a very brief phrase or passage. For example, he dedicates the entire sixth book to the half-verse Gen 2:7a and the entire seventh book to the subsequent half-verse Gen 2:7b.15 The tenth and twelfth books disengage entirely from the text of Genesis. This shows that the factual questions regarding the human soul and its origin, the human body, and the relationship between paradisiacal bliss and eschatological perfection are particularly important to Augustine. The biblical text, in these cases, simply constitutes a point of departure for his profound systematic reflections. This is especially clear in the tenth book. Although the Bible reports the creation of Eve’s body from the rib of Adam, it fails to explain her ensoulment. Augustine effectively fills in the gap, taking this lacuna as an opportunity to reflect on the origin of the human soul in general, a topic that the Bible never addresses directly. From this it is fair to conclude that Augustine’s Gen. litt. is much more concerned with systematic questions than modern exegetical works usually are.

 Cf. Gen. litt. 11.13.17–11.26.33 (CSEL 28/1:345–59). Books 11 and 12 of Civ. in particular, contain clear parallels to the explanations of the creation and fall of the devil given in Book 11 of Gen. litt. Moreover, Augustine presents his doctrine of the two civitates as early as Gen. litt. 11.15.20 (CSEL 28/1:347–8). On the creation and fall of the angels, cf. Civ. 11.11–15 (CCSL 48:332–6); 11.17–20 (CSEL 28/1:336–9); 11.33–34 (CSEL 28/1:352–5); and 12.6–10 (CSEL 28/1:359–65).  The NRSV renders Gen 2:7 as, “Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” For Augustine’s Latin version, cf. Gen. litt. 6.1.1 (CSEL 28/1:170): “Et finxit deus hominem pulverem de terra et insufflavit in faciem ejus flatum vitae. Et factus homo in animam viventem.”

4 Scripture in Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram

93

Table 1: Structure of De Genesi ad litteram. Book

Topic

Question or Problem Addressed

Book I: Gen :–

 day of creation: heaven and earth, light and darkness

the creatura spiritalis as created rational being

Book II: Gen :–

nd–th day of creation: space, earth, plants and land animals

the physical structure of the cosmos

Book III: Gen :–

th–th days of creation: fish, birds, humans

useful and harmful animals/the human being as an image of God

Book IV: Gen :–

th day: God’s rest

the perfect number /the meaning of God’s rest

Book V: Gen :–

the green of the fields and the waters of the earth

the modes of creation: simultaneous creation in an instant and the unfolding of time/the seminales rationes as primal potencies

Book VI: Gen :a

the body of Adam

the animal body of Adam and the question concerning the immortality of the body

Book VII: Gen :b

the soul of Adam

the creation of Adam’s soul and the function of the human soul

Book VIII: Gen :–

the planting of the garden of paradise and the trees in the garden

knowledge of good and evil/sin as disobedience toward God

Book IX: Gen :–

the creation of Eve

why Eve was created; the good of marriage

Book X ——

——

the origin of the human soul – Creationism and Traducianism

Book XI: Gen :–:

the temptation of humans to sin and the expulsion from paradise

the nature of the devil and the fall of the angels/human sin

Book XII ——

——

paradise at the beginning, the third heaven of Paul, and the eternal bliss of the end / three kinds of vision

st

94

Johannes Brachtendorf

What Does Augustine Mean by an “ad litteram” Interpretation of Genesis 1–3? Four Modes of Interpretation and Spiritual Understanding In several works, including Gen. litt., Augustine discusses four different interpretive approaches for biblical, especially Old Testament, texts. These methods correspond to their basic characteristics, though they all differ in detail. Gen. Man. (2.2.3) is particularly foundational for Gen. litt. In the former, Augustine distinguishes interpretations: secundum historiam: according to history, secundum prophetiam: according to prophecy, secundum litteram: according to the letter, and figurate et in aenigmatibus: in figures and in enigmas.

Moreover, Augustine speaks here of “spiritaliter intellegere” (to understand spiritually) (1.17.27).16 At 2.2.3, he explains this as follows: “secundum historiam facta narrantur, secundum prophetiam futura praenuntiantur.”17 The interpretation of a text secundum litteram entails understanding it exclusively according to its wording.18 According to Augustine, this type of interpretation is to be preferred. Indeed, only when this method proves to be unsuitable should it be assumed that the Bible is speaking “figurate atque in aenigmatibus.”19 The interpretations secundum historiam, secundum prophetiam, and secundum litteram or figurate do not enjoy the same standing. The interpretations secundum litteram and figurate represent two alternatives, which, in one way or another, also apply to the other interpretive approaches. For example, the facts laid out in the interpretation secundum historiam could be understood either as such, that is, secundum litteram, or as intimations of the future, that is, figurate.20 Prophetic predictions, too, could be understood either secundum litteram or figuratively. The statement in the biblical account that follows the depiction of the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib serves as a case in point: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24 NRSV). Adam had neither a father nor a mother. Therefore, this statement cannot refer secundum historiam to Adam; it

 For a methodological analysis of Gen. Man., see M. Dulaey’s Introduction in BA 50:40–58. Cf. also R. Teske, “Introduction,” FC 91:6–31.  In Hill’s translation (WSA I/13:72), this is rendered as, “In terms of history deeds and events are being related, in terms of prophecy future events are being foretold.”  Gen. Man. 2.2.3 (CSEL 91:120–1): “Omnia quae dicta sunt secundum litteram accipere, id est non aliter intellegere quam littera sonat.”  Cf. Gen. Man. 2.2.3 (CSEL 91:121). Hill (WSA I/13:72) translates this phrase as “in a figurative sense and in riddles.”  Paul, for example, interprets the deaths of 23,000 Israelites by snakebite during the migration through the desert (1 Cor 10:1–11; cf. Num 21:4–9) as a warning for Christians when facing temptation.

4 Scripture in Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram

95

is rather to be read secundum prophetiam as a forecast for his progeny. As it stands, this prophecy is secundum litteram, but it is also possible to attribute a further, mysterious meaning to it. The apostle Paul attributes such a meaning when he writes, “This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church” (Eph 5:32 NRSV). Accordingly, Christ (the man) leaves the Father, which means that he has come to the world, in order to bind himself to the church (the woman). Paul interprets the prophecy of Gen 2:24 figurate et in aenigmatibus. The following table helps to clarify the relationship between these methods: Table 2: Augustinian modes of interpretation. secundum litteram proprie

figurate et in aenigmatibus allegorice

secundum historiam

IA Num :– the death of the grumbling Israelites

IIA  Cor :– a warning for us

secundum prophetiam

IB Gen : man and woman

IIB Eph : Christ and the church

The spiritual interpretation does not appear initially in this classification. Augustine does mention it elsewhere in Gen. Man., however, in his discussion of what it means for humans to be made in the image of God (cf. Gen 1:27).21 The language of the human as an image of God, he claims, should not be understood such that God is like humans in the sense that God has a body. Instead, it means that it is humans’ intellectual capacities that render them like God, who is a purely intellectual being. Whoever interprets this biblical passage in this manner understands it spiritaliter. Augustine does not explain in this context how the spiritual interpretation of a Bible verse relates to the other types of interpretation, but this example nevertheless allows us to draw a few conclusions. Here, the biblical account of human creation is understood neither figuratively nor prophetically; rather, it offers a depiction of a real event, that is, secundum historiam.22 In this regard, the spiritual interpretation functions as an example, a closer determination of the IA type of interpretation noted in the table above. In Gen. imp. 2.5 (as well as in De utilitate credendi 5), Augustine enumerates the interpretations secundum historiam/secundum allegoriam (figurate)/secundum analogiam

 Cf. Gen. Man. 1.17.27 (CSEL 91:94–5).  Figuratively, the creation of human beings corresponds to the incarnation of Christ (Gen. Man. 1.23.40 [CSEL 91:108–10]). If the creation account is understood as an allegory of the spiritual development of a person, then, as man and woman, the human likeness to God depicts the unity of intellectus and actio from which good works flow (Gen. Man. 1.25.43 [CSEL 91:112–4]).

96

Johannes Brachtendorf

(Old Testament–New Testament) / secundum aetiologiam.23 This list, however, does not include an interpretation ad litteram.24

De doctrina christiana: On the Proper Treatment of Words Augustine discusses additional methodological considerations in Book 3 of De doctrina christiana (Doctr. chr.), where he takes up the question of figurative (figurate) or literal (ad litteram) biblical interpretation.25 He describes two possible mistakes in the treatment of words that are to be avoided in a correct ad litteram interpretation. The first mistake consists in interpreting a figurative manner of speech literally. Paul had already warned against such conflation when, in his second letter to the Corinthians, he wrote, “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3:6 NRSV; “Littera occidit, spiritus autem vivificat”). The second mistake consists in underestimating the range of meaning inherent in many biblical expressions. This is because that which a word directly signifies could itself refer to something else and thus provide the original term with a different meaning.26 This mistake occurs when the eye of the mind is not elevated beyond the immediately signified corporeal thing to receive the eternal light.27 Whoever merely follows the letter does not understand that a word may designate a sensuously perceivable object even as it ultimately intends to indicate an intelligible reality. Both errors result in the subjugation of the intellect to the flesh. In the first case, the error manifests, for example, in taking Old Testament precepts, such as the observation of the Sabbath, as absolute, instead of relativizing them in light of the salvation history leading to Christ. According to Augustine, the Jews commit this error.28 In the second case, the subordination of the intellect to the flesh results in a restricted view of the metaphysical nature of reality. It takes the material world to be the only

 In Util. cred. 6–8 (CSEL 25/1:8–12), Augustine explains that all of the types of interpretation of Old Testament texts previously mentioned are in principle legitimate because Jesus and the apostles used them. He then offers examples from both the Gospels and Paul.  Augustine did not assign this fragment the title De Genesi ad litteram imperfectus (Gen. imp.) until he composed his Retract. some thirty-five years after its composition.  Cf. Augustine, Doctr. chr. (ed. M. Simonetti, Sant’Agostino: L’istruzione cristiana [Rome: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 1994]), 3.5.9–3.6.10 (180–4); 3.10.14 (190); 3.15.23 (200); and 3.24.34–3.29.41 (214–22).  Augustine captures both of these mistakes when he observes at Doctr. chr. 3.5.9 (ed. Simonetti, 180–2): “Qui enim sequitur litteram, translata verba sicut propria tenet, neque illud quod proprio verbo significatur, refert ad aliam significationem.”  Doctr. chr. 3.5.9 (ed. Simonetti, 180–2): “Et demum est miserabilis animae servitus, signa pro rebus accipere; et supra creaturam corpoream oculum mentis ad hauriendum aeternum lumen levare non posse.”  Cf. Doctr. chr. 3.6.10–3.9.13 (ed. Simonetti, 182–8).

4 Scripture in Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram

97

reality and loses sight of all that is immaterial. This, too, is a form of fleshly thinking that the mind must overcome. Augustine suggests that Paul renders this opposition in his distinction between carnales and spiritales in 1 Corinthians. Augustine attributes this metaphysical error less to the Jews, who were accustomed to refer all reality back to God, than to the pagans, who worship idols, and to those who hold materialistic worldviews, especially the Manichaeans. Both of these false orientations regarding the letter are carnal (carnalis). By contrast, the true interpretation ad litteram is spiritual (spiritalis). It loosens itself from the letter of the law (which in the creation account is particularly significant with respect to God’s day of rest and its importance for the Sabbath), and it knows with certainty that Genesis often appeals to invisible realities under the name of visible things. According to Augustine, therefore, Genesis should be interpreted ad litteram, though spiritaliter, not carnaliter. This distinction further clarifies the role of spiritual interpretation. Doctr. chr. also confirms the impression already made in Gen. Man. that it is a mode of interpretation secundum litteram (IA). It is a literal interpretation that is not confined to sensuously perceivable reality; rather, it appropriately includes the higher reality of intelligible being. Table 3 illustrates and clarifies these relationships: Table 3: Carnal vs. Spiritual Interpretation. carnaliter ad litteram

spiritaliter ad litteram

Salvation history ( Cor :)

a Sabbath commandment

a peace in God as the goal of human life

Metaphysics ( Cor :–,)

b reduction of reality to materiality

b inclusion of intelligible reality

De Genesi ad litteram: The Eternal, the Temporal and the Historical According to Gen. litt. 1.1.1, the interpreter regards: quae aeterna intimentur/that which relates the eternal, quae facta narrentur/that which narrates facts, quae futura praenuntientur/that which foretells future events, and quae agenda praecipiantur vel admonentur/that which prescribes or suggests actions to be done.

What is striking about this list, like those in Gen. imp. and Util. cred., is that Augustine does not mention ad litteram interpretation overtly. Striking, too, is that Augustine does not name the perspective of the interpretation (secundum . . .). Instead, he highlights the object that the interpreter engages. These objects become visible, however,

98

Johannes Brachtendorf

in a certain perspective, a fact that clearly demonstrates the connections between this list and the older ones. Thus, the view of the interpreter on quae facta narrentur evidently belongs to the interpretation secundum historiam, about which, in Gen. Man. 2.2.3, Augustine comments “secundum historiam facta narrantur.” And the attention to the future (quae futura praenuntientur) corresponds to the prophetic interpretation, about which Augustine writes, “secundum prophetiam futura praenuntiantur.”29 An overview of Gen. litt. shows that Augustine predominantly addresses questions of method in particular chapters of the work.30 In these chapters, he primarily contrasts two types of interpretation. He characterizes one type as ad litteram/ad proprietatem litterae/proprie/secundum proprietatem rerum gestarum, or simply as the consideration of quod factum est. Augustine links here the interpretations secundum historiam and secundum litteram, and he uses the term “proprie” (“strictly” or “properly”) in order to characterize this kind of interpretation. The other type of interpretation he calls figurate/in figura/allegoria prophetica/figurate et prophetice, or something similar. In such cases, the point apparently is quae futura praenuntientur (“future things announced beforehand”).31 How is the interpretation intimating the eternal (quae aeterna intimentur) to be classified? Augustine does not specify this in any of his earlier lists. However, indications are present in passages in which Augustine exhorts readers to a spiritual understanding of the creation account. During his discussion of the human likeness to God in Gen. Man., Augustine addresses the upright posture of humans, saying, “This signifies that our spirit also ought to be held upright, turned to the things above it, that is to eternal, spiritual realities.”32 The important issue here is the connection of aeterna with the spiritalia. Augustine offers another indication in Doctr. chr. when he characterizes the spiritual treatment of the letters (in contrast to the merely fleshly treatment) as entailing the elevation of the interpreter’s eye to the eternal light above and beyond the material world.33 Here, too, Augustine establishes a link between spiritual interpretation and the beholding of the eternal. Such indications suggest that the interpretation intimating the eternal, which Augustine first mentions in the list offered in Gen. litt. 1.1.1,

 Hill (WSA I/13:72) translates these phrases as “in terms of history deeds and events are being related,” and “in terms of prophecy future events are being foretold” respectively.  These chapters are: Gen. litt. 1.1.1–2 (CSEL 28/1:3–4); 1.17.34 (CSEL 28/1:25); 2.1.4 (CSEL 28/1:34–35); 2.9.22 (CSEL 28/1:47); 4.28.45 (CSEL 28/1:126–7); 8.1.2–8.2.5 (CSEL 28/1:229–33); 11.1.2 (CSEL 28/1:334–5); 11.31.41 (CSEL 28/1:364–5); 11.36.49–11.40.54 (CSEL 28/1:370–1).  For the opposition of literal and figurative interpretations in Gen. litt., see P.-M. Bogaert and I. Bochet, “Scriptura,” AugLex 5:162–4. See also P. Agaësse, A. Solignac, “Introduction générale,” BA 48:32–50.  Gen. Man. 1.17.28 (WSA I/13:57, trans. Hill.) Cf. CSEL 91:96: “Quo significatur etiam animum nostrum in superna sua, id est in aeterna spiritalia, erectum esse debere.”  Doctr. chr. 3.5.9 (ed. Simonetti, 182): “Supra creaturam corpoream oculum mentis ad hauriendum aeternum lumen levare.”

4 Scripture in Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram

99

implies a spiritual interpretation of the text that does not only remain tied to material things but also considers intelligible reality. Therefore, the interpretations with regard to the facta and the aeterna can be compiled into a single interpretation secundum litteram, which is not carnaliter but spiritaliter (see Table 3, Category 2b). In order to better understand the role of the aeterna, it is necessary to consider which facta are referenced in Genesis 1–3. These facta may be subdivided into two types – on the one hand, God’s creative works (Gen 1:1–2:7) and, on the other, the composition of the garden of paradise along with all of the actions and speeches narrated in the story of the fall (Gen 2:8–3:24). Augustine’s biblical text employs a form of facere in the first sentence: “In principio fecit Deus caelum et terram” (Gen 1:1; “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth.” [NRSV]). Moreover, at both the beginning and the end of the report of each day of creation, it is said: “et facta est,” “and it was made”; “et sic est factum,” “and so it was done).” These facta concern the generation of finite reality by God at the first instant of time. By contrast, the second kind of facta (Gen 2:8–3:24) occurs within an already constituted creation. God, humans, and the devil undertake actions over time in a world that already exists. A distinction thus obtains between metaphysical facta, the generation of creatures out of nothing, and the historical facta narrated in the description of paradise and the story of humanity’s fall into sin. The explanation of the metaphysical facta, that is, the deeds of creation, particularly compels recourse to the eternal because they explain that all of reality is made by God. In contrast to the temporality of the God-created world, God is eternal. God creates through his eternal Word, his only begotten Son. This eternal Word, moreover, contains the eternal reasons (aeternae rationes) that inform material creatures.34 According to Augustine, the creation account speaks indirectly about the creation of the angels, who, while not eternal like God, still participate in God’s eternity in timeless contemplation. All of the facta that were created out of nothing are grounded in the eternal God and his coeternal Word. A reflective and metaphysically informed explanation of the creation account, which Augustine intends to offer, has to explicate the indications of the eternal, to grasp them systematically, and to develop them in the context of questions concerning the Creator’s eternity. Consequently, the explanation of the aeterna, according to Augustine, is an integral part of the interpretation of the creation account ad litteram. It does not belong to figurative or allegorical interpretative efforts. Instead, it addresses the establishment of creatures in the proper sense (in creaturarum conditione proprie).35 The following example demonstrates that Augustine attributes the reading of the creation account with respect to the aforementioned aeterna to the interpretation ad litteram/proprie. In Gen. litt. 4.28.45, he summarizes his doctrine of the angelic world

 Cf. Gen. litt. 4.24.41 (CSEL 28/1:123–4).  Cf. Gen. litt. 4.8.45 (CSEL 28/1:126–7).

100

Johannes Brachtendorf

(spiritalis et angelica creatura): They are the “light” and the “day,” the “evening” and the “morning” (Gen 1:3–5); they contemplate the eternal Word of God, and they see themselves and the rest of the creatures in the invariable truth. No one, he emphasizes, should commit the error of conceiving this highly metaphysical interpretation of the light, day, evening, and morning as figurative or allegorical (figurate atque allegorice). Rather, this kind of interpretation is definitely proprie, and thus ad litteram. This interpretation seems to contradict the normal use of language according to which evening and morning refer to the physical sunlight and not the intelligible light of the angels. This does not mean, however, that the normal use of language is proprie and that the understanding of the angelic world must be, therefore, figurate. The inverse is more likely the case, Augustine argues, because the intelligible light more truly evokes evening and morning than does the physical sunlight. Incidentally, even though Augustine believes his interpretation to be correct, he does not deem it obligatory. He encourages those who are not satisfied with his interpretation but who, like him, do seek an interpretation proprie, and not a prophetic-figurative interpretation (non in prophetia figurate), to keep searching for a better one.36 The situation is different with respect to the historical facta, as it is no longer a matter of the eternal ground, but rather a question of historicity. Did the actions and speeches reported in Gen 2:8–3:24 actually occur, or should the corresponding narratives be understood metaphorically? A first issue concerns paradise itself. Did paradise factually exist as a physical place in space and time, thus corporaliter, or is it simply a spiritual dimension? The same question arises concerning the expulsion from paradise. Did humans really have to leave this place to which they had become accustomed, or is the text actually speaking about the loss of the highest good or beatitude? It is no coincidence that Augustine returns to the question of method at the very beginning of the Book 8, in which he interprets the garden of paradise (Gen 2:8–17), and again at the beginning of Book 11, in which he interprets the story of the fall into sin (Gen 2:25–3:24). His maxim is that the narratives of paradise and of the fall into sin must be understood as historical reports that record what actually happened. Augustine claims that the entire narrative of paradise does not use figurative speech in the way that, for example, the Song of Songs does. Instead, it is presented like a historical report, similar to the reports found in the four books of Reigns (i.e I–II Samuel and I–II Kings).37 Therefore, these texts should be understood ad litteram, that is, as actual portrayals of historically real events.

 Gen. litt. 4.28.45 (CSEL 28/1:127): “Quisquis ergo non eam, quam pro nostro modulo vel indagare vel putare potuimus, sed aliam requirit in illorum dierum enumeratione sententiam, quae non in prophetia figurate, sed in hac creaturarum conditione proprie meliusque possit intellegi, quaerat et divinitus adiutus inveniat.” Augustine makes a similar statement in Gen. imp. 2.5 (CSEL 28/1:461), where he claims that the interpretation secundum historiam covers both the human and the divine.  Cf. Gen. litt. 8.1.2 (CSEL 28/1:229–30).

4 Scripture in Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram

101

Augustine does, however, introduce a difference: God and the other actors in this narrative are occasionally attributed with statements and expressions whose contents may not be reasonably understood ad litteram. Augustine observes that the content of God’s curse of the snake only can be understood figuratively insofar as God directs it not at the snake but at the devil, who used the snake in order to speak to humans.38 Nonetheless, it is not to be doubted that these words were actually spoken in paradise at that point in time.39 Similarly, God’s speeches concerning the punishment of the woman and the man (cf. Gen 3:16–19) are to be understood as historically real events, even if the contents of these speeches may be interpreted figuratively (figurate), prophetically (prophetice), or literally (ad proprietatem litterae). The same approach applies to the language of the fabrication of the coats of skin (cf. Gen 3:21).40 According to Augustine, it should always be assumed that the speeches and actions recorded in Scripture as historical facta did occur. Having granted this assumption, however, one can ask whether the meaning of the contents of these speeches and actions should be understood ad proprietatem litterae or whether they are better understood (or, perhaps are only understandable) figuratively or prophetically. Unquestionably the expulsion of humans from paradise (cf. Gen 3:24) has a metaphorical meaning insofar as paradise spiritaliter designates the blessed life, which humans lost through sin. This potential, however, should not lead to the assumption that the expulsion itself represents a mere spiritual occurrence. Indeed, according to Augustine, it did occur as a concrete, historical fact.41 To interpret these biblical narratives ad litteram entails apprehending them as reports of historically real facts. In comparison with his earlier attempts at interpreting Genesis, Augustine appears more cognizant in Gen. litt. that there are two different kinds of facta operating in Genesis 1–3, namely, those generated by the eternal God ex nihilo and those done by various actors in history. He therefore distinguishes in this work the explanation of the aeterna from the interpretation of the facta and combines them both with an understanding ad litteram with respect to the works of creation. With respect to the interpretation of historical reports ad litteram, by contrast, it is not a matter of the eternal reasons but of the historicity of the facta.

 Gen. litt. 8.1.2 (CSEL 28/1:229–30) includes a reference to Gen. Man. and to a passage in which he had already explained the figurative meaning of this text. Cf. Gen. Man. 2.17.26–2.18.27 (CSEL 91:92–95).  Gen. litt. 11.1.2 (CSEL 28/1:334–5): “Si autem in verbis dei vel cujusquam personae in officium propheticum adsumtae dicitur aliquid, quod ad litteram nisi absurde non possit intellegi, procul dubio figurate dictum ob aliquam significationem accipi debet; dictum tamen esse dubitare fas non est.”  Cf. Gen. litt. 11.38.51–11.39.52 (CSEL 28/1:373–4).  Gen. litt. 11.40.55 (CSEL 28/1:375): “Et hoc significandi gratia factum est, sed tamen factum, ut contra paradisum, quo beata vita etiam spiritaliter significabatur, habitaret peccator utique in miseria. . . . non tamen frustra factum esse nisi quia significat aliquid etiam de spiritali paradiso non est utique dibitandum.”

102

Johannes Brachtendorf

Platonism and Its Critique in De Genesi ad litteram: Platonic Philosophy in Augustine’s Understanding of Genesis Augustine’s inclusion of the eternal in his interpretation of Genesis demonstrates that Platonism provides the philosophical background for his doctrine of creation. In late antiquity, the Platonic academy was the only philosophical school that conceived the eternal as the ground of the temporal. In Civ. 8, Augustine singles out the Platonists from all of the other philosophical schools because they established God as the creator both of material and spiritual reality and because they conceived of God as immutable, intelligible light: These [the Platonists] acknowledge a God above the whole realm of soul, a God who made not only this visible world, which is often called heaven and earth, but also every soul whatsoever. They acknowledge, too, that it is this God who makes the rational and intellectual soul – and the human soul is of this kind – blessed by participation in his immutable and incorporeal light.42

Here, as elsewhere, Augustine praises the Platonists for the fact that among the classical philosophical schools they alone have correctly apprehended, according to the Christian view, the notion of creation. He writes that only the Platonists “with their knowledge of God, are the ones who have discovered where to locate the cause by which the universe was constituted.”43 Augustine recognizes close parallels between Plato’s depiction of creation in Timaeus and the biblical narration of creation. These parallels suggest to Augustine that Plato must have orally received knowledge of the Old Testament and of its account of creation specifically during a visit to Egypt. The coincidence between the images of God in the Old Testament and in Plato finds its most poignant formulation in Ex 3:14: “‘I am who am, and you shalt say to the children of Israel, He who is sent me unto you.’ It is as if, in comparison with the one who truly is, because he is immutable, the things which were created mutable have no real existence at all.”44 The immutable, eternal God, who truly is, created mutable beings, which, because of their transience and dependence, possess being solely in a diminished capacity. According to Augustine, this insight constitutes the common basis of the doctrine of creation in both the Old Testament and in Platonism.

 Civ. 8.11 (CCSL 47:217; WSA I/6:242, trans. Babcock): “Isti vero supra omnem animae naturam confitentur deum, qui non solum mundum istum visibilem, qui saepe caeli et terrae nomine nuncupatur, sed etiam omnem omnino animam fecerit, et qui rationalem et intellectualem, cujus generis anima humana est, participatione sui luminis incommutabilis et incorporei beatam facit.”  Civ. 8.10 (CCSL 47:227; WSA I/6:254, trans. Babcock): “Isti deo cognito reppererunt ubi esset et causa constitutae universitatis.”  Civ. 8.11 (CCSL 47:228; WSA I/6:256, trans. Babcock): “Ego sum qui sum, et dices filiis Israel: qui est, misit me ad vos, tamquam in ejus comparatione, qui vere est quia incommutabilis est, ea quae mutabilia facta sunt non sint.”

4 Scripture in Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram

103

When Augustine was working on Gen. litt., such Platonic readings of Genesis, while not new, were still relatively unknown in the Latin West.45 Augustine first encountered Platonic philosophy among the intellectuals who surrounded Ambrose of Milan. In Conf. 6 and 7, he reports how in Milan, he was liberated from his materialistic image of God by the influence of Neoplatonic writings and how he came to accept the Platonic understanding of God as an intelligible, immutable being. According to Augustine, Ambrose often cited in his sermons the hermeneutic maxim of Paul from 2 Cor 3:6 that “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” Through a spiritual (spiritaliter) interpretation, Ambrose was able to remove the appearance of absurdities (absurda) from the Old Testament and, by extension, eliminate what was objectionable in the texts. Nevertheless, Augustine remained undecided regarding the truth of this explanation because, at that point, he was only capable of thinking about the spiritual (spiritalia) in a corporeal manner and did not yet have a concept of the eternal truth of God.46 It was only after reading the Neoplatonic writings that Augustine attained the capacity to see the immaterial, immutable light of God with the eye of his soul.47 He came to understand that Holy Scripture could be read in two different ways: first, in the simple language in which it immediately presents itself to every reader and second, as it shows itself to those who seek an intellectually sound understanding of its secrets (in intellectu profundiore) and who are capable of apprehending the reasoned truths it contains.48 In the latter sense, Augustine drew from a Neoplatonic-saturated understanding of the prologue to John, a text that serves as a complement to and commentary on the creation account of Genesis. It offers information on the “beginning,” and it explains God’s speaking during creation via the doctrine of God’s eternal Word, the second person of the Trinity.49 Consequently, Augustine distinguishes between two groups of readers. The first group consists in recipients unversed in philosophy, who read the Bible in its directly accessible wording but who run into difficulties when it comes to the text’s logical consistency. Augustine frequently characterizes this group as the “little ones,” “those slow to understand,” or the “unknowledgeable.”50 The second philosophical group, composed of those versed in Platonic theories, recognizes the deeper meaning of the text, especially of the biblical creation account. They read Genesis more profoundly,

 Several scholars have noted a widespread anti-intellectualism in the North African church. Cf., e.g., R. Teske’s “Introduction” in FC 84:10–12.  Conf. 6.4.6 (CCSL 27:77).  Conf. 7.9.13 (CCSL 27:101) and Conf. 7.10.16 (CCSL 27:103–4).  Cf. Conf. 6.5.8 (CCSL 27:78–79).  Cf. Conf. 7.9.13 (CCSL 27:101).  Augustine speaks of parvuli (Gen. litt. 2.6.13 [CSEL 28/1:41–42]; 5.3.6 [CSEL 28/1:141]), carnales (Gen. litt. 1.2.5 [CSEL 28/1:5–6]; 4.34.55 [CSEL 28/1:135–6]; 8.21.41 [CSEL 28/1:260]; 9.14.24 [CSEL 28/1:284–5]), tardiores (Gen. litt. 1.14.28 [CSEL 28/1:20–21]; 6.6.9 [CSEL 28/1:176–7]), and also of imperitiores and animales. His subdivision of readers can be found already in Gen. Man. 1.1.2 (CSEL 91:67–68); 1.17.27 (CSEL 91:94–95); and also in Gen. imp. 5.19 (CSEL 28/1:471); 7.28 (CSEL 28/1:478–9), as well as in Conf. 12.4.4 (CCSL 27:218); 12.27.37 (CCSL 27:236–7); and 13.18.23 (CCSL 27:254–5) among other places.

104

Johannes Brachtendorf

on a level which requires the exercise of reason. On this level, the philosophical theology of Moses coincides with the metaphysics of Plato. Motivated by the Johannine prologue, this group applies a Platonic hermeneutic to the biblical account of creation.

Augustine’s Platonic-Pauline Hermeneutic: Carnales and Spiritales as Readers of Genesis According to Augustine, the biblical text exhibits two levels of meaning, namely that of the literal words and that of the deeper reality. The same text may be understood in two ways, either naïvely or reflectively. Augustine formulates this double-hermeneutic of the two levels in Conf. In Book 2, for instance, he writes, “What wonderful profundity there is in your utterances! The surface meaning lies open before us and charms beginners. Yet the depth is amazing, my God, the depth is amazing.”51 While the superficial meaning of the text is attractive to the little ones, the naïve and uneducated readers, the profound meaning, not apparent to the eye but unlocked by reason, is “amazing” to the wise. Augustine suggests that the simple level of meaning is devised for those who know only material reality, whereas the profound meaning shows itself to the readers informed by Platonic philosophy. For they know that there is an eternal, intelligible reality beyond changeable, material reality. Augustine’s hermeneutic is not just Platonically-inspired, however. It also possesses a Pauline hue, as his mention of the “little ones” demonstrates. In 1 Cor 3:1–2, Paul writes, “And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food.”52 Paul’s distinction of the spiritales from the carnales will become central for Augustine. He observes that the spiritales to whom the text refers are the Platonically educated readers of the creation account who discern intelligible reality. By contrast, the carnales are the naïve, materialistically minded recipients who deem real only what they can grasp with their hands and see with their eyes because they are incapable of apprehending even the notion of an immaterial reality.

 Conf. 12.14.17 (CCSL 27:224): “Mira profunditas eloquiorum tuorum, quorum ecce ante nos superficies blandiens parvulis: sed mira profunditas, deus meus, mira profunditas!” Cf. E. Moro, “Mira profunditas eloquiorum tuorum: Agostino interprete dei primi versetti della Genesi nelle Confessiones e nel De Genesi ad litteram,” in On Genesis. Philosophical Interpretations of the Hexaemeron in Patristic and Medieval Literature, eds. G. Catapano and E. Moro (Padova: Il poligrafo, 2016), 11–39 [=Medioevo: rivista di storia della filosofia medievale 61 (2016): 11–39].  See the (NRSV). Augustine’s Latin version reads: “Et ego, fratres, non potui vobis loqui quasi spiritualibus, sed quasi carnalibus, tamquam parvulis in Christo. Lac vobis potum dedi, non escam: nondum enim poteratis.”

4 Scripture in Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram

105

In 1 Cor 2:10–16, Paul distinguishes between those persons to whom God reveals the depths of himself through the spiritus Dei and those sensual persons (animalis homo) who cannot comprehend what the spirit of God reveals. Paul’s invocation of the parvuli in Christo, however, attenuates this brusque juxtaposition, converting it into a project of paraenesis. After all, the carnales are also members of the congregation in Corinth, even if they are parvuli in Christo. In order for them to grow from being little ones into adults, they require sustenance. The apostle gives them this food first in the form of milk, according to their ability (cf. 1 Cor 3:2). They will receive more substantive food upon having become spiritales. Obviously, Paul does not distinguish between two human species, one fleshly and the other spiritual; rather, he believes that fleshly humans can grow into spiritual humans if they receive proper nourishment. Augustine explicitly utilizes this Pauline notion of instruction for his Platonic hermeneutic of Genesis. The spiritales and the carnales, understood as parvuli in Christo, read the same biblical creation story. The latter, however, orient their reading to the superficial meaning, that is, to milk, whereas the spiritales penetrate to the deeper meaning, that is, to more substantive food. The superficial reading on the part of the naïve is legitimate because it corresponds to the horizon of their understanding. Nevertheless, the goal of instruction is to lead the carnales to a deeper understanding so that they no longer need to drink milk but are able to eat solid food.53 The original motivation for Augustine’s development of his Platonic-Pauline Genesis hermeneutic was likely apologetic, as a glance at the beginning of Gen. Man. illustrates. In their critique of Genesis, the Manicheans attacked “the weaker brethren and the little ones among us,” who could not defend themselves.54 With this PlatonicPauline hermeneutic, Augustine thus seeks to protect the little ones. Like these “little ones,” the Manicheans are carnales. They, too, read Genesis superficially. In contrast to the “parvuli in Christo,” however, their materialistic understanding is not oriented specifically toward the Christian faith in the goodness of creation.55 Instead, they

 In Gen. Man. 1.23.40 (CSEL 91:108–10), Augustine invokes a similar juxtaposition of the spiritalis homo and the animalis homo that draws on 1 Cor 2:14–15. In Conf. 13, too, Augustine refers to 1 Cor 2:10–16, where Paul writes that only the spirit of God is capable of fathoming the depths of God. According to Augustine, the homo spiritalis, who apprehends the principles of creational metaphysics – especially the eternity of the Creator – sees through the spirit of God. When the homo spiritalis sees God in this way, it is actually God who sees himself in this seeing. Cf. Conf. 13.29.44 (CCSL 27:268): “Sic ea, quae vos per spiritum meum videtis, ego video,” and Conf. 13.31.46 (CCSL 27:269–70): “Qui autem per spiritum tuum vident ea, tu vides in eis.” Augustine also takes recourse to 1 Cor 2–3 in the first tractate on the Gospel of John. Pervasive throughout this composition is the problem of how the statement, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God (John 1:1),” which only could be understood in its fullest theoretical sense by spiritual persons, could also be made accessible to the “little ones” (cf. Tract. Ev. Jo. 1.1–2 [CCSL 36:1–2]; 1.8–13 [CCSL 36:4–8]).  Gen. Man. 1.1.2 (CSEL 91:67–68): “infirmos et parvulos nostros.”  At the beginning of Gen. imp. Augustine formulates the principles of what it means to have faith in creation’s goodness (cf., Gen. imp. 1.2–4 [CSEL 28/1:459–61]).

106

Johannes Brachtendorf

point to the self-contradictions and absurdities of the biblical text in order to dismantle such faith. The parvuli in Christo do not have any retort besides a dogmatic adherence to faith because they also base their reading on the superficial meaning of the text. Augustine’s hermeneutic aims at shielding the weak and small from the Manichean attacks by showing them how and where the superficial interpretation can transcend into the profound interpretation and how the fleshly (carnalis) understanding can be overcome through a spiritual (spiritalis) understanding. The supposed selfcontradictions and absurdities dissolve once one transcends to the plane of profound interpretation. At that level, the Manichaean attacks are shown to be empty, and the Manichaeans demonstrate themselves to be readers with an inadequate, fleshly understanding of the text.

Augustine’s Metaphysics of Creation and His Critique of Platonism The following principles form the foundation of Augustine’s metaphysics of creation: God is the immutable ground of all mutable reality. God is eternal; creation is temporal. God creates through his Word, which is coeternal with him and has neither beginning nor end. As the Son of God, the Word is of the same substance as the Father. In this Word are all of the forms of every created thing. Through the Word, all creatures receive their determinateness and order. God alone is Creator. He created everything from nothing. Although Augustine adopts many conceptions from Platonic cosmology, his creational metaphysics is not identical to it. In fact, significant differences obtain, which can be summarized in Augustine’s radicalization of the distinction between Creator and creatures. Whereas Platonism establishes manifold gradations and transitions between both spheres, Augustine establishes a sharp separation. This fundamental distinction can be demonstrated by investigating three topics from Gen. litt.

First: The Divine Nous and the Eternal Word of God Augustine reflects on the meaning of God’s speech at the creation of the world. According to the Bible’s superficial meaning, God spoke repeatedly and with an audible voice: “Let there be . . .” Yet only the carnales and the parvuli stop at this understanding. The spiritales, in contrast, know that God is eternal, immutable, and immaterial. Therefore, his speech, unlike human speech, cannot have been acoustically audible, and it cannot have had a beginning and an end because in God’s nature, nothing comes to be and

4 Scripture in Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram

107

nothing passes away.56 According to the philosophical understanding, the expression “God spoke” refers to the Son of God as the coeternal Word of the Father. In this Word, the entire creation is preconceived. It thus constitutes the “beginning” in which God created everything. Interpreted in this way, the Son corresponds to Plato’s demiurge and, even more closely, to the second divine hypostasis in Plotinus’s thought. Augustine suggests that the biblical notion of God’s speech refers to the Neoplatonic doctrine of hypostases. Nevertheless, he simultaneously asserts an important distinction. For the Neoplatonists, the nous, as the second hypostasis, is subordinate to the One, the first hypostasis, because it emerges from it. For Augustine, who accepted Nicene theology as orthodox, the Son is of the same substance as the Father and coeternal with him. Whereas Neoplatonism conceives creation as a hierarchical but nonetheless continual process of generation from the highest being, God, down to matter, Augustine, by contrast, radicalizes the difference between the eternal Creator God and the contingent creation that was brought forth from nothingness.

Second: The Creation of Matter Out of Nothingness The biblical expressions “heaven” and “earth” require a separate discussion. When the Bible speaks of “heaven” and “earth,” according to Augustine’s philosophical interpretation, it means the formless matter at the base of all material and immaterial creatures. As Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists conceived it, this matter is featureless and thus invisible. Because the little ones, in their intellectual frailty, cannot imagine any invisible reality, the Bible gives this matter the name of known and visible realities.57 The carnales and the spiritales read the same text. The carnales understand it in a superficial sense as depicting visible things like the blue sky and the dark earth, whereas the spiritales recognize in it the profound sense, indicating invisible, formless matter understood as a metaphysical principle. Whereas Plato deems this matter eternal and uncreated, Augustine asserts that it, too, was created.58 Plato’s demiurge discovers matter as already existing when he begins to create. By contrast, the Bible explicitly claims that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” According to Augustine’s philosophical reading, this statement means that God created the formless, invisible matter in the beginning. God made this matter out of nothing. In contradistinction to Plato, who represents the creation of the cosmos as a forming of all things out of a preexistent, formless substratum, Augustine, along with

 See Gen. imp. 5.19 (CSEL 28/1:471); and Gen. litt. 2.6.13 (CSEL 28/1:41–42).  Cf. Gen. Man. 1.5.8 (CSEL 91:74–75); 1.7.12 (CSEL 91:78–79); Gen. imp. 4.11 (CSEL 28/1:465–6); Conf. 12.4.4 (CCSL 27:218); and Gen. litt. 1.14.28 (CSEL 28/1:20–21).  Plato, Timaeus 52d–53c (Platonis Opera, vol. IV, ed. J. Burnet [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902]); see also, Plotinus, Enn. IV 8. 6. 18 (Plotini Opera, tomus II, ed. P. Henry et H.-R. Schwyzer [Paris: Desclée de Brouwer-L’Edition Universelle, 1959], 244). Cf., e.g., and in contrast, Augustine, Leg. 1.11 (CCSL 49:43–44).

108

Johannes Brachtendorf

all late antique Christian thinkers, understands the act of creation as creatio ex nihilo. Therefore, in contrast to Plato, Augustine does not allow any substance to preexist the creational act, much less be coeternal with God, because any such presupposition would undermine the sovereignty of the Creator and could lead to a metaphysical dualism, which, in turn, would contradict the principle of God’s singularity.

Third: The World Soul and the creatura spiritalis In the first book of Gen. litt., as well as in subsequent books, Augustine expends a lot of energy explicating the meaning of “light” and “darkness,” “evening” and “morning,” as well as the notion of the seven days of creation. He interprets these expressions in light of his doctrine of the angelic world, the creatura spiritalis, which in several respects resembles Plato’s and Plotinus’ concept of the “world soul.” Two correspondences emerge. The first concerns the origin of the world soul or the creatura spiritalis; the second concerns its function. According to Plato, the demiurge creates the world as a living being composed of soul and body. The cosmos is, for Plato, a living being that possesses an immortal and reasonable soul.59 This soul, the world soul, is planted in the middle of the world-body, penetrating it and encompassing it. It produces circular movements that effectuate the rotation of the heavenly bodies.60 Plotinus understands the creation of the world soul by the demiurge through the lens of his emanation schema. Just as the spirit (nous) emerges from the One, the soul emerges from the spirit.61 Initially, the soul flows out of the spirit and remains imperfect. It is first realized and perfected by turning around and looking at the spirit.62 Thus, the soul relates to spirit as the receiving material relates to form. In other words, the soul is the material of spirit.63 “The soul is subsequent to the Firsts and receives completion from the principles that engendered it. The producing principle takes the Matter of the produced and works it into a shapely perfection.”64 Like the emanation of the spirit/nous out of the Good, the emanation of the soul out of the spirit follows a two-step schema of exitus and reditus, exit and return. Plotinus’ theory of intelligible matter also follows this exitus-reditus schema. If the ideas are many and each has its own individual form, then the ideas must have a material form, even though they are intelligible. Although the intelligible world is not

 Timaeus 30c (Burnet, vol. IV).  Timaeus 36c (Burnet, vol. IV).  Plotinus, Enn. V 1.7.36–38 (Henry, tomus II, 279).  Enn. V 1.3.15–8 (Henry, tomus II, 266).  Enn. V 1.3.20–4 (Henry, tomus II, 266).  Enn. V 9.4.10–2 (Henry, tomus II, 416; trans. S. Mackenna, revised by B. S. Page Plotinus. The Enneads [London: Faber and Faber, 1956], 436, slightly modified).

4 Scripture in Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram

109

constituted of parts, it must be, in a sense, divisible.65 Such divisibility is only possible because of the quality of intelligible matter. Movement and alterity are the source of such intelligible matter. Plotinus writes, “Movement and alterity, which come from the First, are indeterminate and require it in order to be determined; they will be determined if they turn to the First; beforehand matter was unformed, it was ‘the other’ and not yet good but un-illuminated.”66 Both the spirit as the entirety of ideas and the world soul thus possess an intelligible materiality. He states that it is only in the condition of the exitus that this matter is not yet good, but bad. It becomes good by returning. It is first filled with light through conversion. Augustine’s schema does not consider the cosmos to be an ensouled being and thus does not require the world soul. Nonetheless, a correspondence to Plato’s world soul obtains in his cosmology. This correspondence is the so-called “creatura spiritalis,” the spiritual creature. The point of connection is the Christian doctrine of the angels. The Bible repeatedly claims that there are purely spiritual beings, angels, and that they were created by God.67 In the creation narrative of Genesis, the angels are not specifically mentioned. Augustine asserts, however, that the creation of light could be indirectly understood as the creatura spiritalis. On the first day of creation, God made the light: “God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness” (Gen. 1:3–4). With the support of Plotinus, Augustine interprets this creation of light as the production of the creatura spiritalis. Through the eternal Word, the Father creates the creatura spiritalis by initially allowing it to flow out (exitus) unformed (“unformed” being the meaning of “In the beginning God created the heavens”) and then calling it back (reditus) to himself through his Word: “Let there be light.” Just like in Plotinus, intelligible matter, which is at first still darkness (“darkness was over the surface of the deep”), becomes light by means of a conversion back to its source. Without the turning, it is not yet good, but it becomes good through conversion. An anti-Platonic feature of Augustine’s schema is found in the fact that the creatura spiritalis, as its name indicates, is clearly a creature. The exitus-reditus-schema serves Plotinus’ description of the emanation of a lower divine hypostasis from another, higher one. Again, it is impossible for Augustine to apply Plotinus’ doctrine of hypostases, including the exitus-reditus schema, to the Trinity. Instead, Augustine uses it to explain the emergence of the first creature, that is, the transition from the divine sphere of reality to the non-divine sphere. The creatura spiritalis also bears resemblances to the Platonic world soul with respect to its function. According to Plotinus, the world soul mediates between the spirit above it and the cosmos below it. For Plotinus, the soul is the “pronounced thought of

 Enn. II 4.4.7–20 (Henry, tomus I, 186).  Enn. II 4.5.31–5 (Henry, tomus I, 196; trans. Mackenna and Page, 108).  For angels as spiritual beings, see, e.g., Eph 6:12 and Heb 1:14; for angels as created beings or part of God’s creative activities, see, e.g., Gen 2:1; Neh 9:6; Ps 148:2–5; John 1:3 and Col 1:16.

110

Johannes Brachtendorf

the spirit.”68 Thought here means logos. It also signifies that the soul is invested with logoi by the nous – like art invests the soul of the artist with logoi for his artistic creation.69 The world soul thus has access to the thoughts of the spirit through the logoi. If the world soul turns and looks to the spirit during its emanation, it sees the logoi as ideas within the spirit. Its task consists in assigning the logoi, which it receives from the spirit to matter, in order to allow formed things to emerge. To depict this process, Plotinus adopts the Stoic conception of seed potency. The logoi are, on the one hand, forms or natures (essentia) of things. On the other hand, they are like seeds (sperma) that contain the potentiality of the already formed beings. When they are assigned to matter, they allow the beings of a certain kind to effectuate themselves out of themselves.70 In Plotinus’ conception, the creation of the cosmos takes place in two stages. First, the nous conveys its thoughts to the world soul. The thoughts then abide in the world soul as logoi. Second, the world soul assigns these logoi to matter so that concrete and specific kinds of material beings emerge. In Plotinus’ conception, the world soul refers to the ideas in the nous; in Augustine’s conception, the creatura spiritalis refers to the thoughts of God in the eternal Word. Augustine describes this connection on the basis of the biblical text.71 According to the Bible, the first day of creation, like all the days thereafter, begins in the evening: “And there was evening, and there was morning – the first day” (Gen 1:5). Again, Augustine explains the creation of the creatura spiritalis such that it initially flows out of God and then, “from a kind of formlessness,” turns back to God. This creatura spiritalis is a rational being and thus possesses knowledge of itself. In the condition of flowing out of God, it recognizes itself by grasping its own nature as a spiritual being. It knows its own logos. According to Augustine, the mere knowledge of a thing’s own nature approximates darkness if it does not refer itself back to God. That situation equates to weak (self-) knowledge, as if one is dwelling in the intellectual twilight. Upon the command “Let there be light!” the creatura spiritalis turns back to God and sees itself, that is, its own nature in the eternal Word from which it emerged. It no longer grasps itself as merely in and of itself. It witnesses its logos in the complete context of God’s thought. Augustine claims that this knowledge is a pure sort of knowledge. It is as if the knowledge had been bathed in the bright morning light.72 The biblical language of evening and morning is thus to be understood metaphorically: it indicates the two manners of self-knowledge of the creatura spiritalis. According to Augustine, a similar structure obtains when God’s other thoughts of creation are correlated to the other days of creation. The Bible reports how on each day

 “ἐν προφορᾷ ”; Enn. V 1.3.7–8 (Henry, tomus II, 265).  Enn. V 9.3.31–33 (Henry, tomus II, 414).  Enn. V 9.6.8–24 (Henry, tomus II, 418–20).  Cf. P. Agaësse and A. Solignac, Note complémentaire 20: “La connaissance angélique et les jours de la création,” in BA 48:645–53.  Gen. litt. 4.22.39 (CSEL 28/1:121–2).

4 Scripture in Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram

111

God first brings forth his thoughts as logoi. The creatura spiritalis knows these logoi initially in its own nature, associated with the evening of each day, and then grasps them in turning back to God within the entire context of divine thought, which is associated with the morning of the next day. “And because the other creatures which are made below it are not made without its knowledge, that surely is why the same day is repeated every time, so that by its repetition as many days may be made as there are distinct kinds of things created.”73 Augustine states that the eternal Word lets the creatura spiritalis see the logoi as the ground of the created world and lets the creatura spiritalis praise God for his work. For Plotinus, the bestowing of the logoi by the nous to the world soul does not entail the true emanation of the cosmos because the world soul has yet to assign these received logoi to matter. Analogously for Augustine, the knowledge of the natures of things on the part of the creatura rationalis does not yet entail real creation. Rather, the creatura spiritalis merely knows the God-given thoughts of creation, which, like seeds, still have to be planted in order to be realized. Augustine writes: Now just as all these elements, which in the course of time and in due order would constitute a tree, were all invisibly and simultaneously present in that grain, so too that is how, when God created all things simultaneously, the actual cosmos is to be thought as having had simultaneously all the things that were made in it and with it “when the day was made” (Gen 2:4). . . . It also . . . includes those things . . . potentially in their causes, before they could evolve through intervals of time, as they are now known to us in the works on which God is continuing to “work until now” (cf. John 5:17).74

Augustine interprets the first part of the creation narrative, namely the so-called work of six days (Gen 1:1–2:5), as the simultaneous creation of the logoi, which are given to the creatura spiritalis to know. This marks the first phase of creation, which temporally encompasses a mere instant, the first instant of time altogether. In a second phase, the logoi are successively deployed and developed so that concrete space-time objects emerge. In the biblical representation, this second phase extends from Gen 2:6 to 2:24. Alongside the question of origin, the function of the creatura spiritalis demonstrates strong parallels to Plotinus’s theory of the world soul. These parallels are as follows: the middle-position of this creatura between the eternal Word (in Plotinus, the nous) and the material cosmos; the knowledge of the ideas on the part of the creatura spiritalis; and the concept of logoi, in which the ideas emerge from their interwovenness, are differentiated from one another, and become effective in matter. In general, Augustine’s conception of a two-step creation process is remarkably Platonic.

 Gen. litt. 4.22.39 (WSA I/13:264, trans. Hill; CSEL 28/1:121–2).  Gen. litt. 5.23.45 (WSA I/19:299–300, trans. Hill.) Cf. CSEL 28/1:168–9: “Sicut autem in ipso grano invisibiliter erant omnia simul, quae per tempora in arborem surgerent, ita ipse mundus cogitandus est, cum deus simul omnia creavit, habuisse simul omnia, quae in illo cum illo facta sunt, quando factus est dies . . . etiam illa, quae . . . potentialiter atque causaliter, priusquam per temporum moras ita exorerentur, quomodo nobis jam nota sunt in eis operibus, quae deus usque nunc operatur.”

112

Johannes Brachtendorf

However, an anti-Platonic motive also emerges from Augustine’s thinking about functions. Simply put, Augustine’s creatura spiritalis does not create. Only God creates. Augustine frequently raises the question as to whether angels create only to reject this notion each and every time. The world soul in Plotinus’s thought is definitely a creator since it attaches the logoi to matter and thus performs the final and pivotal act of creation as formation. According to Augustine, however, it is not the task of the creatura spiritalis to deploy the logoi, the natures of things, and let them develop into matter. The activity of the creatura spiritalis consists solely in the recognition of the principles of things as works of God and in the praise of God for these works. Augustine claims that the insertion of these thoughts into matter, as described in and after Gen 2:5, is the work of God. Thus, while Augustine’s explanation of the connection between the “two” creation narratives is thoroughly Platonic insofar as it is oriented on the two-step world-creation schema of Plato and Plotinus, it is also anti-Platonic insofar as it replaces the continuity of the emanation process with a sharp distinction between the Creator and the created. God alone is Creator. The creatura spiritalis or the world soul belongs wholly on the side of created things.

Conclusion These three examples highlight how Augustine’s creational metaphysics corrects Platonism. First, he repeals Plotinus’ subordination of the nous under the One by declaring the Son to be consubstantial with the Father. Moreover, he opposes both Father and Son to creation in the same way. Second, he intensifies the notion of creation by claiming that matter is also created. Third, in his conception of the creatura spiritalis, he removes the mediatorial position between the creator god and the created cosmos that the world soul held in Platonism. On the one hand, Augustine’s hermeneutic of Genesis relies on the Platonic thesis that intelligible reality represents the reality which the apostle Paul claims is closed to the carnales but open to the spiritales. On the other hand, Augustine transforms Platonism through his strict distinction of Creator from creature, which is ultimately motivated by the Bible’s attribution of creative activity to God alone. On the whole, the Platonic-Pauline hermeneutic, including its theoretical correction to the process of creation, leads to an understanding of the biblical creation account ad litteram and proprie. The interpretation ad litteram encompasses, therefore, not only the naïve understanding of the superficial sense of Scripture as practiced by the carnales, but also, and especially, the understanding of the profound sense that is open to the spiritales. Like the Platonists, they can raise their eyes to the eternal. Unlike (and in a way superior to) the Platonists, however, they know that God alone is the Creator, while the rest of reality is created in every respect.

4 Scripture in Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram

113

Further Reading Primary Sources Augustine. La Genèse au sens littéral en douze livres, translated by Paul Agaësse and Aimé Solignac. Bibliothèque Augustinienne. 2 vols. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1972. Augustine. On Genesis, translated by Edmund Hill. Part I, vol. 13, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, edited by John E. Rotelle. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002. Augustine. Sancti Aureli Augustini De Genesi Ad Litteram Libri Duodecim, Eiusdem Libri Capitula, De Genesi Ad Litteram Inperfectus Liber, Locutionum in Heptateuchum Libri Septem, edited by Iosephus Zycha. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 28/1. Vindobonae: Tempsky, 1894.

Secondary Sources Agaësse, Paul and Aimé Solignac. “Introduction & Notes Complémentaires.” In St. Augustine La Genèse au sens littéral en douze livres, translated by Paul Agaësse and Aimé Solignac, 11–81, 575–717, 497–590. Bibliothèque Augustinienne 48–49. 2 vols. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1972. Brachtendorf, Johannes and Volker Drecoll, eds. Augustinus De Genesi ad litteram – Ein kooperativer Kommentar. Augustinus – Werk und Wirkung 13. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2021. Kim, Yoon Kyung. Augustine’s Changing Interpretations of Genesis 1–3: From ‘De Genesi contra Manichaeos’ to ‘De Genesi ad litteram’. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2006. Catapano, Giovanni. “Prefazione.” In Aurelio Agostino. Commenti Alla Genesi: La Genesi Contro I Manichei – Libro Incompiuto Sulla Genesi Alla Lettera – La Genesi Alla Lettera, VII–XIV. Florence: Bompiani, 2018. Mayer, Cornelius et al., eds. Augustinus-Lexikon. 5 vols. Basel: Schwabe, 1986–present.

Hildegund Müller

5 Scripture in Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos Introduction Augustine’s monumental commentary on the Psalms, Enarrationes in Psalmos (Enarrat. Ps.) marks both a turning point and a summit for his biblical exegesis, as well as for ancient biblical exegesis in general.1 It was not his first exegetical undertaking: two attempts at a commentary on Genesis as well as commentaries on Galatians and Romans may have preceded its inauguration.2 Yet it is with the Psalms that Augustine truly comes into his own as an exegete. The ambitious and innovative nature of the project made it both necessary and possible for him to reconsider all aspects of exegesis and preaching: the hermeneutical basis, the text of the Bible, the relationship between primary and secondary text, between text and speaker and listeners, and ultimately, between God and his church; the various layers of style and the rhetorical theory governing them, even the syntax and vocabulary that he would employ homiletically. The interrelation of these elements in the grand undertaking of Augustinian preaching is clearer in the Enarrat. Ps. than it is anywhere else in Augustine. In the Enarrat. Ps. it is explicitly discussed and exploited as a rhetorical means for negotiating the interactive framework in which the speaker and the audience have to play their respective communicative roles. We can

 Enarrat. Ps. is the subject of few monographs, most importantly M. Fiedrowicz, Psalmus vox totius Christi. Studien zu Augustins ‘Enarrationes in Psalmos’ (Freiburg: Herder, 1996) and M. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere: Augustine’s Early Figurative Exegesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). For general information on Enarrat. Ps., see H. Müller, “Enarrationes in Psalmos: Philological aspects,” AugLex, 2:804–38; M. Fiedrowicz, “Enarrationes in Psalmos: Theological aspects,” AugLex, 2:838–58, and the literature cited there.  The date at which Augustine began Enarrat. Ps. cannot be pinpointed, but it was certainly in the 390s (cf. infra). The Galatians commentary dates to 394/95 (see E. Plumer, Augustine’s Commentary on Galatians: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Notes [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003], 3f.). The two incomplete commentaries on Romans belong to approximately the same period. Both Gen. Man. and Gen. imp. predate these books, according to the order provided in Retract. (cf. 1.10 and 1.18, respectively [CCSL 57:29–33 and 54–55]). ✶ Hildegund Müller is associate professor of Classics at the University of Notre Dame. She received her PhD from the University of Vienna, Austria. Her publications include critical editions of Augustine (Enarrationes in Psalmos 51–60 and 61–70) in the CSEL series. She is currently working on a book on Augustine as a preacher.

Hildegund Müller, University of Notre Dame https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-006

116

Hildegund Müller

safely assume that the fixed points established in the Psalms commentary stay in place for his entire oeuvre, as far as it was related to preaching and exegesis (which, for Augustine, overlap significantly), to the Psalms, or to his thinking on the text of the Bible in general. The Psalms commentary, therefore, can serve as a good entry point for a modern reader who is trying to unravel the complex, yet astonishingly seamless whole of Augustine’s work and thought. Moreover, exceptional as it is, Enarrat. Ps. is less anomalous than Confessiones (Conf.) and more accessible than De civitate Dei (Civ.). This work was not meant for a small group of specialists, but for a broad audience of readers, preachers, and churchgoers. Part of the commentary’s uniqueness is a direct consequence of the particular nature of the Psalter among the books of the Bible. Since it consists of many discrete songs of praise and prayer, rather than a narrative, it was received by the recently inaugurated church in a more immediate way than the narrative or instructive books of the Bible; indeed, it could be sung and prayed by the community. As a consequence, the texts could be understood not solely as the voice of a prophet or inspired narrator, but as the voice of the congregation itself. However, this particular role as “the church’s prayerbook” clashed with the problems of understanding posed by a text in poetic form and its frequently faulty translations into Greek or Latin. Thus, the Psalter provided both a challenge for the exegete and an opportunity to make its words come to life. No wonder, therefore, that Augustine’s longest and most laborious exegetical undertaking was dedicated to it. The project we call Enarrat. Ps. began sometime in the early 390s CE as a regular written, or to be precise, dictated, commentary, following the Psalms one by one and verse by verse.3 It was never formally consistent: whether by design or under pressure of time, Augustine seems to have experimented with various lengths and styles and layouts. It is an idle question whether he intended to rework and harmonize the different parts, since the emphasis on the commentary proper ended abruptly at Ps 32, apparently because Augustine’s preaching duties took precedence. The vast majority of the remainder of the work consists of preached sermons (some even duplicate the dictated expositions), which were taken down in shorthand,4 transcribed, and compiled into what was

 For a detailed description of the genesis of the work see Müller, “Enarrationes,” 805–32.  This is attested by Enarrat. Ps. 51.1 (CSEL 94/1:52; trans. is my own): “Neque enim passim praetereunda sunt, quandoquidem placuit fratribus non tantum aure et corde, sed et stilo excipienda quae dicimus, ut non auditorem tantum, sed et lectorem etiam cogitare debeamus.” (“These things cannot be touched upon casually, since the brothers have decided that my words should be received not just with the ears and the heart, but also with the stylus. Thus, we have to consider not only listeners, but also readers.”) The sentence seems to imply that the plan to record the enarrationes was not Augustine’s alone but came from a larger group of fratres. External stimuli of this kind are not at all uncommon for Augustine’s works; we might compare, e.g., his lost commentary on James which began as a response to questions by brothers (Retract. 2.32 [CCSL 57:116]), or his commentary on Job (Adnotationes in Job), which originated as a set of marginal notes and owes its preservation as a book to the copyists who compiled them (Retract.

5 Scripture in Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos

117

intended to be an uninterrupted sequence. Thus, the practicalities of Augustine’s day-today preaching activities coalesced with his intention to produce a complete commentary on the Psalter. Augustine did not preach on Psalms sequentially but as circumstances and preferences dictated; while he was clearly intent on completing the entire corpus, he did so without a visible plan or schedule. Many of the sermons were preached outside of Hippo Regius;5 apparently (and justifiably), he regarded his sermons on the Psalms as showpieces worthy of a greater audience.6 Interestingly, Augustine chose not to rework the sermons for inclusion in the commentary; the inconsistency caused by this haphazard production and the references to specific places, persons, or events were left unchanged. Enarrat. Ps. spans a large portion of Augustine’s tenure as a bishop, extending beyond the time of his active preaching. Starting in 415, he began filling in the missing parts of the commentary with dictated written treatises on single Psalms. Finally, sometime after 420, the last piece was added: the commentary on the long abecedarian Psalm 118, which consists of no less than thirty-two homilies “that should be delivered in public” with a preface.7 The result of this long and involved process is the first Latin commentary on the entire Psalter and Augustine’s longest work. Although formally diverse, the content of Enarrat. Ps. is remarkably coherent; Augustine apparently did not change his approach to the exegesis of the Psalms or to the Psalm text over the decades. With the exception of an experimental concept in the earliest Enarrat. Ps. which he later dropped,8 Augustine used the same exegetical principles and strategies, if not the same style, in all of them. He also seems to have used the same Psalter; neither the dictated expositions nor Enarrat. Ps. 118, the final component of the entire series, betray any traces of the Vulgate text.9 To understand the importance of the work, it is helpful to put it into its historical context. As we have seen, the beginning of Enarrat. Ps. belongs to the period shortly after Augustine’s ordination to the priesthood in 391; it may even predate it. Unlike

2.13 [CCSL 57:99–100]). However, the earliest part of Enarrat. Ps. makes it clear that the plan was to publish a commentary.  For a discussion of indications of time and place embedded within particular enarrationes, see Müller, “Enarrationes,” 810–29.  To cite the most obvious examples: Enarrat. Ps. 64, 138, and 136 were preached in Utica, surrounding the local martyrs’ feast of the Massa Candida (Müller, “Enarrationes,” 829). An extensive group of sermons preached in Carthage sometime after 403 included at least six enarrationes in addition to an unknown number of sermons extraneous to the Enarrat. Ps. corpus (Müller, “Enarrationes,” 828).  Enarrat. Ps. 118 praef. (CSEL 95/2:69): “Statui autem per sermones id agere, qui proferantur in populis, quas Graeci ὁμιλίας dicunt.”  On the concept of homo dominicus, see M. Cameron, “Totus Christus and the Psychagogy of Augustine’s Sermons,” AugStud 36/1 (2005): 63.  See, however, n.39 infra: Augustine had access to a Vulgate text and, in the dictated enarrationes, referred to its diacritical signs.

118

Hildegund Müller

his other early commentaries, this one was composed with an eye to his new duties as a preacher and teacher. The book has no title and no preface or dedication.10 And, while it starts out as a dictated commentary, the rhetorical quasi-orality of some expositions, as well as the draft-like shortness of others, make it clear that, in this case, the written form was secondary. From the moment he started preaching on Psalms, the oral version took precedence over the written commentary, making its influence felt even in the later dictated parts. Thus, Enarrat. Ps. occupies a very special position as Augustine’s experimental, yet programmatic and exemplary, appropriation of exegesis. We may speculate why it was the Psalter that he chose for this project and not a shorter, linguistically and hermeneutically more straightforward book (such as John, which he would later explain in a similar format).11 The reasons for this were certainly in part personal: we learn from Conf. that the new convert prayed the Psalms assiduously and passionately,12 and that the bishop and memoirist still relied on the Psalter and on its lexicon to trace his inner journey.13 However, another reason was certainly the special nature of the Psalter, which in the ancient church was received and reused as the timeless voice of the Christian people, rather than of a single historical Hebrew prophet. This is especially true for Augustine, as will be demonstrated below. The importance of the Enarrat. Ps. project is evident from the fact that Augustine continued it throughout his life, no doubt at great logistical expense. Trained secretaries had to be present wherever he preached to note down and later transcribe the (often long) sermons on Psalms. And, once he returned home, the sermons had to be inserted into the growing series and a tally kept of what had been done and what was still missing. There is another point that shows the programmatic nature of the commentary. Around the time that he began Enarrat. Ps., Augustine presumably undertook two more seminal projects: a theoretical reconsideration of biblical hermeneutics in De doctrina christiana (Doctr. chr.) and a survey and an emendation of the biblical texts he would use as a preacher, based in part on Greek codices.14 Together, these three exegetical tasks would prepare him for a lifetime of preaching. In what follows, we will approach Augustine’s Psalter in Enarrat. Ps. from three distinct angles: First, we will look at the text itself. Which Psalter did Augustine use, and how did he come to use that version? Second, we will explore how he used his Psalter (together with others) in the preparation and delivery of his Psalms sermons,

 The work originally lacked a title. The one commonly used today was first used by Erasmus in his edition (cf. Müller, “Enarrationes,” 805). Cf. also n.1 supra.  Cf. the chapter dedicated to Augustine’s relationship to the Johannine corpus, “Augustine and John the Evangelist,” by A. Fitzgerald in this volume.  Conf. 9.4.8 (CCSL 27:137): “Quas tibi, deus meus, voces dedi, cum legerem Psalmos David, cantica fidelia, sonos pietatis.”  See A. Kotzé, “Scripture in Augustine’s Confessiones,” in BCNA I, 346–50; G. N. Knauer, Psalmenzitate in Augustins Konfessionen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1955).  See nn.28–29 infra (Ep. 261).

5 Scripture in Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos

119

how he handled textual problems and variants and used Greek and Latin codices. Third, we will take a brief look at Augustine’s exegesis itself, its principles and strategies, and their broader importance for his understanding of exegesis and of his role as a preacher. In addition, we will take a very brief look at the use of other biblical books in Enarrat. Ps. and the ways they are made to interact with the Psalter.

Augustine’s Psalm Text in Enarrationes in Psalmos and Elsewhere When Augustine undertook to comment on the Psalter, various Latin versions of the text were in circulation.15 In addition to numerous Old Latin Psalters,16 at least one of Jerome’s translations had been finished, the translation according to the Septuagint (later known as Psalterium Gallicanum), and he was probably working on his Psalterium iuxta Hebraeos, the new translation from the Hebrew. Where can we situate Augustine’s text in this broad landscape? There are a few undisputed facts concerning Augustine’s Psalter, or Psalters. Every Psalm text Augustine ever used, whether in Enarrat. Ps. or elsewhere, was based on the Septuagint. In addition, it has always been known that his standard Psalter was not identical with any one of Jerome’s revised or newly translated versions and, given his skepticism regarding the introduction of a new text, this comes as no surprise. Indeed, his Psalm text was historically not just considered Old Latin, but the Old Latin, or more specifically the Itala Psalter,17 which in the 18th century was reconstructed on the basis of Augustine’s commentary.18 If we make allowances for the relatively primitive state of Vetus Latina scholarship that obtained at this juncture, this assumption is not entirely far-fetched; one could further support it by the fact that a specific Old Latin Psalter was shown to agree widely with Augustine’s text. The bilingual Psalter in the seventh-

 See R. Weber, Le psautier romain et les autres anciens psautiers latins (Rome: Abbaye Saint-Jérôme 1953), VIII–XII.  Weber’s edition (see n.15 supra) collects textual variants of fifteen different Psalters, all of them presumably predating the Vulgate, or at least its general acceptance by the western church. While the manuscript tradition of some of these texts is fragmentary, it seems likely, given that these Psalters were copies in a manuscript of their own, that they originally were complete translations. This list does not include versions of passages from Psalms found in works by Latin authors, which may have been excerpted from existing Latin Psalters or translated by the author on the spot from the Greek.  On the terms Itala and Afra in older scholarship, see H. A. G. Houghton, “Scripture and Latin Christian manuscripts from North Africa,” in BCNA I, 18f.; on the term Itala in Doctr. chr. 2.15.22 (CCSL 32:47–48), see Tarmo Toom, “Scripture in Augustine’s De doctrina christiana,” in BCNA I, 327.  G. Bianchini, Vindiciae canonicarum scripturarum (Romae: Ex Typographia S. Michaelis, sumptibus Hieronymi Mainardi, 1740), 220, ascribes this opinion to Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, “Qui, ut psalterium (quod appellat vetus) in lucem ederet, illud totum ex S. Augustini Enarrationibus in Psalmos exscripsit.”

120

Hildegund Müller

century manuscript Verona, Bibl. cap. I 119 was first described by Giuseppe Bianchini, who, as a native Veronan, undoubtedly had access to the manuscripts of the Biblioteca capitolare. Bianchini already remarked on its similarity with Augustine’s text, arguing that the Latin Psalterium Veronense provided a better text of the Itala Psalter than did Augustine.20 While we have since learned to think of the Vetus Latina in more complex and nuanced terms, i.e., as a multitude of related versions rather than just one or two, the astonishing closeness of the Veronensis text to what we find in Enarrat. Ps. still requires further investigation, especially since the text preserved in both is quite distinctive. For example, the translator made some striking lexical choices, such as muscipula (“trap” or “snare”; literally “mousetrap”) where the Vulgate and other Psalters use the synonym laqueus (“trap” or “snare”).21 There are also some less striking, but still characteristic ones, such as the use of eruere (literally, “pluck” or “dig up”), where the Vulgate usually has eripere (“save”),22 or psallere (“sing”) for Jerome’s preferred Psalmum dicere.23 These recurring terms separate the text of the Psalterium Veronense clearly from other old Psalm texts; they also appear in Augustine’s commentary. Given the lexical consistency, we can assume that this edition was the work of one scholar, who translated the Septuagint Psalter or, what is more likely, redacted an existing Latin version, and possibly also paired the result with the Greek. It is highly probable that this redactor was European (or more narrowly Italian), not only because of the provenance of the only extant manuscript, but also because of its similarities with other non-African Psalters. The text seems to belong to a family that also included the versions found in works by Ambrose and Hilary, though it is not identical with what we find in either of those two sources. What does this tell us about Augustine’s choice of text? His Psalter came from Italy and probably was in his luggage when he returned to Africa, thus joining the list of other Italian imports in Augustine’s church.24 Since the Veronensis text is thoroughly idiosyncratic and not just a “typical” Italian Psalter, it must have been chosen specifically and carefully. It would be interesting to know what attracted Augustine to it, whether it was the liveliness and occasional colloquiality of its language or perhaps, if our earlier hypothesis is correct, the usefulness of the bilingual codex. In any case, in

 On the Psalterium Veronense see Weber, Le psautier romain, X.  Vindiciae canonicarum scripturarum, 221–5.  E.g., Ps 63:6: “Narraverunt ut absconderent muscipulas”; (Veronensis: muscipula; Vulg.: laqueos). All citations from Psalms in this chapter follow the Septuagint numbering and versification.  E.g., Ps 58:2: “Erue me de inimicis meis deus” (= Veronensis); (Vulg.: “eripe”).  E.g., Ps 56:8: “cantabo et psallam” (= Veronensis); (Vulg.: “Psalmum dicam”).  Augustine’s catholicism was profoundly informed by his time in Milan and we can assume that his Italian experience proved formative for his own priesthood and episcopacy. E.g., following Ambrose, Augustine forbade celebratory meals (laetitiae) at the martyrs’ tombs, which were common in Africa. See the online version of O’Donnell’s commentary for Conf. 6.2.2 (Augustine: Confessions, a text and commentary [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992], consulted Dec. 20, 2020 (https://www.stoa.org/hippo), and Éric Rebillard, The Care of the Dead in Late Antiquity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012), 142–53.

5 Scripture in Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos

121

this Psalter, Augustine had found his go-to text, the basis for his reading, writing, praying and exegesis. This basis remained unchanged throughout the Enarrat. Ps. project. At the same time, there is an alternative reading of these facts we have to consider: what if the Latin Veronensis is in fact Augustine’s text in a much narrower sense, i.e., what if it is a text created by Augustine himself? Could it be not the source, but a by-product of Enarrat. Ps., or even a text derived from the commentary? Prima facie, this is unlikely because there is nothing specifically Augustinian about the linguistic idiosyncrasies of the translation. In fact, Augustine frequently struggles with a translation he sometimes considers linguistically odd.25 However, we have to consider this possibility because Donatien de Bruyne has famously made the argument that Augustine was a “reviseur de la Bible.”26 In a contribution to the second volume of Miscellanea Agostiniana, de Bruyne argued that Augustine was far more of a textual scholar than he is generally thought to be. In fact, according to de Bruyne, traces of Augustine’s revisions can be found in numerous biblical books, including the Psalter. De Bruyne identified the text shared by Augustine’s text and the Verona Psalter as Augustine’s own revision.27 The argument starts from a short remark in epistula (Ep.) 261.28 In this letter, Augustine is replying to the effusive praise and brazen demands from an otherwise unknown admirer named Audax. While the praise was delivered in the shape of a (faulty) hexametric poem, the demands apparently included that Augustine send him a “perfect” text of the Psalter – either Jerome’s translation from the Hebrew or Augustine’s own translation.29 Augustine responds with a clarification: I do not have the Psalter translated from the Hebrew by Saint Jerome. As for myself, I have not translated it, but have corrected some errors in the Latin manuscripts, following the Greek copies. Thus, I may have made it somewhat more convenient than it was, but not as excellent as it should be. Even now, if something strikes me when reading, which I may have overlooked at the time, I compare manuscripts and correct it. Thus, like you, I am also searching for the perfect text.30

 See, e.g., Augustine’s apologetic explanation of Ps 50:16 (CCSL 38:613): “Erue me de sanguinibus deus, deus salutis meae. Expressit latinus interpres verbo minus latino proprietatem tamen ex graeco. Nam omnes novimus latine non dici ‘sanguines,’ nec ‘sanguina’; tamen quia ita graecus posuit plurali numero, non sine causa, nisi quia hoc invenit in prima lingua hebraea, maluit pius interpres minus latine aliquid dicere quam minus proprie.”  D. de Bruyne, “S. Augustin reviseur de la Bible,” in Miscellanea Agostiniana II (Vatican city: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1931), 521–606.  de Bruyne, “S. Augustin reviseur de la Bible,” 563–78.  The letter is difficult to date. Its high catalogue number indicates that it was considered undatable by the Maurist editors, who thus appended it to the end of their edition.  These details are deduced from Augustine’s reply, since Audax’s existing letter does not contain this request, which was apparently made in an earlier letter.  Ep. 261.5 (CSEL 57:620; trans. is my own): “Psalterium a sancto Hieronymo translatum ex hebraeo non habeo. Nos autem non interpretati sumus, sed codicum latinorum nonnullas mendositates ex graecis exemplaribus emendavimus. Unde fortassis fecerimus aliquid commodius, quam erat, non tamen tale, quale esse debebat. Nam etiam nunc, quae forte nos tunc praeterierunt, si legentes moverint, conlatis codicibus emendamus. Ita illud, quod perfectum est, tecum nos quoque requirimus.”

122

Hildegund Müller

However, the passage describes something more specific and narrower in scope than a revision of the entire text. Apparently, Augustine emended his codex of the Psalter, or more likely, parts of the Bible (which would explain the plural codices). This project was likely undertaken prior to his ordination as bishop and was probably intended to be pursued systematically.31 We have no way of knowing how much the original plan entailed or how much of it was completed. What followed was not particularly systematic; rather, it consisted of occasional corrections of passages that struck him as faulty.32 The wording (mendositates . . . emendavimus, emendamus) points to the mechanical process of emendatio, which consisted in the correction of scribal errors in an existing codex, rather than even a partial new translation or the production of a new codex.33 This is a far more likely Augustinian project than a thorough linguistic review of the biblical text. Not only was Augustine’s interest in the text consistently secondary to his allegorical reading and understanding of the text, it also appears – despite his selfdeprecating statement in Ep. 261 – that he was not searching for the perfect text. On the contrary, he was content to possess a good working text accompanied by a variety of Latin and Greek versions. In a well-known passage from Doctr. chr., Augustine makes the point that the multitude of Latin versions is actually a benefit for the exegete:

 In 391, the newly ordained presbyter Augustine asked his bishop Valerius for relief from his duties for a period of time so that he could study the Bible. Here is an excerpt from Ep. 21.3 (CSEL 34/1:51; trans. is my own): “Debeo scripturarum ejus medicamenta omnia perscrutari et orando ac legendo agere, ut idonea valitudo animae meae ad tam periculosa negotia tribuatur. Quod ante non feci, quia et tempus non habui; tunc enim ordinatus sum, cum de ipso vacationis tempore ad cognoscendas divinas scripturas cogitaremus et sic nos disponere vellemus, ut nobis otium ad hoc negotium posset esse.” (“I ought to examine carefully all the remedies of his scriptures and, by praying and reading, work that he may grant my soul health suited for such dangerous tasks. I did not do this before because I did not have the time. For I was ordained at the time when we were planning a period of retreat for gaining knowledge of the divine scriptures and wanted to arrange our affairs in order that we could have the leisure for this task.”) It seems highly unlikely that Augustine would have had the leisure to undertake such a project after his ordination as bishop. Moreover, de Bruyne, “Saint Augustin reviseur de la Bible,” 574–6, overstates the differences between the Psalm text as found in the early and later enarrationes. In fact, the text seems to be very consistent. On Augustine’s practice of textual emendation see R. S. Schirner, “Inspice diligenter codices,” in Philologische Studien zu Augustins Umgang mit Bibelhandschriften und -übersetzungen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015).  Augustine’s habit of punctually correcting books he read can also be inferred from the nature of his self-criticism in Retract.: in many cases, his corrections are isolated and unsystematic (see esp. Retract. 2.15 on Trin. and 2.43 on Civ. [CCSL 57:101–2 and CCSL 57:124–5, respectively]).  In another variant of the same thought experiment, the Veronensis text could be based on Enarrat. Ps., rather than the latter on (a relative of) the former; concretely, the Psalm text could have been excerpted from en. Ps. This is impossible to refute definitively; were the Veronensis a High Medieval manuscript, we would have to consider it seriously. But it seems unlikely that anything along these lines would have been attempted as early as the 6th or 7th century, esp. in a codex that did not also contain Enarrat. Ps.

5 Scripture in Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos

123

This, however, has been found to be a help rather than a hindrance to the understanding, as long as readers are not negligent. Indeed, the inspection of numerous codices has often explained unclear passages. For example, one translator of the prophet Isaiah rendered a passage as: “And do not despise the kinsmen of your seed,” while another says: “And do not despise your flesh”: they both have borne witness to each other.34

This bizarre (from a modern standpoint) approach to textual variants as clarifying each other and, as it were, “collaborating” towards a deeper understanding has to be kept in mind when we see Augustine juggling different readings and languages. This is how textual criticism works for him: textual variance is an inherent condition of exegesis rather than a deficiency or hindrance. It follows, then, that Augustine regards the text he is using as a vehicle for understanding (not just the inaccessible Hebrew text itself, but on a deeper, spiritual plane), and not as an end in itself. This has consequences for his exegesis. Throughout Enarrat. Ps., we observe a certain openness when it comes to different versions of the same Psalm, an unwillingness to determine the “correct” text and a willingness to make sense of every version that he encountered. In part, this may be due to the fact that Augustine was aware of his linguistic limitations, but it contributed to his inclination to use multiple readings, or multiple versions, as building blocks for his argument. We will return to this characteristic exegetical strategy in the next section. Do we have evidence for Augustine actively and intentionally changing the text of his Latin Psalter? Certainly not to the degree which de Bruyne assumed; we cannot even make a compelling case for it. What should we make, for example, of Ps 68:8, where Augustine alone reads and explains operuit irreverentia faciem meam, “shamelessness covered my face,” whereas the Veronensis and other old Psalters and Psalms exegetes read operuit reverentia faciem meam, “shame covered my face” (the Vulgate has the synonym confusio)? Did Augustine have a faulty copy, possibly due to dittography, or did irreverentia fit better into his reading of the Psalm? The Greek word entropé (ἐντροπή) may well have been unfamiliar to him, so the fact that reverentia, rather than irreverentia, is a correct translation does not provide much help. It is one of many exegetical questions that will have to remain open. Before we take a look at Augustine’s use of the Psalm text in practice, a final question needs to be touched upon: Did Augustine use the same Psalm text throughout his writings? An extended quotation of Ps 4 in Conf. is nearly identical with the Psalm text of Enarrat. Ps. (and also very close to the Veronensis).35 Can the same be said for

 Doctr. chr. 2.12.17 (CCSL 32:42–43; trans. is my own; emphasis added): “Quae quidem res plus adiuvit intellegentiam quam impedivit, si modo legentes non sint neglegentes. Nam nonnullas obscuriores sententias plurium codicum saepe manifestavit inspectio, sicut illud Esaiae prophetae unus interpres ait: ‘Et domesticos seminis tui ne despexeris,’ alius autem ait: ‘Et carnem tuam ne despexeris’: uterque sibimet invicem attestatus est.” Cf. Schirner, Inspice diligenter codices, 25–28.  See Conf. 9.4.9–11 with O’Donnell’s commentary (cf. n.25 supra). O’Donnell reconstructs the Psalm text of the passage and notes only minimal differences with what is found in Enarrat. Ps. As for the explanation provided in Enarrat. Ps., he observes that “the points of contact with Conf. are so numerous

124

Hildegund Müller

other Augustinian works? The question exceeds the scope of this chapter; but a random search of a few conspicuous renderings, as well as de Bruyne’s extensive lists, seem to point to the likelihood that he did.36 However, this is a question that requires much more detailed investigation, especially with regard to the Psalm text that Augustine employed when composing Conf.37

Augustine’s Use of the Psalm Text in His Exegesis We have preliminarily established the material resources and methodological approaches that were at Augustine’s disposal and that enabled him to do scholarly and pastoral work on the Psalter. In the following section, we will look at the textual work preceding and accompanying Augustine’s interpretation of the Psalms. In addition to Augustine’s hermeneutical theory and the principal positions outlined above, this aspect of his exegesis was obviously deeply influenced by his circumstances. Preached enarrationes show a markedly different approach to the Psalm text than do dictated ones. Preaching is a performative act that happens in a public space and that is subject to all sorts of external influences, whether on the part of the preacher, his book, or the particularities of the place and time that he is preaching. Like every improvisator, Augustine was prone to small mistakes of memory and confusion. The life of an itinerant preacher, which led him up and down the African coast and into the hinterland, added its own challenges and opportunities. The Psalm text therefore provides a small window into the material surroundings and the everyday rhetorical practice of the preacher.38

and the illumination provided so considerable that it is impossible to do more than present the texts side by side and enjoin attentive reading of both.”  E.g. Ps 57:6: “medicamenti medicati a sapiente”: This is the text of both the Veronensis and Enarrat. Ps. 57.6 (CSEL 94/1:275); it is also found in sermo 316.2 (PL 38:1432). The Vulgate reads “venefici incantantis” (see de Bruyne, “S. Augustin reviseur de la Bible,” 554). Toom, “Scripture in Augustine’s De doctrina christiana,” 340, claims that the Psalms are quoted according to the Vulgate in Doctr. chr. 4. This is unlikely; it is more probable that Augustine is quoting his standard VL version, which in the two Psalm quotations that occur in Doctr. chr., does not diverge from the Vulgate. Toom’s description of the biblical text in Doctr. chr. as “mixed” is also questionable.  See Kotzé, “Scripture in Augustine’s Confessiones,” 352n.29.  For a much more exhaustive discussion of Augustine’s work with textual variants, as well as his use of the Greek text, see Schirner, Inspice diligenter codices. In Part 2 “Die Verbesserungspraxis Augustins,” Schirner discusses a multitude of examples for “corrections” of the biblical text (frequently of the Psalms). It has to be said, however, that these “corrections” are only pointed out as alternative translations in the commentary, thus clarifying the existing text. There is no indication that Augustine actually did correct the text he found in a codex, nor did he change it in repeated quotations of the same verse.

5 Scripture in Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos

125

Augustine’s standard preparation for preaching Enarrat. Ps. appears to have involved consultation of several versions of the Latin Psalter.39 It is unknown if the library in Hippo Regius provided him such an abundance of books,40 or, as Othmar Perler has suggested, he had to make use of the larger library available at the See of Carthage.41 The outcome of this collation could vary. A straightforward example occurs in Enarrat. Ps. 51.5. The Psalm title, which situates the Psalm in a specific episode in David’s life, mentions the name Abimelech, which is at odds with the narrative of the same episode in 1 Kings, where the same person is called Achimelech. Augustine suspects a scribal error: Yet when we examined the codices of the Psalms we found Abimelech more often than Achimelech. Moreover, in another place you find a very well-known Psalm offering not a variant but a different name altogether: I am referring to the title of that other Psalm which runs, “When he altered his behavior in the presence of Abimelech,” whereas David altered his behavior in the presence of King Achis, not King Abimelech, and forsook him, and went away. The change of name alerts us to the mystery. Without it, you might simply concentrate on an historical episode and ignore the sacred veils that conceal the meaning.42

In the Latin original, the passage is obviously shaped by its oral nature and cries out for clarification, which the translator has supplied. The overall meaning, however, is clear. The investigation has led Augustine to the conclusion that the text of his codex is correct, given the readings of both the majority of manuscripts and a supporting parallel passage (i.e., Ps 33:1), in which the change of name cannot possibly be explained as a mechanical

 Did this process include Jerome’s translation? As de Bruyne (“S. Augustin reviseur de la Bible,” 564) points out, by 415, Augustine seems to have had access to a Psalter containing the textual marks introduced by Origen and adopted by Jerome; cf. Enarrat. Ps. 67.16 (CSEL 94/2:220): “Quamquam istam repetitionem non omnes codices habent et eam diligentiores stella apposita praenotant, quae signa vocantur asterisci, quibus agnosci volunt ea non esse in interpretatione Septuaginta, sed esse in Jasraeo, quae talibus insigniuntur notis.” However, the text additions and diacritical marks Origen had introduced both to bring the Greek in closer accordance with the Hebrew and to indicate their differences had long since entered the mainstream of the Septuagint (and Old Latin) tradition, a fact attested by Jerome himself (Ep. 112.19 [CSEL 55:389] = Aug. Ep. 75.19 [CSEL 34/2:316–7]). No characteristic “Vulgate” version can be identified in Enarrat. Ps. Schirner, Inspice diligenter codices, 533f., discusses a passage in Enarrat. Ps. 135.3 (a dictated enarratio) which seems to imply that Augustine had direct or, what is more likely, indirect knowledge of a translation from the Hebrew.  Thus Schirner, Inspice diligenter codices, 320ff.  O. Perler and J. L. Maier, Les voyages de saint Augustin, (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1959), 424.  Enarrat. Ps. 51.5 (CSEL 94/1:59–60; WSA III/17:18, trans. Boulding): “In codicibus tamen Psalmorum cum inspiceremus, magis ‘Abimelech’ quam ‘Achimelech’ invenimus, et quoniam in alio loco habes evidentem Psalmum non de similitudine nominis, sed prorsus diversum nomen insinuantem–quandoquidem David ante regem Achis, non ante regem Abimelech immutavit faciem suam, et dimisit eum et abiit, titulus autem Psalmi sic scriptus est: quando immutavit vultum suum coram Abimelech–ipsa magis mutatio nominis in mysterium fecit intentos, ne tamquam res historiae persequaris et sacrata vela contemnas.”

126

Hildegund Müller

error. Thus, the historically “wrong” name is “right” in the Psalm title. From this it follows that another explanation has to be sought for the discrepancy. Predictably, Augustine finds it in an allegorical reading: since Abimelech means “my father’s kingdom,” the Psalm title alludes to Christ’s mission to the Gentiles. While the process of textual analysis in itself is unremarkable, the result is very Augustinian: Psalm titles are regularly explained allegorically in Enarrat. Ps. Thus, the “philological” approach really serves an ulterior purpose; it paves the way to a reading of the Psalm based on the etymology of the name in the title. In the parallel passage in Enarrat. Ps. 33, Augustine goes one step further: not only is the discrepancy intentional, but both versions contribute to the interpretation. A particularly striking example of this type of “additive” interpretation based on two textual variants in the same verse is provided by Ps 70:15, where Augustine’s Psalter probably read (with the Psalterium Veronense) “quoniam non cognovi negotiationes” (“because I do not know trade”), though he was also aware of the reading “quoniam non cognovi litteraturam” (“because I do not know lettering”), which is attested in Jerome’s translation from the Septuagint as well as the Psalterium Romanum, another ancient Latin Psalter.43 Augustine explains first negotiationes as referring to those putting their trust in their works, then litteraturam as referring to the Jews, who base their confidence on the letter of the law. Finally, he combines the two readings in order to reach a very Pauline conclusion:44 What advantage to you is the letter (of the law) to which you do not adhere? But why do you not adhere to it? Because you are proud of yourself. Why do you not adhere to it? Because you are a trader: you extol your own works . . .45

How are we to interpret passages like this one? Does Augustine work on the assumption that it was not only the Hebrew Bible and its Greek translation(s) that were inspired,46 but that even the multitude of Latin translations were, if not inspired, then at least willed by divine providence? We have already seen that, according to Doctr. chr., he thought the existence of many (even bad) translations was beneficial for the understanding of the biblical text. But his main considerations were probably connected with his homiletic practice rather than with the theoretical pursuit of exegesis. The two different versions of the Psalm verse permitted him to address and associate two different aspects of the Christian faith in contrast to the wrongful behavior of those who do not adhere to their own law (“lettering”) as well as the sinful pride of

 On the passage see Schirner, Inspice diligenter codices, 59–61.  In this context, he quotes Rom 10:3: “Ignorantes enim dei justitiam et suam quaerentes statuere justitiae dei non sunt subjecti”. ([ESV]: “For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.”).  Enarrat. Ps. 70 (s.1).19 (CSEL 94/2:339; WSA III/17:434, trans. Boulding [modified]): “Quid tibi ergo profuit littera quam non imples? Quare autem non imples? Quia de te praesumis. Quare non imples? Quia negotiator es: opera tua extollis.”  On this point, see Toom, “Scripture in Augustine’s De doctrina christiana,” 327.

5 Scripture in Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos

127

those who trust in their own works (“trade”). For Augustine, pastoral concerns always outweighed the scholarly interests of the exegete. We will return to this point later. In addition to his collations of different Latin versions, Augustine consulted manuscripts of the Septuagint text.47 Compared to his creative and sometimes surprising exploitation of the Latin text, his interaction with the Septuagint Psalter comes across much as might be expected. In the Psalms sermons, Greek words are rare. The use of the Greek text is sometimes implicit but is usually not discussed openly. Augustine clearly has no interest in showing off his learning; rather, he wants his parishioners to feel comfortable and engaged with a sermon they can follow. The practice changes with the dictated Enarrat. Ps. Starting from Enarrat. Ps. 67, the first dictated Psalms commentary, the Greek text is cited verbatim in numerous instances, apparently whenever a Latin idiom seems strange or requires clarification. But how much actually changes? The comparison with the Greek affirms and sometimes refines Augustine’s exegesis, but it is not really necessary for understanding his interpretation. The frequent citation of the Greek text does not point to a deepened interest in linguistic detail or in the Septuagint per se; instead, it probably represents an earlier stage of commentary, much like what his working notes for the sermons must have looked like. Had he decided to preach on Ps 67, the Greek would probably have disappeared, as it did in his preached sermons in general. Enarrat. Ps. 118, where Augustine returns to at least an affected orality, occupies a middle position; in these thirty-two short homilies, the Greek text is cited eighteen times, an average of 1.75 times per sermon.48 However, intentional collation is not the only way in which Augustine may be found working with numerous versions of the Psalm text. In some cases, he first cites one version of a verse and later switches to another one, apparently without noticing, or at least without pointing towards it. Enarrat. Ps. 56.12 provides a good example. Here, Augustine first cites Ps 56:5b thus: Filii hominum dentes eorum arma et sagittae, et lingua eorum gladius acutus: “Their teeth are weapons and arrows, their tongue a sharp sword.” Ignore the weaponless hands and watch the armed mouth, for that is where the sword is wielded that slew Christ; so too from Christ’s own mouth proceeded the sword with which the Jews would in their turn be slain. He has a sharp, two-edged sword . . .49

 Augustine apparently had no direct knowledge of the contents of other Greek translations, though he clearly knew that many were in circulation. See, e.g., Civ. 18.43 (CCSL 48:638–9).  Remarkably, among these eighteen passages, several refer to the same Greek words. Thus, the total number of Greek terms explained in this enarratio is smaller.  56.12 (CSEL 94/1:246; WSA III/17:114, trans. Boulding [emphasis added]): “Filii hominum, dentes eorum arma et sagittae, et lingua eorum gladius acutus. Noli adtendere inermes manus, sed os armatum: inde gladius processit quo Christus occideretur, quomodo et de ore Christi unde Judaei occiderentur. Habet enim ille gladium bis acutum.”

128

Hildegund Müller

The word gladius (“sword”) is repeated three times in the following two sentences. While this version happens to agree with the Vulgate, the repetition of gladius in Augustine’s own words and the reference to Rev 1:16 make it quite clear that the quotation cannot have been mistakenly corrected by a medieval scribe.50 Augustine must indeed have read gladius acutus in the Psalter he was using. However, he then recapitulates the verse using a different word for “sword”: Filii hominum, dentes eorum arma et sagittae, et lingua eorum machaera acuta. This is the reading of the Psalterium Veronense,51 and therefore probably represents Augustine’s usual text. Again, textual corruption is unlikely since the sentence is immediately repeated.52 Why did Augustine change his text in mid-sermon? François Dolbeau has provided a very plausible explanation: the preacher starts out using an unfamiliar codex and out of habit slips back into the text he knows best while preaching.53 It follows that he was very likely preaching abroad and intentionally using the Psalm text the host church provided. Thus, passages attesting to the use of two versions of the Psalms add to the precious and scarce indications of time and location for individual enarrationes (while simultaneously attesting again to Augustine’s relaxed attitude towards textual discrepancies). The Psalm text in Enarrat. Ps. provides an abundance of evidence for the oral, improvised nature of the sermons. Psalm texts are abbreviated, confused with similar verses from different Psalms, assimilated to verses from the same Psalm, reordered, and, sometimes, even omitted.54 It seems that even when a codex of the Psalms was present in the church during the sermon, Augustine did not regularly consult it; rather he relied on his memory, even where it led him astray. One of the most fascinating aspects of working on Enarrat. Ps. is that it allows us to reimagine what the situation must have looked like: a codex on a lectern, a preacher, standing, possibly moving around while he preached freely and passionately, occasionally approaching the open book for the text or using it dramatically as a stage prop. This image replaces an older one in which Augustine is seen sitting on his bishop’s chair with the codex in

 The influence of the Psalterium Gallicanum is frequently visible in the manuscripts of Enarrat. Ps. Since Jerome’s Psalter was a widespread text in the Middle Ages and was commonly learned by heart, readings from the standard text replaced Augustine’s Old Latin in numerous instances even in the oldest manuscripts of Enarrat. Ps.  Machaera is used in pre-classical Latin and Late Latin and almost entirely missing in Classical Latin. The word is frequently used in VL translations and generally replaced by gladius in the Vulgate; see 8.10.59ff.; cf. e.g. Pass. Perp. 4.3 (ed. H. Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, [Oxford: Clarendon 1972], 110): “Erant ibi gladii, lanceae, hami, machaerae, veruta.” Taken together, these facts indicate a low stylistic register.  Enarrat. Ps. 56.12 (CSEL 94/1:246): “Filii hominum, dentes eorum arma et sagittae, et lingua eorum machaera acuta. Lingua filiorum hominum machaera acuta, et dentes eorum arma et sagittae.”  F. Dolbeau, Vingt-six Sermons Au Peuple D’afrique, EAA 147 (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1996), 277.  For numerous examples, see the reconstructed Psalm texts that accompany my edition of Enarrat. Ps. 51–60 (CSEL 94/1) and 61–70 (CSEL 94/2).

5 Scripture in Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos

129

his lap. Neither the textual evidence nor the stylistic vibrancy of Enarrat. Ps. makes the latter version probable, much less appealing.55 To return to the Psalm text: we have seen Augustine as a well-prepared preacher, one who took into account both Latin and Greek versions without becoming enslaved to any one of them to the exclusion of all others. Textual criticism was a means, not an end in itself. In the live preaching situation, he would use or discard his preparation as needed and give himself over to the moment and to the powerful flow of his performance.

Augustine’s Exegesis of the Psalms Enarrat. Ps. is both a book of sermons and a commentary on Psalms. Typically for Augustine (as for late antiquity in general), biblical exegesis cannot be excised from its liturgical context. In the Psalter in particular, the liturgical situation mingles with the historical circumstances of the biblical text. The Psalm was read by a lector or sung by Augustine and his community, which allowed him to interpret the ancient Hebrew poem as the voice of his church and the bishop, their speaker and teacher. Asserting this unity of past and present was one of Augustine’s main goals for his Psalms exegesis. Rather than try to make his listeners understand the text in its historical context or hear its message to them, he wanted them to become the speakers of the Psalm and experience its words as their own: “Let us hear in this Psalm our own voice, that is, the voice of the citizens of the heavenly kingdom . . . and let us join in this voice with our ears and tongues and hearts and works.”56 Consequently, Augustine never discusses the identity of the author of the Psalms; and, as noted above, the historical circumstances mentioned in some Psalm titles are

 See F. Van der Meer, Augustine the Bishop: The Life and Work of a Father of the Church (London: Sheed and Ward, 1962) 391; P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 251. However, there is ample evidence in the sermons that the preacher was standing (see also Dolbeau, Vingt-six, 39 with n6 and 391 with n14). Obviously, the two images convey an entirely different type of rhetoric. It appears that Augustine rarely used the text to read the verse. he was explaining, which he knew by heart. He did, however, use the book in staged arguments, cf., e.g., Tract. Ev. Jo. 35.7 (CCSL 36:321; WSA I/12:548, trans. Hill [slightly modified]): “Codex Isaiae proferatur a Judaeis, videamus si non ibi lego . . . ecce lucerna una. Alia proferatur, Psalmus aperiatur, etiam inde praedicta passio Christi recitetur.” (“Let the Book of Isaiah be brought forth by the Jews, let us see if I do not read there . . . There is one lamp. Bring out another, open the psalter, let the passion of Christ as foretold there also be recited”).  Enarrat. Ps. 51.6.30–34 (CSEL 94/1:63; trans. is my own). The full quotation (which was abbreviated above) runs: “Quamdiu ergo nunc permixtum est (sc. regnum caelorum), audiamus hinc vocem nostram, id est civium regni caelorum–hoc enim adfectare debemus: tolerare hic malos, quam tolerari a bonis–, et conjungamus nos huic voci et aure et lingua et corde et opere.”

130

Hildegund Müller

invariably read allegorically. In Augustine’s preaching, far more than in the work of his predecessors, the Psalms have become timeless and universal. The divine service at Augustine’s church typically included two or more readings, usually from the Bible, although on the feast day of martyrs sometimes their Acta were read. The choice of the biblical texts seems to have been largely free or governed by local rules and customs, certainly not by a church-wide established reading cycle or lectionary.57 Augustine could therefore experiment with combinations or with sequences of texts over several days. When preaching outside of his own church, he would sometimes be asked to preach on a specific Psalm. We know of one case in which the lector read the wrong Psalm, and Augustine had to improvise.58 Sometimes we are able to reconstruct a series of consecutive readings, which in most cases do not proceed in an obvious order.59 Rarely are the Psalms interpreted in the order in which they are numbered.60 Some of the preached enarrationes are astonishingly long; apparently churchgoers were willing to listen to Augustine for more than two hours at a time. Even so, some Psalms had to be divided and explained in two, three, or even four sermons. Sometimes, this decision seems to have been made on the spot.61 Planning and spontaneity were evenly balanced; Augustine came well-prepared but was apparently willing to adjust to circumstances if need be. As a listening experience, Enarrat. Ps. must have been fascinating. Augustine the preacher employed his rhetorical skills and his immense knowledge of the Bible to weave a varied fabric of topics, voices, stories and emotions, speaking to the mind and the senses alike. The sermon functions as an appropriation of the biblical text rather than as an explanation; while the listeners

 See A. Zwinggi, “Der Wortgottesdienst bei Augustinus,” Liturgisches Jahrbuch 20 (1970): 96.  Enarrat. Ps. 138.1 (CSEL 95/4:126; trans. is my own): “Psalmum nobis brevem paraveramus, quem mandaveramus cantari a lectore; sed ad horam, quantum videtur, perturbatus, alterum pro altero legit. Maluimus nos in errore lectoris sequi voluntatem dei quam nostram in nostro proposito.” (“We had prepared a short Psalm and had told the lector to recite it; but he seems to have been momentarily confused and read another one instead. We decided to follow God’s will, shown in the lector’s error, rather than our own by adhering to our plan.”) This episode is discussed and elaborated on at length in W. Harmless “A Love Supreme: Augustine’s ‘Jazz’ of Theology” AugStud 43 (2012): 149–77. Thanks to Jonathan Yates for bringing this article to my attention.  See Müller, “Enarrationes,” 828 for the series Enarrat. Ps. 147, 103, 80, 102, and 66 (with, inter alia, sermones ad populum 146 [ed. P.-P. Verbraken, OSB, “Le Sermon 57 de saint Augustin pour la tradition de l’Oraison dominicale,” in Homo spiritalis. Festgabe für L. Verheijen zu seinem 70. Geburtstag, eds. C. P. Mayer and K. H. Chelius, Cassiciacum 38 (Würzburg: Augustinus-Verlag,1987), 414–24]; 57 [PL 38:426–30]; and 65 [PL 38:796–7]). This essay also includes relevant earlier literature.  See infra for a brief discussion of the Gradual Psalms, which Augustine preached on in order. This was both exceptional and a liturgical experiment on Augustine’s part.  Enarrat. Ps. 58 (s.1).22 (CSEL 94/1:356; trans. is my own): “Obscura sunt, et timeo ne non bene insinuentur jam audiendo fatigatis. Itaque si placet Caritati vestrae, quae restant in crastinum differamus.” (“This is difficult, and I am afraid I will not properly explain it to you since you are already tired from listening. Therefore, if you agree, dear brothers, let us postpone the rest until tomorrow.”) In some cases, such as this one, the two sermons are of vastly different lengths.

5 Scripture in Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos

131

would certainly hear the information they needed in order to make the (sometimes) strange text approachable, they would also find themselves drawn into, and moving along with, the verses of the Psalm as they were read. A concrete example of this may be helpful. Enarrat. Ps. 57 was preached in Carthage; the date is uncertain.62 To explain the concept of justice (justitia), which is mentioned at the beginning of the Psalm, Augustine begins not with an explanation of the verse itself, but with a long and passionate diatribe on the Golden Rule, “Do not do to another what you would not want anyone to do to you” (quod tibi fieri non vis, ne facias alteri): For who has taught you not to want an adulterer to approach your wife? Who has taught you not to want a theft to happen to you? Who has taught you not to want to suffer injustice, and whatever else can be mentioned either specifically or generally? For there are many things like this: if you ask humans about them one by one, they’ll respond loudly and clearly that they do not want to suffer them. But tell me: if you don’t want to suffer any of them, are you the only human being? Don’t you live in the community of the human race?63

The passage seems intended to capture the attention of any listener who happened to drop in, whether Christian, non-Christian, or somewhere in between. Augustine keeps the argument mostly free of biblical quotations, and he discreetly shows his knowledge of ancient moral philosophy by relating a traditional moral example: if a friend entrusted a treasure to you in secret before traveling abroad, will you return it to him, even if there were no witnesses? If he dies abroad, will you return it to his son, who now lives in abject poverty? The story, and the chapter overall, serves to intensify the rapport between preacher and audience. Virtually the entire passage is stylized as an address to a single listener (or, rather, to every single listener) who is slowly revealed to be the guilty party, who has not kept to the Golden Rule and has not shown justice towards his neighbor. Augustine drives the point home by questionand-answer interactions with the audience in order to involve them personally: Is theft good? “No.” I ask you: Is adultery good? Everybody shouts: “No!” Is murder good? Everybody shouts that he hates it. Is it good to covet your neighbor’s belongings? “No” is what everybody says.64

When Augustine finally is ready to discuss the Psalm, a lot has been achieved already: preacher and listeners have come together in a shared understanding of their own

 Müller, “Enarrationes,” 828.  Enarrat. Ps. 57.1 (CSEL 94/1:260–1; trans. is my own): “Quis enim te docuit nolle accedere adulterum ad uxorem tuam? Quis te docuit nolle tibi furtum fieri? Quis te docuit nolle injuriam pati, et quidquid aliud vel universaliter vel particulariter dici potest? Multa enim sunt, de quibus singulis interrogati homines clara voce respondeant nolle se pati. Age, si non vis pati ista, numquid solus es homo? Nonne in societate vivis generis humani?”.  Enarrat. Ps. 57.1 (CSEL 94/1:262; trans. is my own): “Furtum bonum est? ‘Non.’ Interrogo: adulterium bonum est? Omnes clamant: ‘Non.’ Homicidium bonum est? Omnes clamant detestari se. Concupiscere rem proximi bonum est? ‘Non’ vox omnium est.”

132

Hildegund Müller

culpability. The Psalm has lost every trace of its original setting. The first verse of the Psalm that he cites (i.e., verse 2: “If you truly speak justice, judge what is right, sons of men”), which could have sounded slightly trivial or even redundant without this preamble, has taken on a deeper and quite personal meaning. Listeners have been treated to a pathetic, open-ended story (the impoverished son of the traveling friend) as well as to some bonding activities, and they are thoroughly hooked. The verse itself does not need much explaining; and Augustine uses it to establish another central tenet of his Psalm exegesis (to which we will return below): almost anything in the Psalter refers both to individuals and to the church in its historical evolution. Thus he illuminates the verse with the first explicitly Christian narrative in the sermon, the hypocrisy of Christ’s persecutors. If Christ was entirely absent from the sermon so far, he is emphatically present at the very moment that his suffering and resurrection are evoked. There is still a lot of direct apostrophe, but now the addressees are the Pharisees. Still, Augustine does not let his listeners off the hook; his explanation of verse 3 (“your hands string together iniquities” [iniquitatem manus vestrae conectunt]) strikes painfully close to home. This describes the attempts of a felon to avoid capture: While he schemes to avoid capture or conviction, he consults an astrologer . . . Perhaps the astrologer predicted something harsh and evil: so he runs to a haruspex to be freed from guilt. The haruspex answered that he could not do that: so he seeks out a sorcerer–and who can count all the sins that are strung together?65

While certainly few if any of Augustine’s listeners were felons, some of them were prone to the specific evil deeds listed here. Remarkably, Augustine does not directly preach against the evil of sorcery and astrology; he probably takes it for granted that his audience knows that these activities are wrong. Rather, he uses the example of the felon’s string of evil deeds to illustrate the inborn sinfulness of man. The remainder of the sermon proceeds in a similar manner, fluctuating between the past and the present and switching between narrative passages and the voice of the teacher. One element is added, which further explains why it is so important that the universal church presents both a unified front and united hearts. In his explanation of verses 4–7, Augustine identifies the sinners, among other readings, concretely with the Donatist schismatics, whose attempts to undermine catholic unity, at least in Augustine’s view, are shown to continue the destructive work of the persecutors of Christ and the martyrs. While his reading of the Psalm provides the theoretical foundation, Augustine finds a lot of opportunities for storytelling, staged dialogues and mimicry of his opponents. All in all, Enarrat. Ps. 57 is a masterpiece of folksy rhetoric as well as a tour de force of multivalent exposition.

 Enarrat. Ps. 57.4 (CSEL 94/1:270; trans. is my own): “Dum ea molitur forte ne inveniatur, aut quia fecit ne convincatur, consulit mathematicum . . . respondit forte aliqua dura et mala mathematicus, curritur ad haruspicem ut expietur, respondit haruspex non se posse expiare, maleficus quaeritur–et quis omnia possit numerare quae conectuntur peccata peccatis?”.

5 Scripture in Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos

133

This short example by no means sums up Augustine’s complex and manifold approach to reading Psalms, but it does enable us to draw a few important conclusions. First and most obviously: Augustine explains the Psalm verse by verse, or rather half verse by half verse, usually without changing the order or omitting anything.66 The difficulty of the poetic text certainly required this kind of commentary. (For a different approach, see Augustine’s second extensive sermon-commentary series, the Tractatus in evangelium Iohannis [Jo. Ev. Tract.]).67 However, as we have seen, a sequential commentary also allowed for a dynamic, evolving kind of exegesis. As he progresses from verse to verse, the preacher also moves from the sinful state of man to his salvation, from Christ’s resurrection to his eventual return as judge. Many individual enarrationes exhibit this transformation of the verse sequence into a chronological line that traces the process of salvation both in history and in the individual.68 Secondly, as we have seen, Augustine avoids a simple “teaching” or “moralizing” approach. Even where he does address specific sinful behavior, he seems more interested in its role in the larger context of human sinfulness than in correcting his listener’s faults directly. Thirdly, and most importantly, the exegesis (if we can call it that) moves seamlessly between different points in time, from a single addressee or speaker to the entire church, from Christ himself to every human being. The question of the identity of the speaker of this Psalm is never directly addressed in this enarratio (a technique used in many others); yet it underlies the discussion in an important way. The so-called Totus Christus scheme can be described as Augustine’s answer to the traditional prosopological question of Psalms exegesis: Who is the speaker of this Psalm?69 Typically, speakers of single Psalms or even single verses were identified specifically as the Jewish people, King David, Christ, or the church. In addition, as previously noted, the Psalms were frequently spoken or sung by the congregation; thus, in a very pragmatic sense, the speakers of the Psalms were indeed the faithful themselves. Augustine finds an ingenious solution for the resulting complexity: all possible speakers of the Psalms are united in the body of the church, which, according to Paul, is the body of Christ, of which Christ himself is the head.70 Since the body of the church includes its present members, the scheme also provides the theoretical basis for the exegetical strategy we discussed above, one through which listeners are led to experience themselves as the speakers of the Psalm. Totus Christus is explained in  In Enarrat. Ps. 57, verse 1 (the title) is cited after verse 2. This aligns with the tendency of this sermon, highlighted supra, to begin from a neutral, extra-biblical point of departure.  See also the chapter dedicated to Augustine’s relationship to the Johannine corpus, “Augustine and John the Evangelist,” by A. Fitzgerald in this volume.  See, e.g., H. Müller, Eine Psalmenpredigt über die Auferstehung. Augustinus, Enarratio in Psalmum 65: Einleitung, Text, Übersetzung und Kommentar (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1997), 16–29, and H. Müller, “Zur literarischen Einheit der exegetischen Predigt Augustins. Beobachtungen an den Enarrationes in Psalmos,” SEAug 68 (2000): 293–306.  See Cameron, “Totus Christus,” and Fiedrowicz, “Enarrationes,” 854f. with the literature cited there.  See, e.g., Eph 1:22–23 and Col 1:18.

134

Hildegund Müller

many Augustinian sermons. For example, the following passage from Enarrat. Ps. 56, in addition to being quite detailed and expansive, provides a delightful case of the preacher repeatedly losing his train of thought and having to start over several times: For this Psalm sings about his passion, and since the whole Christ is head and body, as I don’t doubt you know very well–the head is our savior himself, who suffered under Pontius Pilate and now, after he rose from the dead, sits at the right hand of the Father, his body is the church, not this one or that one, but the one extended over the entire world, and not just the one which consists of humans presently alive, but even those belong to her who were before us and will be after us until the end of time: for the whole church consisting of all the faithful–because all faithful believers are members of Christ–has its head in heaven, which governs its body: although it is divided by vision, it is connected by charity. Since, therefore, the whole Christ is Christ’s head and his body, therefore we can hear not only the voice of the head in all the Psalms, but also the voice of the body.71

According to the concept of totus Christus, Christ and his church are joined as head and body. Consequently, the words of the Psalm can be read as spoken by the incarnated Christ or by his church as a whole or by any one member of the church. Thus, it creates and enhances a sense of unity both within the particular congregation (including its preacher) and between the congregation and the universal church over time and space. The union provided by the shared experience of the service, and in particular the sermon, had its basis in the text itself. Obviously, this reading, not only of the Psalter but of the preaching situation itself, had consequences beyond the Psalms sermons. As Michael Cameron observes, “totus Christus is not merely a theme or even the most important and central doctrine of Augustine’s preaching. It rather forms the very atmosphere of the sermons, a subterranean stream of ever-flowing experience.”72 The foregoing should have made it clear that Augustine’s reading of the Psalter is, broadly speaking, allegorical. As he interprets, he acknowledges the validity of the literal sense but only occasionally betrays a strong interest in the historical facts, or even in a moralizing reading of the underlying biblical narrative. Names of persons and places are generally etymologized and read allegorically, in a way similar to the treatment accorded to the Psalm titles (cf. supra). His inclination towards a Christological, or, to

 Enarrat. Ps. 56.1 (CSEL 94/1:225; trans. is my own): “Psalmus enim iste passionem ipsius cantat, et quoniam totus Christus caput est et corpus, quod bene vos nosse non dubito–caput est ipse salvator noster passus sub Pontio Pilato, qui nunc posteaquam resurrexit a mortuis, sedet ad dexteram patris, corpus autem ejus est ecclesia, non ista aut illa, sed toto orbe diffusa, nec ea quae nunc est in hominibus qui praesentem vitam agunt, sed ad eam pertinentibus etiam his qui fuerunt ante nos et his qui futuri sunt post nos usque in finem saeculi: tota enim ecclesia constans ex omnibus fidelibus, quia fideles omnes membra sunt Christi, habet illud caput positum in caelis quod gubernat corpus suum: etsi separatum est visione, sed adnectitur caritate. Quia ergo totus Christus caput est et corpus ejus, propterea in omnibus Psalmis sic audimus voces capitis, ut audiamus et voces corporis.”  Cameron, “Totus Christus,” 65.

5 Scripture in Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos

135

borrow Cameron’s word, “toto-Christological” reading of the Psalms is supported by the common Psalm title in finem,73 which is invariably associated with Rom 10:4: If a Psalm has “to the end” (in finem) in it, we always have to understand this as Christ. “For the end of the law is Christ, for the justification of everyone who believes.” . . . Since we have no further goal when we reach Christ, he is called the end of our road.”74

In sum, describing Enarrat. Ps. as a biblical commentary is doing the book a grave injustice. In addition to the richness of theological thought Enarrat. Ps. contains,75 the exegesis itself only unfolds its full depth if considered in the context of Augustine’s homiletical performances. The live performance of the preacher, the presence of listeners, the church building, and the specifics of the feast day all form part of what is a multidimensional, multilayered experience, ranging from pure teaching to theatrical spectacle, from direct interactions with the audience to imagined interactions with heretics, with sinners, and even with Christ himself. While performativity is an aspect of preaching in general, in Enarrat. Ps. it joins with the performative nature of the Psalm text and Augustine’s transformational concept of homiletics to create a unique, innovative and programmatic kind of Christian rhetoric.

Presence and Exegesis of Other Biblical Texts in Enarrationes in Psalmos The Psalter forms the core, or, better, the spine of Enarrat. Ps., but it does not function in isolation. Other biblical quotations surround and are used alongside it, forming a tapestry richly interwoven and filled with connections and shared connotations. Frequently, Augustine refers to another reading of the day; moreover, he associates freely based on thematic or lexical similarities. What do these clusters of biblical allusions and citations tell us about Augustine’s exegesis, both in terms of his regular practice and in terms of his underlying theory? Fascinating as the question is, it vastly

 In modern translations such as the New American Standard Bible (NASB), the Hebrew words corresponding to the Latin in finem are interpreted as some kind of musical direction and rendered as “For the Music Director” (or something similar). Cf., e.g., Ps 74, in finem ne corrumpas, “For the music director; set to Al-tashheth” (= literally “do not destroy,” presumably the title of a song which provided the tune).  Enarrat. Ps. 45.1 (CCSL 38:518; trans is my own): “In finem quod habet, semper Christum intellegere debemus. Finis enim legis Christus, ad justitiam omni credenti. Finis autem dicitur non quia consumit, sed quia perficit. Nam et finitum cibum dicimus qui manducabatur, et finitam tunicam quae texebatur: illud ad consumptionem, hoc ad perfectionem. Quia ergo ultra quo tendamus non habemus, cum ad Christum pervenerimus, ipse cursus nostri finis dicitur.”  For an overview, see Fiedrowicz, Psalmus vox totius Christi, passim, and Müller, “Enarrationes,” 846–54.

136

Hildegund Müller

transcends the scope of this article. It goes without saying that, in this area, much remains to be researched. We will therefore conclude with two previously investigated aspects, even though they too warrant further study, both in general and within Enarrat. Ps. First, on recurring combinations of biblical verses, which are a common and well-known phenomenon in Augustine’s writings. Anne-Marie La Bonnardière pioneered the study of recurring groupings as part of a chronological argument: sermons that can be shown to belong together frequently share similar biblical clusters. Hence, we can infer that the recurrence of the clusters themselves points to the likelihood of two texts belonging to roughly the same time, even if there is no other, more obvious indicator for this. In the sequence of sermons on the Gradual Psalms and the synchronous series of the first sermons on John, La Bonnardière highlighted biblical verses about doves (John 1:33, Cant 6:8, Matt 3:14–16, and Gen 8:8–11) as support for the theory.76 On the other hand, where the combination of enarrationes with sermons on other biblical texts can be established, we catch a glimpse of Augustine as a liturgical reformer. By far the most interesting of these combined sequences is the series mentioned before and studied by La Bonnardière, the sermons on the Gradual Psalms (cf. Enarrat. Ps. 119–133), which are preached in a roughly alternating pattern with another sermon series, namely the inauguration of Augustine’s Tract. Ev. Jo. The resulting sequence was preached over the course of one winter and early spring.77 Much work has been done to establish the precise chronological sequence and the probable date, as well as the thematic foci of this series. However, there remains an open and equally interesting question: Why did Augustine create this unusual series? What caused him not only to give up his habitual reluctance to preach consecutive sermons on texts belonging together (lectio continua), but also to do so on more than one occasion during the same period with the two series intertwined? Whatever it was he had in mind, in this we probably can observe his attempt to create a more stable and a more meaningful reading cycle than the volatile and arbitrary sequence that he had inherited and that he himself had also employed at an earlier stage in his ecclesiastical career.78

 A.-M. La Bonnardière, Recherches de chronologie augustinienne (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1965), 29–37. Her methodology is used extensively (and with excessive optimism) by P.-M. Hombert, Nouvelles recherches de chronologie augustinienne (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2000).  La Bonnardière, Recherches, 46–53.  For a very short interpretation, see H. Müller, “In Iohannis Euangelium Tractatus,” AugLex, 3:703f.

5 Scripture in Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos

137

Conclusion Of all of Augustine’s exegetical undertakings, Enarrat. Ps. is certainly the most ambitious, and, when viewed from a modern standpoint, one for which he was not especially wellequipped. The work did not impress everyone. For example, Jerome remarked pointedly that the teachings it contained diverged from those of the Greek fathers,79 and later readers, such as Cassiodorus, found it confusing and verbose.80 Yet there is an enduring fascination in its very complexity, in its immediacy, and in its non-scholarly nature. Enarrat. Ps. is a triumph of actualization, of bridging the gap between the “then” of the Hebrew text and the “now” of the church, of making a text that the speaker himself only partly understood come alive. What Augustine brought to bear on the text in terms of vivacity, associative layering, and sensitive appropriation, as opposed to the “correct” literal understanding and historical contextualization, was more than worth the tradeoff.

Further Reading Primary Sources Augustine. Expositions of the Psalms, 6 volumes, translated by Maria Boulding. Part III, vols. 15–20, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, edited by John E. Rotelle. Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 2000–2004. Augustine. Sancti Aurelii Augustini Enarrationes in Psalmos I–CL, edited by E. Dekkers and J. Fraiport. Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina 38–40. Turnholt: Brepols, 1956, reprint 1990. Augustine. Sancti Aurelii Augustini Enarrationes in Psalmos 1–32 (Expos.), edited by Clemens Weidmann. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 93/1A. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2003. Augustine. Sancti Aurelii Augustini Enarrationes in Psalmos 18–32 (Sermones), edited by Clemens Weidmann. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 93/1B. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2011. Augustine. Sancti Aurelii Augustini Enarrationes in Psalmos 51–60, edited by Hildegund Müller. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 94/1. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2004. Augustine. Sancti Aurelii Augustini Enarrationes in Psalmos 61–70, edited by Hildegund Müller. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 94/2. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020.

 Jerome, Ep. 105.5 (CSEL 55:246 [addressed to Augustine]): “Neque enim lectioni eorum (sc. operum tuorum) umquam operam dedi nec horum exemplariorum apud nos copia est praeter . . . quosdam commentariolos in Psalmos, quos si vellem discutere, non dicam a me, qui nihil sum, sed a veterum Graecorum docerem interpretationibus discrepare.”  Cassiodorus, in Psalm. praef. (CCSL 97:3): “Tunc ad Augustini facundissimi patris confugi opinatissimam lectionem, in qua tanta erat copia congesta dictorum, ut retineri vix possit relectum quod abunde videtur expositum. Credo, cum nimis avidos populos ecclesiasticis dapibus explere cupit, necessario fluenta tam magnae praedicationis emanavit.”

138

Hildegund Müller

Augustine. Sancti Aurelii Augustini Enarrationes in Psalmos 71–80, edited by Lukas J. Dorfbauer, in collaboration with Victoria Zimmerl-Panagl. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 94/3. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023. Augustine. Sancti Aurelii Augustini Enarrationes in Psalmos 101–109, edited by Franco Gori and Claudio Pierantoni. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 95/1.Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2011. Augustine. Sancti Aurelii Augustini Enarrationes in Psalmos 110–118, edited by Franco Gori and Angelo De Nicola. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 95/2. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015. Augustine. Sancti Aurelii Augustini Enarrationes in Psalmos 119–133, edited by Franco Gori. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 95/3. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2001. Augustine. Sancti Aurelii Augustini Enarrationes in Psalmos 134–140, edited by Franco Gori and Francesco Recanatini. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 95/4. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2002. Augustine. Sancti Aurelii Augustini Enarrationes in Psalmos 141–150, edited by Franco Gori and Giuliana Spaccia. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 95/5. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2005. Augustine. Sant’Agostino. Commento ai salmi, edited and translated by Manlio Simonetti. Milan: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla: A. Mondadori, 1989.

Secondary Sources Cameron, Michael. Christ Meets Me Everywhere: Augustine’s Early Figurative Exegesis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Daley, S.J., Brian and Paul Kolbet, eds. The Harp of Prophecy: Early Christian Interpretation of the Psalms. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014. Fiedrowicz, Michael. Psalmus vox totius Christi. Studien zu Augustins “Enarrationes in Psalmos.” Freiburg: Herder, 1997. Fiedrowicz, Michael. “Enarrationes in Psalmos: Theological aspects.” In Augustinus-Lexikon, edited by Cornelius Mayer, et al, 2: 838–58. Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2001. La Bonnardière, Anne-Marie. Recherches de chronologie augustinienne. Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1965. Müller, Hildegund. “Enarrationes in Psalmos: Philological aspects.” In Augustinus-Lexikon, edited by Cornelius Mayer, et al, 2: 804–38. Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2001.

Allan D. Fitzgerald O.S.A.

6 Augustine and John the Evangelist Introduction Augustine’s commentaries on the Gospel of John and on 1 John occupy a special place among his many writings because they focus on themes that are central to all of his preaching. As this chapter will show, the emphasis on Christ that is inherent in John’s writings is a crucial characteristic of Augustine’s own work.1 It is thus not surprising that his preaching came to be permeated by the Johannine spirit. At the same time, it needs to be added that his interest in the Johannine corpus was neither in competition with nor in opposition to the influence of the other biblical writers. His use of Scripture has been beautifully described as orchestral.2 That means that each part of the Scriptures is in harmony with the rest. Augustine described the whole Bible as speaking in one voice: that of the Holy Spirit.3 For Augustine, the writings of John resonate most fully when their coherence

 H. Drobner, “An Overview of Recent Research,” in Augustine and His Critics: Essays in Honour of Gerald Bonner, eds. R. Dodaro and G. Lawless (London: Routledge, 2000), 27, rightly describes Christ as “the condition, the author and the method of all his thinking.”  “Orchestration scripturaire” was Anne-Marie La Bonnardière’s picturesque (and often used) phrase for describing Augustine’s habit of multiplying mutually illuminating biblical texts. See, for example, her “Le Cantique des Cantiques dans l’œuvre de saint Augustin,” REAug 1 (1955): 225–237, esp. 229ff. See also M.-F. Berrouard, “L’exégèse de saint Augustin prédicateur du quatrième Évangile. Le sens de l’unité des Écritures,” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 34 (1987): 317.  For the idea that the Bible speaks via one voice or “word” (unus sermo), see, for example, Enarrat. Ps. 103 (s. 4).1 (CCSL 40:1521). For the Holy Spirit’s role in inspiring a multiple – but ultimately harmonious and true – meanings into the same text, see Doctr. chr. 3.27.38 (CCSL 32:99–100). See also S. Dermer, “Magna Gratiae Commendatio: Augustine’s Teaching on Grace in the Tractates on the Gospel of John,” Saint Louis University, ProQuest Dissertations, 2018, 39–46. ✶

Allan D. Fitzgerald, O.S.A. was member of the Department of Theology at Villanova University (1972–1997; 2009–2020) and served as Director of The Augustinian Institute (2009–2020), as editor of Augustinian Studies 1989–2011 and of Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia (Eerdmans, 1999). He is Emeritus professor of the Augustinian Patristic Institute (Rome 1997–2009) and member of the Accademia Ambrosiana of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, Italy (2003–). He is presently the Director of Special Events of the Augustinian Institute. Allan D. Fitzgerald O.S.A., Villanova University https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-007

140

Allan D. Fitzgerald O.S.A.

with the other biblical books is uncovered.4 His preaching on John, therefore, sought to give his listeners a biblical perspective, not simply a Johannine one.5 Although Augustine names John “the evangelist” (evangelista) before Gospel citations and as “the apostle” (apostolus) before citations from 1, 2, or 3 John, his referent is always the disciple whom Jesus loved (cf. John 13:25 and 21:20).6 Augustine’s praise of John as “most true and in full agreement,”7 suggests that he accepts its authenticity without difficulty; indeed, he often affirms it with phrases like “the divinely inspired Scriptures.”8 The Indiculum (Indic.) of Possidius lists the Gospel commentary as Tractatus on the Gospel of John in Six Codices and Augustine’s commentary on 1 John as ten sermons on that text.9 Tractatus is commonly regarded as the term Augustine himself chose for his expositions of John.10 Both works have a pastoral purpose and were preached to the people of Hippo when they gathered for a liturgical celebration. Canonicity for Augustine was based on the authority of the majority of Catholic churches.11 In De baptismo (Bapt.) he asks, “who does not know that the canonical Holy Scripture, both of the Old and of the New Testament, is contained within certain

 M.-F. Berrouard, BA 73A:108: “L’Évangile de Jean ne prend son sens et n’acquiert toute sa résonance que si l’on sait découvrir sa cohérence, parfois mystérieuse, avec tous les autres livres qui le complètent et dont il est solidaire.”  Cf. J. M. Norris, “The Theological Structure of St. Augustine’s exegesis in his Tractatus in Iohannis Euangelium,” Marquette University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1990, 191.  H. A. G. Houghton, Augustine’s Text of John. Patristic Citations and Latin Gospel Manuscripts, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 307; 362–3. See, for example, Tract. ep. Jo. 1.1 (PL 35:1978–9); Ep. 214.1 (CSEL 57:831–2); sermo 112. 6 (RBén 76 [1966]:50–51); Fel. 1.3 (CSEL 25:802–4); Tract. Ev. Jo. 124.7 (CCSL 36:687). The list of canonical Scriptures at Doctr. chr. 2.8.13 (CCSL 32:39–40) includes John, 1, 2, and 3 John and Revelation. He presumes that John is the author of the several works in the Bible that bear his name. Cf. sermo 34 (CCSL 41:424–7), which also makes it clear that Augustine regards the favorite disciple to be the apostle John. In Tract. Ev. Jo. 36.5 (CCSL 36:326–7) he opines that Revelation was written by the same John who wrote the Gospel of John. Cf. Tract. Ev. Jo. 13.2 (CCSL 36:130); 36.5 (CCSL 36:326–7); sermones 95.2 (PL 38:581); 250.3 (SC 116 [1966]:316–24); and 273.8 (PL 38:1251–2).  Grat. Chr. 1.45.49 (CSEL 42:161): “veracissima et concordissima.”  See Civ. 11.3 (CCSL 48:322–3) and Ep. 147.7 (CSEL 44:280–1).  Indic. 10.5 and 10.6, respectively. See, A. Wilmart ed., Operum S. Augustini Elenchus a Possidio eiusdem discipulo Calamensi episcopo digestus. Post Maurinorum labores nouis curis editus critico apparatu numeris tabellis instructus, in Miscellanea Agostiniana, 2:182: “tractatus de evangelio Johannis a capite usque in finem in codicibus sex”; and, Miscellanea Agostiniana, 2:204: “de epistula Joannis apostoli ad Parthos sermones decem.”  See M.-F. Berrouard, BA 71:25, and the references provided there.  Doctr. chr. 2.8.12 (CCSL 32:38–39) and An. Orig. 1.10.12 (CSEL 60:312).

6 Augustine and John the Evangelist

141

limits?”12 Augustine does provide a list of the books that he sees as canonical in his work,13 and this list includes John, 1, 2, and 3, John, and Revelation.14 Augustine would never have seen a single volume or a single codex containing all of the recognized Scriptures.15 In fact, in the fourth century, “Scripture” did not describe an agreed collection of inspired writings;16 rather, Scripture is God’s one sermon.17 Augustine wrote the De consensu evangelistarum (Cons.) to demonstrate the unity and coherence of the four Gospels,18 a view that was a natural extension of his belief in the unity of all the Scriptures: “Everything is in agreement, there are no contradictions at all.”19 Apparent contradictions are there to exercise the mind and to compel deeper understanding. For Augustine, the thing which proved to be the key that opened the way to a new appreciation of the Scriptures and of Jesus Christ was his cross: “Our Lord’s cross was like a key for opening what was locked away.”20

A Pastoral Attitude One significant concern characterized Augustine’s era: a practical need for his people to understand what it meant to be Christian.21 Because of diverse and competing views about Christ both among the Christians of North Africa and in the surrounding culture,

 See Bapt. 2.3.4 (CSEL 51:178; trans. is my own) “Quis autem nesciat sanctam scripturam canonicam tam veteris quam novi testamenti certis suis terminis contineri.”  Doctr. chr. 2.8.13 (CCSL 32:39–40). See also the chapter dedicated to the development of the scriptural canon, “Scripture and the North African Conciliar Canon Lists,” by R. Villegas Marín in this volume.  See also sermones 95.2 (PL 38:596); 250.3 (SC 116:316–24); and 273.8 (PL 38:1251–52).  T. Toom, “Augustine on Scripture,” in T&T Clark Companion to Augustine and Modern Theology, eds. C. C. Pecknold and T. Toom (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013), 75–90. See also G. Bonner, “Augustine as biblical scholar,” in The Cambridge History of the Bible, eds. P. R. Ackroyd and G. F. Evans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 541–63.  For further data on the Bible in Roman Africa in the beginning of the fifth century, see P.-M. Bogaert, “Les bibles d’Augustin,” in Saint Augustin et la Bible. Actes du colloque de l’université Paul Verlaine-Metz (7–8 April 2005), eds. G. Nauroy and M.-A. Vannier, Recherches en littérature et spiritualité 15 (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008), 17–28.  Enarrat. Ps. 103.1 (CCSL 40:1521): “unus sermo dei.”  See also C. Harrison, “‘Not Words but Things’: Harmonious Diversity in the Four Gospels,” in Augustine: Biblical Exegete, eds. F. van Fleteren and J. C. Schnaubelt (Bern: Peter Lang, 2001), 159–62.  Tract. Ev. Jo. 19.7 (CCSL 36:191–2): “omnia disposita, nequaquam rixantia.”  Enarrat. Ps. 45.1 (CCSL 38:518): “Crux domini nostri clavis fuit, qua clausa aperirentur.”  R. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 19: “In one way or another the debates of these decades [at the end of the 4th century] all revolved around the question: what is it to be a Christian?”.

142

Allan D. Fitzgerald O.S.A.

it was particularly important to address the issue of Christian identity.22 In explaining to the Catholic community who Christ was or distinguishing between the various understandings of Christ and/or of faith in Christ that were circulating, Augustine was not engaging in a debate with adversaries. From this it follows that his sermons on the Johannine corpus should be described as pastoral rather than polemical.23 At the same time, it is clear that Augustine’s purpose was “not merely to hear Scripture speak of Christ, much less merely to speak correct dogma . . . rather [he] seeks to stir spiritual love so that the body’s members might read the Law as Christ reads it.”24 When he preached or commented on the Johannine corpus, he was not, in other words, trying to produce a work of technical exegesis; rather, he was seeking to show “how the gifts of the incarnate Christ and indwelling Spirit bring about a real transformation in human life.”25 Even though this chapter will confine itself to his commentaries on John and 1 John,26 it has been correctly observed that there is a “deep, unmistakable permeation of all his writing with the Johannine spirit. St. John’s is the ideal image that roots Augustine both in mind and being in the New Testament.”27

 D. J. Jones, Christus Sacerdos in the Preaching of St. Augustine, Patrologia: Beiträge zum Studium der Kirchenväter 14 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004), 17–19.  A point is insistently made by S. Dermer, “Magna Gratiae Commendatio,” 55, 68, 76, 179, 220, etc. Cf. Tract. Ev. Jo. 30.1 (CCSL 36:289; trans. is my own): “Quod enim pretiosum sonabat de ore domini, et propter nos scriptum est, et nobis servatum, et propter nos recitatum, et recitabitur etiam propter posteros nostros, et donec saeculum finiatur.” (“The precious words that sounded from the lips of the Lord were written down for us and preserved for us and spoken for us and will also be read aloud for our descendants until the age is over.”) And Tract. Ev. Jo. 49.1 (CCSL 36:419–20; trans. is my own): “Electa sunt autem quae scriberentur, quae saluti credentium sufficere videbantur.” (“Yet the things chosen for writing seemed sufficient for the salvation of believers.”) G. Madec, Introduction aux Révisions et à la Lecture des Œuvres de Saint Augustin (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1996), 64, highlights their actuality, not their polemical nature: “C’est un commentaire lié à l’actualité par ses nombreuses allusions anti-donatistes, surtout dans les premières homélies.”  M. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere: Augustine’s Early Figural Exegesis (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 288.  S. Dermer, “Magna Gratiae Commendatio,” 261.  Augustine preached many other sermons on the Johannine corpus, texts which cannot easily be integrated into this chapter. See, for example, the list of the sermons on John in H. A. G. Houghton, Augustine’s Text of John, 121. Since Augustine’s treatment of the Johannine corpus in these two commentaries is consistently more detailed than in any of the individual sermons dedicated to only a part of that collection, it is best to keep the focus on those works rather than on other individual sermons.  R. Guardini, The Conversion of St. Augustine, trans. E. Briefs (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1960), 76–77.

6 Augustine and John the Evangelist

143

The Disciple Jesus Loved and Who Rested on His Breast As noted above, Augustine clearly regards John the Evangelist as the author of all of the biblical books that are thought to have been written by “John.” What is significant is the fact that he was reading these works through the eyes of the disciple that Jesus loved28 and that he sought to comment on them in relation to John’s bond with Christ.29 As the one who laid his head on Jesus’s breast and drank in the secrets of wisdom and truth,30 John is the one evangelist who writes about the divinity of Christ. At the same time, John never loses sight of the humanity of Christ, the mediator of salvation.31 This chapter will unfold in four main sections. The next brief section will discuss what is known about Augustine’s initial experiences of John’s writings in the midst of developing a biblical mindset. That will be followed by a rather lengthy section that describes some of the significant changes in the way he read the Scriptures: a history of how his Johannine perspective came into focus and thus prepared him for the time when he would begin the commentary on the Gospel of John and, shortly thereafter, on 1 John. The section that follows will discuss the factors that led Augustine to decide to begin the commentary on the Gospel of John for the Catholic community in Hippo. This chapter will then offer some examples of what it means to say that Augustine was reading John through the eyes of that apostle.

 References to the beloved disciple are found in John 13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7; and 21:20. Augustine usually qualifies that title for John in some way so as to be able to say that Jesus loved all of the disciples: “He, of course, loved everyone, but loved [John] more than the others and more intimately, so much so that at the supper he had him repose on his breast.” Trans. is my own. Cf. Tract. Ev. Jo. 119.2 (CCSL 36:658–9): “Qui utique omnes, sed ipsum prae ceteris et familiarius diligebat, ita ut in convivio super pectus suum discumbere faceret.” D. Dideberg, “Saint Jean, le disciple bien-aimé, révélateur des secrets du Verbe de Dieu,” in Saint Augustin et la Bible, ed. A.-M. La Bonnardière, Bible de tous les temps 3 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1986), 189–201, esp. 189 and 192. The Gospel refers to the experience at the last supper twice: John 13:25 and 21:20. Augustine spends time on these titles in Tract. Ev. Jo. 16.2; 61.4f; 113.2; 119.2; and 124.4 (CCSL 36:165; 481f; 636–7; 658–9 and 682–3).  D. Wyrwa, “Augustins geistliche Auslegung des Johannesevangeliums,” in Christliche Exegese zwischen Nicaea und Chalcedon, eds. J. van Oort and U. Wickert (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1992), 187–8.  Tract. Ev. Jo. 61.6 (CCSL 36:482): “Hic est utique pectoris sinus, sapientiae secretum.” See also Tract. Ev. Jo. 1.1; 16.2; 18.1; 20.1; 36.1; 61.4f; 119.2 (CCSL 36:1; 165; 179–80; 202; 323; 481f; 658–9) and Tract. ep. Jo. 5.1 (PL 35:2012).  See, for example, Tract. Ev. Jo. 1.5; 15.1; 20.13; 38.4; and 48.6 (CCSL 36:2–3; 150–1; 210–1; 339–40; and 405–6) as well as s. Dolbeau 26.55 (ed. F. Dolbeau, Vingt-six Sermons Au Peuple D’afrique, EAA 147 [Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1996], 409–10) where the disciple whom Jesus loved exemplifies the way of humility.

144

Allan D. Fitzgerald O.S.A.

Acquiring a Biblical Mindset It was in the mid-380s CE in Milan that the priest, Simplicianus, “turned Augustine’s attention to the Johannine Prologue.”32 Years later, when he wrote about the last stages of his conversion in his Confessiones (Conf.), Augustine reflected on how the Prologue of John (1:1–18) had instilled within him a need to appreciate both the humanity and the humility of Christ. The insights that he wrote about in Conf. were substantive and lasting, and the words of John were prominently cited.33 This way of recounting the initial understanding of John has been rightly described as “proleptic” because,34 in reality, it took Augustine several years to recognize how John words had helped him see the difference between the Christian message and what he had read in the books of the Platonists. Those changes have been perceptively described in several recent studies, showing what led him to come to a full and balanced appreciation of the role of Christ’s humanity in God’s salvific plan.35 A recounting of the significant stages of that history will show how the Word of God proclaimed by John came to be at the heart of Augustine’s life and ministry.36

Bishop Valerius Augustine’s progress in the Scriptures began to accelerate shortly after he was drafted by the people of Hippo as their priest in 391. At that time he wrote to Bishop Valerius, “I was ordained at the time when we were planning a period of retreat for gaining knowledge of the divine Scriptures and wanted to arrange our affairs in order that we could have the leisure for this task.”37 Thus did he begin to read the Scriptures in a new way, thanks to a process that was clearly enhanced due to both the interest and

 G. Madec, Le Christ de Saint Augustin: La Patrie et la Voie, Jésus et Jésus-Christ 36 (Paris: Desclée, 2001), 37. Years later, he would look back to the time before his conversion and recall what Simplicianus had often said about the prologue of John: “This passage should be inscribed in letters of gold and displayed in the most prominent place in every church.” See Civ. 10.29 (CCSL 47:306; WSA I/6:341, trans. Babcock): “Aureis litteris conscribendum et per omnes ecclesias in locis eminentissimis proponendum esse [dicebat].”  On the humility of Christ, see Conf. 7.9.13–14 and 7.18.24–7.21.27 (CCSL 27:101–2 and 108–12).  M. Cameron, “Augustine and John’s Gospel from Conversion to Confessiones,” AugStud 48:1/2 (2017): 272–3, explains that in Conf. Augustine wrote in a way that future events were projected “back into an earlier moment by means of the quotation from John.” See, for example, Conf. 7.9.13–14 (CCSL 27: 101–2).  See M. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, esp. ch. 4 on Christ as “the Glue of Scriptural Unity”; and M. Cameron, “Augustine and John’s Gospel from Conversion to Confessiones.”  W. Harmless, Augustine and the Catechumenate, rev. ed. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014), 250: “Thus it was Scripture itself and not theological topics that shaped the organization of his curriculum for catechumens.”  Ep. 21.3 (CSEL 34/1:51): “Tunc enim ordinatus sum, cum de ipso vacationis tempore ad cognoscendas divinas scripturas cogitaremus, et sic nos disponere vellemus, ut nobis otium ad hoc negotium posset esse.”

6 Augustine and John the Evangelist

145

guidance of Bishop Valerius.38 While it may be obvious that Augustine’s faith was well grounded by the time he came to Hippo, he still found it necessary to ask his bishop for time to study the Scriptures so that he could see how to exercise his ministry “for the salvation of others, ‘not seeking what is beneficial for me, but for many, that they may be saved’” (cf. 1 Cor 10:33).39 That same pastoral attitude will be affirmed at the beginning of the second homily on John: “It is good for me, brothers, to explain the text of the divine scriptures, and especially of the holy Gospel, insofar as I can without skipping any passage, and that I be nourished according to my capacity and hand over to you what nourished me.”40

Moving toward a Johannine Vision Over the years of his priesthood, Augustine learned much from his study of the Scriptures. The various texts from John that are cited in this period have been listed in a recent article that asks, “how did Augustine’s reading of John draw him, compel him, and transform him in the time before and during the writing of Conf.?”41 That article also noted that some texts from John were “powerful agents of conversion in their own right.”42 and that “Augustine’s most significant use of Johannine texts is Christological.”43 A brief examination of his participation in the Council of Hippo that was held in 393 will show that his interests were more than merely Christological.

 M. Dulaey, “L’apprentissage de l’exégèse biblique par Augustin, II: Années 390–392” REAug 49 (2003): 43–84; and M. Cameron, “Valerius of Hippo: A Profile,” AugStud 40:1 (2009): 5–26.  Ep. 21.4 (CSEL 34/1:52): “Sed hoc ipsum quo modo ministrem ad salutem aliorum ‘non quaerens, quod mihi utile est, sed quod multis, ut salvi fiant.’” See A. Fitzgerald, “When Augustine was a Priest: Pride, Common Good and Donatism,” AugStud 40/1 (2009): 37–48.  See Tract. Ev. Jo. 2.1 (CCSL 36:11): “Bonum est, fratres, ut textum divinarum scripturarum, et maxime sancti evangelii, nullum locum praetermittentes pertractemus, ut possumus; et pro nostra capacitate pascamur, et ministremus vobis unde et nos pascimur.” See also Tract. Ev. Jo. 16.3 and 35.9 (CCSL 36:165–7 and 322–3).  M. Cameron, “Augustine and John’s Gospel,” 264: “Augustine refers to John’s Gospel roughly 200 times in extant texts prior to Conf., and about 70 times in Conf. itself.”  M. Cameron, “Augustine and John’s Gospel,” 264: “Christological” means that he treats Christ’s deeds as signs that point to spiritual realities. Thus does Christ function as the ultimate sign where his humanity points to the Word with God. See also Norris, “Augustine and Sign in Tractatus in Iohannis Euangelium,” in Augustine: Biblical Exegete, eds. F. Van Fleteren and J. C. Schnaubelt (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 215–31.  M. Cameron, “Augustine and John’s Gospel,” 267.

146

Allan D. Fitzgerald O.S.A.

The Council of Hippo At this council, it was clear that Augustine was reading widely, and he was also searching the Scriptures for an understanding of the Spirit of God. He depends “on Scripture, especially John, in developing this theme of the Holy Spirit as love.”44 Already, in his words to the gathered bishops, Augustine describes the Holy Spirit as the communion between the Father and the Son. He is the “gift of God” (donum dei) that is called love: Some have even dared to believe that the Holy Spirit is the communio or, so to speak, the deitas (which the Greeks call θεóτητα) of the Father and the Son. . . . This divinity, which they also interpret as the mutual love and charity of each to the other, they say is called the Holy Spirit and that many scriptural texts exist to support their view . . . Whenever there is mention in Scripture of the Gift of God, they want to interpret it above all else as meaning that the charity of God is the Holy Spirit.45

Augustine thus affirms an intimate connection between 1 John 4:7 (“love is of God), 1 John 4:16 (“God is love”), and Rom 5:5 (“The love of God has been poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us”).46 Thus, “For Augustine . . . the proper context . . . includes not only 1 John 4 but also the Gospel of John and indeed the whole of Scripture.”47 But, even though he would come to see the “deep, internal logic held together by the persons of Christ and the Holy Spirit,”48 his understanding of how the humanity of Christ was integral to the plan of salvation would have to wait until he could overcome some of what he had learned in his time with the Manichaeans.

 S. Dermer, “Magna Gratiae Commendatio,” 149 n64.  Fid. symb. 9.19 (CSEL 41:23–25): “Ausi sunt tamen quidam ipsam communionem patris et filii atque, ut ita dicam, deitatem, quam Graeci θεóτητα appellant, spiritum sanctum credere . . . Hanc ergo deitatem, quam etiam dilectionem in se invicem amborum caritatemque volunt intellegi, spiritum sanctum appellatum dicunt multisque scripturarum documentis adsunt huic opinioni suae . . . unde etiam cum donum dei dicitur, satis significari volunt caritatem dei esse spiritum sanctum.” See L. Ayres, “Spiritus Amborum: Augustine and Pro-Nicene Theology,” AugStud 39/2 (2008): 208. On 211–12, Ayres notes that he had written similarly in Mor. eccl. et mor. Manich. 1.23 (CSEL 90:27–28).  S. Dermer, “Magna Gratiae Commendatio,” 149n64; see also M. Levering, Engaging the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit: Love and Gift in the Trinity and the Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 69–70; the recent case study of J. Grabau and A. Dupont provides another example of how John and Paul were used in support of one another: “How Pauline Was Augustine’s John Commentary?” Annali di Storia dellʼEsegesi 33/2 (2016): 365–94.  M. Levering, Engaging the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, 69. See also S. Dermer, “Magna Gratiae Commendatio,” 149–50n64: “Augustine’s dependence on scripture, especially John, in developing this theme of the Holy Spirit as love . . . positing even that John leads us to equate the Holy Spirit with love in a way analogous to equating Jesus with the Word.” Ayres, “Spiritus Amborum: Augustine and Pro-Nicene Theology,” 209, writes: “note that the argument is also partly buttressed by reference to 1 John 4:18, a text used by none of the Latin pro-Nicenes we can show him to have read up to this point.”  S. Dermer, “Magna Gratiae Commendatio,” 255. See also, E. F. Kuehn, “The Johannine Logic of Augustine’s Trinity; A Dogmatic Sketch,” TS 68 (2007): 572–94, who showed that Augustine’s logic for understanding the Father-Son-Spirit relationship will later be seen as essentially Johannine.

6 Augustine and John the Evangelist

147

Paul’s Letter to the Galatians It was as he produced on a commentary on Galatians that a new appreciation began to be evident.49 Prior to the Commentary on Galatians, Augustine’s writings presented Christ as offering a moral example to be followed. Thus, “the man Jesus qua man often seems passively subordinate to the Word rather than actively engaged in the human enterprise.”50 In 393–394, however, as he was working on the Commentary, Augustine came to a new understanding. In the process of explaining Gal 3:13: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, by being made a curse for us, for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’ (cf. Deut 21:23),” he realized that it was precisely because Christ “became a curse for us” that he could exchange his life for ours. The humanity of Christ was thus seen as essential to the work of salvation. Only as a fully human being could he mediate salvation. Cameron summarizes this realization beautifully: Augustine’s take-away insight from reading Galatians was that salvation not only accommodated to historical events, but salvation itself was essentially historical. Just as Augustine’s Pauline discovery of the spiritual realm as a seeker in Milan decisively reoriented his materialistic thinking, so as a priest in Hippo his strong Pauline identification of spiritual salvation with Christ’s human and historical crucifixion eradicated any trace of spiritualism or devaluation of the material. The critical lesson he learned from Paul’s teaching concerned the human Mediator, “the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5), who bridged the divine and human as well as the spiritual and material. Christ revealed God’s design of offering spiritual reality through material and physical means throughout the different times of salvation history.”51

With this new articulation of the human and historical dimensions of salvation, Augustine had attained a new awareness of the significance of the humanity and of the humility of Christ. “This shift rippled across Augustine’s language. The telltale move at this time is Augustine’s expanded use of the word suscipere, ‘to take up,’ to include the crucifixion as a human event.”52

 M. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, ch. 5. P. Hombert, “La christologie des trent-deux premières,” in Augustin, philosophe et prédicateur: Hommage à Goulven Madec [Actes du colloque international organisé à Paris les 8 et 9 sept. 2011], ed. I. Bochet, Coll. des Études Augustiniannes, Série Antiquité 195 (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2012), 443, also suspected that some things had changed, but did not study the implications of this idea: “Le commentaire du Sermon sur la montagne et celui des Lettres aux Romains et aux Galates marquent peut-être un tournant dans la christologie augustinienne.”  M. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 149.  Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 151, emphasis in original. For a detailed description of Augustine’s progress at this time, see ch. 5.  Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 154. This interpretation is also offered against the Manichaean view in Adim. 21 (CSEL 25/1:182); cf. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 155–6.

148

Allan D. Fitzgerald O.S.A.

Later in this commentary, Augustine will, and for the first time, cite 1 Tim 2:5: “God is one, one also is the Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.”53 Thus, “Christ’s ‘visible’ humility on the cross not only indicated God’s wisdom and power in the temporal arrangement for salvation but also put it into effect; that is, Christ crucified mediated it.”54 Augustine will henceforth consistently and insistently see Christ as mediator,55 recognizing that: The real flesh of Christ on the cross was necessary not only to show redemption but also to conduct it; Christ instructed the human mind with truth but also mediated grace to the human will . . . In the course of studying Paul’s letter to the Galatians, then, Augustine’s fresh analysis of Christ’s death reorganized his understanding of eternal-temporal relations. Rather than only distinguishing or juxtaposing or sequencing the two realms, the cross interrelated them as Christ took up sin, death, and the curse both figuratively and really.56

It is also clear that Augustine recognized the interconnection between the Old and the New Testaments as highlighted by Paul in Gal 3:13. This recognition supplied him with a solid illustration of the need to move beyond the Manichaean denial of the interrelationship of the two testaments. It also sets up a significant development in his reading of John.

Jesus as the Way The aforementioned development can be seen in the change in Augustine’s writing about Christ as “the way” (John 14:6a). Prior to 396, in fact, he always omitted that term when he spoke about Christ as truth and life (John 14:6bc). But in Book 1 of De doctrina christiana (Doctr. chr.), he wrote that “while [Christ] himself is the homeland, he also made himself our way to the homeland.”57 In Augustine’s deepened understanding of the significance of Christ’s humanity, he has now become the way to get to our homeland. Once again, Augustine had to move beyond his old Manichaean mindset in which Christ only provided a moral example to be admired and followed. From this point forward, Augustine would also describe the incarnate Word as the one who is the way precisely because his human life truly mediates salvation.58

 Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 157, emphasis in original.  Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 157, emphasis in original.  D. J. Jones, Christus Sacerdos in the Preaching of St. Augustine.  M. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 158, emphasis in original.  M. Cameron, “Augustine and John’s Gospel,” 270; Doctr. chr. 1.11.11 (CCSL 32:12): “Cum ergo ipsa sit patria, viam se quoque nobis fecit ad patriam.” While this passage is, formally speaking, about the work of Wisdom, in context it is clear that Augustine is talking about the Wisdom who was Christ: “Wisdom adapted her healing art to our wounds by taking on a human being.” Cf. Doctr. chr. 1.14.13 (CCSL 32:13–14).  Fort. 3 (CSEL 25/1:84–86).

6 Augustine and John the Evangelist

149

At that same time and, indeed, in the same paragraph, Augustine brought to the fore a new formulation of John 1:14: “he dwelt (habitavit) among us.” At the end of that paragraph, he again cites that phrase, but there he changes the form of the verb from “he dwelt” (habitavit) to “so that he might dwell” (ut habitaret).59 He repeats that new form shortly thereafter, connecting it to Christ as the Way (John 14:6):60 “This is why the Lord said, ‘I am the way the truth and the life,’ by which he means, ‘by me you come, at me you arrive, and in me you abide.’”61 In these subtle changes, Augustine fashioned a link between John 1:14 and John 14:6, highlighting an alternate sense in which the flesh of Christ is “a basic and continually necessary pathway to finding God.”62 “Augustine essentially said that, if one wants to attain to a vision of Christ’s divinity as portrayed in John 1:1, then one has to travel along the ‘way’ of John 14:6 that is embedded in the ‘flesh’ of John 1:14.”63 Hence, even though Augustine inherited a patristic tradition that tended to see John as distinctive in its teaching on the divinity of Christ, this new insight into the necessity of the humanity of Christ for our redemption was henceforth tightly linked to his reading of that same Gospel.64 So too did the nuanced appreciation of Christ’s mediation of salvation provide a good example of how the words of Paul and the words of John mutually interpreted one another. This analysis of Augustine’s progress in his understanding of the role of the physical, historical life of Christ as the means of salvation also serves the larger purpose of this chapter. By the time he begins his commentary on John in 406, Augustine’s increased interest in that text will be seen not as an isolated experience but as a process of becoming less centered on the intellectual challenges that came from his Manichaean past and more fully concerned with addressing the needs of those to whom he is preaching in the present.65 The verses discussed supra (1:14 and 14:6) will, in fact, be the keys that Augustine uses to introduce the faithful to the fourth Gospel in his full-length commentary.66

 Doctr. chr. 1.13.12 (CCSL 32:13); M. Cameron, “Augustine and John’s Gospel,” 270.  M. Cameron, “Augustine and John’s Gospel,” 270.  Doctr. chr. 1.34.38 (CCSL 32:27–28; trans. M. Cameron, “Augustine and John’s Gospel,” 270): “Sic enim ait: ‘ego sum via et veritas et vita,’ hoc est ‘per me venitur, ad me pervenitur, in me permanetur.’”.  M. Cameron, “Augustine and John’s Gospel,” 270.  M. Cameron, “Augustine and John’s Gospel,” 270.  Cf. S. Dermer, “Magna Gratiae Commendatio,” 30–31; see also M. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 148: “Augustine’s early works so emphasized Christ’s divinity that they tended to obscure the integral human reality of Christ; the man Jesus qua man often seems passively subordinate to the Word rather than actively engaged in the human enterprise.”  See T. J. van Bavel, Christians in the World: Introduction to the Spirituality of St. Augustine, trans. M. van Bryn, Spirituality for Today 2 (New York: Catholic Book Publishing Co., 1980), 77: “A certain shift in emphasis is discernible in Augustine’s thought. This moves down from God to man. In the development of Augustine’s spiritual life an increasing preoccupation with John plays an important part.”  M.-F. Berrouard, “L’exégèse de saint Augustin prédicateur du quatrième Évangile. Le sens de l’unité des Écritures,” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 34 (1987): 321.

150

Allan D. Fitzgerald O.S.A.

Christ and the Church As a way of completing the picture of how John’s writings played a significant role in his appropriation of a biblical mindset, a few comments on how the Johannine corpus contributed to Augustine’s thinking on the ecclesial dimensions of salvation in Christ are in order. Gerald Bonner once wrote that, the “most important feature of Augustine’s biblical exegesis is its ecclesial quality.”67 His Enarrationes in Psalmos (Enarrat. Ps.) 15–32 help to clarify Bonner’s point.68 A hint of Johannine influence can also be seen in Enarrat. Ps. 15 where he repeatedly quotes “because I am within them,” a line that “expresses the whole economy of the Incarnation in the compass of a single phrase.”69 As Michael Cameron notes: In quibus quia ego sum recalls the Johannine Christ’s ego sum, “I am” (John 6:35, 8:12, 8:58, etc.), itself an echo of the divine self-revelation to Moses in Exod 3:14 (“Tell them ‘I am’ sent you”). But it also reflects the “high priestly” prayer that the still mortal, pre-crucifixion Christ prays for his disciples at the climax of the “farewell discourse” of John 17:1–26.”70

Augustine did not refer to John 17 in any of the first fourteen enarrationes but does so several times in Enarrat. Ps. 15–32. The latter position clearly “contrasts with Augustine’s previous view that Christ’s intercessory work at God’s right hand was an exclusively divine work that was delegated to the Man only after his resurrection.”71 More importantly, there is a sense that Augustine’s attention to the unity of those who pray the psalms with Christ will lead him, in words of Enarrat. Ps. 17, to make the “first known use of the phrase, ‘the whole Christ’,”72 one that Augustine will use to express the unity of Christ and his members, as head and body, in a single person.73 In effect, Augustine is saying that it is Christ who is both the one praying and the one to whom the church prays. Thus, each of the psalms that Cameron calls the

 G. Bonner, “Augustine as Biblical Scholar,” in The Cambridge History of the Bible, From the Beginnings to Jerome, vol. 1, eds. P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 561.  M. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 189–212. Augustine’s expositions on these psalms were likely composed in 393–395; see M. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 166.  M. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 203.  M. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 202.  M. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 203.  M. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 204.  This Augustinian expression is both important and complex. See M. Cameron, “The Emergence of Totus Christus in Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos,” in The Harp of Prophecy: Early Christian Interpretation of the Psalms, eds. B. E. Daley, S. J. and P. R. Kolbet (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), 205–26.

6 Augustine and John the Evangelist

151

“Psalms of the Crucified” (Enarrat. Ps. 15; 16; 17; 21; 27; 29; and 30)74 shows that they are the voice of Christ and the voice of the church. Through this, in turn, he again manifests a “transformed understanding of Christ and the Church.”75 By reading “the Psalms in terms of Paul’s insights about Christ’s crucified human humility,” “an unexpectedly rich trove of insights that permanently altered Augustine’s Christian faith and reading of Scripture”76 has been uncovered. On the basis of this rich tapestry of the history of some of the significant developments in Augustine’s use and understanding of the Scriptures, it can now be asked: What was it that led him to begin a commentary on John in the winter of 406 and, shortly thereafter, to preach ten homilies on 1 John?77 How does the response to that question make it possible to talk about the significance of the Johannine writings for Augustine from ca. 406 until his death in 430?

Beginning to Preach on John What led Augustine to begin the commentary on John and to assert that he wanted to treat the whole Gospel?78 Marie-François Berrouard holds that he saw a need to respond to the way the Donatists confined Christ’s saving work to themselves, thus failing to extend his love beyond the shores of Africa.79 Scott Dermer suggests that the deep theological coherence Augustine saw between the “Psalms of Ascent” and John led him to engage his listeners in the experience of an ascent to God.80 Douglas Milewski notices that no one asked him to do this nor were they a response to any individual heresy; rather, they were intended “to achieve a seemingly impossible goal: the delivery of a detailed, intricate exegetical and theological discourse to a frequently unpredictable general audience.” Moreover, they were “not dependent upon any

 M. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 196.  M. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 197. See also 197–9 where Cameron explains how Ps 21 uncovers “the very engine of human redemption” (198), and the “human act of ‘taking up’ the sinner on the cross reveals the depth of the humble human love of Christ that ratified and conjoined with divine love” (199).  M. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 167.  See A. Fitzgerald, “Introduction,” in WSA III/12:25–28 for the list of how these commentaries were interspersed with his expositions on the so-called “Psalms of Ascent.” See also A. Ployd, Augustine, the Trinity and the Church. A Reading of the Anti-Donatist Sermons (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2015), 4–5, and M.-F. Berrouard, Introduction aux homélies de saint Augustin sur l’évangile de saint Jean (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2004), 22–27.  Tract. Ev. Jo. 2.1 (CCSL 36:11–12).  M.-F. Berrouard, Introduction aux homélies de saint Augustin sur l’évangile de saint Jean, 77–78.  S. Dermer, “Magna Gratiae Commendatio,” 73: “I argue that Augustine turned to John’s Gospel in the Winter of 406 because it complemented the Psalms of Ascent with its clear teaching on the incarnation.”

152

Allan D. Fitzgerald O.S.A.

historically specific occasion or audience.”81 Each of those assessments is helpful insofar as Augustine’s desire was to apply the Johannine corpus to his time and to his community without losing sight of the challenge of helping all to come to a more accurate understanding of their Christian identity. It is accurate to say that these sermons may not “depend upon any historically specific occasion or audience.” Yet, it also has to be said that they were preached in specific personal and historical circumstances. Describing those historical and human circumstances will, ironically, make it possible to appreciate that Augustine’s work was not limited or defined by them alone. It will thus be seen that Augustine’s attitude both toward Christ and toward growth in the Christian community were given a new impetus at this time, but that new impetus was not narrowly defined by the challenges that he was facing.

Attitudes toward Jesus Christ The first group of sermons (1–16) on John, as well as the ten homilies on 1 John, were preached not long after Emperor Honorius’s Edict of Unity was issued in 405. This was an imperial decree intended to end violence against Catholics.82 As a result, some formerly Donatist Christians began to join the Catholic community in Hippo.83 Augustine had already noticed that the Donatist leaders emphasized the holiness of the minister, even to the point of obscuring the work of Christ. But he had also noticed how the non-Christian culture spoke about Christ in merely practical and human terms. He addressed both of those experiences in the early years of the fifth century.84 Using the works of John to preach on Christ was a way to offer his (newly) diverse community a unifying focus. That theme, in fact, was already present in the first sermon on the “Psalms of Ascent,” a sermon preached at this same time and in which he cited several passages from the prologue to John. Jesus Christ “is the starting point of your ascent and the goal of your ascent; you climb from his example to his divinity. He gave you an example by humbling himself.”85 Augustine invites all to accompany him on a contemplative assent,86

 D. Milewski, “Augustine’s 124 Tractates on the Gospel of John: The Status Quaestionis and the State of Neglect,” AugStud 33 (2002): 70–71.  See Berrouard, BA 71:57. This edict forbade membership in the Donatist church, called for the exile of clergy, and turned Donatist properties over to the Catholics.  Tract. Ev. Jo. 13.10–11 (CCSL 36:135–7). Cf. A. Fitzgerald, “Engaging the Gospel of John,” AugStud 48/1 (2017): 3–22, for a fuller development of his desire to unify the Catholic community.  S. Dolbeau 26 (ed. Dolbeau, Vingt-six, 366–417). Cf. D. Jones, Christus Sacerdos in the Preaching of St. Augustine; and G. Madec, “Le Christ des païens d’après le De consensu euangelistarum de saint Augustin,” RechAug 26 (1992): 3–67.  Enarrat. Ps.119.1 (CCSL 40:1777): “Hinc ergo adscendendum est, illuc adscendendum; ab exemplo ipsius, ad divinitatem ipsius. Exemplum enim tibi fecit humiliando se.”  Cf. S. Dermer, “Magna Gratiae Commendatio,” 74–77.

6 Augustine and John the Evangelist

153

describing that process as also a source of ongoing learning on his part; together, they were all learning in the school of Christ: “Listen to me questioning rather than arguing, seeking rather than presuming to know, learning rather than teaching, and, of course, in me or rather through me you also question [Christ].”87 More than a correction of the way that Donatist ministers had put themselves in the place of Christ,88 and more than a contrast with the misrepresentations of Christ by their non-Christian contemporaries,89 Augustine shows them how to use John in coordination with other biblical texts to overcome division and to foster unity at the beginning of the fifth century. That same motivation will continue to be present when the focus changes from cultural and Donatist challenges to those that associated with the Pelagian controversy. Augustine’s desire to keep Christ at the center of his own life thus found a way to invite all his listeners to a deeper understanding of their own Christian identity.

Attitude toward the Church Another dimension of Augustine’s decision to preach on the Johannine corpus may have been connected to the first stages of his work on the Trinity, even though that connection is intuitive rather than clearly demonstrable.90 Basil Studer has noticed that his sermons on John played an important role in his conviction regarding the uniqueness of the Holy Spirit.91 Evan Kuehn’s article recognizes the Johannine logic in Augustine’s treatment of the Trinity.92 Adam Ployd’s study on Augustine’s work in the early years of the fifth century highlights the fact that the unity of the church is brought about by the love of the Holy Spirit.93 Scott Dermer adds that Augustine sees

 Tract. Ev. Jo. 38.9 (CCSL 36:342): “Audite me interrogantem potius quam disputantem, magis quaerentem quam praesumentem, potius discentem quam docentem, et certe in me vel per me etiam vos interrogate.” See also B. Studer, “I Tractatus in Iohannem di sant’Agostino,” in Atti del I simposio di Efeso su S. Giovanni apostolo, ed. L. Padovese (Rome: Pontificio Ateneo Antoniano, 1991), 137.  See Berrouard, BA 71:61–70, and 78: “Augustin a l’intuition qu’en prêchant le Christ et son amour il démasque le schisme, détruit ses arguments et avance sa ruine.” Augustine had already recognized this problem while he was still a priest, i.e., during 391–395/6: see Psal. Don. 295 (Anastasi [1957]: 70): “Quia quod debetis pro Christo, pro Donato vultis ferre”; Enarrat. Ps. 10.5 (CCSL 38:78): “Itaque isti cogunt eos qui accipiunt sacramenta, spem suam in homine ponere, cujus cor videre non possunt”; and s. Dolbeau 26.45 and 52 (ed. Dolbeau, Vingt-six, 401–7). The latter was probably preached in 404.  D. Jones, Christus Sacerdos in the Preaching of St. Augustine.  Augustine’s commentary on John was preached from about 406–421; Trin. was composed between about 399 and 422/26. See A.D. Fitzgerald et al., ATAE, xlvi and il. For a discussion of Augustine’s sources, see L. Ayres, “Spiritus Amborum: Augustine and Pro-Nicene Theology.”  B. Studer, “Zur Pneumatologie des Augustinus von Hippo (De Trinitate 15,17,27–27,50),” Aug 35/2 (1995): 569.  E. F. Kuehn, “The Johannine Logic of Augustine’s Trinity.”  A. Ployd, Augustine, the Trinity, and the Church, ch. 4: “The Love of the Holy Spirit.”

154

Allan D. Fitzgerald O.S.A.

the gratuitous gift of the incarnate Word as inspiring one to love God gratuitously.94 Thus, for Augustine, it was the Holy Spirit who brought about and maintained the unity of the church.95 In other words, the theme of inviting his listeners to pay attention to the life of the incarnate Word is both explicitly and implicitly tied to the action of the Holy Spirit.96 Therefore, in commenting on the gift of God as living water (John 4:10), Augustine uses John 7:38–39 to identify that gift as the Holy Spirit. Christ was “promising a lavish meal and her fill of the Holy Spirit.”97 Rather than a speculative exploration of the Trinitarian relationships, Augustine was interested in inviting his listeners to see how the grace of God was at work. By accepting the gift of love that was the Holy Spirit, they were accepting the legacy of Christ who continued to work in the world, a highly practical opportunity to overcome division by the love of neighbor: “Without the Holy Spirit we cannot love Christ or keep his commandments; and the less we receive him, the less we are able to do this and the less we do it, while the more fully we receive him, the greater our capacity for doing it.”98 Demer explains: As Augustine interpreted John’s Gospel, he explained how the gifts of the incarnate Christ and indwelling Spirit bring about a real transformation in human life. . . . For Augustine, this sharing in God is actualized in the church where one receives the gifts of God through baptism and the Eucharist.99

Keuhn agrees, saying, “Augustine insists on drawing Christology into Pneumatology, as it is the Spirit who leads the believer to Christ and sustains the union of soteriological contemplation.”100 According to Augustine, Donatist leaders had failed to preach the whole mystery of Jesus Christ. By contrast, Augustine makes it the focus: “When we say to them, ‘Love peace, love Christ,’ do we say, ‘pay honor to us’? Certainly not! We say, ‘Pay

 Tract. Ev. Jo. 3.17 (CCSL 36:27–28).  S. Dermer, “Magna Gratiae Commendatio,” 150.  Tract. Ev. Jo. 5.15 (CCSL 36:49–50). See, for example, E. F. Kuehn, “The Johannine Logic of Augustine’s Trinity,” 594n14: “Augustine’s theological synthesis of the canonical narrative reveals the Johannine logic of the Pater-Filius relationship and its pneumatological fulfillment.” Studies that fail to note this connection include D. Wyrwa, “Augustins geistliche Auslegung des Johannesevangeliums,” and J. M. Norris, “The Theological Structure of St. Augustine’s Exegesis in his Tractatus in Iohannis Evangelium,” PhD diss., Marquette University, 1990.  Tract. Ev. Jo. 15.17 (CCSL 36:156): “Promittebat ergo saginam quamdam et satietatem spiritus sancti.”  Tract. Ev. Jo. 74.2 and 26.3 (CCSL 36:513–4 and 261). The latter offers another example of the close connection Augustine makes between Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit: “Do you therefore also wish to live from the Spirit of Christ? Be in the body of Christ.”  Tract. Ev. Jo. 9.8 (CCSL 36:94–95). See S. Dermer, “Magna Gratiae Commendatio,” 261.  E. F. Kuehn, “The Johannine Logic of Augustine’s Trinity,” 196. It is, after all, the Holy Spirit who inspires love in believers and empowers their ascent to God. Cf. Scott Dermer, “Magna Gratiae Commendatio,” 263, who, recognizing that Augustine’s focus on Jesus Christ never loses sight of the work of the Spirit of Christ, observes that “when Augustine tells the story of grace, he is not telling a human story. Rather, he is telling the story of God: God who gives God.”

6 Augustine and John the Evangelist

155

honor to Christ.’ We want him to be venerated, not ourselves.”101 His concern “was to lead his audience to a deeper understanding and appreciation of the persons of Christ and the Holy Spirit and their gracious works in the economy of salvation.”102 Nevertheless, as Augustine saw it, the broader pagan culture also saw Christ in a way that was inadequate and merely human. Hence, by talking about John’s vision of Christ as central to everything and by noticing how his vision includes an emphasis on humility and on the ministry of baptism in this commentary, Augustine’s words are not limited to questions of this or that doctrine. On the contrary, the need to encourage and to empower everyone to accept the Word of God as found in John was a way to a new understanding of both Catholic unity and Christian values.

Augustine’s Reading of John Is it possible to characterize Augustine’s reading of John? After all, the writing of the commentary on John spanned about fifteen years of his life. Over that time the importance of the Donatist faction diminished and new issues raised by Pelagius and those who were in sympathy with him came to the forefront. The cultural upheaval that followed the sack of Rome in 411 CE was significant enough to compel him to write De civitate Dei (Civ.), thus adding the completion of that great work to the many concerns that regularly confronted him.103 It is noteworthy, therefore, that Augustine’s way of reading John follows familiar patterns and affirms similar emphases. His commentary always treats individual verses, and he even pauses to discuss single words. The content is also consistent. A clear example is in his treatment of grace: “The sermons on John indicate a remarkable stability in his teaching on grace; the Christological and Pneumatological aspects of grace are prominent throughout.”104 At the same time, he recognizes that John offers a model of contemplation and of love, observing, even before he began his commentary on the Gospel, that, “One should remember that this very Gospel of John, which raises one much more fully to a contemplation of the truth, also requires more fully the sweetness of love. And because that commandment . . . is most true and most beneficial, the evangelist who commends Christ much more sublimely than the others has him wash his disciples’ feet.”105

 Enarrat. Ps. 119.9 (CCSL 40:1786): “Quibus dicimus: amate pacem, Christum amate, numquid dicimus: amate et honorate nos? Sed: honorate Christum. Nos nolumus honorari, sed illum.”  S. Dermer, “Magna Gratiae Commendatio,” 29.  Ep. 224.2 (CSEL 57:452–3).  S. Dermer, “Magna Gratiae Commendatio,” 262.  Cons. 4.10.20 (CSEL 43:418; WSA I/14–15:332, trans. Paffenroth): “Meminerit hic ipsum evangelium Johannis, quam multo amplius erigit ad contemplationem veritatis, tam multo amplius praecipere de dulcedine caritatis. Et quia illud praeceptum verissimum ac saluberrimum est . . ., qui evangelista Christum

156

Allan D. Fitzgerald O.S.A.

It is not surprising, therefore, that Augustine reads the writings of John, as it were, through the eyes of John, asking his listeners to contemplate the truth found therein and to practice it. The image of John that is often placed before his community is that of the one who was nourished with the secrets of divine wisdom when he rested his head on Jesus’ breast at the last supper. From that breast he drank in secret; but what he drank in secret, he proclaimed openly, so that all nations might learn not only about the incarnation, the passion, death and the resurrection of the Son of God, but also about that which was before the incarnation: that he was the only Son of the Father, the Word of the Father, co-eternal with the Father and sent by him.106

Just as that experience gave John the ability to present Jesus as the incarnate Word who was the Word from the beginning, so too were his listeners being called to penetrate “the mystery of the Johannine Christ,”107 so as to recognize their own identity in Christ.108 Thus does he say that it was John who “brought us the Word from on high, humbled him and, in some way, lowered him so that we might not dread the exalted one, but approach the humble one.”109

Augustine’s Vision Augustine does not provide an initial introduction that includes an outline of the Gospel of John or even a sense of what his commentary will cover. He simply says that he intends to interpret the whole of John, nourishing his listeners with that which had

longe ceteris altius commendat, aput eum discipulis pedes lavat.”; see also 1.4.7–1.6.9 (CSEL 43:6–10; WSA I/14–15:141–143, trans. Paffenroth): “Joannes ipsam maxime divinitatem Domini, qua Patri est aequalis, intendit eamque praecipue suo Evangelio, quantum inter homines sufficere credidit, commendare curavit. . . . [Ex quo intellegi datur . . . Joannem] ea praesertim, quae Trinitatis unitatem et vitae aeternae felicitatem insinuarent, . . . suam intentionem praedicationemque tenuisse. . . . [Ioannes] lucem incommutabilis veritatis acutissimis atque firmissimis oculis cordis intuetur.” (“John . . . directed his efforts above all to the setting forth of the divine nature in his Gospel in such a way as he believed to be adequate to men’s needs and notions. . . . [for he] directed his efforts above all to the setting forth of the divine nature in his Gospel in such a way as he believed to be adequate to men’s needs and notions. . . . John . . . intended to introduce us to the knowledge of the unity of the Trinity and the blessedness of the life eternal. . . . [He] gazes upon the light of the unchangeable truth with those keenest and steadiest eyes of the heart.”).  Tract. Ev. Jo. 36.1 (CCSL 36:323): “De illo ergo pectore in secreto bibebat; sed quod in secreto bibit, in manifesto eructavit, ut perveniat ad omnes gentes non solum incarnatio filii dei, et passio, et resurrectio, sed etiam quid erat ante incarnationem unicus patri, verbum patris, coaeternus generanti, aequalis ei a quo missus est.” See also Tract. Ev. Jo. 18.1 (CCSL 36:179–80).  E. F. Kuehn, “The Johannine Logic of Augustine’s Trinity,” 194.  Tract. Ev. Jo. 30.1; 20.1; 24.7; 49.1; 104.2; and 124.7 (CCSL 36:289; 202; 247–8; 419–20; 602; and 687). See also D. Jones, Christus Sacerdos in the Preaching of St. Augustine, 19.  Tract. Ev. Jo. 21.12 (CCSL 36:219): “Perduxit ad nos de alto verbum, humiliavit, et quodammodo stravit, ut non horreamus altum, sed accedamus ad humilem.”

6 Augustine and John the Evangelist

157

nourished him.110 Augustine, like John,111 seeks to proclaim in a public way what he had absorbed from personal reading. Throughout his entire Gospel, John maintains the same level as he had attained while formulating the proclamation found in the sublime Prologue,112 publicly proclaiming what he then quietly drank in his Gospel. That is what Augustine seeks to make his listeners capable of doing: not only drinking in what John has spoken but also of pouring it out into the world.113

The Signs of the Gospel of John One example of the way that Augustine reads John can be found in the many places where he discusses the “signs” (semeia; signa) that Jesus did. Those signs or miracles are regularly seen as renewed expressions of the Word’s creative activities. Not only is it a way to re-emphasize what was said in the initial verses of John (cf., for example, 1:3: “All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.”), but they also showed how God was still present and active in the world.114 Augustine observes: I said, you remember, that one dead man rose again, and people were struck dumb with amazement, while nobody marvels at those – who did not exist – [yet are] being born every day. In the same way, who is not astonished at water being turned into wine, while God is doing the same thing every year in the vines? But all the things done by the Lord Jesus avail not only to stir up

 See Tract. Ev. Jo. 2.1 (CCSL 36:11–12).  Tract. Ev. Jo. 20.1 (CCSL 36:202; trans. is my own): “Quod amando biberat, evangelizando ructaret” (“to drink of the secrets of his lofty wisdom, and to proclaim by evangelizing what he imbibed by loving”). See also Tract. Ev. Jo. 1.7 and 36.1 (CCSL 36:4 and 323).  Tract. Ev. Jo. 36.1 (CCSL 36:323; WSA I/12:551, trans. Hill/Fitzgerald): “Huic tantae sublimitati principii etiam cetera congrua praedicavit, et de Domini divinitate, quomodo nullus alius, est locutus.” (“The rest of what he went on to proclaim also conformed to the sublime beginning, and he spoke about the Lord’s divinity as did no other.”).  Tract. Ev. Jo. 124.7: (CCSL 36:687; trans. is my own): “Quoniam nec iste solus, sed universa ecclesia ligat solvitque peccata; nec ille in principio verbum Deum apud Deum, et cetera de Christi divinitate, et de totius divinitatis trinitate atque unitate sublimia, quae in illo regno facie ad faciem contemplanda, nunc autem donec veniat dominus, in speculo atque in aenigmate contuenda sunt, quae praedicando ructaret, de fonte dominici pectoris solus bibit; sed ipse dominus ipsum evangelium pro sua cujusque capacitate omnibus suis bibendum toto terrarum orbe diffudit.” (“For, it is not that man alone, but the universal Church that binds and looses sins. Nor is it this other alone who drank from the fountain of the Lord’s breast all that he was to belch out by preaching, about the Word of God with God in the beginning (Jn 1:1), and the rest of it about the divinity of Christ, and the sublime things about the trinity and unity of the Godhead as a whole, which are to be gazed upon face to face in that kingdom, but now can only be looked at indistinctly as in a mirror (1 Cor 13:12), until the Lord comes (Mt 10:23); but the Lord himself has spread the gospel itself through the whole wide world, to be drunk by all who are his own, according to the capacity of each one.”).  E. F. Kuehn, “The Johannine Logic of Augustine’s Trinity,” 194–5.

158

Allan D. Fitzgerald O.S.A.

our hearts by their miraculous quality, but also to build them up in the teachings of the faith; so it is incumbent on us to investigate what all these things are about, that is, what they mean.115

Augustine interprets these signs as pointing both him and his listeners back to the Word of creation and thus calling them to contemplation of the one who is not now seen: Something therefore was brought to the attention of the senses whereby the mind would be alerted, something displayed before the eyes whereby the understanding could be exercised, so that we might marvel at the invisible God through his visible works; and so, being thus raised up to faith and purified through faith, we might even long to see in an invisible manner the one we recognized through things visible as invisible.116

Hence, Augustine is reading John in a way that reinforces the interconnections among the various parts by using the signs or miracle stories to reaffirm the meaning of the Prologue in relation to everyday experiences of Augustine’s own community. Calling them to look beyond the present by both looking back and looking ahead, that is, back to creation as an ongoing reality that announces that which is to come. The signs of the fourth Gospel thus provide him with a relatively consistent way to focus the reflections of the community on the promise of the life and work of Jesus Christ.

Attentive to John’s Role Another example of how Augustine is reading John is cleverly presented by Dietmar Wyrwa in his analysis of Augustine’s understanding of the Gospel’s twenty-first and final chapter.117 Wyrwa’s insight on that chapter suggests that, from the very beginning of his commentary, Augustine had a sense of the Gospel as a coherent whole.118  Tract. Ev. Jo. 9.1 (CCSL 36:91): “Diximus, sicut meministis, resurrexit unus mortuus, obstupuerunt homines cum quotidie nasci qui non erant, nemo miretur. Sic aquam in vinum conversam quis non miretur, cum hoc annis omnibus deus in vitibus faciat? Sed quia omnia quae fecit dominus Jesus, non solum valent ad excitanda corda nostra miraculis, sed etiam ad aedificanda in doctrina fidei, scrutari nos oportet quid sibi velint illa omnia, id est, quid significent. Horum enim omnium significationes, sicut recordamini, in hodiernum distulimus.” See Tract. Ev. Jo. 8.1 and 49.1 (CCSL 36:81–82 and 419–20). CF. E. F. Kuehn, “The Johannine Logic of Augustine’s Trinity,” 195.  Tract. Ev. Jo. 24.1 (CCSL 36:244): “Hoc ergo admotum est sensibus, quo erigeretur mens, et exhibitum oculis ubi exerceretur intellectus, ut invisibilem deum per visibilia opera miraremur, et erecti ad fidem et purgati per fidem, etiam ipsum invisibiliter videre cuperemus, quem de rebus visibilibus invisibilem nosceremus.” Cf. E. F. Kuehn, “The Johannine Logic of Augustine’s Trinity,” 195.  D. Wyrwa, “Augustins geistliche Auslegung des Johannesevangeliums,” 212–6. See also Berrouard, BA 71:40.  Wyrwa refers to what had Augustine already said about John in Cons. 1.4.7–6 and 1.4.9. See 1.5.8 (CSEL 43:7–9; trans. is my own): “[Ex quo intellegi datur] Joannem vero facta Domini multo pauciora narrantem, dicta vero ejus, ea praesertim, quae Trinitatis unitatem et vitae aeternae felicitatem insinuarent, diligentius et uberius conscribentem, in virtute contemplativa commendanda, suam intentionem

6 Augustine and John the Evangelist

159

Even though Augustine recognized that John 21 had the appearance of being added later, he explained why he saw it as an integral part of the work. At the same time, Augustine gave it extra importance by describing the last words of John 20 as a preface to the final chapter: This passage seems to indicate the end of this book; but he [John] goes on to tell the story of how the Lord showed himself at the sea of Tiberias, and in the catch of fish presented us with a sacrament of the Church, such as it would be in the final resurrection of the dead. And so I think that the purpose of presenting the apparent end of the book in this way, was to make it also serve as a kind of preface to the story that was going to follow, thus underlining its importance.119

As if to highlight that importance, Augustine explains that he will be talking about the exegetical problem that is evident within it, namely “why did the Lord . . . say to the apostle Peter: ‘Follow me,’ but say about the apostle John, ‘What if I wish him to remain until I come; what concern is that of yours?’”120 In response, Augustine gives Jesus’s words a symbolic interpretation. Peter represents the pilgrim church as it toils along the way; John represents the church as it will be after having received the reward of contemplation. “This life is represented by the apostle Peter, that one by John.” Augustine continues, “This can be said more plainly in the following way: Let activity that has been perfected follow me, shaped by the example of my passion, but let contemplation that has begun remain until I come, to be perfected when I come.”121 He sets up a certain tension between the faith of those on earth and the face-toface vision that is promised, between the fact of being on pilgrimage and the hope of attaining eternal peace. He then reinforces the symbolic contrast by noticing that Christ’s love for Peter was not the same as his love for John. These explanations give us an understanding of Augustine’s view of the whole Gospel of John:

praedicationemque tenuisse.” (“John narrates fewer by far of the Lord’s doings [than the Synoptics], but records with greater carefulness and with larger wealth of detail the words which He spoke, and most especially those discourses which were intended to introduce us to the knowledge of the unity of the Trinity and the blessedness of the life eternal; he formed his plan and framed his statement with a view to commend contemplative virtue to our regard.”).  Tract. Ev. Jo. 122.1 (CCSL 36:668; trans. is my own): “Hoc capitulum velut libri hujus indicat finem; sed narratur hic deinde quemadmodum se manifestaverit dominus ad mare Tiberiadis, et in captura piscium commendaverit ecclesiae sacramentum, qualis futura est ultima resurrectione mortuorum. Ad hoc itaque commendandum valere arbitror, quod tamquam finis interpositus est libri, quod esset etiam secuturae narrationis quasi prooemium, quod ei quodammodo faceret eminentiorem locum.” Cf. Tract. Ev. Jo. 122.6 (CCSL 36:671).  Tract. Ev. Jo. 124.1 (CCSL 36:680–1; trans. is my own): “Cur apostolo Petro, quando se tertio manifestavit discipulis, dixerit dominus: ‘Sequere me’ [Io 21:19]; de apostolo autem Johanne: ‘Sic eum volo manere donec veniam; quid ad te?’ [Io 21:22].”  Tract. Ev. Jo. 124.5 (CCSL 36:686; trans. is my own): “Perfecta me sequatur actio, informata meae passionis exemplo; inchoata vero contemplatio maneat donec venio, perficienda cum venero.”

160

Allan D. Fitzgerald O.S.A.

Only now does the symbolic dimension, which Augustine gave to his entire exposition of the fourth Gospel, become fully open to us. Only now, when we recognize the representative of the heavenly life of the Church in the Evangelist, does the context of the Gospel as a whole become transparent to us. Only now do we understand that John [who] . . . ties the symbolic network of references of his Gospel into a dynamic spiritual movement; on the basis of faith, that network is to lead us to the contemplation of the all-transcendent Trinitarian God until, in the eschaton, when even the gospel is complete, all will be fulfilled with the face-to-face vision of God.”122

These words represent the intention of Augustine for his commentary on John in a beautiful way, even if there is more to Augustine’s vision than a presentation of Peter and John as exemplars of the life of Christians. For Augustine continues this final sermon by highlighting the fact that both apostles represent the whole church: Let no one separate these outstanding apostles. Both were in what Peter symbolized, and both were going to be in what John symbolized. . . . Not they alone, but the universal holy Church, the bride of Christ, does this, which is to be snatched away from those trials and preserved in that blessedness. Peter and John represented those two lives, one in each case, but in this life, too, both walked temporally by faith, and both will enjoy that life eternally by vision.123

Remembering that life on this earth is filled with trials, he emphasizes the fact that, even now, we have been redeemed by the Mediator and have received the Holy Spirit as a pledge; hence, we already have the blessed life in hope.124 Here, as everywhere in his work, Augustine made the human Christ the foundation of everything, linking John 1:14 as the way to John 1:1 by invoking John 14:6.125 Maintaining the unity of Peter and John was both a statement about the church and about his care for leading the community to contemplate the fullness of God. Not only does Christ bridge the gap between God and man by his life on earth, but he also asserts that it is the whole church that has the power to bind and loose: For all the saints who belong inseparably to Christ’s body, in order to steer them through this most tempestuous life, Peter, the first of the apostles, received the keys of the kingdom of heaven for the binding and loosing of sins. And for all the same saints the evangelist John, referring to the most tranquil bosom of that hidden life, reclined upon Christ’s breast. For it is not the former alone but the whole Church that binds and looses sins, nor does John alone drink from the fountain of the Lord’s breast which he pours out in preaching the Word, God with God at the beginning and the other sublime things concerning the divinity of Christ and the Trinity and unity of the whole Godhead, things that will be contemplated face to face in that kingdom but now until

 D. Wyrwa, “Augustins geistliche Auslegung des Johannesevangeliums,” 209.  Tract. Ev. Jo. 124.7 (CCSL 36:687): “Nemo tamen istos insignes apostolos separet. Et in eo quod significabat Petrus, ambo erant; et in eo quod significabat Johannes, ambo futuri erant . . . Nec ipsi soli, sed universa hoc facit sancta ecclesia sponsa Christi, ab istis tentationibus eruenda, in illa felicitate servanda. Quas duas vitas Petrus et Johannes figuraverunt, singuli singulas; verum et in hac temporaliter ambulaverunt ambo per fidem, et illa in aeternum fruentur ambo per speciem.”  Cf. Tract. Ev. Jo. 124.5 (CCSL 36:683–6).  See supra and the section “Jesus as the Way.” This connection is also found in Tract. Ev. Jo. 34.9 and 108:3 (CCSL 36:315–6 and 617).

6 Augustine and John the Evangelist

161

the Lord comes must be glimpsed in a mirror and in a dark manner; but the Lord himself spreads his Gospel to be drunk by all in the world, each one according to his capacity.126

Thus was Augustine’s preaching on John motivated by a desire to give his listeners an understanding of their identity as Christians in the face of challenges from outside, and of a desire to unite them in their appreciation of their own faith. If Peter and John are going to be examples of how to live with a clear awareness of one’s Christian identity, it did not matter whether the daily challenge was a secular culture, a Donatist claim, or a Pelagian spirituality. Augustine saw the benefit of having all his listeners share a coherent understanding of Jesus Christ as the source of their salvation. It was not sufficient that Christ provides a moral example, or that his life be used to stigmatize Catholic forgiveness of sinners, or that human effort be exalted to the point that grace is overshadowed. To bring out the beauty and the ordinariness of this challenge, John’s Gospel was singularly appropriate.

The Holy Spirit A truly significant dimension of Augustine’s reading of the Johannine corpus is often left unspoken in the common understanding that John’s work is primarily an invitation to contemplate and participate in the life of Christ, the Word made flesh. In fact, Augustine himself does not always make the role of the Holy Spirit explicit, perhaps because he was so well aware of the description of the Spirit as the gift of love. The importance of noticing the role that he assigns to the Holy Spirit can be seen in the discussion of the way the Spirit is given to Christ and to the Christian.127 In explaining how it can be said that the Holy Spirit is not given “by measure” (cf. John 3:34) when it comes to Christ, Augustine notes: For it is not without the grace of the Holy Spirit that the man Jesus Christ is mediator between God and men . . . For his being the Only Begotten, equal to the Father, is a matter of nature, not of grace; but that the man was taken up into the unity of the Person of the Only Begotten is a

 Cf. Tract. Ev. Jo. 124.7 (CCSL 36:687): “Omnibus igitur sanctis ad Christi corpus inseparabiliter pertinentibus, propter hujus vitae procellosissimae gubernaculum, ad liganda et solvenda peccata claves regni caelorum primus apostolorum Petrus accepit; eisdemque omnibus sanctis propter vitae illius secretissimae quietissimum sinum, super pectus Christi Johannes evangelista discubuit. Quoniam nec iste solus, sed universa ecclesia ligat solvitque peccata; nec ille in principio verbum deum apud deum, et cetera de Christi divinitate, et de totius divinitatis trinitate atque unitate sublimia, quae in illo regno facie ad faciem contemplanda, nunc autem donec veniat dominus, in speculo atque in aenigmate contuenda sunt, quae praedicando ructaret, de fonte dominici pectoris solus bibit; sed ipse dominus ipsum evangelium pro sua cujusque capacitate omnibus suis bibendum toto terrarum orbe diffudit.”  See esp. Tract. Ev. Jo. 74 (CCSL 36:512–5).

162

Allan D. Fitzgerald O.S.A.

matter of grace, not of nature,128 as the Gospel testifies, saying, “And the child grew and became strong, full of wisdom, and the favor of God was in him” (Luke 2:40).129

Augustine is saying that, by grace, the Holy Spirit was imparted to the humanity of Jesus, uniting it to the person of the Son.130 For Augustine, therefore, there is a certain solidarity between Christ and Christians. What Christ had without measure from the very beginning of his human life, however, is also a source of union with God. Nevertheless, it can only be described as having been given “in measure.” Thus, “to the rest, however, it is given by measure, and once given is added to, until for each of us the measure is reached appropriate to the degree of our perfection.”131 Dermer comments at some length: From the beginning of the Tractates, Augustine has emphasized that the incarnation is itself a grace. Augustine’s argument in Tract. Ev. Jo. 74, however, is that the incarnation occurred by means of grace. That is, it occurred by means of the Holy Spirit dwelling – fully and uniquely – in the humanity of Jesus and linking the humanity of Jesus to the divine Word. This notion of union by grace was certainly not present in 406 in Augustine’s comments on John 1:14 (“full of grace”). Nor is it to be found in 407 in his reflection on John 3:34. . . . However, we did see that in Tract. Ev. Jo. 25.11 (of 414) Augustine spoke of the Son of Man being set apart by a “certain grace of the Spirit” (quadam gratia spiritus). Yet he does not elaborate on the theme there, as he does . . . in Tract. Ev. Jo. 74. . . . Augustine came to this notion of union by grace as a result of the Pelagian crisis. It was during the crisis that the bishop came to portray Christ as the “perfect example of the man endowed with the prevenient and unmerited grace of God.”132

Augustine, therefore, is reading John both with a developed and a developing sense of the union of Christ and the Holy Spirit. While it is accurate to emphasize the Christological character of his commentary on John, that emphasis needs to be accompanied by a delicate reflection on the way the Holy Spirit is an integral part of his work, whether in the way just outlined or by the way he talks about the Spirit as the love of God. In the sixth homily on 1 John, for example, the love of neighbor is quite forcefully given by the presence of the Holy Spirit.133

 See Trin. 13.17.22 (CCSL 50A:412–3); 15.26.46 (CCSL 50A:525–7); and sermo 185.3 (PL 38:998–9).  Tract. Ev. Jo. 74.3 (CCSL 36:516): “Neque enim sine gratia spiritus sancti est mediator dei et hominum homo Christus Jesus . . . quod enim est unigenitus aequalis patri, non est gratiae, sed naturae; quod autem in unitatem personae unigeniti assumtus est homo, gratiae est, non naturae, confitente evangelio atque dicente: ‘Puer autem crescebat et confortabatur plenus sapientia, et gratia dei erat in illo’.”  See also Tract. Ev. Jo. 15.12 (CCSL 36:154–5). Cf. S. Dermer, “Magna Gratiae Commendatio,” 225n37.  See Tract. Ev. Jo. 74.3 (CCSL 36:514): “Ceteris autem ad mensuram datur, et datus additur, donec unicuique pro modo suae perfectionis propria mensura compleatur.” See also 32.8 (CCSL 36:304–5).  S. Dermer, “Magna Gratiae Commendatio,” 226–9.  Tract. ep. Jo. 5.10 (PL 35:2017–8).

6 Augustine and John the Evangelist

163

1 John The preceding comments lead naturally to an appreciation of the focus of his ten sermons on 1 John, compositions made in the days just after Easter of 407 and the time in between the twelfth and the thirteenth homilies on John. These ten sermons are a striking invitation to fraternal charity at the time when a certain number of Donatist Christians were returning to the Catholic church. It would also have been a time when the community was celebrating the catechumens who had just been baptized during Easter. How is Augustine reading 1 John? His main concern is about love because that is what this letter highlights: “All of scripture commends charity’s worth, but I don’t know if it is commended anywhere more expansively than in this epistle.”134 In these ten sermons, therefore, he talks about both the love of God and the love of neighbor, each of which depends upon the other. That compels him to confront the question of how to recognize whether someone’s love is true, an issue surely made more pertinent given the social circumstances of the time. Having cited 1 John 3:18 (“Little children, let us not love only in word and speech but in action and truth”), Augustine then asks, “in what action and in what truth? Can an action be more overt than giving to the poor? There are many who do this for the sake of display, not out of love . . . What proof is there that we love the brotherhood? That we don’t sever its unity, because we maintain charity.”135 For actions to be truly charitable, it was important that they favor unity over division, a concern that clearly recognizes that good deeds done by those who worked against the unity of the Christian community were not acts of charity. Mere belonging to the Catholic church was insufficient. Self-serving actions could be done by anyone. He thus asks his listeners to examine their heart, to return to their conscience. Since the love for God or for others is not perfect, he again asks, how is anyone to know whether he or she loves merely in word or also in truth? That question was very practical and pertinent to Augustine’s audience because the Donatists often used their record of helping those in need to buttress their claim to Christian authenticity. When Augustine says that giving one’s excess to someone in need is the beginning of charity, he is accepting the fact that the deeds of the Donatists are to be seen as good. But he asks for a fuller reflection on what this “beginning” is all about:

 Tract. ep. Jo. 5.13 (PL 35:2019): “Quid valeat caritas, omnis scriptura commendat; sed nescio si alicubi amplius quam in ista epistola commendetur.” See also Prol. 1.5–6; 5.4; 5.7; 7.4; 8.4; 8.14; and 10.7 (PL 35:1977–8; 1981–3; 2014; 2015–6; 2031; 2037–8; 2044; and 2059).  Tract. ep. Jo. 6.2 (PL 35:2020): “In quo opere, in qua veritate? Potest esse manifestius opus, quam tribuere pauperibus? Multi hoc jactantia faciunt, non dilectione.” See also Tract. ep. Jo. 2.3 (PL 35:1992): “Unde probatur quia amamus fraternitatem? Quia non scindimus unitatem, quia tenemus caritatem.”

164

Allan D. Fitzgerald O.S.A.

This beginning is charity. If you nurse this beginning by the word of God and the hope of future life, that is how you will arrive at that perfection, with the result that you will be ready to lay down your life for your brothers. But because many things are done by people who are pursuing other things and who don’t love their brothers, let us return to the testimony of conscience. . . . How many there are who give away much for the sake of display, and who are looking for nothing but human praise and the people’s acclaim . . . Since there are many like that, how does that show that there is fraternal love? . . . That person loves his brother who, before God, where he alone sees, assures his heart and questions his heart as to whether he is really doing this on account of fraternal love, and the eye that penetrates the heart, where a human being cannot gaze, testifies to him.136

The point that Augustine is making, then, is about more than personal actions or personal virtue. He recalls that many have given their lives but have done so without charity. Their lack of charity is seen in the fact that their giving, while directed toward some, is refused to others. Division has turned their charity into something that is actually self-serving.137 Augustine is the only late antique Christian to have so thoroughly explained 1 John, not to mention to have treated the letter (almost) in its entirety.138 In particular, his exegesis of 1 John 4:8 and 4:16 is seen as “personal and original.”139 It should also be noted that 1 John 4:20 (“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen”) is a verse that is only rarely cited in the Latin patristic tradition. In Augustine’s commentary, however, it – along with 1 John 5:1b–2a (“Everyone who loves the father loves the one begotten by him. This is how we know that we love the children of God, because we love God”), becomes a significant text. Both are expressions of Augustine’s vision of “the one Christ loving himself” (unus Christus amans seipsum).140

 Tract. ep. Jo. 6.1–2 (PL 35:2019–20): “Hinc exordium est caritatis. Hanc ita coeptam, si verbo dei et spe futurae vitae nutrieris, pervenies ad illam perfectionem, ut paratus sis animam tuam ponere pro fratribus tuis. Sed quia multa talia fiunt ab his qui alia quaerunt, et qui fratres non amant, revocemur ad testimonium conscientiae . . . Item quam multi sunt qui jactantiae causa multa tribuunt, multa donant; et non ibi quaerunt nisi laudem humanam et gloriam popularem . . . Quia ergo sunt tales, ubi probanda erit caritas fraterna? . . . Restat ut ille diligat fratrem, qui ante deum ubi solus videt, cordi suo persuadet, et interrogat cor suum an vere propter fratrum dilectionem hoc faciat; et perhibet illi testimonium oculus qui penetrat cor, quo homo attendere non potest.”  A. Fitzgerald, “Augustine, Conscience and the Inner Teacher,” in StPatr 12:3–11.  In fact, he stops after 1 John 5:3, omitting the final eighteen verses.  D. Dideberg, “Esprit Saint et charité d’après l’exégèse augustinienne de I Ioh. 4, 8.16 (Tr. VII, 6),” in BA 76:486–92.  D. Dideberg, Saint Augustin et la première Épître de saint Jean. Une thélogie de l’agapé (Paris: Beauchesne, 1975), 150–3.

6 Augustine and John the Evangelist

165

Conclusion This overview of Augustine’s reading of the Johannine corpus has centered on the two main works that he dedicated to that collection. It has, therefore, not explicitly considered the various sermones ad populum dedicated to John or his comments on Revelation. By beginning with Augustine’s gradual development of his interest in John, this chapter aimed to set Augustine’s work within the contexts of his own life as well as within the social and cultural contexts of his own day. A primary, if general, aim of this chapter is to provide a solid basis for both deeper understanding and a further presentation of the exegetical and conceptual dimensions of Augustine’s reading of and thinking about the Johannine corpus. More particularly, this chapter has highlighted the centrality of the Father-Son relationship in Augustine theological and pastoral thought, as well as the impact of his reading of John on Christian spirituality both for his own time and, perhaps, for our own, where, even now, the Holy Spirit continues to inspire our love.

Further Reading Primary Sources Augustine. Homilies on the Gospel of John 1 (1–40) and 2 (41–124). Translated by Edmund Hill. Edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald. Part III, vols. 12–13. The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. Edited by Boniface Ramsey. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2009 and 2020. Augustine. Homilies on the First Epistle of John. Translated by Boniface Ramsey. Part III, vol. 14. The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. Edited by Daniel E. Doyle and Thomas Martin. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2008. Augustine. In epistulam Iohannis ad Parthos tractatus decem. Patrologia Latina 35. Edited by J.P. Migne. Paris, 1865, cols. 1977–2062. Augustine. In Iohannis euangelium tractatus. Edited by Radbodus Willems. Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina 36, Turnhout: Brepols, 1954.

Secondary Sources Berrouard, Marie-François. Introduction aux Homélies de Saint Augustin sur L’Évangile de Saint Jean. Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2004. Dermer, Scott. “Magna Gratiae Commendatio: Augustine’s Teaching on Grace in the Tractates on the Gospel of John.” Saint Louis University: ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2018. Dideberg, Daniel. “Esprit Saint et charité d’après l’exégèse augustinienne de I Ioh. 4, 8.16 (Tr. VII, 6).” In Homélies sur la Première Épître de saint Jean, edited by J. W. Mountain, J. Lemouzy and Daniel Dideberg. Bibliothèque Augustinienne 76. Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2008. Gallay, Jacques. “La Conscience de la Charité Fraternelle d’après le Tractatus in Primam Joannis de saint Augustin.” Revue des Études Augustiniennes 1 (1955): 1–20.

166

Allan D. Fitzgerald O.S.A.

Kuehn, Evan F. “The Johannine Logic of Augustine’s Trinity; A Dogmatic Sketch,” Theological Studies 68 (2007): 572–94. Lawless, George P. “Desiderium sinus cordis est: Biblical Resonances in Augustine’s Tractatus in Evangelium Iohannis 40, 10.” Augustiniana 49/3–4 (1998): 305–29. Milewski, Douglas J. “Augustine’s 124 Tractates on the Gospel of John: The Status Quaestionis and the State of Neglect.” Augustinian Studies 33/1 (2002): 61–77. Norris, John M. “Augustine and Sign in Tractatus in Iohannis Euangelium.” In Augustine, Biblical Exegete, edited by Frederick Van Fleteren and Joseph C. Schnaubelt, 215–31. New York: Peter Lang, 2001. Norris, John M. “The Theological Structure of Augustine’s Exegesis in the Tractatus in Euangelium Ioannis.” In Augustine: Presbyter Factus Sum, edited by Joseph T. Lienhard, Earl C. Muller, and Roland J. Teske, 385–94. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. Wyrwa, Dietmar. “Augustins geistliche Auslegung des Johannesevangeliums.” In Christliche Exegese zwischen Nicaea und Chalcedon, edited by Johannes van Oort and Ulrich Wickert, 185–216. Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1992.

Isabelle Bochet

7 Augustine’s Use of Scripture against the Manichaeans after 400 CE Introduction By the beginning of the fifth century, having finally and fully become Hippo’s bishop, Augustine no longer needed to defend the bona fides of his conversion to Catholic Christianity back in 386. Nor, as he once had had to, earlier, did he need to achieve a Catholic reading of those biblical books that had been the object of Manichaean critique.1 But once the Capitula of Faustus came into his hands, its exhaustive arguments against the church’s Scriptures challenged Augustine to a decisive confrontation with his former teacher. The result was one of his longest works, the Contra Faustum Manichaeum (Faust.). It marked a turning point. Thereafter, his contestations with Manichaean teachings and teachers, which had dominated many of his post-conversion writings, declined noticeably. He debated one Felix for two days in 404 CE (transcribed as Contra Felicem manichaeum [Fel.]), and he refuted the points raised in a letter from Secundinus (Contra Secundinum manichaeum [Secund.]). And, doubtless with these confrontations in mind, Augustine composed his treatise De natura boni (Nat. b.) to serve as a sort of handbook for catholics engaged in anti-Manichaean disputes. We will review briefly these various writings, situating them in their immediate context. Thereafter, and in some detail, we will closely examine Faust. This great work, presented by Augustine as if a debate, emblematically and emphatically measured the distance between Manichaean and Augustinian interpretations of the Bible.

Augustine’s Anti-Manichaean Debates after 400 When still a Manichaean himself, back in Carthage, Augustine had impatiently anticipated an encounter with the electus and Bishop Faustus of Milevis, to whom he put  Cf. J. D. BeDuhn, “Scripture in Augustine’s Early Anti-Manichaean Treatises,” in BCNA I, 266–88. ✶ Isabelle Bochet is a researcher at the Institut d’Études Augustiniennes (Paris) and a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Centre Sèvres - Facultés Jésuites de Paris. She has published “Le Firmament de l’Écriture”. L’herméneutique augustinienne (Paris, 2004) and she co-edited many volumes of the Bibliothèque Augustinienne.

Note: This chapter was translated into English by Prof. Paula Fredriksen of Hebrew University. The author of this chapter and the editors of this volume thank Prof. Fredriksen for her timely and expert assistance. Isabelle Bochet, Institut d’Études Augustiniennes https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-008

168

Isabelle Bochet

urgent questions in 382–383 CE. Years later, he would identify his disappointment with the Manichaean’s intellectually thin responses as a major factor contributing to the declining appeal of the sect, and thus his ultimate liberation from it.2 Reading Faustus’s Capitula many years later, and harkening to the requests of his clerical brethren, Augustine felt compelled to compose “a major work” in thirty-three books, Faust.3 This effort must have demanded a considerable time commitment, a period of composition probably stretching from 398 to 403.4 We think it very likely that Augustine’s response preserved the entirety of Faustus’s text, since Augustine claimed to have “refuted all of Faustus’s calumnies, at least those of the Capitula.”5 The Latin Capitula, like its Coptic counterpart the Kephalaia, deploys the literary strategy of posing apposite questions and then providing answers. No overall logic seems to underlie its structure.6 When Faustus addresses issues like the biblical conception of God or the idea of Incarnation, he directs his responses particularly in order to lambaste the Old Testament, or to denounce inconsistencies between the Gospels, or to posit various interpolations within the Pauline epistles.7 Faust., in preserving the Capitula, thus not only provides us access to a premier work of Manichaean antiCatholic polemic, it also allows us to see how Augustine develops a profound Christian interpretation of the Old Testament, one that particularly illumined the prophetic role of the Jewish people. In none of Augustine’s later anti-Manichaean writings would Scripture play the key role that it does here. Toward the end of 404, Felix, an electus of high clerical rank, came to Augustine’s see bearing Manichaean sacred texts to support his missionary work.8 Municipal authorities, however, bolstered by imperial law, seized these Manichaean scriptures, forcing Felix to attempt to recoup them from the city’s curator.9 At this point, Augustine intervened. He offered Felix two choices: either relate Mani’s teachings in public debate with the bishop or, otherwise, quit Hippo immediately.10 Their confrontation, preserved in the  Conf. 5.3.3 and 6.10–7.13 (CCSL 27:58 and 61–64).  Retract. 2.7.1 (CCSL 57:95).  Cf. M. Dulaey and A. Massie, “Augustin et le Contre Fauste: Les circonstances de la rédaction,” in BA 18/A:9–15.  Faust. 33.9 (CSEL 25/1:796): “post omnes Fausti calumnias refutatas dumtaxat horum ejus capitulorum.”  Cf. G. Wurst, “Bemerkungen zu Struktur und genus litterarium der Capitula des Faustus von Mileve,” in Augustine and Manichaeism in the Latin West. Proceedings of the Fribourg-Utrecht International Symposium of the IAMS, eds. J. Van Oort, O. Wermelinger and G. Wurst, Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 49 (Leiden: Brill 2001), 307–24. Wurst criticizes Paul Monceaux’s reconstruction of the Capitula in “Le manichéen Faustus de Milev: restitution de ses Capitula,” Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres 43 (1924): 1–111.  Retract. 2.7 (CCSL 57:95). Cf. G. Wurst, “Augustin et le Contre Fauste: Les Capitula de Fauste,” in BA 18/A:27–32, and F. Decret, Aspects du Manichéisme dans l’Afrique romaine. Les controverses de Fortunatus, Faustus et Felix avec saint Augustin, EAA 41 (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1970), 67.  Retract. 2.8 (CCSL 57:97).  Fel. 1.12 and 2.1 (CSEL 25/2:815 and 827–8).  Ep. 79 (CSEL 34/2:345–6).

7 Augustine’s Use of Scripture against the Manichaeans after 400 CE

169

Fel., was staged in two separate sessions, on December 7th and 12th in 404, before a large popular audience assembled (at least for the second day) in Hippo’s basilica pacis. Felix, more quick-witted, said Augustine, than his last debating opponent back in 392, the Manichaean Fortunatus, did all he could to evade answering, demanding the return of his books while responding to Augustine’s questions with more of his own. Finally, the verbally pummeled Felix could not frame an adequate rejoinder to “the argument of Nebridius”:11 “How was it that God, whom nothing could harm, had allowed some part of himself to be captured; or, if indeed he were susceptible to harm, in what way could God be said to be ‘incorruptible’?”12 Anathematizing those who conceived of the divine as corruptible, Felix finally conceded the point and thus, the debate.13 New Testament texts appeared frequently in the course of their encounter. Felix invoked John 16:10 and 13 (“I am going to my Father, . . . and I will send you the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, who will guide you toward all truth”)14 to argue that Mani’s books were precisely those prophesied inspired Scriptures wherein all truth might be found. Augustine countered by citing Luke 24:36–49 and the beginning of Acts (cf. 1:1–2:12): the promise of the Holy Spirit, he insisted, had already been given at Pentecost.15 To scripturally establish the Manichaean teaching of two natures, Felix repeatedly appealed to Matthew’s Gospel (7:17, on the two trees; 13:27–28, the parable of the good and bad seed; and 25:31–41 the separation of sheep from goats on Judgement Day), as well as to verses in Paul (Rom 8:7, on the hostile mind of the flesh; 2 Cor 4:4, the god of this world; 2 Cor 12:7–8, Paul’s afflictions caused by Satan).16 Augustine parried by interpreting the two trees in light of Matt 12:33 (“Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad”) as a statement in defense of free will.17 To exclude any possibility of injury to God, nodding to 1 Timothy, Augustine repeats that “God lives in unapproachable light” (6:16), impossible to attain without God’s gracious gift (Ps 33:6; Matt 5:6).18 And, finally, the two antagonists faced off over the meaning of Gal 3:13/Deut 21:23, “Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree.”19 Of the circumstances that drove him to write Nat. b. Augustine left no hint. In his Retractationes (Retract.),20 this treatise stands sandwiched between his writings against Felix and against Secundinus, perhaps implying the chronology of their composition. In

 Conf. 7.3 (CCSL 27:93–94); Fort. 36–37 (CSEL 25/1:112); and Ep. 79 (CSEL 34/2:346).  Fel. 2.7 (CSEL 25/2:835): “Quare deus miscuit istam partem suam, cui nihil nocere poterat? Aut si potuit, quomodo sit incorruptibilis.”  Fel. 2.14 (CSEL 25/2:843–4).  Fel. 1.2 (CSEL 25/2:802).  Fel. 1.3–5 (CSEL 25/2:802–7).  Fel. 2.2 (CSEL 25/2:829–30).  Fel. 2.4 (CSEL 25/2:831–2): “Aut facite arborem bonam et fructum ejus bonum aut facite arborem malam et fructum ejus malum.”  Fel. 2.7 (CSEL 25/2:834).  Fel. 2.10–11 (CSEL 25/2:839–40).  Retract. 2.9 (CCSL 57:97).

170

Isabelle Bochet

Nat. b., Augustine teaches that God is the Supreme Good and, thus, that all natures created by him are therefore also good. Evil is not a “nature,” but the wicked use of a good. Unpacking Catholic doctrine through appeal to rational argument (§1–23), then to Scripture (§20–40), Augustine spends relatively little time refuting Manichaean dualism (§41–47). The treatise’s dossier of scriptural citations is intended to aid Catholics engaged in argument with Manichaeans over the meanings of these passages. The treatise itself, however, relates no Manichaean biblical hermeneutics. Secundinus, a Manichaean auditor (as Augustine himself had once been), though personally unacquainted with the bishop, composed a letter inviting Augustine to rejoin his former sect and to attack the teachings of his current, Catholic one.21 Responding in Secund., Augustine addressed the issues raised by Secundinus. He briefly reviews why he quit the Manichaeans (§1–2); he underscores the distinctions between the creature and his Creator, and between God’s only-begotten Son and those sons adopted by grace (§3–9); he explains yet again that evil is not a substance but a defect, and that the only reason sin is possible rests with the intrinsic mutability of the created soul (§10–21). Finally, defending the Old Testament (§21–23), Augustine concludes his letter by returning the Manichaean’s courtesy, inviting Secundinus to join the Catholic church (§24–26). “Jesus Christ the first-born.” This expression, deployed by Secundinus,22 commanded Augustine’s attention because of its obvious implication, namely, that Jesus was merely the first of a series of God-engendered sons. Against this position, Augustine masses citations to Scripture that emphasize, to the contrary, how Christ alone was Son consubstantial with the Father, and that humans receive the status of sons by grace, which “enables them to become children of God” (cf. John 1:12).23 Augustine likewise takes care to oppose the Catholic interpretation of Eph 6:12 (“We struggle not against flesh and blood, but rather against principalities and powers”) to that of the Manichaeans. These principalities do not represent a co-equal nature eternally opposed to God, he emphasizes, but rather they are God’s errant creatures who chose to turn away from him in order to harm humanity.24 Old Testament texts singled out for criticism by Secundinus25 receive only brief treatment here: Augustine will resume their interpretation26 at greater length in Faust. As for Secundinus’s summons to Augustine “to revive Paul for our times; that Paul who, though learned in the Law, received the grace of apostleship from the Lord and so devalued as

 Retract. 2.10 (CCSL 57:98): “Secundinus quidam, non ex eis quos Manichei electos sed ex eis quos auditores vocant, quem ne facie quidem noveram, scripsit ad me velut amicus, honorifice objurgans quod oppugnarem litteris illam heresim, et admonens ne facerem atque ad eam sectandam potius exhortans, cum ejus defensione et fidei reprehensione catholicae.”  Secundinus, Ep. (CSEL 25/2:893).  Secund. 5–7 (CSEL 25/2:911–6).  Secundinus, Ep. (CSEL 25/2:893–4); and Secund. 10 (CSEL 25/2:919–22).  Secundinus, Ep. (CSEL 25/2:896–7).  Secund. 21–23 (CSEL 25/2:938–41).

7 Augustine’s Use of Scripture against the Manichaeans after 400 CE

171

detritus his own former accomplishments, once he had attained Christ,”27 Augustine responded by asserting that Paul had never belittled scriptural prophecy, only the Jews’ fleshly, this-worldly achievements, his own former zealousness in persecuting the church, and the righteousness that comes from the Law (cf. Phil 3:4–8).28 Years later, in his Retract., the old bishop will grant pride of place, of all his anti-Manichaean works, to the Secund.29 It is Faust., however, that truly merits this distinction, for it reveals the crucial role played by Scripture in Augustine’s battle against Manichaean readings of the Bible.

Faustus on Biblical Interpretation Each unit of Faustus’s Capitula is shaped as a dialogue between the learned Manichaean doctor and a fictive Catholic interlocutor who poses convenient questions about Manichaean doctrine, while appealing either to Scripture or to reason. Motivating Faustus’s entire biblical hermeneutic is his visceral rejection of Judaism.30 Properly speaking, Faustus does not interpret the Old Testament so much as he repudiates it entirely; the New Testament he handles quite differently. As noted by M. Tardieu, for the Manichaeans, “the New Testament was susceptible of interpretation, since Jesus himself had left no writings,” whereas Mani’s works needed no interpretation, their revelations were “secured since authored directly by the Prophet himself.”31 According to Faustus, “Christ came to destroy the Law and the Prophets.”32 “What is old does not fit with what is new.” Accordingly, Faustus absolutely refused to confound “Christian newness with Hebrew oldness.”33 This principled position regarding the Old Testament of course immediately affected New Testament interpretation: any New Testament passage drawing on the Law or the prophets was considered either to be an interpolation, or to be a problematic passage to be explained away.

 Secundinus, Ep. alluding to Phil 3:8 (CSEL 25/2:899): “Temporibus nostris renova Paulum, qui cum legis Judaicae doctor esset, consecutus a domino apostolatus gratiam, quae putabat commoda, contempsit ut stercora, ut Christum lucrifaceret.”  Secund. 26 (CSEL 25/2:946).  Retract. 2.10 (CCSL 57:98).  Faustus’s ready appropriation of catholic traditions adversus Judaeos made him an exceedingly difficult adversary for Augustine. Cf. P. Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews. A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 240.  Les règles de l’interprétation, 128; cf. Fel. 1.17; and 1.19 (CSEL 25/2:821 and 824).  Faust. 18.1 (CSEL 25/1:490): “Quia Christum in destructionem legis ac prophetarum venisse putavimus.”  Faust. 8.1 (CSEL 25/1:305): “Veteri autem et novo non convenit”; “Christianam novitatem Hebraicae vetustati non misceo.”

172

Isabelle Bochet

The Radical Rejection of the Old Testament The objections introduced by the Capitula’s fictive Catholic questioner enabled Faustus to establish his principled repudiation of the Old Testament. He explained, first of all, that those writings contained absolutely no prophecy concerning Christ, “whether because there were none, or because I myself could not understand them.”34 This position coheres with that of the Manichaean magisterium, alluding as it does to the teaching of Adimantius: “Our scriptural patrimony has abundantly demonstrated that the [Jewish] prophets said absolutely nothing on the subject of Christ.”35 Faustus then explains how those passages drawn from Moses and habitually invoked as just this kind of prophecy are actually irrelevant to the issue at hand. Deut 18:15–18, “I will raise up for you from among your brethren a prophet like you,” for example, could not refer to Christ, in light of the plain discrepancies between Moses and Christ. Christ was not a prophet. Moses was human, whereas Christ was God. Moses was a sinner; Christ, without sin.36 The lives of the prophets themselves put a major objection: to “receive” such a text, Faustus insists, means to put into practice what the text proclaims.37 Those people who accept such prophets should therefore exemplify in their lives “righteousness, wisdom, and virtue.” But in fact, these prophets’ deeds correspond not in the least to such standards. Quite the contrary, they are scandalous. Since “it is written that one can never find grapes amidst thorns, nor figs among brambles,” one should therefore question such prophecies.38 And even if some prophecy did exist, Faustus challenges their relevance for pagans. These prophecies might very well be relevant to and for the Jews; but Manichaeans attained Christianity by leaving paganism behind. Followers of Mani, then, have no need of such teachings.39 Faustus, furthermore, considers the Old Testament to be fundamentally incompatible with the New. John 5:46 (“If you believed in Moses, you would have believed in me”) is utterly implausible, “since the teaching given by Moses differs extremely from that of Christ – so much, in fact, that had the Jews believed in the one, they could never have accepted the other.”40 Faustus then contrasts the Law’s instructions about Sabbath observance, about circumcision, or about foodways, to Jesus’s conduct. In his view, Jesus could not have actually said, “I am come not to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but

 Faust. 16.2 (CSEL 25/1:441): “Nam ego quidem scripturas ejus perscrutatus, ut jussum est, nullas ibidem de Christo prophetias inveni, sive quia nullae sunt, sive quia intellegere ipse non potui.”  Faust. 12.1 (CSEL 25/1:330): “Alioquin nihil eos de Christo prophetasse abunde jam parentum nostrorum libris ostensum est.”  Faust. 16.4 (CSEL 25/1:442–3).  Faust. 5.1 (CSEL 25/1:271).  Faust. 12.1 (CSEL 25/1:330): “Oblitus utique scriptum esse numquam vindemiari uvam de spinis nec de tribulis ficus.”  Faust. 13.1 (CSEL 25/1:377–9).  Faust. 16.6 (CSEL 25/1:444–5).

7 Augustine’s Use of Scripture against the Manichaeans after 400 CE

173

to fulfill them” (Matt 5:17), or, if he had, he must have meant something utterly different by it,41 a teaching continuous with those found in the Antitheses of Adimantius.42 Faustus multiplies examples to demonstrate the fundamental incompatibility of the two Testaments. To this end, he cites Matt 9:16, “No one sews a piece of new fabric on old cloth . . . .”43 He assigns Matthew’s image of the “two trees” respectively to Judaism and to Christianity, “one gives sweet fruit; the other, bitter, each tree rooted in one and the same soil but transforming its vitality according to their respective qualities.”44 According to Faustus, both Judaism and Christianity proceed from paganism; but Christianity has nothing at all in common with Judaism and, thus, ought to be kept strictly separate from it. Mixing the two is prohibited as such a mixing would ruin the whole.45 This fundamental incompatibility between the two scriptural canons, Old Testament and New, might have released Faustus from offering any further criticisms of the Jewish writings. Instead, against his imaginary Catholic opponent, he multiplied further examples. He first of all dismisses all of the Law’s ritual prescriptions (Sabbath, circumcision, sacrificial cult, food laws, and so on) as “abominable teachings, altogether shameful,” their observance “useless and empty,” and “utterly irrelevant to the salvation of the soul.”46 He denounces the inconsistency of Catholics, who praise the Old Testament with their lips but ignore it in practice.47 Jewish traditions? Ridiculous! How could Jews imagine that God would be pleased by circumcision, a rite which “seals a shameful sign on the body’s shameful parts”? To observe rest on the seventh day is to enslave oneself and “bind oneself with the chains of Saturn.”48 And what about the blood sacrifices, offering animals as well as humans? A cruel practice designed to “sate the gluttony of the Jews’ demon,” a demon, because one could never attribute such bloody protocols to the good God.49 One can only conclude that such rituals and precepts adorning the sacred writings

 Faust. 18.2 (CSEL 25/1:491).  Adim. 16 (on circumcision); 2 (on the Sabbath); and 15 (distinctions between “pure” and “impure”). Cf. CSEL 25/1:159; 116–7; and 154, respectively.  Faust. 8.1 (CSEL 25/1:305).  Faust. 9.1 (CSEL 25/1:307): “Tamquam si duae arbores, dulcis et amara, radicibus suis unius terrae in se vim transferant mutandam qualitatibus suis.”  Faust. 15.1 (CSEL 25/1:415–6).  Faust. 22.2; 6.1; and 10.1 (CSEL 25/1:592; 284; and 310).  Faust. 6.1 and 19.4–6 (CSEL 25/1:285 and 500–3).  Faust. 18.2 (CSEL 25/1:491): “Placet suscipere sabbatorum otium et Saturniacis manus insertare catenis?” Saturday, the day on which Jews celebrate the Sabbath, was associated in Roman antiquity with the god Saturn: the day was therefore considered ill-omened for undertaking any enterprise. Faustus, in alluding to “the chains of the Sabbath” thus accomplishes a double-entendre, referring at one and the same time to the chains that were part of Saturn’s pagan iconography and the restrictions regarding the Sabbath according to Jewish tradition. Cf. M. Y. Perrin, “Le sabbat et le jour de Saturne,” in BA 18/B:614–5.  Faust. 18.2 (CSEL 25/1:491): “Placet in ingluviem Judaeorum daemonis – neque enim dei – nunc tauros, nunc arietes, nunc etiam hircos, ut non et homines dicam, cultris sternere?”

174

Isabelle Bochet

of the Jews deformed “the Law dispersed among the nations.” Such practices are like “a leperous growth, a scab” or, perhaps like bulging “tumors,” a disfigurement of the Law.50 The Old Testament’s moral precepts Faustus likewise distained. “He only recalls the older commandments such as, ‘You shall not kill’ (Matt 5:21), ‘You shall not commit adultery’ (Matt 5:27), ‘You shall not swear falsely’ (Matt 5:33). As it is easy to prove, these were promulgated long ago among the gentiles by Enoch and Seth and other righteous men like them.” Those commandments corresponded to the “law of truth,”51 which Christ had fulfilled. This fulfillment at once confirmed these commandments and compensated for what they had lacked.52 On the other hand, however, Faustus rejected those commandments specific to the Jews, which Christ “destroyed at the root” by commanding their opposite. The mandates to revenge an eye for an eye, to hate one’s enemies, to repudiate one’s wife, such commandments came from Moses and not from the righteous men of old. For this reason, Christ had annulled them.53 Already, Adimantus had appealed to Matt 5:38–40 in support of this position: Christ stood in opposition to the Old Testament.54 What of the Old Testament’s promises? Faustus had two grounds for dismissing them. First, these laws did not speak to Faustus’s church: the Manichaeans, disregarding Old Testament precepts, could scarcely be heirs to its promises. But furthermore, these promises were crudely material, far removed from what was good for the soul, whose benefit they did not have in view.55 Finally, Faustus rejected as unacceptable storytelling those Old Testament accounts bespeaking God’s ignorance or immorality.56 He condemned the scandalous behaviors of the patriarchs and of the prophets. Were these episodes the invention of the writers, or did they relate real malfeasance? No matter, said Faustus, who went on calmly to detail the undisciplined sexuality and the crimes of Jewish patriarchs and prophets: Abraham’s impregnation of his concubine, Lot’s fornication with his own two daughters, Jacob’s fevered sexual activity with Rachel and Leah and their handmaidens, Moses’s committing murder, and so on (and on).57

 Faust. 22.2 (CSEL 25/1:591–3).  On these three types of laws according to Faustus, see Faust. 19.2–3 (CSEL 25/1:497); cf. A. Massie, Peuple prophétique, 133–52.  Faust. 19.3 (CSEL 25/1:498–9), which quotes Matt 5:21; 5:27; and 5:33.  Faust. 19.3 (CSEL 25/1:499), which quotes Matt 5:38–39; 5:43–44; and 5:31–32.  Adim. 8 (CSEL 25/1:130).  Faust. 4.1; 10.1; and 15.1 (CSEL 25/1:268; 310; and 416).  Faust. 22.4 (CSEL 25/1:593–4).  Faust. 22.5 (CSEL 25/1:594–5).

7 Augustine’s Use of Scripture against the Manichaeans after 400 CE

175

The Critical Readings of the New Testament Faustus’s rhetorical Catholic questioner voices a recurring question presented in different forms, which often opens many of the capitula. What Christian biblical texts did Faustus and his church accept? “Do you accept the authority of the gospel?”58 Asked with particular reference to Jesus’s genealogies, “Do you accept Jesus’s patrilineal descent?”59 And Jesus’s birth: “Do you hold that Jesus was born of Mary?”60 Once, the same question is put of Paul: “Do you accept the authority of the Apostle?”61 The fictive interlocutor seems astonished that Faustus can acknowledge Paul’s authority while denying the incarnation of Jesus. This persona denounces as similarly incoherent the Manichaean disavowal of the Old Testament, when it clearly prophecies Christ. The argument rests as well on Matt 5:17, “I am come not to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them.”62 For Faustus, to “accept” or “receive” the Gospel means above all else to put into practice what the texts themselves preach. He condemns the simplistic fideism of those Catholics whose “reception” of the Gospels means believing everything reported in them.63 To the question, “Do you accept the authority of the Gospel?” he immediately responds, “You ask me whether I accept the Gospel, when clearly I do, for I observe what it ordains.”64 Faustus proceeds to describe his faithful adherence to evangelical precepts (e.g., voluntary poverty and the practices enunciated in the Beatitudes).65 To “accept” the Gospels and Paul, for Faustus, is not the same as considering them canonical texts.66 He well avoids characterizing them as such, while maintaining a prudent silence on the status of Mani’s writings, the sole authoritative texts of the Manichean church.67 The importance ascribed to the Paraclete decisively determines Faustus’s hermeneutic: it is that which ensures Manichaean freedom with respect to the (Catholic) New Testament. He affirms this expressly:  Faust. 2.1 and 5.1 (CSEL 25/1:253 and 271).  Faust. 3.1 and 7.1 (CSEL 25/1:261 and 302).  Faust. 23.1 (CSEL 25/1:707).  Faust. 11.1 (CSEL 25/1:313).  Faust. 17.1; 18.1; and 19.1 (CSEL 25/1:483; 490; and 496).  Faust. 5.2 (CSEL 25/1:272).  Faust. 5.1 (CSEL 25/1:271): “Accipis evangelium? Tu me interrogas utrum accipiam, in quo id ipsum accipere adparet, quia quae jubet observo.” In the words of G. G. Stroumsa, “Les mots et les œuvres: connaissance religieuse et salut chez Augustin et Fauste de Milève,” in Savoir et salut (Paris: Cerf, 1992), 345, for Faustus, “la religion est affaire d’éthique, et d’éthique seulement.”  This description corresponds to the ideal of ascetic life as pursued by the Manichean electi. See C.R.C. Allberry, ed. and trans., A Manichaean Psalm-Book, Part II: Manichaean Manuscripts in the Chester Beatty Collection, vol. 2 (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1938), 169.  Cf. M. Tardieu, Les règles de l’interprétation, 129–30.  Cf. G. Wurst, “L’état de la recherche sur le Canon manichéen,” in Le Canon du Nouveau Testament. Regards nouveaux sur l’histoire de sa formation, eds. G. Aragione, É. Junod, E. Norelli (Genève: Labor et Fides, 2005), 237–67; J.-D. Dubois, “Le manichéisme: Les Écritures manichéennes,” in BA 18/A:47–53.

176

Isabelle Bochet

It is the Paraclete that Jesus himself promised to us in the Gospel: “He will guide you to all truth, he will announce to you all things to come, and it will give recollection of it to you” (John 16:14–16). This is why he granted us the freedom to take with the New Testament, in the name of the Paraclet, that liberty that you demonstrate with the Old, in Jesus’s name . . . a liberty yet more legitimate since – as is established fact – neither Christ himself, as we have said, nor his apostles wrote any of the New Testament.68

Faustus’s invocation of Jesus’s promise to send the Paraclete was not unanticipated. Augustine, unimpressed, responded that the Paraclete had already been sent long ago, according to Acts 2, to the original apostles. He accordingly dismissed the Manichaean assimilation of the promised Paraclete to Mani’s revelations.69 And in fact, the Coptic Kephalaion 1 describes the coming of Mani precisely in terms of the Paraclete promised by the Johannine Christ.70 Mani, in this view, brought perfect revelation, thereby relativizing all that had come before. One notes with some surprise, then, Faustus’s insistent recourse to the New Testament. Still, for him, the Manichean community alone is the one true Christian church; the Catholics are “schismatics”71 or, indeed, semichristiani, because they never succeeded in rupturing fully from Judaism.72 Faustus’s approach to the New Testament is, nonetheless, negatively critical. He considers the original texts of the Gospels to have been corrupted in transmission. And while he grants Pauline authorship to the epistles, he holds that they betray evidence of interpolations.73 Admitting that the Gospels do contain some of the “sayings of the Lord,” he likewise insists that these have been mixed with others, falsely attributed, which contradict Jesus’s true teachings.74 These unknown later redactors were semijudaei who “did not even agree among each other.” They amassed various sayings “from rumors and gossip.” What resulted was a farrago of lies, falsehoods, and errors whose mutual contradictions indexed the extent of the redactors’ distortions. Faustus retained from this compromised tradition only “those purest teachings that conduce to salvation” and “those fit to edify faith and to increase the glory of the Lord Jesus

 Faust. 32.6 (CSEL 25/1:765–766): “De quo ultro Jesus cum eum promitteret, dicit in evangelio: ‘Ipse vos inducet in omnem veritatem et ipse vobis adnuntiabit omnia et commemorabit vos.’ Quapropter liceat tantundem et nobis in testamento novo per paracletum, quantum vobis in vetere licere ostenditis per Jesum . . . praesertim quod nec a Christo scriptum constat, ut diximus, nec ab ejus apostolis.”  Faust. 32.15–17 (CSEL 25/1:774–8).  Kephalaia 1, in A. Böhlig, H.J. Polotsky, hrsg., Kephalaia, I, 1. Hälfte: Manichaïschen Handschriften der staatlichen Museen Berlin, Band 1 (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1940), 14–6; Cf. Coptic Psalm, in Allberry, ed., A Manichaean Psalm-Book, Part II, 130; Fel. 1.9 (CSEL 25/2:811); and Letter Called Fundamental 5.6–7.8 (CSEL 25/1:197–201).  Faust. 20.3–4 and 13.1 (CSEL 25/1:537–8 and 377–8).  Faust. 1.2 (CSEL 25/1:251–2).  Faust. 32.2 (CSEL 25/1:761–2); A. Hoffmann, “Verfälschung der Jesus-Tradition,” 149–82.  Faust. 33.3 (CSEL 25/1:788).

7 Augustine’s Use of Scripture against the Manichaeans after 400 CE

177

Christ and the all-powerful God his Father.”75 For him, the gospel is “nothing other than the teachings and the commandments of Christ.”76 The Pauline epistles presented different issues. Paul occupied a premier place in Manichaean piety, and Faustus cites extensively from the Pauline corpus.77 He never hesitates to ascribe Paul’s authorship, but he holds that certain phrases and passages could not possibly have originated with the apostle. These problematic passages, Rom 1:3, 1 Tim 4:1–3, and Tit 1:15,78 for example, were thus, strictly speaking, additions later “interpolated”79 into Paul’s own texts. One must always examine in critical perspective, urged Faustus, every New Testament text ascribed to the Lord. One must “establish whether it is true, firm, unaltered,” since “there are many weeds that the sower of the night has scattered in almost all the Scriptures in order to spoil the good seed.”80 He then details what of the New Testament must be retained, what jettisoned.81 One must exclude as false, Faustus insists, not only those things that bespeak the ignorance, naiveté, or imprudent affirmations of simple believers, but also those things falsely introduced by later writers, especially in their attempts to tie the Old Testament to the New. Faustus’s interpretive scruples draw especially from his conviction that the writers of the Gospels were not direct witnesses to the events that they report or to the speeches that they recount. No less important was his conviction that Jewish Christians had corrupted evangelical transmission as well. These yoked criteria of discernment themselves derive from Manichaean Christian faith. Nothing should be considered truly “Christian” Scripture that is unworthy of Jesus or that ties Jesus to Jewish writings. And the opposite also holds true: that which coheres with Manichaean faith – the mystical semiotics of the Passion, the true teachings of Christ, the doctrine of two opposing natures or principles – must be authentic and therefore retained. In point of fact, Faustus’s Capitula put two critiques in play, one external, one internal. The external critique gauged the historical value of reported facts in terms of the reliability of their witnesses, as well as the compatibility of such reports with other similar testimonies. The internal critique targeted those contradictions contained within an account, or the anomalies related therein. The divergences of Matthew’s messianic genealogy from that of Luke, for example, called the validity of both into question, while supporting a preference for the two Gospels that lacked birth narratives, Mark and

 Faust. 32.1–2 (CSEL 25/1:761–2).  Faust. 5.1 and 2.1 (CSEL 25/1:271 and 253).  Cf. F. Decret, “L’utilisation des Épîtres de Paul chez les Manichéens d’Afrique,” 51–83.  Faust. 11.1; 30.1–4; and 31.1 (CSEL 25/1:313; 747–8; and 756).  Cf. A. Hoffmann, “Verfälschung der Jesus-Tradition,” 169–70.  Faust. 18.3 (CSEL 25/1:491–2): “. . . probare, si sint eadem vera, si sana, si incorrupta; esse enim permulta zizania, quae in contagium boni seminis scripturis paene omnibus noctivagus quidam seminator insperserit.”  Faust. 32.7 (CSEL 25/1:766).

178

Isabelle Bochet

John.82 And such genealogies were nugatory in any case, since Jesus himself claimed that he was not of this world but had descended to it from “above.”83 It would, therefore, be utterly ludicrous to trust in any such genealogy, since the disciples, having met Jesus only after his baptism, could not possibly have known anything about his lineage. Jesus’ speech in Matt 5:17, for another example, which claims that he came to fulfill rather than abolish the Law, could not count as reliable testimony. Matthew himself was not present on the Mount to hear Jesus’ speech; and John, who was there, reports no such saying. Further, that fact that Matt 9:9 speaks in the third person argues strenuously against identifying this Gospel’s author with Matthew the historical disciple.84 Conclusion: Matt 5:17 represents a falsification of Jesus’ true teaching. The hermeneutical principles put in play by Faustus were indissolubly linked to his reading of the New Testament through the lens of his commitment to the Manichaean doctrine of two opposing principles. He privileged those verses in the Gospels or in Paul that supported his adversarial dualism of Good and Evil, Darkness and Light. His interpretation of 1 Tim 6:16, of 1 Cor 1:24, and of 2 Cor 4:4, bolstered this dualism. Faustus opens by confessing the Trinity. Alluding to 1 Timothy, he defines God the Father as “dwelling in supreme light, which Paul, in other words, described as ‘inaccessible.’”85 Christ, he continues, nodding to 1 Corinthians, “is the power of God and the wisdom of God,” concluding that “he is himself two-fold” since “his power dwells in the sun and his wisdom in the moon.”86 The Holy Spirit, he declares, dwells in the air. A bit further on, Faustus explains the distinction between himself and those pagans who hold that good and evil comprise a single principle. To the contrary: “God is the sole principle of Goodness; the principle opposing the Good is hylē [unformed matter].”87 Nonetheless, in the chapter following, he avoids professing two gods, justifying the Manichaean inclination to call the nature opposing Good “god” by appeal to 2 Cor 4:4: “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers.” Faustus observes that the apostle “rightly names this opposing force ‘god,’ because he knew the name that the pagans gave to this force – but then adds that their minds were blinded, so that they would understand that the god blinding them was not the true God.”88

 Faust. 3.1 (CSEL 25/1:261–2).  Faust. 7.1 (CSEL 25/:302–3).  Faust. 17.1 (CSEL 25/1:483).  Faust. 20.2 (CSEL 25/1:536), which alludes to 1 Tim 6:16: “Patrem quidem ipsum lucem incolere credimus summam ac principalem, quam Paulus alias ‘inaccessibilem’ vocat.”  Faust. 20.2 (CSEL 25/1:536): “Qui quoniam sit et ipse geminus, ut eum apostolus novit Christum dicens esse dei virtutem et dei sapientiam, virtutem quidem ejus in sole habitare credimus, sapientiam vero in luna.” Manichaean theology is intimately alligned with Manichaean cosmology. See Fund. 13.16 and 15.19 (CSEL 25/1:209 and 212).  Faust. 20.3 (CSEL 25/1:537): “His ego valde contraria sentio, qui bonis omnibus principium fateor deum, contrariis vero hylen.”  Faust. 21.1 (CSEL 25/1:569): “Quemadmodum et apostolus, ‘Deus,’ inquit, ‘saeculi hujus excaecavit mentes infidelium,’ deum quidem nominans, quia sic jam vocaretur a suis, sed adiciens, quod mentes

7 Augustine’s Use of Scripture against the Manichaeans after 400 CE

179

Faustus dedicates a chapter to explaining how his anthropology drew on citations to Paul. “It is a fact that, according to the Apostle, each person comprises ‘two persons’: the ‘outer man,’ this-worldly and ‘the old man,’ and another, ‘inner man,’ heavenly and new.”89 The Manichaean thus associates these Pauline doublets, inner man/ outer man, earthly man/heavenly man, old man/new man. He identifies the “old man” with the original nature of man, while devaluing man as originally created. The new man, alone, is made by God, whereas “the old man was neither formed by Him nor made like him.”90 The “old man” bespeaks carnal birth which conjures that “the frenzy of [sexual] disorder” that is “obscene and dishonorable.” To attribute any such creation to God is clearly impossible and impious, absolutely incompatible with true divinity. The second birth is that of the new man: a spiritual birth, “intelligible and divine.” This presupposes the person’s turning toward truth, according to “the knowledge of God.” This sort of conversion attests to the nullification of distinctions of ethnicity, sex, and social status, brought together in Christ, to the restitution of that first, lost unity, this last being Faustus’s interpretation of Gal 3:27–28.91 Faustus continually contraposes Christ to Jewish Law. If the Catholic church is an adulterous woman, he claims, it is because the church has not separated from the god of the Old Testament: “She enjoys the gifts and writings of a husband not her own.”92 Images proliferate denouncing the Catholic’s unacceptable mixing of Christian gospel with Jewish Law, by which they render Christian faith a monstrous hybrid, a “centaur” neither completely horse nor completely human.93 To thus combine “Christian newness with Hebrew oldness”94 contrasts utterly with the way proclaimed by Mani (who accomplished a complete break with hybrid Judeo-Christianity) and by Adimantus (in his Antitheses). The New Testament alone suffices for the Manichaean community. Not only have they no need of the Old: they actually, actively repudiate it.

excaecet, ut ex hoc intellegatur non esse verus deus.” Cf. Fel. 2.2 (CSEL 25/2:830). Titus of Bostra attributes the same exegesis to Manichaean tradition. See Against the Manichaeans 4.108 (CCSG 82:409–10); and cf. P.-H. Poirier, “Exégèse manichéenne et anti-manichéenne de 2 Corinthiens 4,4 chez Titus de Bostra (Contre les manichéens IV, 108),” in Gnose et manichéisme. Entre les oasis d’Égypte et la Route de la Soie. Hommage à Jean-Daniel Dubois, eds. A. Van den Kerchove and L. G. Soares Santoprete, BEHEH 176 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 273–86.  Faust. 24.1 (CSEL 25/1:717): “. . . quoniam quidem sunt secundum apostolum homines duo, quorum alterum quidem interdum exteriorem vocat, plerumque vero terrenum, nonnumquam etiam veterem, alterum vero interiorem et caelestem dicit ac novum.”  Faust. 24.1 (CSEL 25/1:719): “Cum vero hominem novum a deo creari testatur, tum indicat veterem nec ab ipso esse nec secundum eum formatum.”  Faust. 24.1 (CSEL 25/1:720).  Faust. 15.1 (CSEL 25/1:416): “Vestra sane ecclesia usurpet testamentum vetus, quae ut lasciva virgo inmemor pudoris alieni viri et muneribus gaudet et litteris.”  Faust. 15.1 (CSEL 25/1:417). Cf. M. Tardieu, “La foi hippocentaure,” in Saint Augustin, ed. P. Ranson (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1988), 52–60.  Faust. 8.1 (CSEL 25/1:305): “Christianam novitatem Hebraicae vetustati non misceo.”

180

Isabelle Bochet

Augustine on Biblical Interpretation against Faustus Augustine directs all of his efforts in Faust. toward illumining and emphasizing the harmony between both parts of the Catholic double canon. This required a major interpretive labor on his part. Unsatisfied to simply offer counterarguments to the conflicts between the testaments so emphasized by the Manichaeans, he went further, demonstrating the ways, if Scripture is read with true piety, that the grace of Christ is concealed in the Old Testament and revealed in the New.95 Christ, insisted Augustine, fulfilled the Law and the Prophets: Christ indeed represents the nodal point where all the powerful prophetic vectors of the Old Testament converge. Christ’s presence in the Jewish Scriptures can be apprehended and appreciated only by those who study holy writ “with piety, rather than censure it with levity.”96 To put this another way, for the reader studying Scripture who is guided by Holy Spirit, “truth is attained only through love [caritas].”97 Elsewhere he famously testifies that: As I make my way and gasp in that sweat coming from our human condemnation, Christ meets and refreshes me everywhere in those books, everywhere in those scriptures, whether openly or in a hidden manner. He sets afire for me the desire to find him as a result of some difficulty in discovering him, so that I may eagerly absorb what I find and hold it for my salvation, hidden within the marrow of my bones.98

Augustine explicates: “It is Christ who beckons me in the figure of Joseph [. . .]. It is Christ who speaks to me through the staff of Moses . . .”99 Book 12 explains this loving quest for Christ amidst the figures populating the Old Testament. “Who other [than Christ] is represented by Abraham? Who else, by Isaac? Who else was the ram offered as a burnt sacrifice? Who else was it who fought with Jacob?”100 Augustine’s biblical hermeneutic, in brief, is fundamentally Christocentric.

 Faust. 12.11 (CSEL 25/1:340).  Faust. 12.25 (CSEL 25/1:353).  Faust. 32.18 (CSEL 25/1:779).  Faust. 12.27 (CSEL 25/1:356): “Christus mihi ubique illorum librorum, ubique illarum scripturarum peragranti et anhelanti in sudore illo damnationis humanae sive ex aperto sive ex occulto occurrit et reficit. Ipse mihi et ex nonnulla difficultate inventionis suae desiderium inflammat, quo id quod invenero, avide sorbeam medullisque reconditum salubriter teneam.”  Faust. 12.28 (CSEL 25/1:356): “Ipse mihi in Joseph, innuit . . . ipse mihi innuit in virga Moysi.”  Faust. 12.25–26 (CSEL 25/1:353–4): “Quis alius in Abraham? Quis alius in Isaac? Quis alius aries inmolandus? Quis alius in angelo cum Jacob luctatus?” Cf. M. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere. Augustine’s Early Figurative Exegesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 257–8.

7 Augustine’s Use of Scripture against the Manichaeans after 400 CE

181

Defending the Old Testament Against Faustus, Augustine unceasingly invoked the prophetic value of the Old Testament. Far from being incompatible, the two Testaments immediately engaged each other, the New Testament fulfilling the Old. The Old Testament in its entirety, insists Augustine, whether obscurely or overtly, forespoke Christ. “Who could . . . recall all that the Hebrew prophets have said with regard to our lord and savior Jesus Christ?”101 Clearer passages obviously provide the key to the more obscure ones; texts napped in symbols rouse the seeker to search further and more deeply. “If one weaves together certain texts, their voices blend so well in witness to Christ, that even the most rigidly deaf must blush not to attend to them.”102 Someone might object that such readings attest merely to the ingenuity of the interpreter, who distorts the text to discover a reference to Christ in it. Augustine dismisses such objections as feeble for the true Christian on the authority of Paul, who affirmed that “All these things were given in symbolic figures,” and “All these things [in Jewish scriptures] were symbolically figured on our account.”103 Not to recognize the prophetic value of the Old Testament is to defy and deny the scriptural authority that Christ himself had affirmed.104 Augustine reviews those Mosaic passages whose prophetic reference to Christ which Faustus had denied. He acknowledges the differences between Christ and Moses, which called into question, for Faustus, the prophetic value of Deut 18:18 (“I will raise up for them in the midst of their brethren a prophet like you”). These distinctions, Augustine insists, ought not occlude their resemblances to each other: by making himself human, Christ made himself appear as a sinner.105 Further, the title “prophet” could also be applied to Christ, as he himself pronounced on this same subject, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country.”106 What use in pointing out Moses’ maledictions? Far from being insults to Christ, these sayings were themselves, indeed, prophecies.107 As Paul himself affirmed, Christ “was made a curse for us”; nor did Paul hesitate to declare that “He died for all.”108

 Faust. 12.7 (CSEL 25/1:335): “Quis autem potest . . . omnia commemorare praeconia prophetarum Hebraeorum de domino et salvatore nostro Jesu Christo?”  Faust. 12.7 (CSEL 25/1:336): “Quamquam et ex illis, quae figuris involuta sunt, si quaedam velut sub uno aspectu quasi contexta ponantur, ita conjungunt in contestatione Christi voces suas, ut cujusvis obtunsi surditas erubescat.”  Both 1 Cor 10:11 and 10:6 are cited in Faust. 12.37 (CSEL 25/1:364).  Faust. 13.5 (CSEL 25/1:382–3).  Faust. 16.15 (CSEL 25/1:455–6).  Matt 13:57 as cited in Faust. 16.18 (CSEL 25/1:459): “Unde et ipse de se ipso ait: ‘Non est propheta sine honore nisi in patria sua.’”  Faust. 16.22 (CSEL 25/1:464–5).  Gal 3:13 and 2 Cor 5:15 as cited in Faust. 14.4 (CSEL 25/1:406).

182

Isabelle Bochet

Deuteronomy 28:66 (“You will see your life hanging, and you will not trust in your life”) was likewise a prophecy, this one bespeaking the incredulity of those Jews who saw their life, that is, the Son of God, hanged on the cross, and yet had no faith in him.109 The prophets’ personal lives, Augustine continued, was no reason to reject their prophecies: On what basis did the Manichaeans claim authority to judge whether one’s life had been virtuous or wicked? Paul himself asserted the righteousness of Abraham’s faith. Rather than criticize the lives of these prophets, one must “apprehend the mystery that they experienced,”110 that is, foreseeing the coming of Christ. Against Faustus’s allegations, Augustine urged that scriptural prophecy could lead a pagan to the faith since he could see that these things had been realized in his own day:111 the destruction of idols, for one example, or, for another, the Jews’ predicted lack of faith.112 Indeed, the danger was that a pagan might claim that these Old Testament prophecies, foreseeing with such precision, were invented after the fact by Christians. Augustine countered that the existence of the Jews, who always guarded and kept their ancient sacred texts, nullifies any such suspicion. “It is on the merit of their books, in effect, that we can prove that we were not the source of these prophecies, as if we created them after the fact; but these things were foreseen and forespoken of old, preserved in the time of the Jews’ kingdom, and made manifest and fulfilled even now, in our own day.”113 The fulfillment of these prophecies, he adds, also serves to rebuff pagan accusations that Christ and his apostles worked their miracles through magic.114 Augustine dismissed Faustus’s interpretation of parables and symbols relating to the two testaments as oppositions. The image of new wine in old wineskins or of new fabric sewn onto an old garment (cf. Matt 9:16–17) signified not the relationship of the two testaments, but “of two types of life, and of two types of hope.”115 As for the parable of the two trees, one with sweet fruit and the other bitter, which offered another opportunity for Faustus to oppose the Old Testament to the New, Augustine juxtaposed it with Paul’s discourse in Rom 11:13–26: the wild olive designates the nations, the cultivated

 Faust. 16.22–23 (CSEL 25/1:464–7).  Faust. 12.47–48 (CSEL 25/1:375–7). Augustine, for instance, justifies the prophet Hosea’s marriage to a prostitute (cf. Hos 1:2), but he also affirms her subsequent moral rehabilitation. In his view, her marriage is a figure for the entrance of pagans into the church. Cf. Faust. 22.80 and 22.89 (CSEL 25/ 1:682–3 and 694–7).  Cf. Faust. 13.7–16 and 16.20–21 (CSEL 25/1:384–98 and 461–4).  Faust. 13.9–12 (CSEL 25/1:388–92).  Faust. 13.10 (CSEL 25/1:389–90): “Per eorum quippe codices probamus non a nobis tamquam de rerum eventu commonitis ista esse conscripta, sed olim in illo regno praedicta atque servata, nunc autem manifestata et inpleta”; cf. 16.21 (CSEL 25/1:463–4). On the Jews as guardians of the very Scriptures which bear witness to Christ, see P. Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews, 276–7, and A. Massie, Peuple prophétique, 355–60.  Faust. 12.45 (CSEL 25/1:374).  Faust. 15.2 (CSEL 25/1:418): “Nam pannum novum et vestimentum vetus et vinum novum et utres veteres non duo testamenta significare, sed duas vitas et spes duas.”

7 Augustine’s Use of Scripture against the Manichaeans after 400 CE

183

olive the Jewish people.116 “The gentile nations, like the wild olive, have been engrafted onto the same root, that is, onto the stock of the Hebrew saints, in order to be able to share in the rich vitality of that cultivated olive tree.” The two seraphim who cry one to the other “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts” (Isa 6:3) express the accord between the two testaments.117 Thus “the voices of the prophetic books and of the apostolic books call out to each other in harmony.”118 The Jewish people, Augustine avers, were “a prophetic people, a prophetic nation, a prophetic kingdom.”119 The image of prophetic gestation speaks forcefully to how the entire history of Israel prepared the way for the divine economy of salvation in Christ.120 Not every passage of the Old Testament was equally significant; but its totality was necessary in order to sound its prophetic elements, much like a cithara first has to have its framework in order to provide a place where the strings can attach so that, at a touch, the musical note resonates. All these passages, therefore, speak of Christ. The whole aim of those who wrote these truly sacred scriptures was to bring to birth that head, who has already ascended into heaven, and this body of his [the church], which labors on earth up to the end. Nor should we believe that anything has been narrated in the text of the prophetic books that does not signify something to come, except the things that were set forth there so that they might somehow link together the passages that foretell that king and his people either in proper or in figurative terms and events.121

If the Old Testament prophesies the New, the New Testament fulfills the Old. Augustine counters Faustus’s criticism of Matt 5:17 (on Christ’s coming to fulfill, not to abolish, the Law) with John 1:17 (“The Law came through Moses, but it was made grace and truth by Jesus Christ”). He sees no tension between the verse’s two clauses: “The same Law that was given through Moses became grace and truth through Jesus Christ.”122 The couplet “grace and truth” corresponds to the two parts of the Law: the

 Faust. 9.2 (CSEL 25/1:308): “Et in ipsa oleae radice, id est origine sanctorum Hebraeorum, tamquam oleastrum gentes insertas ut fierent participes pinguedinis oleae.”  Faust. 12.48 (CSEL 25/1:377).  Faust. 13.18 (CSEL 25/1:400): “Libros propheticos et apostolicos legimus alterutris vocibus sibimet concinentes.”  Faust. 12.46 (CSEL 25/1:375): “per propheticam gentem, per propheticum populum, per propheticum regnum.”  Faust. 19.31 (CSEL 25/1:535).  Faust. 22.94 (CSEL 25/1:375): “Christum igitur sonant haec omnia; caput illud, quod jam ascendit in caelum, et hoc corpus ejus, quod usque in finem laborat in terra, scribentium litteras vere sacras omnis parturivit intentio, nec esse quicquam credendum est librorum propheticorum contextione narratum, quod non significet aliquid futurorum, nisi quae ideo posita sunt, ut ex eis quodam modo religentur ea, quae illum regem populumque ejus sive propriis sive figuratis locutionibus rebusve praenuntient.”  Faust. 15.8 (CSEL 25/1:434): “Eadem quippe lex, quae per Moysen data est, gratia et veritas per Jesum Christum facta est.” Most often, Augustine cites John 1:17 while omitting “autem,” just as the Vulgate will do later. The same omission occurs in the Codex Aureus, and this was probably also the

184

Isabelle Bochet

moral precepts, on the one hand, and the ritual precepts, on the other.123 The Law is fulfilled differently in these two sets of teachings. The moral precepts (such as the Ten Commandments) were fulfilled by the gift of grace since the Holy Spirit made one capable of observing these by the gift of love (caritas). The ritual precepts were fulfilled once truth unveiled what these rules actually prophesied. In the first case, the precepts of the Law are retained; in the second, their enactments are to be set aside in order to yield their place to those truths that, once foretold, were finally revealed.124 This reading of John 1:17 affirms the continuity of the testaments by interpreting positively their distinctions. To make his point, Augustine reverts to his theory of semiotics. The historical period of Scripture is one thing; the period of reading and of understanding Scripture, another. “After all, if there were one time for writing and another time for reading, we would not be correct to say that a reader did not observe the writing because he did not form the letters, though the letters were symbols of the sounds. Rather, he simply produced the sounds, not at all concerned with the formation of the letters but guided by seeing them.”125 This distinction validates how (gentile) Christians can respect the ritual precepts of Jewish Law without themselves actually observing them. Christians see in these ritual prescriptions their prophetic significance, which foretold Christ. There is, therefore, no longer any benefit in Christians keeping these Jewish practices since what they foretold has already been realized. To observe them would even be to ignore that the prophetic figure has become truth. The same realities are announced as promised by “the prophetic rite” and as fulfilled by “the evangelical rite.”126 Augustine takes into consideration the details of Faustus’s critiques. He shows that no shame attaches to Old Testament ritual, and he underscores that the traditional practices of the Jewish people truly conformed to divine intention. “The Jews did well to observe these former rites,”127 because, as Paula Fredriksen explains it, “only in so doing could they have enacted the Law by their behavior, in the flesh, within historical time.”128 In developing this argument about prophetic signification, Augustine referred

case with other recensions of the VL. Cf. n.108 in BA 18/B:242, and M. Dulaey, “Jean 1, 16–17 dans l’interprétation patristique,” Graphè 10 (2001): 103–23.  Faust. 6.2 and 19.7–8 (CSEL 25/1:285 and 503–7).  Faust. 22.6 (CSEL 25/1:596).  Faust. 16.32 (CSEL 25/1:481).  Faust. 19.16 (CSEL 25/1:512–3).  Faust. 12.9 (CSEL 25/1:337): “Etsi ante Judaei recte illa fecerunt.” P. Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews, 244, notes the revolutionary character of Augustine’s affirmation of the probity of Jewish practice, so at odds with a ubiquitous trope within Christian adversus Judaeos teachings. On Augustine’s view of the positive value of various Jewish cultural practices, see 246–56.  P. Fredriksen, “Augustine and ‘Thinking with’ Jews: Rhetoric Pro- and Contra Iudaeos,” sec. II., Ancient Jew Review, Feb. 13, 2018: https://www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2018/2/3/augustine-and-thinkingwith-jews-rhetoric-pro-and-contra-iudaeos.

7 Augustine’s Use of Scripture against the Manichaeans after 400 CE

185

to 1 Cor 10:6 and 10:11.129 He rejects the distinction introduced by Faustus among the moral precepts between those which Christ would have accomplished by confirming and completing them, on the one hand, and those which he would have abolished, on the other, as well as the attribution of the first precepts to the righteous like Enoch and Seth, and the second to Moses.130 The fulfillment of these precepts cannot consist in “additions, which have to do either with explaining the old passages that were quoted or with changing them but not with fulfilling them.”131 The sense of Christ’s words in his Sermon on the Mount says quite otherwise: every unjust act aimed at harming a brother is to be assessed as already homicidal; in the same way, an adulterous desire renders its subject already an adulterer.132 As for those Mosaic teachings that Faustus considers as having been “destroyed” by Christ, Augustine argues that, far from destroying them, Christ unveiled them, rendering their meaning visible. Thus, no contradiction complicates the relation of the lex talionis to Christ’s teaching: “But I say to you, do not resist the wicked one; but if someone strikes you on one cheek, offer him your other cheek” (Matt 5:39). The lex talionis – “an eye for an eye” – had been established to limit violence. The teaching of Christ, by demanding renunciation of vengeance, provides a more secure means to avoid unjust violence and to create room for real forgiveness.133 Christ, thus, did not come to complete an incomplete Law, nor to annul evil precepts, as Faustus maintained. Quite otherwise: according to Augustine, the Law is fulfilled practically and effectively through the grace of love. The proud man is incapable of fulfilling its mandates. Only the grace of love, granted to the humble (cf. Prov 3:34 [LXX]; Jas 4:6; 1 Pet 5:5), enables people to truly meet the Law’s standards.134 As for the promises recorded in the Old Testament, they are to be interpreted in a figurative sense. The promise of earthly goods (fertility, social stability, political peace) were simply “symbols of the good to come”: life eternal in God’s kingdom.135 Responding to Faustus’s calumnies against the Old Testament’s god, Augustine notes that these same accusations can be brought against Christ.136 Moreover, when addressing a rhetorical pagan hearer, Augustine unpacks the ways in which the biblical

 Faust. 6.2; 13.10; and 18.6 (CSEL 25/1:285–6; 390; and 495). Cf. A. Massie, Peuple prophétique, 393–405 and 437–41.  Faust. 19.19 (CSEL 25/1:518).  Faust. 19.22 (CSEL 25/1:521).  Faust. 19.23 (CSEL 25/1:521–2).  Faust. 19.25 (CSEL 25/1:525–6).  Faust. 19.27 (CSEL 25/1:529).  Faust. 4.2 (CSEL 25/1:269).  Faust. 22.13–14 (CSEL 25/1:600–3): Christ, who is God, is astonished by the faith of the centurion (cf. Matt 8:10); Christ does not know who touched him (Luke 8:45); Christ zealously drives out the merchants from the Temple (John 2:17); and, in the Parable of the Talents, he calls for the death of his enemies (Luke 19:27).

186

Isabelle Bochet

god’s “jealousy” or “cruelty” should be understood.137 The Manichaean critique of the Jewish patriarchs and prophets has little basis. The interpreter must consider the differences in historical periods before judging the deeds of the ancients, whose actions were appropriate to their times. And above all else, he urges, the hearer must especially grasp the fact that the lives of the patriarchs and prophets were themselves prophetic: “the entire Hebrew kingdom was in effect a great prophet.”138 Augustine connects Christian destiny to that of humanity quite specifically by attaching that destiny securely to its Jewish roots. The Christ whom he discovers in Scripture is at the same time fully human and fully Jewish, “born of woman, born under the Law” (Gal 4:4), thus profoundly rooted in a particular people and in its history.139

Interpreting the New Testament The authority of the New Testament is one thing for Augustine; for Faustus it is quite another. Augustine recalls the precise criteria for judging a text canonical, thus authoritative: Does an apostle stand as its source? Has said text been transmitted through an unbroken line to later bishops from the apostles? Is the text universally acknowledged by the [true] church?140 The determination of a text’s canonical status is crucial, because if so, then it transmits a truth, no matter how much that truth might trouble or astonish current hearers. Moreover, one cannot call into question the mutual coherence of canonical texts. A seeming contradiction cannot excuse ignoring the offending passage in favor of the other. Rather, both passages must be trusted as if they had both issued from the same speaker: the faithful hearer will seek to understand, if possible, how the two passages can be seen to accord with one another.141 The correct attitude toward authoritative canonical texts is one of accommodating piety: one should approach them with a spirit of serenity,142 without seeking to triage this New Testament verse or that New Testament passage in the way that the Manichaeans do. Respectful submission to the authority of the Scriptures does not exclude the exercise of critical reason. Determination of the correct hermeneutical rule for a given passage in fact positively demands it. On this point Augustine reinstates the importance of the witness of the apostles: they, not Mani, had the advantage of knowing Christ in the flesh, and to have been able to garner as recent events the testimony of other contemporaries for those deeds that they themselves did not witness.143 Where apostolic witnesses appear

      

Faust. 22.18–21 (CSEL 25/1:606–11). Faust. 22.23–24 (CSEL 25/1:618–9). Cf. M. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere, 258–60; and P. Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews, 258. Faust. 11.2 and 33.9 (CSEL 25/1:315–6 and 796). Faust. 11.5–6 (CSEL 25/1:320–2). Faust. 3.5 (CSEL 25/1:266–7). Faust. 7.2 (CSEL 25/1:305).

7 Augustine’s Use of Scripture against the Manichaeans after 400 CE

187

to contradict each other, one must acknowledge the variability of historical testimonies that characterizes any human account.144 Augustine applies such interpretive rules to those texts that were the particular object of Faustus’s critiques. He smooths out the disparities between Matthew’s and Luke’s respective Christological lineages,145 to which Faustus had particularly drawn attention. He defends Matt 5:17, when Faustus had noted that Matthew himself had not been witness to the Sermon on the Mount, by saying that Matthew might have heard that teaching later, from John, or for that matter, from Jesus. Perhaps the Gospel writer referred to himself in the third person. So what? Secular historians routinely did just the same thing. John himself had done so at John 21:20–24; Jesus, referring to himself as “the Son of God,” spoke in the third person at John 5:25.146 And these same rules applied when reading and interpreting Paul. A verse had to be interpreted within its immediate context. A Manichaean favorite, 2 Cor 5:16, for example, “As for us, we know no one from according to the flesh; and if once we had known Christ according to the flesh, we now know him in that way no longer,” could not be used to undermine the plain teaching of Rom 1:3, that Christ, God’s son, was “of the line of David according to the flesh.” Faustus’s reading of 2 Cor 5:16 therefore falsified its meaning; the verse’s context established that Paul was speaking not of life in the present, but of the life to come.147 The canonical Scriptures, Augustine insisted, could in no way support the dualist interpretations upon which Faustus based his selective appropriations of New Testament verses. The passages so favored by Faustus could sustain neither the dualism of the Manichaeans’ Two Principles, nor their dualist anthropology, nor their opposition of Gospel to Law. Manichaeans did not understand the “unapproachable light” of the Father (1 Tim 6:16). What they conceived as a corporeal light extending infinitely in space was actually “an incorporeal substance, pure immaterial spirit, unchanging.” They did not know that “this light is the inseparable Trinity, the One God,” within which the Son and Holy Spirit were indistinguishable.148 Nor, further, could one divide Christ, as if his wisdom could be separated from his power, supposedly dwelling in two distinct regions.149 Augustine accordingly contested Faustus’s interpretation of 2 Cor 4:4, which spoke of “the god of this age who blinds the minds of unbelievers.”150 He explores the way to subdivide the verse, such that “the greater part of us” introduces a pause between “god” and “age,” so that it is the true God who “has blinded the minds of the unbelievers” of this

      

Faust. 33.7 (CSEL 25/1:793). Faust. 3.2–4 (CSEL 25/1:262–6). Faust. 17.3–4 (CSEL 25/1:485–8). Faust. 11.7–8 (CSEL 25/1:322–8). Faust. 20.7 (CSEL 25/1:541–2). Faust. 20.8 (CSEL 25/1:542–4). Cf. P.-H. Poirier, “Exégèse manichéenne,” 275 and 285–6.

188

Isabelle Bochet

age.151 And he justifies this reading by appealing to other passages where Paul attributes to the true God the blinding of unbelievers: in Rom 3:15, for example, and again in Rom 9:14–15 and 9:22–23. In Augustine’s reading, God’s justice is demonstrated by his divinely-designed and inherent punishment of sin, by which he means the sinner’s hardening in his own sinfulness, without recourse, as the Manichaeans would have it, to some sort of second Principle engaged in conflict with God. Augustine’s refutation of Faustus’s dualist anthropology rested on the precision of his reading of Paul. To distinguish the outer man from the inner man is not to say that two separate men co-exist within the same person at the same time. “The outer man and the inner man constitute a single man, that single one whom God created in his own image.”152 To justify his interpretation, Augustine shows, first, that the outer man is also God’s creation, by appeal to Paul’s reference to the physical body in 1 Cor 12:18 (“But God has arranged the bodily members, each one as he wished”) and to the “earthly man” invoked in 1 Cor 15:35–40. He continues by explaining that Paul distinguishes between the natural or “animal” human being and the “old” one: the “old man” designates the entire human being, in as much as he is a sinner. Thus, the whole man is made by God, the whole man grows old in sin, the whole man will be remade by his Creator.153 In a final blow to Manichaean dualism, Augustine insists that Christ himself, far from opposing the Law and the Prophets, appeared in order to fulfill the Law and the Prophets. The Catholic church is thus not the “adulterous wife” of Rom 7:2–3 so slanderously conjured by Faustus, but “the true bride of Christ,” who “understands the distinction between the letter and the spirit or, in other words, between the Law and the gift of grace. And she serves God no longer in the old way, according to the letter, for in the newness of the Spirit she is no longer under the Law, but under grace” (cf. Rom 6:14).154

Conclusion According to Michel Tardieu, “the interesting aspect and the historical novelty of the Manichean reading of the New Testament is its invocation of principles of reading that we today would term ‘literary criticism’ – rudimentary, to be sure, and not in our sense scientific; but literary criticism nonetheless.”155 True enough, providing one acknowledges as well that this form of criticism rests entirely on dualist Manichaean

 Faust. 21.2 (CSEL 25/1:569–70).  Faust. 24.2 (CSEL 25/1:721): “Quia hoc utrumque, interius et exterius, simul unus homo est, hunc unum hominem ad imaginem suam fecit.”  Faust. 24.2 (CSEL 25/1:723).  Faust. 15.8 (CSEL 25/1:432): “At ista vera sponsa Christi . . . intellegit, quid distet inter litteram et spiritum, quae duo dicuntur alio modo, lex et gratia, et non jam in vetustate litterae, sed in novitate spiritus deo serviens non est jam sub lege, sed sub gratia.”  Les règles de l’interprétation, 145.

7 Augustine’s Use of Scripture against the Manichaeans after 400 CE

189

religious convictions. But added to this must be the observation that Augustine applies the principles of historical criticism156 in his response to Faustus; and that he is at pains to put to use those interpretive rules or keys articulated in another hermeneutical master work, De doctrina christiana (Doctr. chr.).157 Manichaean exegesis had emphasized the incompatibility between the Old and the New Testament, denouncing the scriptural “hybrid monster” of the Catholics which betrayed the newness of the Gospel. Against this total rejection of Jewish scriptures Augustine constructed a truly systematic interpretation of the sacred texts, one that encompassed at the same time both their historical sense and their symbolic ones.158 It is in the light of this hermeneutic that the Gospel expresses its full meaning. In Secundinus’ view, Augustine, by leaving the Manichaeans, had allied himself “with the Jews, that nation of barbarous customs.”159 Augustine unhesitatingly confessed his dedication to these ancient Jewish texts, since “it is in them that Christ was prophesied, in them that the truth of God was made manifest, and not in those works that Mani, in the pride of his vanity, made up.”160 Augustine was not on this account a Jew, but he recognized the features of Christ as prophesied in the books of the Jews. The religious and historical status of the Jewish people stands at the heart of the debate between Augustine and the Manichaeans. Faustus had only contempt for the Jews. He attributed to them the grotesque representations of an ignorant, jealous, and cruel deity; he denounced the immoralities of the patriarchs and the prophets; he caricatured Jewish cultural practices and condemned Jewish Law. Augustine, to the contrary, attributed an important role to Israel, which remains “a prophetic nation” for the duration of its history. He takes into consideration all of the stages of Israel’s history beginning with Abraham, going through to the Exodus, the establishment of the Davidic kings, the Babylonian exile, up through to the appearance of Christ. And he emphatically insists that the Jewish people offered an important and ongoing service to the church as the guardians and guarantors of these sacred texts: they remain, even in the present, an essential “witness” to and for the church.161 Christianity for Augustine is not just a religion of the Book.162 “The essential conviction” of the Christian religion is that “history and

 Cf. G. Madec, La Patrie et la voie. Le Christ dans la vie et la pensée de saint Augustin (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1989), 253.  Within this work Augustine famously acknowledges his debt to the Rules of Tyconius. See Doctr. chr. 3.30.42–3.37.56 (ed. Simonetti: 222–50).  Cf. P. Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews, 241–2.  Secundinus, Ep. (CSEL 25/2:896).  Secund. 21 (CSEL 25/2:938): “In eis quippe prophetatus est Christus, qualem dei veritas reddidit, non qualem Manichaei vanitas finxit.” Cf. A. Massie, Peuple prophétique, 9–11.  Faust. 12.23 (CSEL 25/1:351): “Quid est enim aliud hodieque gens ipsa nisi quaedam scriniaria christianorum, baiulans legem et prophetas ad testimonium adsertionis ecclesiae, ut nos honoremus per sacramentum, quod nuntiat illa per litteram?” Cf. A. Massie, Peuple prophétique, 355–60; and P. Fredriksen, “Augustine and ‘Thinking with’ Jews.”  Cf. G. Madec, La Patrie et la voie, 127.

190

Isabelle Bochet

prophecy attest to the way that divine providence accomplishes the redemption of humanity in time.”163

Further Reading Primary Sources Augustine. Answer to Faustus, a Manichean, translated by Roland Teske. Part. I, vol. 20. The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, edited by Boniface Ramsey, 69–432. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2007. Augustine. Contre Fauste le manichéen, 2 volumes, translated by Martine Dulaey, Isabelle Bochet, JeanDaniel Dubois, Alban Massie, Paul Mattei, Michel-Yves Perrin, and Gregor Wurst. Œuvres de Saint Augustin. Bibliothèque Augustinienne 18/A–B. Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2018, 85–385 and 2020, 109–593. Augustine. S. Aureli Augustini: De utilitate credendi, De duabus animabus, Contra Fortunatum, Contra Adimantum, Contra epistulam fundamenti, Contra Faustum, edited by Josef Zycha. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 25/1. Vienna: Tempsky, 1891. Augustine. S. Aureli Augustini: Contra Felicem, De Natura Boni, Epistula Secundini, Contra Secundinum, edited by Josef Zycha. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 25/2. Vienna: Tempsky, 1892. Augustine. Six traités antimanichéens. De duabus animabus. Contra Fortunatum. Contra Adimantum. Contra epistulam Fundamenti. Contra Secundinum. Contra Felicem Manichaeum, translated by Jean Jolivet and Maurice Jourjon, 52–757. Œuvres de Saint Augustin. Bibliothèque Augustinienne 17. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1961. Augustine. The Manichaean Debate. Translated by Roland Teske. Part I, vol. 19. The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, edited by Boniface Ramsey, 28–389. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2006. Pedersen, Nils Arne, René Falkenberg, John Møller Larsen, and Claudia Leurini, eds. The Old Testament in Manichaean Tradition. The Sources in Syriac, Greek, Coptic, Middle Persian, Parthian, Sogdian, New Persian, and Arabic. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017. Pedersen, Nils Arne, René Falkenberg, John Møller Larsen, and Claudia Leurini, eds. The New Testament Gospels in Manichaean Tradition. The Sources in Syriac, Greek, Coptic, Middle Persian, Parthian, Sogdian, Bactrian, New Persian, and Arabic. Turnhout: Brepols, 2020.

Secondary Sources BeDuhn, Jason David. Making a “Catholic” Self, 388–401 C.E. Vol. 2, Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. Cameron, Michael. Christ Meets Me Everywhere. Augustine’s Early Figurative Exegesis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

 Ver. rel. 7.13 (CCSL 32:196): “Hujus religionis sectandae caput est historia et prophetia dispensationis temporalis divinae providentiae pro salute generis humani in aeternam vitam reformandi atque reparandi.”

7 Augustine’s Use of Scripture against the Manichaeans after 400 CE

191

Decret, François. Aspects du manichéisme dans l’Afrique romaine. Les controverses de Fortunatus, Faustus et Felix avec saint Augustin. Collection des Études augustiniennes. Série Antiquité, 41. Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1970. Decret, François. “L’utilisation des Épîtres de Paul chez les Manichéens d’Afrique.” In Le epistole paoline nei Manichei, i Donatisti e il primo Agostino, edited by Julien Ries et al., 31–89. Sussidi Patristici 5. Rome: Istituto Patristico Augustinianum, 2000. Fredriksen, Paula. Augustine and the Jews. A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. Fredriksen, Paula. “Augustine and ‘Thinking with’ Jews: Rhetoric Pro- and Contra Iudaeos.” Ancient Jew Review, Feb. 3, 2018: www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2018/2/3/augustine-and-thinking-with-jewsrhetoric-pro-and-contra-iudaeos. Hoffmann, Andreas. “Verfälschung der Jesus-Tradition. Neutestamentliche Texte in der manichaischaugustinischen Kontroverse.” In Atti del Terzo Congresso Internazionale di Studi “Manicheismo e Oriente Cristiano Antico”, Arcavacata di Rende – Amantea, 31 agosto–5 settembre 1993, edited by Luigi Cirillo, Alois Van Tongerloo, 149–82. Manichaean Studies 3. Turnhout: Brepols, 1997. Massie, Alban. Peuple prophétique et nation témoin. Le peuple juif dans le Contra Faustum manichaeum de saint Augustin. Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2011. Mayer, Cornelius et al., eds. Augustinus-Lexikon. 5 vols. Basel: Schwabe, 1986–present. Tardieu, Michel. “Principes de l’exégèse manichéenne du Nouveau Testament.” In Les règles de l’interprétation, edited by Michel Tardieu, 123–46. Paris: Cerf, 1987.

Adam Ployd

8 Scripture in Augustine’s Polemics against the Donatists Introduction: Historical Context and Status Quaestionis By the time Augustine was ordained coadjutor bishop in 395 CE, the Donatist schism was almost ninety years old. The conflict began over the disputed election of Caecilian as bishop of Carthage in 307 and allegations that one of his consecrators, Felix of Abthungi, was a traditor, that is, one who had “handed over” holy texts during the Diocletianic persecution that had ended in North Africa only two years earlier. Those opposed to Caecilian’s election chose their own bishop, Maiorinus, who was soon succeeded by Donatus, the source of the imposed moniker “Donatists.”1 Theologically, the dispute focused on guilt by association and the pollution of sin, the nature of the church, and the efficacy of baptism. Was the present Catholic church contaminated by the sin of traditio allegedly committed by bishops during the Diocletianic persecution? Does the true church exist only in Africa where its integrity is preserved? Or is it spread throughout the world and composed of both sinners and saints while on sojourn in this life? Is the power of baptism dependent upon the moral condition of the baptizer and the baptized? Or is it Christ, as opposed to the bishop, who gives the sanctifying Spirit in the sacrament? The years 400 to 411, which encompass the works covered in this essay, represent a period in which the Catholic church of North Africa embarked upon an intensified strategy of imperial lobbying.2 The annual councils of Carthage in the first years of the fifth century assembled dossiers and dispatched representatives first to provincial authorities and then to the court at Ravenna. Perhaps more convincing than any  This essay retains the traditional nomenclature of “Catholic” for Augustine’s communion and “Donatist” for the opposition. It should be noted that the latter would see themselves as the true Catholics. Given that this essay is primarily about Augustine, it is appropriate to retain his terminology while acknowledging its bias.  B. Shaw, Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 546–53. See also, E. Hermanowicz, Possidius of Calama: A Study of the North African Episcopate at the Time of Augustine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 124–80. ✶

Adam Ployd is Vice Principal of Wesley House, the Methodist Theological College in Cambridge, UK. His research interests include trinitarian theology, Christology, ecclesiology, martyrology, language, and rhetoric. His articles on Augustine and the Donatists have appeared in Augustinian Studies, the Journal of Early Christian Studies, and Vigiliae Christianae.

Adam Ployd, Wesley House Cambridge https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-009

194

Adam Ployd

literary documentation, though, were a Catholic bishop’s wounds, allegedly inflicted by violent bands of Donatist enforcers known as Circumcellions,3 and displayed at court as evidence of the threat that Donatism posed to peace and stability at the southern end of the Western Empire at a time when its northern borders were being overrun. In response, the emperor Honorius issued the Edict of Unity in 405, condemning the Donatist communion, requiring them to merge with the Catholics, and declaring those who persisted in rebaptism to be heretics. This seeming victory was cut short by the local authorities’ inability or unwillingness to enforce the edict. By early 410, the emperor, with his eyes focused primarily on the invading Alaric, reversed the edict, this time promoting religious toleration. This new policy did not last long, however. Later that same year, Honorius not only reversed his reversal but also decreed a judicial hearing to be held the following year at which, his instructions left no doubt, the Donatists would be quashed for good, this time with all the force of the imperial court brought to bear.4 Throughout this period, Augustine and his comrades also pursued the Donatists through a strategy of persuasion, urging them to meet with their local counterparts for a debate about the historical and theological issues that divided them.5 The Donatists refused to do so, presumably from a desire neither to legitimate the Catholic church nor to establish an official record to be used against them by an empire that supported their opponents. To put it another way, they knew a trap when they saw one. Augustine was reluctant to bring imperial power to bear until he determined it was necessary against what he saw as Donatist recalcitrance. His preference was to woo rather than to coerce. The works treated in this essay should be read as efforts to do just that, to convince his opponents by appealing to Scripture and historical authorities so that they might enter into what he considered the true church. One should also read them as constructed dialogues, placeholders for the public debates that Augustine would rather have, as well as conversations that he can shape to his own ends, editing Donatist documents to give himself the argumentative high ground. Despite his desire to avoid compulsion if possible, even in his literary efforts at persuasion he strongarms Donatist words into place. There is no inconsistency, then, in the fact that this study of Augustine’s antiDonatist treatises should end with the transcript of a pre-determined imperial trial in which Donatist arguments are entered into the record for formality’s sake while the Catholic position inevitably wins the day. In his anti-Donatist treatises from the period 400–411, Augustine depicts the conflict as one of scriptural interpretation and application. He dismisses questions of historical evidence as irrelevant to the debate, or at least as subordinate to the authority of

 Shaw, Sacred Violence, 828–39.  For the imperial rescript, see Coll. Carth. 1.4 (CSEL 104:76–7).  J. Ebbeler, “Charitable Correction and Ecclesiastical Unity in Augustine’s Contra Epistulam Parmeniani,” in The Donatist Schism: Controversy and Contexts, ed. R. Miles (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016), 284–96.

8 Scripture in Augustine’s Polemics against the Donatists

195

Scripture. His attacks on the Donatists, therefore, focus more often than not on their reading of Scripture. Several methods will stand out as central to his anti-Donatist biblical interpretation, all of which represent expressions of the ideals espoused in De doctrina christiana (Doctr. chr.).6 These include, first, a holistic reading of Scripture that attends to its overarching narrative.7 In these treatises Augustine emphasizes Scripture’s consistent affirmation of the unity and ubiquity of the church. Further, in light of the unity of Scripture, passages of Scripture are to be seen as mutually interpretive: seemingly contradictory passages are to be reconciled with one another and clear passages take precedent over the more obscure, providing the key to overarching scriptural themes, such as the universality of the church.8 The Donatists’ failure to read Scripture correctly, he claims, is a manifestation of their failure to love correctly, itself evident in their refusal to unite with the true church. In deploying these principles, Augustine uses techniques such as establishing constellations of passages that mutually interpret each other when juxtaposed in a citation cluster. Most significantly, Augustine remains remarkably consistent in the Scriptures he uses against the Donatists as well as in how he interprets them, even as he expands his repertoire of relevant Scripture passages, incorporating new evidence within already established constellations and interpretive moves. As yet, there is no work that analyzes the role of Scripture throughout Augustine’s anti-Donatist corpus. Nevertheless, one would be remiss to consider the topic ignored. Numerous studies have addressed particular scriptural passages and themes within the oeuvre. A few examples will suffice to illustrate this trend. The notes appended to the end of each anti-Donatist volume within the Oeuvres de Saint Augustin series of the Bibliothèque Augustinienne include several commentaries on Scripture verses, particular biblical books, and Augustine’s biblical text. For example, Yves Congar examines Augustine’s response to the Donatist use of Song 1:6–7.9 While the Donatists interpret the phrase in meridie to refer to the South and the church’s true location in Africa, Augustine emphasizes the brightness of midday that suggests that the church exists in the light of truth. More recently, Anthony Dupont and Matteo Dalvit again take up the topic of Song 1:6–7, moving beyond summarizing

 On these exegetical principles, see T. Toom, “Scripture in Augustine’s De doctrina christiana,” in BCNA I, 321–42.  Cf. Doctr. chr. 3.10.14–16 (CCSL 32:86–8).  Cf. Doctr. chr. 3.26.37–3.27.38 (CCSL 32:99–100).  See Y. Congar, “Cant., I, 6–7, dans la discussion entre Augustin et les Donatistes,” in Traités antiDonatistes I, Oeuvres de Saint Augustin 28, BA (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1963), 747–8. For these verses, the NRSV reads: “Do not gaze at me because I am dark, because the sun has gazed on me. My mother’s sons were angry with me; they made me keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept! Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you pasture your flock, where you make it lie down at noon; for why should I be like one who is veiled beside the flocks of your companions?” (Song 1:6–7). Throughout this chapter, all English translations of Scripture are NRSV, unless there is a significant variant in Augustine’s text, which I will note.

196

Adam Ployd

the theological issue from Augustine’s perspective and instead reconstructing a plausible original Donatist interpretation that is less about ecclesial location and more about the communion’s relationship to martyrdom.10 Indeed, the role of the Song of Songs in the Donatist dispute is a perennial concern for scholars.11 Other works of note include Maureen Tilley’s The Bible in Christian North Africa, which provides a sustained examination of the place of Scripture within Donatist theology and polemics.12 Many of Augustine’s works treated in this essay appear in Tilley but only as sources for Donatist texts. Tilley’s contribution lies in seeking to understand the Donatists in their own terms by showing how they map the “biblical world” onto their own, seeing themselves in terms of the collecta of Israel, at times experiencing Babylonian exile via persecution and at other times promoting institutional (not necessarily individual) purity. Tilley’s analysis adds much needed nuance to the oftcaricatured depiction of Donatist theology. Much of her work, however, depends on texts preceding the Augustinian treatises that will be considered in what follows. While we will see ripples of her arguments in Augustine’s quotation of Donatist scriptural interpretation, this chapter’s focus will be on how Augustine presents and responds to particular Donatist texts, admittedly through his own constructive lens. In “The Bible and Polemics,” Anne-Marie La Bonnardière tackles questions of textual variance through a brief discussion of the Donatist use of Sir 34:25, “He who is baptized by death, his purification serves him nothing.”13 This translation represents an abridged version of the verse, and Augustine chastises his opponents for amending it, not knowing at the time that it was a legitimate variant in African Old Latin versions of Sirach. For their part, the Donatists read this text as referring to the dead traditores whose baptism is ineffectual. La Bonnardière further claims that their source for this reading is likely Cyprian’s Ep. 71,14 even though she earlier notes that Augustine himself admits that he had not realized the shorter version was present in some older African

 A. Dupont and M. Dalvit, “From a Martyrological ‘tabernacula pastorum’ towards a Geographical ‘in meridie’. Augustine’s Representation and Refutation of the Donatist Exegesis of Sg. 1,6–7,” RHE 109 (2014): 5–34.  For a position between Congar on the one hand and Dupont and Dalvit on the other, see N. Henry, “The Lily and the Thorns: Augustine’s Refutation of the Donatist Exegesis of the Song of Songs,” REAug 42 (1996): 255–66; and M. Cameron, “Augustine’s Use of Song of Songs against the Donatists,” in Augustine: Biblical Exegete, eds. F. van Fleteren and J. C. Schnaubelt (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 99–127.  M. Tilley, The Bible in Christian North Africa: The Donatist World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997).  A-M La Bonnardière, “The Bible and Polemics,” in Augustine and the Bible, ed. and trans. P. Bright (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999), 190–2.  See Cyprian, Ep. 71.1.1 (CSEL3.2: 771–2; trans. La Bonnardière, “The Bible and Polemics,” 191): “. . . haereticorum sordidam et profanam tinctionem uero et unico et legitimo ecclesiae catholicae baptismo praeponere et praeferre contendunt, non considerantes scriptum esse: ‘qui baptizatur a mortuo, quid proficit lauatione eius?’” (“. . . they set off before and prefer the sordid and profane washing of heretics to the true and only and legitimate baptism of the Catholic Church, not considering that it is written, ‘He who is baptized by one dead, what availeth his washing?’”).

8 Scripture in Augustine’s Polemics against the Donatists

197

versions of Sirach.15 The present author has also engaged Augustine’s use of this text in his anti-Donatist treatises, emphasizing the way forensic rhetoric shapes his antiDonatist exegesis.16 Much like Augustine’s own exegetical approach, this essay offers a more holistic view of his anti-Donatist biblical interpretation. By tracing his emphasis on the consistent message of Scripture, the need to interpret texts in light of more clear texts, and the overarching need for charity in interpretation, key texts and themes will rise to the surface as testimony to the continuity that defines his use of Scripture in the conflict. While new texts and emphases arise to address occasional concerns, one more often finds repetition and expansion on perennial themes and favorite texts.

Contra litteras Petiliani In early 400, Augustine became aware of a letter written by the Donatist bishop Petilian condemning the Catholics for being traditores and persecutors. Though only possessing a small portion of the letter, Augustine quickly produced a response, a composition we now know as Book 1 of Contra litteras Petiliani (C. litt. Petil). In this first and shortest book, Augustine does not quote any of Petilian’s letter but only reports his accusations and attempts to refute them. In 401, Augustine was able to access the full letter and wrote a second book, quoting Petilian’s own work and responding passage-by-passage in a faux literary dialogue. In 403, Petilian wrote a response to Augustine’s text, eliciting a third book in which Augustine addressed the particular issues of baptism and the worthiness of the minister. Augustine’s first foray into Scripture in C. litt. Petil. establishes a pattern for his use of Scripture throughout his anti-Donatist oeuvre: the use of text constellations, groupings of Scripture passages that mutually interpret one another and establish what he takes to be the consensus view of Scripture. In this first instance, he deploys a constellation of texts supporting his claim that the character or conscience of the baptizer does not affect the quality of the baptism. He reads Ps 118:8,17 Jer 17:5,18 Ps 3:8,19 Ps 60:11,20 and 1 Cor 1:1321 as mutually informing texts affirming that salvation comes not from humans but  Augustine, Retract. 1.21.3. See, La Bonnardière, “The Bible and Polemics,” 192.  A. Ployd, “Sir 34:30 and Forensic Rhetoric in Augustine’s Conflict with the Donatists,” VC 75 (2021): 556–71.  “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to put confidence in mortals” (Ps 118:8).  “Thus says the Lord: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord” (Jer 17:5).  “Deliverance belongs to the Lord; may your blessing be on your people!” (Ps 3:8).  “O grant us help against the foe, for human help is worthless” (Ps 60:11).  “Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (1 Cor 1:13). This verse and adjacent passages will continue to be important for Augustine’s antiDonatist theology of baptism as he emphasizes that we are baptized into the name and by the power

198

Adam Ployd

from God.22 This constellation approach exploits the presumed unity of Scripture to rally multiple passages, rather than an isolated verse, to Augustine’s side. Petilian makes similar moves, but Augustine can hide this fact in his presentation of his opponent’s work: he often cuts Petilian off after a single citation and then responds with a constellation, making it appear as if Petilian is merely prooftexting rather than considering the entire scope of Scripture. Augustine deploys a similar approach later in C. litt. Petil. 1 as he proves that the Donatists are schismatics because they are not in communion with the universal church but only with those in Africa. While elsewhere he will state this as a principle in itself, here he brings scriptural evidence to bear upon his claim, in this case Ps 72:823 and 2:824 and, later, Gen 22:1825 and Gal 3:16.26 In Augustine’s reading, these texts point to the universality of the Lord’s inheritance. He reads these as excerpts from a will and testament. Again, the assumption that guides him is that Scripture represents a single, consistent, and self-interpreting text. Gal 3:16 becomes the key for understanding the Abrahamic blessing of Gen 22:18, and that Christological interpretation allows the texts from the Psalter to be brought into the same inheritance constellation. Indeed, this particular constellation, gradually expanded to include more and more passages, will be one of the most frequently recurring sets of Scripture in Augustine’s anti-Donatist arsenal.27 C. litt. Petil. 2 provides excellent examples of textual disputes as Augustine critiques and corrects Petilian’s citations. For example, Petilian quotes John 8:44 as “You are children of the devil, and from the beginning he was an accuser.”28 But Augustine claims, “We are not used to reading ‘he was an accuser’ but rather ‘he was a murderer.’”29 He can then interpret satanic murder as exemplified in tempting Adam away from paradise. Paradise, he claims, is now understood to be the church. Thus,

of Christ, not into the name and by the power of a bishop, regardless of the bishop’s moral quality. See, e.g., Augustine, C. litt. Petil. 2.41.97 (CSEL 52:97); 3.51.63 (CSEL 52:215–6); Bapt. 1.10.14; 3.14.19; 5.26.37 (CSEL 51:158–60; 208–10; 292–3); Cresc. 1.27.32 (CSEL 52:351–2); Unic. bapt. 5.7; 11.18 (CSEL 53:7–9; 18–20); and Coll. Carth. 1.55 (CSEL 104:98–107).  C. litt. Petil. 1.3.4 (CSEL 52:5–6).  “May he have dominion from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth” (Ps 72:8).  “Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession” (Ps 2:8).  “and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice” (Gen 22:18).  “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring; it does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ as of many; but it says, ‘And to your offspring,’ that is, to one person, who is Christ” (Gal 3:16).  See, e.g., C. litt. Petil. 2.8.20 (CSEL 52:31–33); 3.50.62 (CSEL 52:214–5); Parm. 1.2.2; 1.4.6; 2.13.27 (CSEL 51:20–22; 25–26; 77–79); Cath. fr. 6.11; 19.51 (CSEL 52:243–4; 298–300); Cresc. 2.36.45; 3.63.70; 4.61.74 (CSEL 52:405–6; 476; 573–4); and Coll. Carth. 1.55; 3.55 (CSEL 104:98–107; 200).  C. litt. Petil. 2.13.29 (CSEL 52:35; WSA I/21:86, trans. M. Tilley and B. Ramsey): “filii diaboli estis; et ab initio enim ille accusator fuit.”  C. litt. Petil. 2.13.30 (CSEL 52:35; WSA I/21:86, trans. M. Tilley and B. Ramsey): “non solemus legere: ille accusator fuit, sed: ille homicida fuit.”

8 Scripture in Augustine’s Polemics against the Donatists

199

Petilian’s misquoted text – possibly blending John 8:44 with Rev 12:10 which refers to “the accuser”30 – is turned against his own communion. We find a similar argument when Petilian combines 1 Cor 6:1831 with Matt 12:31–3232 to create one statement about the nature of sin against the Holy Spirit.33 Augustine responds, “Neither is this written in this way, and see how greatly you are mistaken. . . . You began with a phrase from the Apostle and concluded it from the Gospel, as if it were a single thing, which I believe that you did not deceptively but mistakenly.”34 Augustine, having divided, now conquers: “Both [texts] are beside the point, and I do not understand in the least why you said them and with what intention you said them, unless perhaps, when you said previously that those who relaxed one of the precepts were condemned by the Lord, you realized how many you have who relax not one but many precepts, and, lest this be raised against you, you wanted to introduce in passing a difference among sins.”35 Not only, Augustine claims, does Petilian mix up his citations, but he does so only to cover an earlier theological error in consistency. Thus, a key strategy in Augustine’s use of Scripture is to undermine his opponent’s arguments by pointing out (alleged) errors in their citations. A final approach to Scripture worth highlighting from C. litt. Petil. 2 is another that appears throughout Augustine’s Donatist “debates.” He repeatedly turns Petilian’s interpretation back upon him. For example, when Petilian claims that the Donatists are the meek who will inherit the earth, Augustine challenges him to show how this applies to the aggresive circumcellions.36 Similarly, Petilian quotes Ps 133, the sweetness of brothers

 H. A. G. Houghton, Augustine’s Text of John: Patristic Citations and Latin Gospel Manuscripts (Oxford: Oxford University Pres, 2008), 268, suggests that Petilian is not misquoting; rather “this may have been the text of the Donatist’s African version.” Perhaps, but there is no evidence for this reading beyond this one passage.  “Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself” (1 Cor 6:18).  “Therefore I tell you, people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come” (Matt 12:31–32).  There is no reason to think that Petilian is confused here, as Augustine suggests. Rather he is creating the same kind of constellation that Augustine uses so often, reading these two verses together but not mistaking them for a single verse.  C. litt. Petil. 2.62.140 (CSEL 52:96; WSA I/21:141, trans. M. Tilley and B. Ramsey): “et hoc non ita scriptum est et vide quantum te fefellerit. . . . tu autem coepisti ex apostolo sententiam et eam tamquam una sit ex evangelio terminasti; quod te non credo fraude sed errore fecisse.”  C. litt. Petil. 2.62.140 (CSEL 52:96; WSA I/21:141, trans. M. Tilley and B. Ramsey): “neutra enim ad rem pertinet et cur haec dixeris, quoquo modo dixeris, omnino non uideo. nisi forte quia, cum superius dixisses damnatos esse a domino qui resoluerint unum ex mandatis, considerasti quam multos habeatis non unum sed multa mandata soluentes, et ne tibi obiceretur, uoluisti per transitum subinducere differentiam peccatorum.”  C. litt. Petil. 2.64.143–4 (CSEL 52:97–8; WSA I/21:142, trans. M. Tilley and B. Ramsey).

200

Adam Ployd

dwelling in unity, to condemn the Catholics for breaking unity through their sin. Augustine responds with an extended interpretation of the Psalm that emphasizes unity with the Body of Christ as the paramount virtue that the Donatists have forsaken through schism. The key for Augustine is the “ointment on the head that comes down upon the beard,” an image that, according to him, requires Col 1:1837 for its proper interpretation.38 In both of these cases, Augustine shows not only why Petilian’s theology is wrong but also how that wrong theology is based on an incorrect reading of Scripture.

Contra epistulam Parmeniani After writing Book 1 of C. litt. Petil. but before composing Books 2 and 3, Augustine turned his sights to a letter written by the late Donatist leader Parmenian. This text is of particular interest to our study as Parmenian’s letter was against the Donatist exegetical theorist Tyconius, whose ecclesiologically-based interpretive principles appeared too close to the Catholic position.39 Augustine, therefore, takes the opportunity to defend Tyconius against his own communion’s condemnation by demonstrating the rectitude of his exegetical approach. The result is Contra epistulam Parmeniani (Parm.), a feast of polemical biblical interpretation that expands upon the groundwork already laid in C. litt. Petil. 1 and anticipates C. litt. Petil. 2 and 3. Parm. 1 is a brief summary of Augustine’s anti-Donatist ecclesiology. Unlike the later books, it only rarely cites Donatist biblical interpretation directly; instead, Book 1 represents what Augustine takes to be the most important anti-Donatist texts on the nature of the church. Against Parmenian’s claim that the true church exists only in Africa, Augustine again brings forth the same Abrahamic promise of Gen 22:18 read in light of Gal 3:16, interpreting them, as above, as bequeathing to the church the entire world. This time he adds Gen 26:440 and 28:13–1441 to bolster his claim.42 To this vision of ecclesial ubiquity Augustine joins the image of wheat and chaff from Matt 13. His interpretation counters calls for separation from the supposedly polluting sin of other Christians, especially of bishops. Quoting the relevant verses,

 “He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything” (Col 1:18).  This reading reflects the Cyprianic emphasis on unity over schism. However, Augustine incorporates texts into his arguement that Cyprian does not use for this purpose.  On Tyconius, see J. Hoover, “Scripture in Tyconius,” in BCNA I, 289–320.  “[A]ll the nations of the earth shall gain blessing for themselves through your offspring” (Gen 26:4).  “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring” (Gen 28:13–14).  Parm. 1.2.2; and 1.4.6 (CSEL 51:20–21; and 24–26).

8 Scripture in Augustine’s Polemics against the Donatists

201

Augustine appeals to Jesus’ supposed intent in order to support his reading: “For [the Lord] did not wish to uproot the weeds and to separate them from the mingled grain ahead of time . . . . When [the Donatists] flee from the weeds, they have shown that they themselves are weeds when they speak out in the most manifest sacrilege against the Lord’s words.”43 Augustine’s reading here, which he deploys repeatedly against the Donatists,44 is heavily indebted to Cyprian.45 With Book 2, Augustine takes up Parmenian’s interpretation of particular passages. Each passage receives extended attention from Augustine as he undoes Parmenian’s argument first one way and then another. Note this example on the proper interpretation of Isa 5:20: “Woe to those who say that the bad is good and that the good is bad, who put light for darkness and darkness for light, who put what is bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” First, appealing to Ps 133:1 (a text Petilian had used to condemn the Catholics46), Augustine opines, “what is so good and so pleasant as brothers dwelling as one? Those who have separated themselves from all the brothers call this bad and put it down as bitter.”47 This typical move establishes unity as the guiding principle for understanding Isa 5:20, one text interpreting another. If Ps 133:1 takes precedence, then Isa 5:20 condemns those who break unity, rejecting the true good for a bad they falsely call good. Similarly, Augustine turns again to the inheritance of Abraham as a guiding precedent: “What is more light-filled than the promises of God . . . that all nations were going to receive a blessing in the offspring of Abraham, that is, in Christ.”48 The Donatists, Augustine claims, are again the true targets of

 Parm. 1.14.21 (CSEL 51:42; WSA I/21:293, trans. M. Tilley and B. Ramsey): “qui enim noluit ante tempus eradicare zizania et a frumentorum permixtione separare. . . . isti autem, cum quasi zizania fugiunt, se ipsos esse zizania demonstrarunt, in manifestissimo sacrilegio contra sententiam domini praedicantes.”  See, inter alia, Bapt. 4.9.13 (CSEL 51:237–8); Cath. fr. 14.35 (CSEL 52:277–8); and Coll. Carth. 1.55 (CSEL 104:98–107).  See Cyprian, Ep. 55.25.1 (CSEL 3.2:643–4; ACW 46:49, trans. Clarke): “[L]ook at the puffed-up arrogance of it all, the total disregard for meekness and humility, the supreme display of personal pride, that a man should dare to do or even imagine himself able to do what the Lord did not allow even the apostles to do, that he should think he is able to divide the tares from the wheat, or as if it was to him that had been granted power to wield the winnowing fan and to cleanse the threshing floor, that he should set about separating the chaff from the grain.” See also, Cyprian, Ep. 37.2.2; 63.18.2; and 66.8.1 (CSEL 3.2:577–8; 715–6; 732–3); as well as Cyprian, Unit. eccl. 9 (CSEL 3.1:217–8).  Cf. supra. Both Petilian and Augustine read the text as condemning the other for separating from unity. Such an emphasis, however, is more central to Augustine’s anti-Donatist argument, and he more regularly deploys this text, making it more of a “Catholic” proof than a “Donatist” one.  Parm. 2.1.1 (CSEL 51:44; WSA I/21:294, trans. M. Tilley and B. Ramsey): “vae his qui dicunt quod nequam est bonum et quod bonum est nequam.”  Parm. 2.1.2 (CSEL 51:44; WSA I/21:295, trans. M. Tilley and B. Ramsey): “quid enim lucidius promissis dei, qui temporibus nostris exhibuit quod ante annorum milia praenuntiavit, in semine abrahae, quod est christus.”

202

Adam Ployd

Isa 5:20 because they reject the light of God’s Abrahamic promise by cutting themselves off from the rest of the world. Augustine continues his attack, proffering the example of Optatus of Thamugadi, a controversial Donatist bishop, to demonstrate again that the Donatists have embraced a false good: “Was Optatus the light, and did all Africa call him darkness, or rather did all of Africa realize that he was darkness and only those who put light for darkness and darkness for light refer to him as light?”49 Here it is not another text that establishes precedence but the behavior of a famous Donatist figure that, Augustine claims, conforms more to the condemnation of Isa 5:20. Next, Augustine considers the scope of the text’s application. He has shown that it fits the specific actions of the Donatists, but he must also address the issue more generally. After all, the Donatists accuse the Catholics of being subject to this text’s condemnation precisely because they allegedly embrace those who have done wrong. Rather than rehashing questions of historical traditio, Augustine makes such questions moot: the Donatists should understand “that this was written against those who do bad things, thinking that it is bad to be good, or against those who consent to such persons by praising them or approving of them.”50 Here Augustine seeks to limit the scope of the passage in order to exculpate his communion, which, he claims, does not praise but only tolerates sinners. Augustine closes his refutation of Parmenian’s interpretation of Isa 5:20 by again condemning Donatist schism, this time appealing to two of his favorite ecclesial texts, Eph 4:351 (the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace) and Matt 13:30–39 (the wheat and the chaff growing together until Christ’s winnowing). Given their failure to live according to these guiding texts, the Donatists, Augustine argues, become the true object of Isa 5:20’s condemnation. In other words, Augustine suggests, their reading of Isa 5:20 ignores the larger meaning of Scripture and lacks the interpretive lens of love.52 Book 3 opens with an even stronger appeal to Eph 4:3. “Every spiritual reason for and manner of ecclesiastical discipline should especially have in view ‘the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace’ . . . when this is not observed, the remedy of punishment is not only superfluous but even destructive, and therefore the remedy is no

 Parm. 2.1.2 (CSEL 51:45; WSA I/21:295, trans. M. Tilley and B. Ramsey): “ita ne lux erat optatus et eum tota africa tenebras appellabat, an eum potius esse tenebras tota africa sentiebat et isti eum lucem vocabant, qui non ponunt lucem tenebras et tenebras lucem?”  Parm. 2.1.3 (CSEL 51:46; WSA I/21:296, trans. M. Tilley and B. Ramsey): “si autem intellegant in eos hoc esse dictum, qui opinantes quod malum est bonum esse mala committunt vel hi qui talibus laudando atque approbando consentiunt.”  For Augustine’s repeated use of Eph 4:3, see, inter alia, C. litt. Petil. 2.15.35; 2.32.74; 2.69.155; 2.78.174; and 3.5.6 (CSEL 52:39–40; 62–63; 100–1; 108–9; and 167–8); as well as Bapt. 2.6.8; 6.7.10; 6.12.18; and 7.51.99 (CSEL 51:182–3; 304–6; 309–11; 370–1); and Cresc. 4.8.10 (CSEL 52:510–1).  The role of charity in interpretation is another key theme of Doctr. chr.: see, e.g., 2.7.9–11 (CCSL 32:36–38).

8 Scripture in Augustine’s Polemics against the Donatists

203

longer valid.”53 As he did in Book 2, Augustine establishes Eph 4:3 as a guiding ecclesiological text. The rest of the book repeats and expands upon texts and tropes we have seen in the previous two. While Augustine criticizes Donatist interpretation at every step, some of his statements point to more general principles that he believes should guide interpretation and, of course, which he accuses the Donatists of ignoring. We find such a statement in Book 3 of Parm. Augustine promotes a holistic approach to Scripture and the need to place verses in their larger context, taking particular aim at Donatists’ use of prophetic texts that seem to demand separation from impurity: People’s blindness is incredible . . . the Donatists have closed the eyes of their heart to such a degree that, when they cite testimonies from Holy Scripture, they do not see in the deeds of the prophets how the words of the prophets have to be interpreted. Jeremiah said, “What does the chaff have to do with the wheat?” not with a view to his own withdrawal from the chaff of his people, against whom he spoke many true things. Isaiah said, “Withdraw, withdraw, go out from there and do not touch what is unclean.” Why was he touching the uncleanness in that people which he gravely rebuked when he was together with them in a single group?54

Here we see two things: first, Augustine begins by pointing out the Donatists’ spiritual “blindness,” how they have “closed the eyes of their heart.” This claim emphasizes that the interpretation of Scripture requires a certain level of spiritual wisdom. Yet, second, this spiritual wisdom leads to a practical, not esoteric, method of interpretation. One must take the prophets’ actions into account when reading their words. In this instance, the prophets do not themselves physically “withdraw” from the wicked, suggesting that their words are referring to a more spiritual withdrawal. Parm. represents continuity with Augustine’s biblical approach in C. litt. Petil., which is to be expected given their interwoven times of composition. Augustine also introduces more explicit principles of interpretation that will continue to guide his work even as he adds more programmatic statements to justify his engagement with Scripture.

 Parm. 3.1.1 (CSEL 51:98; WSA I/21:342, trans. M. Tilley and B. Ramsey): “cum omnis pia ratio et modus ecclesiasticae disciplinae unitatem spiritus in uinculo pacis maxime debeat intueri, quod apostolus sufferendo inuicem praecepit custodiri et quo non custodito medicina uindictae non tantum superflua, sed etiam perniciosa.”  Parm. 3.4.23 (CSEL 51:128; WSA I/21:367, trans. M. Tilley and B. Ramsey): “sed incredibilis est caecitas hominum et omnino nescio quemadmodum credi posset esse in hominibus tanta peruersitas, nisi experimento verborum suorum factorum que patesceret usque ad eos clausos habere oculos cordis, ut, cum commemorent sanctae scripturae testimonia, non intueantur in factis prophetarum quemadmodum intellegenda sint verba prophetarum. dixit hieremias: quid paleis ad triticum? ipse recederet a paleis populi sui in quas tanta illa vera dicebat? dixit esaias: recedite recedite, exite inde et immundum nolite tangere. cur ipse in illo populo immunditiam quam graviter arguebat in una cum eis congregatione tangebat?”

204

Adam Ployd

De baptismo contra Donatistas By the end of 401, Augustine had also completed the seven books of De baptismo contra Donatistas (Bapt.) Much of the treatise attempts to reclaim or at least relativize the legacy of Cyprian on the question of (re)baptism.55 The works of Cyprian and his contemporaneous episcopal colleagues, therefore, operate alongside Scripture as disputed authorities that require careful interpretation. As in Parm., Bapt. contains an important programmatic statement about the role of Scripture in these treatises. Augustine emphasizes that Scripture carries more authority in the debate than do ecclesiastical authorities, even venerated ones: Who does not know that the canonical Holy Scripture, the Old as well as the New Testament, is bounded by its own set limits, and that it is thus so superior to all the later writings of the bishops that it cannot in any respect be subject to doubt or debate. Whatever is written in it establishes whether a thing is true or right. On the other hand, should there be anything in them [i.e., councils, bishops, etc.] that deviates from the truth, it is allowable–through what are perhaps the wiser words of someone who is experienced in a particular area, and the weightier authority and more instructed prudence of other bishops, and councils–to criticize the works of bishops that either have been written or are being written in the wake of a canon’s ratification.56

This passage from Bapt. is concerned with the authority of Cyprian and the Council of Carthage of 256 CE. The legacy of the martyr-bishop looms large in the DonatistCatholic conflict as he and the council appear to support the Donatist position on rebaptism. This programmatic move to define bishops and councils as fallible, at least in comparison to Scripture, is necessary if Augustine is going to not only reinterpret Cyprian in his own favor but also critique him as mistaken at times. Thus, though he will spill much ink debating the significance and meaning of Cyprian’s writings, Augustine establishes Scripture as the final arbiter. This programmatic presentation has the added benefit of suggesting that the Donatists are not as concerned with Scripture,

 On the legacy of Cyprian in the Donatist conflict, see M. Gaumer, Augustine’s Cyprian: Authority in Roman Africa (Leiden: Brill, 2016).  Bapt. 2.3.4 (CSEL 51:178; WSA I/21:423, trans. M. Tilley and B. Ramsey): “quis autem nesciat sanctam scripturam canonicam tam veteris quam novi testamenti certis suis terminis contineri eam que omnibus posterioribus episcoporum litteris ita praeponi, ut de illa omnino dubitari et disceptari non possit, utrum verum vel utrum rectum sit quidquid in ea scriptum esse constiterit, episcoporum autem litteras, quae post confirmatum canonem vel scriptae sunt vel scribuntur, et per sermonem forte sapientiorem cuiuslibet in ea re peritioris et per aliorum episcoporum graviorem auctoritatem doctiorem que prudentiam et per concilia licere reprehendi, si quid in eis forte a veritate deviatum est, et ipsa concilia, quae per singulas regiones vel provincias fiunt, plenariorum conciliorum auctoritati, quae fiunt ex universo orbe christiano, sine ullis ambagibus cedere ipsa que plenaria saepe priora a posterioribus emendari, cum aliquo experimento rerum aperitur quod clausum erat et cognoscitur quod latebat, sine ullo tyfo sacrilegae superbiae, sine ulla inflata cervice arrogantiae, sine ulla contentione lividae invidiae, cum sancta humilitate, cum pace catholica, cum caritate christiana?”

8 Scripture in Augustine’s Polemics against the Donatists

205

which is, of course, a false caricature, especially given the amount of Scripture Augustine cites from Donatist sources. The role of Matt 12:30 in Bapt. provides an opportunity to see how Augustine argues against the Donatists by engaging Cyprian’s exegetical legacy. In De ecclesiae catholicae unitate (Unit. eccl.), Cyprian cites Matt 12:30, writing, “The Lord warns with the words: ‘He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.’ He who ruptures Christ’s peace and concord acts against Christ. He who gathers elsewhere than in the Church scatters Christ’s Church.”57 Here Cyprian reads like the anti-Donatist Augustine: breaking unity separates you from Christ. In a letter written as part of a committee of bishops over rebaptism during the Novatianist schism, however, Cyprian uses this verse to deny the efficacy of baptism outside of the one church: There is but one baptism, and one Holy Spirit, and one Church founded by Christ our Lord upon Peter to be the source and ground of its oneness. As, therefore, with such men everything is false and void, we may not give our approval to anything which they have done. What action of theirs can stand ratified and confirmed in the eyes of the Lord when the Lord calls them His own foes and enemies, stating in His gospel: “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters?”58

In this passage, Cyprian and colleagues draw out what they see as the implications of the church’s oneness: those outside cannot baptize. Because they are outside the true church, their baptism is necessarily false. This conclusion is precisely what Augustine wants to argue against; it represents the Donatist interpretation of baptism. Augustine’s Bapt. includes a reference to this second interpretation. Working through the sententiae from the Council of Carthage of 256, he comes to Secundinus of Cediae, who supported Cyprian but was not a signatory on the letter cited above. Nevertheless, Secundinus opines, When Christ our Lord says, “The one who is not with me is against me,” and the apostle John calls those who go out from the Church antichrists, there is no doubt that the enemies of Christ and those who are called antichrists cannot administer the grace of a saving baptism. And

 Cyprian, Unit. eccl. 6 (CSEL 3.1:214–5; trans. A Brent, On the Church: Select Treatises [Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2006], 157): “Monet dominus et dicit: ‘qui non est me cum aduersus me est, et qui non me cum colligit spargit.’ Qui pacem christi et concordiam rumpit, aduersus christum facit; qui alibi praeter ecclesiam colligit, christi ecclesiam spargit.”  Cyprian, Ep. 70.3.1–70.3.2 (CSEL 3.2:769–70; ACW 47:47–8, trans. Clarke): “. . . quando et baptisma unum sit et spiritus sanctus unus et una ecclesia a Christo domino nostro super Petrum origine unitatis et ratione fundata. Ita fit ut cum omnia apud illos inania et falsa sint, nihil eorum quod illi gesserint probari a nobis debeat. Quid enim potest ratum et firmum esse apud dominum quod illi faciunt quos dominus hostes et aduersarios suos dicit in euangelio suo ponens: ‘qui non est me cum aduersus me est: et qui non me cum colligit, spargit’ . . .”

206

Adam Ployd

therefore I maintain that those who flee to the Church from the snares of heretics must be baptized by us, who by his favor are called friends of God.59

The Council of 256, then, supports this rebaptizing interpretation of Matt 12:30. Therefore, in order to prevent the Donatists from claiming Cyprianic and conciliar precedent for such an interpretation, Augustine must reclaim the verse according to Cyprian’s other reading that emphasizes unity or schism rather than the sacramental effects of such disunity. In Bapt., Augustine engages Matt 12:30 by pairing it with two other Gospel texts: Matt 7:22–23 and Mark 9:39–40. After quoting Secundinus, Augustine uses Matt 7:22–23, along with an allusion to Matt 13, to shape his response: The enemies of Christ are all those to whom–when they say, “Lord, in your name we did many powerful deeds,” and the other things that are recorded there–he will say at the end, “I do not know you; depart from me, all you evildoers.” All this chaff, if it persists to the end in wickedness, is destined for the fire, whether any of it is blown outside by the winnowing or whether it seems to be within. If therefore, heretics coming to the Church must be baptized, so that they may be baptized by the friends of God, are the avaricious, predators, and murderers friends of God, or must those whom they have baptized by baptized anew?60

Those who are not with Christ may be against him, but so are those who, within the church, do works of power while remaining in wickedness. Augustine’s vision of an intermixed church challenges the notion that Matt 12:30 can be interpreted with a binary logic of inside vs. outside. If the wicked exist inside the church as well as outside of it until the eschaton, as, for Augustine, Matt 13 suggests, then one cannot read Matt 12:30 as requiring rebaptism unless all those baptized by morally compromised officiants within the church are also to be rebaptized. Augustine’s reclamation of Matt 12:30, then, represents an effort to read a contested verse in light of other, supposedly clearer, ones.61 In Book 1, Augustine combines Matt 12:30 with Mark 9:39–40. In Matt 12:30, Jesus says, “The one who is not with me is against me, and the one who does not gather with me scatters.” Yet in Mark 9:39–40, he affirms that “the one who is not against you is for you, for no one can do something in my name and speak ill of me.” How, Augustine asks, can both of these statements be true? One suggests a strict antagonism

 Bapt. 6.18.30 (CSEL 51:316; WSA I/21:550, trans. M. Tilley and B. Ramsey): “cum dominus noster christus dicat: qui me cum non est adversus me est, et johannes apostolus eos qui ab ecclesia exeunt antichristos dicat, indubitanter hostes christi quique antichristi nominati sunt gratiam baptismi salutaris ministrare non possunt.”  Bapt. 6.18.31 (CSEL 51:316; WSA I/21:550–1, trans. M. Tilley and B. Ramsey): “cui respondetur christi adversarios omnes esse quibus dicentibus: domine, in nomine tuo virtutes multas fecimus et alia quae ibi dicuntur in fine dicturus est: non novi vos; recedite a me omnes qui operamini iniquitatem.”  For a similar engagement with Matt 12:30 and 7:22–23 – albeit from nine years later – see Unic. bapt. 7.10 (CSEL 53:10–11).

8 Scripture in Augustine’s Polemics against the Donatists

207

to those outside; the other is more latitudinarian, allowing for a separate person or group to be recognized and even valued. He concludes that the outsider had to be confirmed in his respect for that great name where he was not against the Church but for the Church, but also that he had to be considered guilty in his separation when, if he was gathering, he was scattering. Consequently, if perhaps he came to the Church, he would not have received in it what he possessed, but it would have corrected him where he had strayed.62

Augustine’s principle here is that what is good outside the church ought not be condemned or rejected but should be completed and perfected by a return to the true church. By thus reconciling two seemingly contradictory verses, Augustine maintains the unicity of the true church while also allowing for valid baptism outside of it. In Book 4, Augustine again combines these two passages but now in order to make a point more akin to his response to Secundinus: “There are some things done outside in Christ’s name and not against the Church, and some done within by the devil’s party against the church.”63 All these scriptural moves depend upon the assumed unity of Scriptures and the need to reconcile what might appear to be conflicts between individual passages.

Ad Catholicos fratres (or De unitate ecclesiae) Near the end of 401, Augustine wrote a letter to his Catholic flock. The letter “functioned as a handbook of proofs for discussion over a choice between the Catholic and Donatist parties.”64 Ad Catholicos fratres (Cath. fr.) repeats many of the scriptural arguments made in other anti-Donatist treatises of this period. The difference is that here Augustine provides much longer quotations of passages that he cites only briefly in the other works. This fact reflects the pedagogical function of this work as compared to the more polemical focus of the others. Indeed, Augustine’s programmatic statements in this work are designed to train his Catholic audience in how to use Scripture against their Donatist opponents, rather than telling the Donatists why they are using Scripture incorrectly. In advising his own communion how to counter Donatist claims, Augustine offers an even simpler guiding principle:

 Bapt. 1.7.9 (CSEL 51:154; WSA I/21:400–1, trans. M. Tilley and B. Ramsey): “illud autem quod sanum maneret agnitum potius adprobaretur quam inprobatum vulneraretur. certe dominus in evangelio dicit: qui non est me cum adversum me est, et qui me cum non colligit spargit. . . . qui contra vos non est pro vobis est. non potest enim quisquam in meo nomine facere aliquid et male loqui de me.”  Bapt. 4.10.16 (CSEL 51:241; WSA I/21:480, trans. M. Tilley and B. Ramsey): “et foris ergo fiunt aliqua in nomine christi non contra ecclesiam et intus ex parte diaboli contra ecclesiam.”  M. Tilley, “Catholicos fratres, Ad; or De unitate ecclesiae,” in ATAE, 150.

208

Adam Ployd

But since these slanderers often turn many texts against other people, or turn things said for some other reason against those whom they want and for what they want, as well as many texts written figuratively or obscurely so as to exercise rational minds by way of enigmatic images and ambiguous and uncertain meanings, whenever they are believed to accord and harmonize with their fallacious interpretation, this is what I advise and propose: that we select whichever texts are plain and clear; if such texts are not found in the holy scriptures, there is no way in which the things that are closed may be opened and the things that are dark may be illuminated.65

This statement represents what is probably the most important programmatic aspect of Augustine’s anti-Donatist approach to Scripture: one must begin with what is clear in order to understand what is not. Figurative or obscure texts of uncertain meaning are not to be the basis for establishing the truth in these disputes about the nature of the church and the power of baptism. Yet, as we will see, Augustine’s understanding of what is “clear” includes much figurative interpretation. However, he believes his interpretation, when it goes beyond what appears to be the plain, historical sense (in modern terms), is warranted by other passages that elucidate the larger meaning of a given text, especially that of Scripture as a whole. This principle of the priority of plain passages, therefore, allows Augustine to condemn his opponents’ reading as too speculative while presenting his own reading as the obvious one, even when he is making his own figurative moves. Although he occasionally discusses the issue of baptism, in this letter Augustine is primarily concerned to train his readers to answer the question “ubi sit ecclesia?” (“Where is the church?”).66 This question provides the basis for one of his more sustained demonstrations of the universality of the church as Christ’s inheritance and the fulfillment of God’s prophetic promises. Beginning in Genesis and ending with Revelation, Augustine goes through the biblical narrative as he understands it.67 He starts with texts familiar from previous treatises: the promised inheritance of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as interpreted through Galatians. He then moves to the prophecies of Isaiah and the Psalms before turning to Jesus’ own citation of these passages in the Gospels. Acts provides evidence for the spread of the church into the whole world, as do the letters of Paul, addressed to and referencing a variety of far-flung communities.

 Cath. fr. 5.8 (CSEL 52:239; WSA I/21:614–5, trans. M. Tilley and B. Ramsey): “sed quoniam multa in alios vel ob aliud dicta in quos volunt et ad quod volunt maledici plerumque convertunt, multa etiam propter exercendas rationales mentes figurate atque obscure posita per aenigmatis imaginem vel ambiguitatis ancipitem sensum fallaci aliquando interpretationi consonare et convenire creduntur, hoc etiam praedico atque propono, ut quaeque aperta et manifesta deligamus; quae si in sanctis scripturis non invenirentur, nullo modo esset unde aperirentur clausa et illustrarentur obscura.”  Cath. fr. 2.2 (CSEL 52:232).  Cath. fr. 6.11–12.31 (CSEL 52:243–72).

8 Scripture in Augustine’s Polemics against the Donatists

209

Finally, 1 Pet 1:168 and Rev 1:1169 testify to churches outside of Africa that still exist in Augustine’s time. How, then, in the face of all these witnesses and all this evidence can the Donatists claim that the church is only in Africa? Augustine also preserves from Petilian several Donatist proofs for the church’s limited presence. In one, the Donatist bishop compares his communion to Enoch and Noah, alluding to Gen 5:2470 and 1 Pet 3:20:71 “For Enoch was the only one of all human beings who pleased God, and he was carried off, and afterwards, when the whole world was wiped out by a flood, only Noah, along with his wife and sons and daughters-in-law deserved to be saved in the ark.”72 Augustine, again promoting his vision of scriptural unity, critiques such a reading by arguing for the necessity of placing it next to many other passges of Scripture, which, he emphasizes, are drawn from the same sacred collection, and which testify to the spread of Christ’s church throughout the world, in particular Luke 24:4773 and Acts 1:8.74 In Augustine’s caricature, the Donatists appear to be poor and careless readers of Scripture, picking and choosing passages that suit their own preconceptions rather than attending to the meaning of Scripture as a whole. Notably, throughout Cath. fr., Augustine emphasizes the universality of the church and establishes a dossier of texts drawn from throughout Scripture to support this central anti-Donatist claim. He is, therefore, actively constructing the meaning of Scripture as a whole by the passages he chooses to repeat and place in apposition.

Ad Crescronium Grammaticum partis Donati In 405, a Donatist grammarian named Cresconius, having read C. litt. Petil., challenges the theological propriety of using dialectic and oratorical techniques to interpret Scripture. In Book 1 of his response, a composition known as Ad Crescronium Grammaticum partis Donati (Cresc.), Augustine uses Scripture to defend this approach to Scripture. In one case, he draws heavily on Paul’s advice from 2 Tim 2:24–26, a passage in which

 “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia” (1 Pet 1:1).  “. . . saying, ‘Write in a book what you see and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea’” (Rev 1:11).  “Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him” (Gen 5:24).  “. . . who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water” (1 Pet 3:19).  Cath. fr. 13.33 (CSEL 52:274; WSA I/21:642, trans. M. Tilley and B. Ramsey): “nam enoch unus inter omnes homines placuit deo et translatus est et postea toto mundo aquarum inundatione deleto solus noe cum conjuge et filiis et nuribus suis in arca meruit liberari.”  “. . . and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:47).  “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

210

Adam Ployd

Paul distinguishes between litigation on the one hand and correction on the other. The former should be avoided, but the latter, performed properly, is a pastor’s responsibility. Similarly, in 2 Tim 4:2, Paul urges Timothy to rebuke and correct.75 Likewise, Augustine draws on the example of Paul from Acts. Scripture itself says that he disputed with the Jews in the synagogue and with the Gentiles in the forum (Acts 17:17).76 Augustine thus frames his use of dialectic and oratory in terms of the Pauline vision of ministry as including the need to correct those who have gone astray. The rest of Cresc. 1 addresses the issues of rebaptism and the catholicity of the church. Here Augustine repeats many of the same texts seen above. For example, he again uses 1 Cor 1:12–13, a text deployed as early as C. litt. Petil. 1 in 400, to emphasize that we are not baptized into the name of a particular human (e.g., Donatus) but into the name of Christ, thus condemning schism based on such allegiances.77 As to the universality of the church, Augustine promises to bring forth proofs from Scripture later in the work, explaining that it is a matter that Scripture proves “without any ambiguity” through “many, very clear testimonies.”78 In Cresc. 2, Augustine takes up the question of the baptizer’s role in forgiving sins. A representative example of Augustine’s engagement with Scripture is his critique of the Donatist interpretation of Prov 5:16–17: “Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets? Let them be for yourself alone, and not for sharing with strangers.” For the Donatists, this text indicates the need to guard the purity and exclusivity of baptism. Against this reading, Augustine appeals to Cyprian79 who testifies to wicked bishops from whom, nonetheless, he does not break communion; indeed Cyprian, Augustine says, does not even baptize after them. The key to Augustine’s interpretation, however, is a distinction between visible and spiritual baptism. The Donatists, he claims, lack this exegetical tool, reading Prov 5:16–17 and related texts as if they spoke of the visible, material aspect of the sacrament. Using the distinction between visible and spiritual, Augustine interprets the passage to refer to the exclusive privilege of the Holy Spirit who pours the love of God into our hearts (cf. Rom 5:5).80 In Book 3, Augustine addresses a range of topics including the integrity of baptism, the universality of the church, and the history of the schism. For the former two, Augustine deploys what have become predictable proofs from Scripture. 1 Cor 1:15–16

 Cresc. 1.6.8 (CSEL 52:330).  Cresc. 1.14.18 (CSEL 52:341–2).  Cresc. 1.27.32 (CSEL 52:351–2).  Cresc. 1.33.39 (CSEL 52:357–8; trans. is my own): “. . . quam sine ulla ambiguitate sancta scriptura demonstrat. . . . haec sancta scriptura commendat . . . multis te et manifestissimis testimoniis ex eadem auctoritate prolatis onerabo . . .”  See, Cyprian, Laps. 6 (CSEL 3.2:240–1).  Cresc. 2.15.18 (CSEL 52:377). Rom 5:5 is the verse most often quoted by Augustine. For its use in the context of the Donatist controversy, see, e.g., Bapt. 3.16.21 (CSEL 51:212–3) and Cath. fr. 23.66 (CSEL 52:313).

8 Scripture in Augustine’s Polemics against the Donatists

211

affirms that Paul did not baptize in his own name but in Christ’s.81 Gen 22:17–18, paired with Gal 3:15–16 and Matt 24:14,82 confirms that Christ will inherit all the earth.83 The fact that Matt 24:14 has only been cited with the “universal church” constellation once before, namely at Cath. fr. 17.43, shows that Augustine continued to expand this constellation of Scripture in a way that will come to full fruition with the conference of 411.

De unico baptismo After Cresc. from 405, we have no extant anti-Donatist texts (aside from letters and sermons) until the De unico baptismo (Unic. bapt.) of ca. 410. But Augustine was still productive in the fight during this period, writing at least three significant works that are now lost: Probationum et Testamoniorum contra Donatistas liber unus, Contra Donatistam nescio quem, Admonitio Donatistarum de Maximinianistis. The first text is a particular loss for this essay as it no doubt contained a feast of anti-Donatist scriptural interpretation.84 It is unclear what exactly was in the second text, but Augustine offers an enticing explanation of one point in his treatment of the work in the Retractiones (Retract.) Also, what I said, “To the multitude of weeds, by which all heresies are understood,” does not have a conjunction where one is needed, for what should have been said was “by which all heresies are also understood” or “by which all heresies are understood as well.” But, as it stands, it sounds as though there are weeds only outside the Church and not also in the Church, although it is itself the kingdom of Christ, from which the angels will gather all causes of offense at its harvest time. Hence the martyr Cyprian also said, “Even if there are seen to be weeds in the Church, still our faith and our charity must not be adversely affected with the result that, because we see that there are weeds in the Church, we ourselves leave the Church.” This is the understanding that we too have defended on other occasions, especially in a conference directed against the Donatists, who were present.85

 Cresc. 3.11.12 (CSEL 52:419–20).  “And this good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the nations; and then the end will come” (Matt 24:14).  Cresc. 3.63.70 (CSEL 52:476).  For a summary of the circumstances, see Retract. 2.27.54 (CSEL 36:165–6).  Retract. 2.28.55 (CSEL 36:154; WSA I/2:136, trans. B. Ramsey): “illud etiam quod dixi: ‘ad multitudinem zizaniorum, ubi intelleguntur omnes hereses,’ minus habet unam necessariam coniunctionem; dicendum enim fuit: ‘ubi intelleguntur et omnes hereses,’ aut: ‘ubi intelleguntur etiam omnes hereses.’ nunc uero ita dictum est, quasi praeter ecclesiam tantummodo sint zizania non etiam in ecclesia, cum ipsa sit regnum christi, de quo conlecturi sunt angeli eius messis tempore omnia scandala. unde et cyprianus martyr etsi uidentur, inquit, ‘in ecclesia esse zizania, non tamen impediri debet aut fides aut caritas nostra, ut quoniam zizania esse in ecclesia cernimus, ipsi de ecclesia recedamus.’ quem sensum etiam nos alias et maxime aduersus praesentes eosdem donatistas in conlatione defendimus.” Cf. Cyprian, Ep. 54.3 (CSEL 3.2:622–3).

212

Adam Ployd

In this passage from Retract., Augustine reviews his use of Matt 13, which, as we have seen, is a ubiquitous anti-Donatist text. Here he provides a glimpse into his own interpretive thinking. He initially made a mistake in suggesting that the weeds are only heresies and, therefore, only grew outside of the church. Now, however, following Cyprian, he intends to place the weeds both within and outside the church. This is the crucial anti-Donatist point, after all, and Augustine grounds his own interpretation in that of Cyprian to enhance his claim to Cyprian’s legacy within North African Christianity. As Augustine describes his own efforts to discern and communicate Scripture’s ecclesiological meaning, he also points to the continuity in scriptural interpretation that shapes his anti-Donatist polemic as he reveals the continued centrality of Matt 13. The next extant anti-Donatist treatise, Unic. bapt. (ca. 410) is Augustine’s response to a Donatist pamphlet that promoted the idea that there was only one true baptism and that the Donatist communion possessed it. As in Bapt., Augustine’s brief response seeks to reclaim the legacy of Cyprian by highlighting the martyr-bishop’s commitment to unity. In addition, Augustine brings Scripture to bear in what he calls the regula apostolica. Simply put, this rule asserts that one does not condemn the good in otherwise wicked people; rather, one affirms the limited good while working to convert them to the full good.86 It permits Augustine to defend the Catholic practice of accepting Donatist baptism and not rebaptizing Donatists who enter into communion with the true church. Augustine supports this with Rom 1, Acts 17, and 1 Cor 1. In the first, Paul describes those who, though knowing the true God, exchange knowledge of God for wickedness. Augustine points out that Paul does not deny that these people indeed know the true God. It is their worship and morals that need to change. Paul makes a similar move as a character in Acts 17, embracing the Athenian’s veneration of the unknown God. Finally, in 1 Cor 1, another of Augustine’s favorite anti-Donatist texts highlighted above, Paul speaks of those who say they are of Paul or of Cephas or of Apollos. Here it is explicitly schism that Paul refutes while also affirming that all were baptized legitimately in the name of Christ, not in that of Paul nor in that of the others.

Gesta collationis Carthaginensis In the first days of June 411, representatives of the Catholic and Donatist churches gathered in Carthage at the baths of Gargilius for a conference87 chaired by the tribune

 Cf. Bapt. 1.7.9, quoted supra.  On the conference, see, Shaw, Sacred Violence, 544–86; E. Hermanowicz, Possidius of Calama: A Study of the North African Episcopate at the Time of Augustine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 188–220; M. Tilley, “Dilatory Donatists or Procrastinating Catholics: The Trial at the Conference of Carthage,” Church History 60 (1991): 7–19; and É. Lamirande, “Augustine and the Discussion of the Sinners in the Church at the Conference of Carthage,” AugStud 3 (1972): 97–112.

8 Scripture in Augustine’s Polemics against the Donatists

213

Marcellinus.88 It was designed to pass final judgment on the century-old conflict. Although Donatism would survive into the Vandal era, this meeting represents the beginning of the end for a movement that had dominated the African church ever since the schism’s origins in the Diocletianic persecution. Since the council of Arles in 314, they had sought imperial legitimation through the Roman legal system only to see the traditores of the Catholic communion receive imperial approbation. Throughout the fourth century and into the fifth, Catholics and Donatists each appealed to local and imperial authorities for legitimation and enforcement. This Conference of Carthage in 411, then, should be seen as the culmination of a legal dispute, not just of a theological one. The origins of the conference lie in October 410, when, responding to a petition brought by an envoy of Catholic bishops representing that same year’s Council of Carthage, the emperor Honorius declared that a meeting was to be held the following year in Carthage between Donatists and Catholics in order to resolve the century-old schism. It was clear by Honorius’ rescript that the outcome was predetermined in the Catholics’ favor, and that the Donatists would have known this.89 Nevertheless, if the Donatists failed to appear at the council, they would automatically lose and be subject to confiscation of their churches and other penalties. While such punishments were still the eventual outcome, the Donatists nevertheless attended with some hope. Far from viewing the proceedings as a mere “teambuilding experience” for their communion,90 the Donatists developed and deployed a legal strategy to short-circuit the conference and to have the case dismissed on procedural grounds. During the first two days of the conference, the Donatists raised every objection possible. Their complaints were in fact strategic efforts to undermine the conference’s credibility, not mere dilatory distractions. This procedural approach accounts for the infrequent appearance of Scripture in the record. When Scripture does appear, however, it appears in bulk, providing a summary statement for both sides on the nature of the church. While historical claims regarding traditio and prior legal precedent abound, it is the biblical witness that carries the most weight in this context. Within this framework, we can identify two key themes: the catholicity of the church and the purity of the church. In their statement prepared (largely by Augustine) prior to the conference and read into the record on the first day, the Catholics deployed a host of passages condemning the Donatists for separating from the church universal in favor of an African communion.91 The Catholic church must be the true church because it is spread throughout the nations. To support this claim, the mandate identifies the church with

 For the relationship between Marcellinus and Augustine, see M. Moreau, Le Dossier Marcellinus dans la correspondence de saint Augustin, EAA 57 (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1973).  See n.4 supra.  As described by N. McLynn, “The Conference of Carthage Reconsidered,” in The Donatist Schism: Controversy and Contexts, ed. R. Miles (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016): 243.  Coll. Carth. 1.55 (CSEL 104:98–107).

214

Adam Ployd

the promised inheritance of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, quoting Gen 22:16–18, Gen 26:3–5, and Gen 28:14. The catena continues with the prophet Isaiah’s declaration that God’s salvation will reach the ends of the earth and to all the nations (Isa 49:6, 52:10, 54:1–5). The constellation also includes other quotations that have become standard for Augustine on this theme, including Ps 2 and 72, Luke 24, and Acts 1.92 Augustine rehearses similar arguments on the third day of the conference.93 This argument for the universal spread of Christ’s church is the crux of the Catholic argument. Given that this rebuttal to the Donatist ecclesiological challenge was being used as early as 400, we can say that Augustine’s use of Scripture in this area does not change, even though it does grow and develop over eleven years as he incorporates more passages into his arsenal that began initially with the Abrahamic blessings from Genesis. Eventually it came to include passages drawn from throughout the canon, as we have seen above, particularly in the discussion of Unit. eccl. 6.11–12.31. The most important evidence for the Donatists’ use of Scripture at the conference comes on the third day via their own prepared statement.94 Contrary to the Catholic emphasis on the church’s geographic ubiquity, the Donatists emphasize the church’s purity. This theme may be divided into two parts. First, the Donatists offer a positive definition of the true church. “We will show that the church of the Lord in divine Scripture is holy and immaculate wherever it is mentioned.”95 What follows is a constellation of texts that provides an alternative scriptural summary than the one developed by Augustine. As the bride of Christ, the church is to be a pure virgin (2 Cor 11:2), with no flaw (Song 4:7), and neither spot nor wrinkle (Eph 5:25–27). With these texts, identified as “so much evidence of such a kind concerning the purity of the church,”96 the Donatists provide a competing vision of a “biblical” church, a vision established by what passages they, like Augustine, select as foundational and mutually interpreting. Second, the Donatists describe what happens to those who fail to attend to this purity, i.e., their opponents. Sin pollutes both the sacrifice and the people (Hag 2:14). Priests who despise the name of the Lord will be rejected (Mal 1:6). The sinful will be cast out (Isa 14:19–21), and no mercy will be shown to the children of whoredom (Hos 2:4). “And such things you will find in all the prophets,” the statement summarizes, condemning those who “communicate with those whom such voices condemned.”97 This approach to  See, e.g., as early as 400–401 in C. litt. Petil. 1.13.14; 2.8.20; 2.38.91; 2.39.94; 2.43.102; 2.92.210; and 3.50.62 (CSEL 52:12–13; 31–33; 75; 76–78; 79–80; 135–6; and 214–5).  Coll. Carth. 3.55 (CSEL 104:200).  Coll. Carth. 3.258 (CSEL 104:246–53).  Coll. Carth. 3.258 (CSEL 104:246; trans. is my own): “Cuius rei causa nos magis ostendimus ecclesiam domini in scripturis divinis sanctam et inmaculatam fore ubique nuntiatam.”  Coll. Carth. 3.258 (CSEL 104:247; trans. is my own): “His ergo tot et tantis documentis de ecclesiae puritate . . .”  Coll. Carth. 3.258 (CSEL 104:250; trans. is my own): “Et ita in omnibus prophetis invenies, quoniam, si communicassent eis, quos tantis vocibus condemnabant, praevaricationis crimen incurrerent.”

8 Scripture in Augustine’s Polemics against the Donatists

215

the prophets signals that the Donatists, too, are using the same type of interpretive approach that Augustine does. They are appealing to the clear meaning of the totality of Scripture (or, in this case, the common voice of the prophets) to establish a rule for interpreting any contested or ambiguous question. The reader of Augustine may not have espied this before because the Donatist evidence in previous treatises has been chopped up by Augustine to allow him to guide the “debate” and depict the Donatists as sloppy exegetes. Here it becomes plain that the disagreement is not necessarily at the level of interpretive method so much as it is at the level of interpretive focus. Both the Donatists and Augustine are creating a consistent scriptural voice by the very passages they choose to place side by side. In addition to the texts used by Donatists and Catholics respectively, the acts of the conference also include important evidence for how they debated the meaning of the same text, particularly Matt 13. By the time of the conference in 411, Augustine’s interpretation of the wheat and chaff has become relatively de rigueur: the church is the threshing floor that contains both good and bad members, and only when Christ returns will he separate wheat from chaff. In this interpretation, the Donatists become both hubristic in their desire to do what only Christ can fully do and unloving in their refusal to bear with the chaff in this life. In tackling Matt 13, the Donatists emphasize Christ’s explanation of the parable of the sower to explain the meaning of the threshing floor. “‘The field,’ he said, ‘is the world’; therefore, it is not the church, but the world in which the good and the bad are kept together right up until the harvest, that is, until the divine judgement.”98 Thus the Donatists not only proffer their own biblical dossier; they also, as Augustine has done for so long in his literary fauxdialogues, critique the interpretive choices of their opponents, depicting them as sloppy interpreters who do not even recognize the proximate literary context of their chosen passage. The passage, they suggest, interprets itself, if one attends to Christ’s own explanation. In short, for the Donatists, a proper reading of Matt 13 represents the same priority of clear passages that Augustine has emphasized so vehemently. Nevertheless, despite all that the Donatists brought as biblical evidence to the proceedings, the verdict was predetermined. Marcellinus, as he had been instructed to do by the emperor, ruled in favor of the Catholics. There never was a doubt, but at least the Donatists were able to enter their scriptural dossier into the record. It may not have saved them, but it does preserve their theology in a way that Augustine’s edited quotations do not. While the conference of 411 verifies the extent to which Augustine’s antiDonatist use of Scripture remains consistent across the first decade of the fifth century, its other important contribution is a fairer and more holistic view of the Donatist approach.

 Coll. Carth. 3.258 (CSEL 104:247; trans. is my own): “‘Ager’ inquit ‘est mundus’; non ergo ecclesia, sed mundus, in quo boni simul et mali usque messem, id est usque ad divinum iudicium.”

216

Adam Ployd

Conclusion From C. litt. Petil. 1 in 400 to the Conference of Carthage in 411, Augustine demonstrates considerable continuity and consistency in his use of Scripture against the Donatists. He develops constellations of key texts, especially around the universality of the church, and, while these constellations expand over time, the foundational passages and interpretive foci remain the same. More important, though, than the particular passages Augustine uses is the way in which he uses them. His guiding commitment is the unity of Scripture. This permits not only the construction of mutually interpreting constellations but also the ability to critique a Donatist interpretation by bringing forth another, supposedly clearer, passage with which the contested text must be reconciled. In addition to insight into Augustine’s own exegetical approach, these anti-Donatist works also provide a glimpse into the Donatist use of Scripture. Yet readers must be careful in assessing this use given that much of the evidence derives from Augustine’s presentation of Donatist texts. His editing choices favor his own exegetical purposes and often obscure the logic of the Donatist reading. In fact, when the Donatists are able to put their own statement into the official record of the Conference of 411, it becomes clear that they are applying many of the same exegetical commitments that Augustine does. The difference lies in what texts they take to be normative for establishing the overall narrative of Scripture and the basis for mutually interpreting constellations.

Further Reading Primary Sources Augustine. S. Aureli Augustini: Scripta contra Donatistas, Pars I: Psalmus contra partem Donati, Contra epistulam Parmeniani, De baptism, edited by Michael Petschenig. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 51. Vienna: Tempsky, 1908. Augustine. S. Aureli Augustini: Scripta contra Donatistas, Pars II: Contra litteras Petiliani, Epistula ad catholicos de secta Donatistarum, Contra Cresconium, edited by Michael Petschenig. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 52. Vienna: Tempsky, 1909. Augustine. S. Aureli Augustini: Scripta contra Donatistas, Pars III: De unico baptismo, Breviculus collationis cum Donatistis, Contra partem Donati post gesta, Sermo ad Caesariensis ecclesiae plebem, Gesta cum Emerito Donatistarum episcopo, Contra Gaudentium Donatistarum episcopum. Accedit Sententia concilii Bagaiensis. Pseudo-Augustinus, Sermo de Rusticiano subdiacono, Adversus Fulgentium Donatistam, edited by Michael Petschenig. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 53. Vienna: Tempsky, 1910. Augustine. The Donatist Controversy, translated by Maureen Tilley and Boniface Ramsey. Part I, vol. 21, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, edited by Boniface Ramsey and David Hunter. Hyde Park: New City Press, 2019. Augustine. Carthaginensis anni 411: Gesta collationis Carthaginensis; Augustinus, Breviculus collationis; Augustinus, Ad Donatistas post collationem, edited by Clemens Weidmann. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 104. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018.

8 Scripture in Augustine’s Polemics against the Donatists

217

Secondary Sources Burns, J. Patout and Robin Jensen. Christianity in Roman Africa: The Development of Its Practices and Beliefs. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014. Cameron, Michael. “Augustine’s Use of Song of Songs against the Donatists.” In Augustine: Biblical Exegete, edited by Frederick van Fleteren and Joseph C. Schnaubelt, 99–127. New York: Peter Lang, 2001. Dupont, Anthony and Matteo Dalvit. “From a Martyrological ‘tabernacula pastorum’ towards a Geographical ‘in meridie’: Augustine’s Representation and Refutation of the Donatist Exegesis of Sg. 1,6–7.” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 109 (2014): 5–34. Gaumer, Matthew. Augustine’s Cyprian: Authority in Roman Africa. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Henry, Nathalie. “The Lily and the Thorns: Augustine’s Refutation of the Donatist Exegesis of the Song of Songs.” Revue des études Augustiniennes 42 (1996): 255–66. Hermanowicz, Erika. Possidius of Calama: A Study of the North African Episcopate in the Age of Augustine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. La Bonnardière, Anne-Marie. “The Bible and Polemics.” In Saint Augustine and the Bible, edited and translated by Pamela Bright, 183–207. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999. Miles, Richard, ed. The Donatist Schism: Controversy and Contexts. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016. Shaw, Brent. Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Tilley, Maureen. The Bible in Christian North Africa: The Donatist World. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997.

David Meconi

9 Scripture in Augustine’s De ciuitate Dei Introduction Augustine famously described the story of his De ciuitate Dei (Civ.) not as the tensions between rival political systems but as the drama between two competing loves: “Two loves, then, have made two cities. Love of self, even to the point of contempt for God, made the earthly city, and love of God, even to the point of contempt for self, made the heavenly city.”1 To be formed in this love of God properly is the aim and the aspiration of all the Christian Scriptures for Augustine: “the fulfillment and the end of the law and of all the divine Scriptures is love,”2 and again, “we read the books of the prophets and of the apostles in order to remind ourselves of our faith and to obtain the consolation of our hope and to be exhorted to love.”3 In fact, looking back on this magnum opus et arduum of twenty-two books,4 the bishop of Hippo relies on the one source which provides him with the proper imagery to explain to posterity why it is he even began this work: the Old and New Testaments of the Christian church, writing, “Hence, burning with ‘zeal for the house of God’ (cf. Ps 69:9 and John 2:17), I started to write the books On the City of God.”5 Appropriately enough, then, Augustine turns to the Bible to implore God’s help in this massive endeavor, realizing all too well that his own frail powers could in no way assume the ability to complete such a gargantuan task. That is no doubt why the praefatio alone proffers three biblical verses, each providing a small window to the larger work to follow. Knowing that God’s faithful will one day be vindicated, Augustine’s

 Civ. 14.28 (CCSL 47:451; WSA I/7:136, trans. Babcock): “Fecerunt itaque civitates duas amores duo, terrenam scilicet amor sui usque ad contemptum dei, caelestem vero amor dei usque ad contemptum sui.”  Doc. Chr. 1.35.39 (CCSL 32:29; WSA I/11:128, trans. Hill): “Et omnium divinarum scripturarum plenitudo et finis esse dilectio.”  C. Faust. 13.18 (CSEL 25/1:400; WSA I/20:173, trans. Teske): “Nos autem et ad commemorationem fidei nostrae et ad consolationem spei nostrae et ad exhortationem caritatis nostrae libros propheticos et apostolicos legimus.”  Civ., praefatio (CCSL 47:1).  Retract. 43(70).1 (CSEL 36:181; WSA I/2:148, trans. Ramsey): “Unde ego exardescens zelo domus dei adversus eorum blasphemias vel errores libros de civitate dei scribere institute.” ✶

David Meconi is the author of many works treating the church fathers, including Peter Chrysologus’ Sermons (Routledge), the editor of the Cambridge Companion to Augustine’s City of God (Cambridge University Press), and On Self-Harm, Narcissism, Atonement, and the Vulnerable Christ in Bloomsbury’s Reading Augustine Series. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-010

220

David Meconi

interlocutors are first presented with a word of hope, “until justice returns in judgment” (Ps 94:15),6 and are then reminded that the aim of the pages to follow can be accomplished only because “God is our helper” (Ps 62:8),7 with a quote from the LXX version of Prov 3:34 (cf. Jas 4:6 and 1 Pet 5:5) following closely thereafter, teaching that this same “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.”8 These verses are woven into a microscopic window into what lies ahead: the God of the Christians is providentially faithful to those meek enough to surrender to him, while other powers can only fail to provide the assistance and direction needed to live human life unto eternal glory. Given how Augustine knits such biblical themes together in this classic testimony to human allegiances, the following essay will examine his use of the Bible in achieving his aims in writing Civ. We therefore begin with the historical context of the composition of Civ. At the time he began to compose Civ., Augustine’s extensive pastoral experience and theological maturity allowed him to approach Scripture free from his earlier prejudices and misunderstandings, opening up a way of reading the Bible that he had not been capable of earlier. Thanks primarily to the preaching of Ambrose of Milan, Augustine began to see the multivalency of the Bible, and in so doing, his rhetorical pride gave way to a new appreciation for the truth words convey: “As I opened my heart to appreciate how skillfully he spoke, the recognition that he was speaking the truth crept in at the same time, though only by slow degrees . . . I heard some difficult passage of the Old Testament explained figuratively; such passages had been death to me because I was taking them literally.”9 The second section will then treat how Scripture appears throughout Civ., showing what biblical books are used and to what end. The third section focuses in on four key themes elicited by these biblical uses, concluding with a mention of the overall goal of Augustine’s use of Scripture throughout this work for both his Christian and his non-Christian readers.

Historical Context Most scholarship treating Augustine’s City of God begins with Alaric’s sacking of Rome in 410 CE. In the Roman mind, however, the diminishing of ancient Rome’s glory began much earlier. The capturing and subsequent pillaging of 410 was only the

 Civ. 1. praefatio (CCSL 50:1; WSA I/6:1, trans. Babcock): “Quoadusque justitia convertatur in judicium.” Cf. Ps 94:15.  Civ. 1. praefatio (CCSL 50:1; WSA I/6:1, trans. Babcock): “Deus adjutor noster est.” Cf. Ps 61:9.  Civ. 1. praefatio (CCSL 50:1; WSA I/6:1, trans. Babcock): “Deus superbis resistit, humilibus autem dat gratiam.” Cf. Prov 3:34 (LXX); Jas 4:6; and 1 Pet 5:5.  Conf. 5.14.24 (CSEL 27:71; WSA I/1:132, trans. Boulding): “Et dum cor aperirem ad excipiendum, quam diserte diceret, pariter intrabat et quam vere diceret, gradatim quidem . . . maxime audito uno atque altero et saepius aenigmate soluto de scriptis veteribus, ubi, cum ad litteram acciperem, occidebar.”

9 Scripture in Augustine’s De ciuitate Dei

221

inevitable culmination of decades of perfidy and the rejection of Romanitas by an alien creed. For, on the brink of death from a near fatal illness in 380, Emperor Theodosius (d. 395) asked to be baptized and upon recovering, zealously issued the Edict of Thessalonica, Cunctos Populos, which established Nicene Catholicism as the official religion of the Roman Empire. The vigor of Caesar was being replaced by the vulnerability of the Cross, at least in (theological) theory. In these days of imperial enervation, the Christian people found themselves on both the ascendancy as well as on the defensive. Sophisticated Christian leaders had thus to address two related concerns. Against a declinist mentality, Christian writers had to show the non-Christian Roman populace that the church was not responsible for the disasters which strike the good and bad alike. Against a seemingly visible Christian triumphalism, a wedge between historical events and personal salvation had to be driven. For example, one pivotal figure in helping advance Augustine’s career, Symmachus, who served as Prefect of Rome in 384–385, sees in Emperor Theodosius’ withdrawal of state support for the pagan priests and Vestal Virgins as the cause of a recent famine: “The lands are not to be blamed, and we should place no fault upon the winds. A blight did not ruin the cornfields, nor have weeds choked off the fruit of the earth. It was sacrilege which has ruined this year’s bounty.”10 It was this sacriligio of the Christians of the fourth century which was held in contempt for this massive shift in culture. In 313 Christianity was legalized under Constantine; in 357 the Altar of Victory was forcibly removed from the Senate by Constantius II; in 380 Catholic Christianity officially overshadowed all other forms of worship; and by 391, pagan rites were outlawed in most areas. To the non-Christian, this relatively recent instability of the empire was nothing other than the result of emptying the pantheon of its rightful gods and goddesses and instead turning with simplistic obsequiousness to some mortal God from Jerusalem. So, when Alaric and his men entered Rome in August of 410, non-Christians reacted with hostility against those who were not trying to secure divine favor through the old rites, even though Rome had long since ceased serving as the political center and stronghold of the empire.11 Even though the practical splendor of Rome had long passed, its glory in the minds of many remained, especially among the senatorial  Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, Relatio §3.16 (R. Klein ed., Der Streit um Den Victoriaaltar [Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972], 110; trans. is my own): “Non sunt haec vitia terrarum. Nihil imputemus austris! Nec rubigo segetibus obfuit nec avena fruges necavit: sacrilegio annus exaruit.” For Symmachus’s assistance in helping Augustine climb the ladder of imperial success, see Conf. 5.13.23 (CCSL 27:70).  The imperial seat relocated from the banks of the Tiber in 286 when Maximian tranferred the western head of power to Milan, and Diocletian established the eastern seat in Nicomedia. Rome did, however, remain the home of many of the empire’s rich, influential senators. Moreover, a large literary and artistic circle continued to draw from the antiquity of Rome with what all its history meant for so many. With more and more insurgences pouring into Italy, however, the capital moved farther from Rome yet again: in 402 it was moved to Ravenna by Emperor Honorius.

222

David Meconi

class. Even as late as the fifth century, a traditionalist poet like Rutilius Claudius Namatianus could compose the elegiac De Reditu Suo, crying out to his treasured city, “Listen to me, Rome, most lovely queen of all your world, most welcome in the starfilled heavens! Listen, nurse of men, and mother of the gods! Thanks to your temples we are close to heaven.”12 What Rutilius fails to reveal here is that as he recites those lines in 416, those temples close to heaven are shut to anyone on earth; the statues of the deities he adores have been removed from all public places.13 By the early decades of the fifth century, Rome was being kept alive by its past grandeur, its allure being not much more than nostalgia. Alaric and his men symbolized what Augustine would later be forced to address, the ambiguous relationship between the ways of God and the ways of sinful flesh. That is, the fall of Rome was not to be seen as a victory for the new Christians and a defeat for the old Romans, not a victory of Christianity over paganism. It was a loss for everyone who considered Rome their homeland, however ephemeral. Augustine realized just how trying these days were for all, but while simultaneously explaining how evil these days were proving to be, he also has to exhort his people to be the goodness for which they long: Evils abound, and God has willed that evils should abound. If only evil people didn’t abound, then evils wouldn’t abound. The times are evil, the times are troubled, that’s what people say. Let us live good lives, and the times are good. We ourselves are the times. Whatever we are like, that’s what the times are like . . . . Why should we be vexed, and find fault with God? Evils abound in the world to stop us loving the world. Great are the people, real saints are the faithful, who have made light of the beautiful world; we here can’t even make light of the ugly one.14

As tumultuous as 410 was proving to be, the fear of the populace coupled with the practical demands brought about by boatloads of refugees, Augustine knew that he would have to address something much bigger than Alaric’s few days of pillaging in Rome. He soon realized that his gifts would have to be of service to a larger degree, answering the question of Rome’s fall from a much more eternal perspective. He was less concerned with the sack of the city itself than with the double-edged aftermath.  Rutilius Namatianus, A Voyage Home to Gaul, lines 47–50, in Minor Latin Poets, eds. J. W. Duff and A. Duff (Cambridge: Harvard University Press [1934] 1978), 768: “Exaudi, regina tui pulcherrima mundi, inter sidereos Roma recepta polos, exaudi, genetrix hominum genetrixque deorum, non procul a caelo per tua templa sumus.” For more, see Martha Malamud, Namatianus’ Going Home: De reditu suo. Routledge Later Latin Poetry (London: Routledge, 2016).  See the decree “Nemo se hostiis polluat” in Codex Theodosianus xvi.10.10; Theodosiani, Libri XVI, eds. Th. Mommsen and P. Meyer (Berlin: Weidmannsche Verlag, 1954), 899.  Sermo 80.8, which was preached in 410 (PL 38:498; WSA III/3:355–6, trans. Hill): “Abundant mala, et deus voluit ut abundarent mala. Utinam non abundarent mali, et non abundarent mala. Mala tempora, laboriosa tempora, hoc dicunt homines. Bene vivamus, et bona sunt tempora. Nos sumus tempora: quales sumus, talia sunt tempora . . . . . . quare contristamur et causamur deum? Abundant mala in mundo, ut non ametur mundus. Magni viri, fideles sancti, qui contempserunt mundum speciosum: nos non possumus contemnere nec foedum. Malus est mundus, ecce malus est, et sic amatur, quasi bonus esset.”

9 Scripture in Augustine’s De ciuitate Dei

223

On one side, Augustine had to help his readers answer the accusation leveled by pagan sophisticates that Christian culture’s overshadowing of the mos majorum resulted in this devastation; while on the other hand, his writing had to help the faithful understand how God operates in history. To achieve these ends, Augustine would have to present all of Roman history from the Catholic point of view, answering his Christian faithful how the city of the apostles could be ransacked in these tempora christiana, and answering his pagan detractors why these Christians are not to blame for the Fall of Rome. To accomplish his twofold telos, Augustine strategizes through nearly 900 pages of Latin text in Civ. Here the bishop of Hippo sets out to outline the relationship between ecclesia and empire, to demonstrate how Rome was never a just society at all, and how faithful Christians are to live in this world of war and political intrigue. In this way he can look back at the end of his life and tell posterity that the composing of Civ. was initiated with five main objectives in mind. In Retractationes (Retract.), a work he composed near the end of his life, Augustine thus retrospectively provides an illuminating outline of this massive work. His first aim, in Books 1–5, is to address the non-Christians “who want human affairs to prosper and who therefore think it necessary for this to worship the many gods that the pagans are accustomed to worship, and who contend that these evils arise and abound because this is forbidden.”15 Next, the stories of Roman antiquity on display throughout Books 6–10 are brutally realistic and aimed at those “who acknowledge that these evils have never been wanting, nor ever will be, as far as human beings are concerned.”16 With these pagan accusations answered and hopefully annulled, Augustine uses the second half of Civ., Books 11–22, to build up the Christian understanding of the one true God’s nature and his interaction with the created order, explaining that Books 11–14 “deal with the origin of the two cities, of which one is God’s and the other is this world’s,” while Books 15–18 treat the development and trajectory of these two cities, with Books 19–22 explaining the ultimate end of each.17 Augustine justified such a far-reaching response to the events of 410 because for both Christian and non-Christian alike, this fall of Rome was truly momentous, a watershed which marked an insurmountable loss in the fifth century imagination. Even someone as apathetic about this world as St. Jerome would woefully suggest that human weal and the splendor of Rome are somehow related, questioning, “Where is

 Retract. 2.43.1 (CSEL 36:181; WSA I/2:148, trans. Ramsey): “Quorum quinque primi eos refellunt, qui res humanas ita prosperari volunt, ut ad hoc multorum deorum cultum, quos pagani colere consuerunt, necessarium esse arbitrentur et, quia prohibentur, mala ista exoriri atque abundare contendunt.”  Retract. 2.43.1 (CSEL 36:181; WSA I/2:148, trans. Ramsey): “Qui fatentur haec mala nec defuisse umquam nec defutura mortalibus ea.”  Retract. 2.43.2 (CSEL 36:181; WSA I/2:149, trans. Ramsey): “Continent exortum duarum civitatum, quarum est una dei, altera hujus mundi.”

224

David Meconi

salvation if Rome perishes?”18 or seeing how, “The city which captured the world has now itself been captured.”19 But Augustine’s response would be more sober, realizing that no earthly politic, however powerful, was ever meant to stand the test of time. Rome was the world he knew, but he also knew that Rome was just one among many, that every temporal power was destined to end. When Augustine first received word of Rome’s fall, he had currently been busy with the work needed to be done to protect his people against the Donatist extremists, the Circumcellions. He was in fact preparing for the Council of Carthage to be held in 411, which would serve to put an official end to this schismatic group of rigorist Catholics. It was in this political intrigue that Augustine came to know the Roman envoy Marcellinus, tribunus et notarius, who was set over the Council of Carthage and to whom Augustine dedicated the pages of Civ. As such, when Augustine first learned about Alaric’s devastation of Rome, he quickly had to reply to the many concerns surrounding this watershed moment, helping others understand how to go about their Christian life now that so much of their Roman life had been upturned.

The Scriptural Structure of De civitate Dei By the time Augustine sat down to compose Civ., his biblical theology had undergone massive shifts, having developed now into a rich and masterful ability to see both the intricacies of symbols and the overall structure of the Bible’s pages. By 411, Bishop Augustine no longer read the Bible as a monolithic text with only one level of meaning, but as a divinely inspired collection of historical fact, symbolic foreshadowing, and moral exhortation. In his developing as a pastor and theologian, the Scriptures became a powerfully structured tool wherein Augustine saw the truths of the faith laid out for those humble and patient enough to receive them. His early experience with the supposed banality of biblical prose, especially when juxtaposed with the Roman classics he read in his youth, is well known: “. . . when I studied the Bible and compared it with Cicero’s dignified prose, it seemed to me unworthy. My swollen pride recoiled from its style and my intelligence failed to penetrate to its inner meaning.”20 That he asked to be released from the first days of his priestly duties to make a sort of retreat with the pages of Scripture is also indicative how he saw his sacerdotal service as one primarily of reading the Bible rightly: “I ought to examine carefully all the remedies of his Scriptures and, by praying and reading, work

 Jerome, Ep. 123.16 to Ageruchia (CSEL 56/1:94): “Quid salvum est, si Roma perit?”  Jerome, Ep. 127.12 to Principia (CSEL 56/1:154): “Capitur urbs, quae totum cepit orbem.”  Conf. 3.5.9 (CCSL 27:31; WSA I/1:80, trans. Boulding): “Cum attendi ad illam scripturam, sed visa est mihi indigna, quam Tullianae dignitati compararem. Tumor enim meus refugiebat modum ejus et acies mea non penetrabat interiora ejus.”

9 Scripture in Augustine’s De ciuitate Dei

225

that he may grant my soul health suited for such dangerous tasks” of priestly service.21 Then, in this same letter, which dates to 391, the same year that he was ordained to the priesthood, Augustine continues by appealing to the aged Valerius directly: “I implore your love and affection that you may be merciful to me and grant me as much time as I have requested.”22 Moreover, the fact that Augustine’s longest and most extensive work, i.e., Enarrationes in Psalmos (Enarrat. Ps.), is wholly dedicated to the Psalter offers further proof that appropriating and elucidating the Bible rightly was of premier importance to him.

Books 1–5: The Foundations of Rome As such, the stories contained in Augustine’s Bible serve throughout Civ. as both a guide to how human history can be understood correctly, as well as a corrective to the pagan understanding of events in the cosmos. As noted, Books 1–10 take on the purported consolations of both Roman religion as well as the mos majorum of Roman custom and politics; thus here there is no sustained biblical commentary or serious exegesis. We instead receive snippets and references to biblical characters in order to foil any satisfaction with non-Christian Romanitas. For example, Book 1 quickly opens with two biblical verses (Hab 2:4, Rom 8:25) invoking God’s help in achieving the aims set out for Civ. as a whole. But then Augustine turns immediately to Virgil to understand the history of Rome. Not insignificantly, however, toward the end of Book 1 when the valor of Roman war heroes is being examined, the Old Testament figures of Daniel and Job make an appearance in order to illustrate to the reader what true courage in the face of adversity really looks like. In this way Augustine invites his readers not only to contrast but even to prefer (praeferamus) someone like Job over Cato because this “holy man” (sanctum virum) of the Old Testament “chose to endure horrendous evils in his flesh rather than to rid himself of all these torments by putting himself to death.”23 Books 2–5 prove to be an examination of the earliest beginnings of Rome, from its many cultural roots in Hellenistic thought through the fall of Troy and the city’s consequent founding by the brothers Romulus and Remus, up through Cicero’s views on superstition. Throughout these books Augustine’s need to draw from Scripture is fragmentary

 Ep. 21.3 (PL 33:88; WSA II/1:56, trans. Teske): “Debeo scripturarum ejus medicamenta omnia perscrutari, et orando ac legendo agere, ut idonea valetudo animae meae, ad tam pericolosa negotia tribuatur.”  Ep. 21.6 (PL 33:90; WSA II/1:57, trans. Teske): “Ipsam ergo caritatem et affectum imploro, ut miserearis mei, et concedas mihi, ad hoc quod rogavi, tempus quantum rogavi.”  Civ. 1.24 (CCSL 47:24; WSA I/6:26, trans. Babcock): “Nolunt autem isti, contra quos agimus, ut sanctum virum Job, qui tam horrenda mala in sua carne perpeti maluit quam illata sibi morte omnibus carere cruciatibus.”

226

David Meconi

and minimal. He instead needs to lay out the history of Rome so as to show how Scripture shines by comparison. As such, Augustine draws deeply throughout Books 2–5 from his classical training, relying on Cicero, Livy’s History of Rome (Ab Urbe Condita Libri), as well as on Sallust’s two accounts of Roman warfare, On the Catiline Conspiracy (De conjuratione Catilinae) and On the Jugurthine War (Bellum Jugurthinum). These latter two authors will prove even more central, as Augustine turns to the obvious decadences and divisions that proved inescapable for virtually all of Roman history. The main purpose of reminding his readers of this past is to show that well before Christianity, most of Roman history was already fraught with division and death, instability and insurrection. This apologetic is not only an honest assessment of how Augustine reads secular history, but it is also an obvious response to anti-Christian accusations occasioned by the Fall of Rome: in other words, the benefits of Roman religion have been minimal and the events of 410 are nothing new. In this way these first five books serve as a microcosm of the central aim of Civ., namely, to show that the Roman gods have never really secured a lasting civic felicity. But Augustine has an additional aim. Books 6–9 therefore take this argument from the gods’ supposed activity throughout Roman history and apply it to the same gods’ presumed ability to secure a blissful afterlife: “I must also refute and instruct those who contend that the gods of the nations – whom the Christian religion is overthrowing – are to be worshiped not for the sake of this life but for the sake of the life which is to come after death.”24 The inconsistencies, the laughable piety and devotions, as well as the deplorable metaphysics of Roman state religion are squarely in his crosshairs. One may think that when the object of critique is a contending religious worldview, a sophisticated Christian would turn to the canonical books of the Bible to correct the other side’s errors. But Augustine finds it even more powerful to draw first from the obvious internal contradictions and non-sequiturs contained in Roman religion before turning to the Christian alternative in the second half of Civ.

Books 6–10: The Gods and Goddesses of Athens and Rome As such, Books 6–9 serve mainly as a critique of theology as found in Varro and Seneca as well as a rebuke of those religious aspects of Platonism that Augustine judges not as part of natural revelation but as the erroneous contentions of proud philosophers. The first main theme we encounter here is the Roman gods and goddesses’ inability to make good on the blessings they supposedly bestow, from this it follows that they should not be worshiped at all. Augustine then attacks the inconsistent accounts

 Civ. 6.1 (CCSL 47:164; WSA I/6:184, trans. Babcock): “Nunc ergo quoniam deinceps, ut promissus ordo expetit, etiam hi refellendi et docendi sunt, qui non propter istam vitam, sed propter illam, quae post mortem futura est.”

9 Scripture in Augustine’s De ciuitate Dei

227

of how these deities came to be and to rule: the mythical, the natural, and the civic. None of these narrations are sophisticated enough to explain the origin of divinity and the inconsistencies between them only proves these etiological claims regarding causation are fanciful inventions of a theologically impoverished people. However, Augustine does admit that, since Plato understands that the wise person is the one who imitates (imitatorem), knows (cognitorem), and loves (amatorem) God, “No one has come closer to us than the Platonists.”25 Yet, even Socrates and Plato cannot understand either the one true God or his self-willed creation fully and consistently. To make that point clearly, Augustine chooses as his final themes of this section the daemones, the role of the passions, and the need for mediation between the divine and the mundane. There can be no good demons and there can only be one true Mediator (cf. 1 Tim 2:5). In support of these claims Augustine will draw from a selection of New Testament verses on the Incarnation, while also showing the absurdity of worshiping fickle and even fictive demons. This sets up Book 10. Here we finally encounter Augustine’s first real reliance on Christianity’s two biblical testaments. Unlike the more serial treatments found throughout Books 11–22, Book 10 selectively chooses passages from Scripture to combat the pagan understanding of praise and to offer the true alternative. While Augustine never disputes the pagan demons’ ability to work nefariously in this world, he wants to distinguish these evil creatures from the good angels who assist in human salvation. The fallen angels are recognized by their craven willingness to be worshiped for their own power, while the latter are holy because they lift all personal praise to their rightful Creator. Fittingly, then, the scriptural verses appearing in Book 10 all center around the humility of Christ who emptied himself so as to mediate on our behalf (e.g., Phil 2:5–11), and around that example ability to effect our response, that is, our conscious choice to surrender to his divine kenosis (e.g., Rom 12:1–2). To show the roots of this great exchange, Augustine relies on Abraham’s trust in God as found in Gen 18–19, as well as Moses’ power in effecting the miraculous over Pharaoh as found throughout Exodus. These Old Testament characters embody the faithful pilgrim as well as the humble liberator, and both figures are perfectly fulfilled in the incarnate Christ: “In the form of God, then, the true mediator – since, by taking the form of a servant (Phil 2:6), he became the mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ (1 Tim 2:5) – receives sacrifice together with the Father, with whom he is one God.”26 Since the goal of

 Civ. 8.5 (CCSL 47:221; WSA I/6:247, trans. Babcock): “Si ergo Plato dei hujus imitatorem cognitorem amatorem dixit esse sapientem, cujus participatione sit beatus, quid opus est excutere ceteros? Nulli nobis quam isti propius accesserunt.”  Civ. 10.20 (CSEL 47:294; WSA I/6:328, trans. Babcock): “Unde verus ille mediator, in quantam formam serui accipiens mediator effectus est dei et hominum, homo Christus Jesus, cum in forma dei sacrificium cum patre sumat, cum quo et unus deus est.”

228

David Meconi

the second half of Civ. is to “speak of the City of God that is attested by the Scriptures,”27 Augustine’s need for his Bible becomes noticeably much more pronounced in the books to follow.

Books 11–14: Christian Creation and the Promise of True Felicity Books 11–12 begin by treating the divine nature of the one, true God, the nature of time and the possibility of moving away from God, setting the stage for a deeper discussion of the origins of the two cities which Augustine now needs to clarify. Given that he has spent so much time analyzing the civitas terrena, it only makes sense that he now turns to the civitas Dei, marking a new need for sacred Scripture. The most relied upon biblical books throughout this section are the Wisdom Books, and especially select Psalms, Proverbs, and particular passages from Wisdom. In combination with the opening chapters of Genesis they are used to discuss both cosmogony in general and the creation of angelic beings in particular. Even though it was not God’s original intention, a faction of these angels fell and so helped usher creaturely disobedience into God’s good creation. Books 13–14 therefore address the creation of the human person and the effects of the fall, drawing from those scriptural warnings of a twofold death: “The death of the whole human being is followed by what the authority of Divine Scripture calls the second death” (Rev 2:11 and 21:8). This is the death to which the savior referred when he said, “fear him who has the power to destroy both body and soul in hell” (Mt 10:28).28 Augustine is careful to make three crucial points. First, God is not the author of this death; rather, it arose from the misuse of the gift of free will which he endowed upon those made in his image and likeness. Second, this death is not the result of corporality; unlike the view ascribed to Plato, embodiment is divinely intended and will in fact be part of the elect’s eternal beatitude, our “flesh resting in hope.”29 Third, out of this moribund body, God’s assumption of our fallen flesh will ultimately result in an eternally glorified body, with Augustine weaving together images of the first Adam in the early chapters of Gen 3 with the promises of the second Adam as evidenced 1 Cor 15: “Thus it is written, the first man became a living soul” (1 Cor 15:44–45). In this way, then, he wished to show what the animal body is, even though Scripture does not actually say of the first man, who was called Adam, when his soul was created by the breath of God, “And man became an animal body.” Rather it says, “man became a living soul” (Gen 2:7). It is, then, in reference to

 Civ. 11.1 (CSEL 47:321; WSA I/7:1, trans. Babcock): “Civitatem dei dicimus, cujus ea scriptura testis est.”  Civ. 13.2 (CSEL 47:385; WSA I/7:69, trans. Babcock): “Hujusmodi autem totius hominis mortem illa sequitur, quam secundam mortem divinorum eloquiorum appellat auctoritas. Hanc salvator significavit, ubi ait: ‘Eum timete, qui habet potestatem et corpus et animam perdere in gehennam.’”  Civ. 13.20 (CSEL 47:403; WSA I/7:86, trans. Babcock): “Quia caro eorum requiescit in spe.” Cf. Ps 16:9.

9 Scripture in Augustine’s De ciuitate Dei

229

this verse – the first man became a living soul (1 Cor 15:45) – that the Apostle wishes man’s animal body to be understood.30

Fittingly, discussions of eternal beatitude are found throughout this context, with the New Adam being upheld as the only one who is able to offer real rest, rest which is able to satisfy the whole of the human person and all of her desires. It falls to Book 14, then, to discuss the internal workings of this embodied human person whose passions and will can only be unified around the good.

Books 15–18: The Visible Cities Book 15 begins a lengthy examination of two competing cities as experienced in history. Henceforth, those biblical books describing the forming and history of God’s Chosen People (cf., Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), Lucan’s Pharsalia, and Virgil’s Aeneid are connected together throughout. Figuring prominently from Scripture here are three things: (1) the etymological significance of various biblical names, (2) how Old Testament figures symbolize aspects of Christ’s Messianic power, and (3) how the main players of Israel’s history are only fully understood as foreshadowing Jesus. These factors come out usually through Augustine’s juxtaposing two biblical characters and gleaning as much theology as possible from this contrast: Sarah and Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac (Civ. 15.2), Cain and Abel (Civ. 15.5), as well as the descendants of Enoch against those of Seth’s son Enosh (Civ. 15.21). Book 16 traces these two narratives from the great flood (Genesis 6) up through the figure of Abraham (especially in Genesis 25). From patriarchs to prophets, Book 17 moves the reader from the prophet Samuel (1 and 2 Samuel) up through the birth of Christ, while Book 18 serves as a lengthy recapitulation juxtaposing these demarcations in Israel’s history with the earthly kingdoms of Egypt, Assyria, Greece and Rome.31 As Augustine makes his way through the early generations of Israel’s story, he most naturally draws from Genesis and Exodus.

 Civ. 13.23 (CSEL 47:407; WSA I/7:91, trans. Babcock): “Sic, inquit, ‘ scriptum est: factus est primus homo in animam viventem.’ Isto igitur modo voluit ostendere quid sit corpus animale, quamvis scriptura non dixerit de homine primo, qui est appellatus Adam, quando illi anima flatu dei creata est: et factus est homo in corpore animali; sed: ‘Factus est homo in animam viventem.’ In eo ergo quod scriptum est: ‘Factus est primus homo in animam viventem,’ Voluit apostolus intellegi corpus hominis animale.”  Here the more pivotal historical scenes recorded in the Pentateuch are cited, but much of Book 18 proves to be a repackaging of the main events of Eusebius of Caesarea’s history, The Chronicles.

230

David Meconi

Books 19–22: The End of These Two Cities Books 19–22 bring this massive work to a close by aptly discussing the final ends of the two cities, the two loves, as traced hitherto. These two eternal fines are situated in a broader conversation about the supreme good of eternal beatitude. The struggle by which such a gift is won must be analyzed, so we have in these books a discussion of the Antichrist as recorded in Daniel, the judgment scenes of the Gospels (e.g., Matt 25) as well as large portions of Revelation. Not surprisingly, Paul’s theology of death and new life also reappears (1 Cor 15), as does a few verses from Job where the eternal rewards for one’s fidelity to God amidst the struggles of this fallen world are epitomized. That all live in a fallen world is thus made clear. But it is only the Christian who can do so with integrity and eternal purpose. As diverse as the many themes of Civ. 19–22 are, they all orbit around one central question, a question reframed in various contours: Is one willing to surrender to the one true God and to his ways, or is one content living for and by the values of the now-fallen created order? In asking this we are brought back to the work’s opening biblical citation: We live, then, in the midst of all these trials, which have been succinctly summarized in the divine discourse where it says, “is not human life on earth a trial?” (Job 7:1). And who will presume that he is living in such a way that he has no need to say to God, “forgive us our debts” (Matt 6:12)? Only an arrogant person would be so presumptuous not someone who is truly great, but someone puffed up and bloated with pride, who is justly resisted by the one who pours out his grace on the humble. That is why it is written: “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble” (cf. Prov 3:34 [LXX]; Jas 4:6; 1 Pet 5:5).32

From this brief summary of this colossal work, we can easily see how essential the use of the Bible is to Augustine’s schema in Civ. The Scripture he quotes enables him to tell the story both of God and of God’s created world. It also encourages his readers to see the theological intelligence and the moral exemplarity of the Christian canon, even as it also serves as the antidote to those areas of non-Christian culture, which, over the centuries, have been in error regarding both the divine and the human.

 Civ. 19.26 (CSEL 47:697–8; WSA I/7:387, trans. Babcock): “In his ergo temptationibus, de quibus omnibus in divinis eloquiis breviter dictum est: ‘Numquid non temptatio est vita humana super terram’? Quis ita vivere se praesumat, ut dicere deo: ‘Dimitte nobis debita nostra’ necesse non habeat nisi homo elatus? Nec vero magnus, sed inflatus ac tumidus, cui per justitiam resistit, qui gratiam largitur humilibus. Propter quod scriptum est: deus ‘superbis resistit, humilibus autem dat gratiam.’” Cf. supra.

9 Scripture in Augustine’s De ciuitate Dei

231

Primary Scriptural Themes in De civitate Dei When focusing on this use of Scripture in Civ. in particular, four main points are to be considered. The first is the very title itself. No doubt Augustine read and often pondered the image of God’s city in the Psalms he came to love: “Glorious things are said of you, O city of God” (Ps 87:3; cf., Ps 46:5 and Ps 48:2). The second scriptural edifice Augustine gives Civ. is the identification of these two cities, both the eponym and the origin of Jerusalem and Babylon are clearly biblical in both nature and meaning. The third scriptural structure holding Civ. together is the historical battle between these two cities which are engaged in a struggle not for fleeting topography but for all beings who were created for eternity. The fourth and perhaps most formative use of Scripture is to illumine the end and goal of this history, the final separation of heaven and hell. The first and most obvious use of Scripture in Augustine’s polemic here is in the naming of this massive work: in choosing the title De civitate Dei, Augustine was clearly intending a biblical setting ab initio. In setting the historical contest between loves in this way, Augustine chooses from Scripture the image of a city, as opposed to a body or a choir or any other biblical images available, in order to stress the social ties and the multiple nuclei a city gives in forming our identities and thus loyalties. Working as he was from the Platonic philosophical tradition, Augustine surely knew of Plato’s great work on the relationship between civic polity and the individual soul’s values, The Republic (De Republica), the city serving there as a reflection for what a people hold dear. Just before the fall of Rome, Augustine responded to a letter from a Numidian pagan city official, Nectarius, who reached out to the bishop and asked that his beloved Calama be spared imperial punishment for having celebrated what were by then outlawed pagan festivals: I am not surprised that, even though your limbs grow cold with age, your heart is warm with love for your fatherland, and I praise you for this. I am not unwilling, but even happy to hear that you not only hold it in memory, but also show by your life and conduct that for good men there is no limit or end in caring for the fatherland.33

Truly still a man of late antiquity, Augustine realized deeply that a city is more than a place, but is in fact a locus of identification, of one’s values, and concerns. Moreover, while we shall next explore the obvious two cities structure, in choosing to title this work with a passage drawn from Psalms that signals only one city, Augustine may be establishing the unity of God’s intended creation. In so doing, he may be seeking to avoid any of the cosmic dualism which were all too easily available in the ancient world. These two warring ways of life are not eternal and co-equal; two

 Ep. 91.1 (CSEL 34:427; WSA II/1:365, trans. Teske): “Jam senio frigescentibus membris, fervere animum tuum patriae caritate, nec miror, et laudo; teque non tantum tenere memoriter, verum etiam vita ac moribus demonstrare quod nullus sit patriae consulendi modus aut finis bonis, non invitus, imo etiam libens accipio.”

232

David Meconi

cities have arisen only after the deviation and bifurcation effected by the concupiscence of creatures – both angelic and human. For, “in the beginning” there was only goodness, while divided allegiances have come into being only with the fall. It is important to note that, although the image of a unified civitas was used in earlier Christian authors to capture the ethos and the values of a people, Augustine is the first to employ this imagery to capture the ultimate contest between God and his enemies as this struggle is played out on earth: “none of the writers hitherto referred to, puts forward the model of the two cities as an interpretation of the course of history in the way in which Augustine does.”34 Of all the images Augustine had available to him with which he could have described the history of humanity, in choosing the city he draws on the ancients’ “overriding loyalty to another world in terms of ‘full citizenship,’ they (i.e., Augustine and ‘the bishops of his age’) had chosen the most vivid and meaningful expression that ancient men could use.”35 If the first way Augustine employs Scripture in Civ. is titularly, the second is his development of two competing cities in terms of the biblical contrast between good and fallen angels, between pre- and post-lapsarian Adam and Eve, and especially between their offspring Cain and Abel whose familial conflict provide the narrative to explain the division of the two cities. The foes involved in the drama of Civ. are lapidarily described in biblical imagery, the tale of these two competing cities being clearly biblical. The embattled foes are not some abstract good versus a theoretic evil. The rivals are not as easily demarcated as Rome versus the church; the contest is not even as easily categorizable as pagan versus Christian. The eponyms that Augustine thinks best encapsulate the aims of Civ. are both biblical in nature: Babylon and Jerusalem.36 Augustine no doubt expects his readers to see how these two cities play important roles as spiritual metaphors for the two loves which have erected these two locales. This contrast was worked out first at the end of the fourth century in Augustine’s work for his catechists, De catechizandis rudibus (Catech.), where they learn that: In our heart, then we must cling to the very firmly established and unshakeable conviction that, when the times have run their course, the Jerusalem that has been taken captive by the Babylon of this world will be set free, and none of their citizens will perish, because the one who will perish did not belong to her.37

 G. O’Daly, Augustine’s City of God: A Reader’s Guide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 57.  P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 285.  For more on the various significances of these city names, see J. Van Oort, Jerusalem and Babylon: A Study into Augustine’s City of God and the Sources of his Doctrine of the Two Cities (Leiden: Brill, 1991). Van Oort’s primary thesis is that one should read Civ. in terms of an apologetic text meant not only to disarm the Roman propaganda, but also as an introductory catechetical text for those Christians looking for a greater understanding of their faith.  Catech. 11.16 (CCSL 46:140; WSA I/5:74, trans. Canning): “Satis enim fixum atque immobile debet corde retineri, Jerusalem captivam ab hujus saeculi Babylonia decursis temporibus liberari, nullumque ex illa esse periturum: quia qui perierit, non ex illa erat.”

9 Scripture in Augustine’s De ciuitate Dei

233

As early as 399, then, he unites the contrasting of Jerusalem and Babylon, the inevitable end of anything temporal (decursis temporibus), as well as the most important point he can possibly make: one may never assume eternal habitation in the imperishable city, since, in fact, one may eventually discover that one has never been a member at all (quia qui perierit, non ex illa erat). As such, we see even that, very early into his episcopacy and with extreme brevity, Augustine exhorts his readers to identify the two cities because there are two ways of life, and, via trust and hope, to live as securely as possible in the Jerusalem that never ends, but never with a self-assured belief that their citizenship is guaranteed. Such a schematic also appears throughout the years Augustine needed to complete his lengthy commentary on the Psalms. It would also continue to appear, above all, in his preaching precisely because it provided an easily understandable disparity between one’s life in Christ and one’s life in the enemy of human nature. Regardless of one’s sovereign here, entering into either city incorporates all “into one.” So unified, the virtuous and vicious make up their respective cities. This is how Augustine can preach to the Christian faithful that they face a unified opposition: But what about all those diverse errors that are inimical to Christ: must we think of them simply as plural, to be referred to as “all,” and in no other way? Can we not speak of them too as a single individual? Yes, we can. I am not afraid to call them one person, as it were. There is one city, and over against it another one city, one people and another one people, a king and a king. What am I talking about – one city and another one city? Babylon is one, and Jerusalem is one. Whatever mystical names may be applied to it elsewhere, it remains one city set over against another city. One has the devil for its king, but Christ is the king of the other.38

This is ultimately what is at stake for the bishop of Hippo: not a clean historiography of this present age, but the salvation or damnation of an eternal soul. This above all is what motivates his desire to set the Roman record straight, that the deities of their pantheon cannot secure felicity, either temporal or eternal, and to offer the only real counterproposal: that the Christian understanding of reality is the one sure way to endless beatitude. Such scriptural dependence framing Civ. enforces this antagonistic activity between these two cities. A war has clearly been waged, and the loci of Jerusalem and Babylon are consistently depicted as vigorous enemies, a relied-upon trope in Augustine’s pastoral work, evidenced by a recently discovered sermon dated to 418: You see, there’s a certain godless city, described as consisting of a kind of conspiracy of human godlessness throughout all countries, and it is mystically called Babylon in the Scriptures. Again,

 Enarrat. Ps. 61.6 (CCSL 39.776; WSA III/17:207, trans. Boulding): “Quid autem illi diversi errores inimici Christi, omnes tantum dicendi sunt? Nonne et unus? Plane audeo et unum dicere; quia una civitas et una civitas, unus populus et unus populus, rex et rex. Quid est: una civitas et una civitas? Babylonia una; Jerusalem una. Quibuslibet aliis etiam mysticis nominibus appelletur, una tamen civitas et una civitas: illa rege diabolo; ista rege Christo.”

234

David Meconi

there is a certain city, an alien wanderer on this earth, consisting of a conspiracy of godliness, and this one is called Jerusalem.39

Thirdly, the procursus of history hereafter also unfolds in biblical imagery: the progressing of the ages is recast into unmistakable biblical epochs. In so doing, Augustine clearly separates himself from the Roman way of dating which was political in nature. Roman historiography was structured mainly by the role played by significant consulares et triumphales. Time was thus categorized in terms of both civic annales as well religious fasti, allowing the non-Christian Roman mind to structure and mark the passage of time. While some Latin writers, like Augustine’s contemporary, the poet Claudius (ca. 370–404), deviated from this political construction, Rome’s historical records were clearly delineated in terms of the imperially mighty or the celestially majestic.40 Fourthly and finally, the bifurcation of the end of human history into two mutually contradictory parties is a wholly scriptural image in Augustine’s mind. It is biblically clear in the Gospels and is crystalized in the book of Revelation. Social organizations which are freely entered into on earth not only reflect one’s loves and corresponding values, but they will also eventually determine how one spends eternity. Like the other themes we have seen throughout Civ., love’s determining an individual’s eternal judgment is not novel at this late point in Augustine’s theological journey. Moreover, commenting on what the psalmist means by an “enemy,” Augustine not only internalizes this war, he also translates it into a collective body, “The ordinary people, so to speak, of this city are all the self-indulgent desires and unsettling emotions of the mind, whipping up insurrection within a person every day.”41 In order to show how the fall has effected two types of people throughout history, those who love God and those who have been content in loving only themselves, Augustine relies heavily on the eschatological passages from Matthew (esp. chs. 11–13, 19, and 25) and the later chapters of Revelation. These passages exemplify and embody two types of cities: one built on the ways of pride and ambition, another built on the ways of God; the first is largely visible, while the second labors most often secretly in the hearts and minds of those intent on truth. While all bodily deaths are obvious and, in the end not all that important, the death or

 Sermo 299A.8; Dolbeau 4/Mainz 9 (Opere di Sant’Agostino XXXV/1:86–88; WSA III/11:270, trans. Hill): “Quaedam enim civitas impia describitur per omnes terras tamquam consensio impietatis humanae, et haec Babylonia in scripturis mystice nominatur. Rursus quaedam civitas peregrina in hac terra per omnes gentes in consensione pietatis, et haec Hierusalem nominatur.”  Claudian, Carmina Minora XX, lines 1 and 11–12: “Felix, qui propriis aevum transegit in arvis . . . frugibus alternis, non consule computat annum: autumnum pomis, ver sibi flore notat.” Cf. Claudian, vol. 2, trans. M. Platnauer (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1922), 194–5: “Happy is he who has passed his whole life mid his own fields . . . . For him, the recurring of seasons, not the consuls, mark the year: he knows autumn by his fruits and spring by her flowers.”  Enarrat. Ps. 9.8 (CSEL 38:63; WSA III/15:45, trans. Boulding): “Hujus civitatis quasi plebs est omnes delicatae affectiones et turbulenti motus animi, quotidianas seditiones in homine agitantes.”

9 Scripture in Augustine’s De ciuitate Dei

235

the life of the soul manifested by the final judgment (cf. John 5 and Rev 20) is really the only lasting matter of importance. Now that we have seen how the biblical narrative provides Augustine with the central identity and movement of Civ., let us conclude by highlighting two important results of Augustine’s use of Scripture. The first is his agnosticism between the recordings of scriptural events and earthly happenings. While remaining an obviously keen observer of political and historical happenings, Augustine rejects any direct correspondence between the scriptural and the secular. The second main theme to emerge from Civ. is the political fidelity of the Christian people. Drawing from the earliest examples as recorded in the New Testament, Augustine wants to ensure his non-Christian readers that Christ’s church is not the enemy of the state but may very well provide its most loyal subjects. First, Augustine’s position on the relationship between the scriptural scenes he reproduced throughout Civ. is to be read as a sort of via media between thinking God’s will can be directly deduced from historical events and thinking the Almighty has absolutely no plan or purpose in this world of political happenings. Unlike other chroniclers of history, Orosius of Cordoba and Eusebius of Caesarea, for example, Augustine refuses to conflate King David and the Emperor Constantine. He thus rejects any direct connection between biblical figures or events with the incessant fluctuation of worldly powers and political machinations. Instead, Augustine is committed to the view that God’s will for the salvation of all could be made manifest in both political weal and woe, in times of both war and peace, feast and famine. There is no political situation that God cannot use: So long as this heavenly city is a pilgrim on earth, then, it calls forth citizens from all peoples and gathers together a pilgrim society of all languages. It cares nothing about any differences in the manners, laws, and institutions by which earthly peace is achieved or maintained . . . provided only that they do not interfere with the religion which teaches that we are to worship the one supreme and true God, for, however different they may be in different nations, they all aim at one and the same thing – earthly peace.42

The Scriptures can assure us that there will be a last day and a final judgment, but no human event can serve as a direct correlation and guaranteed herald of that promise. After the glorious inbreaking of God into human history in Jesus Christ, there are no more watershed moments, no more decisive revolutions, only the unfurling of the divine plan in the hearts of all. In his classic work Saeculum, Robert Markus has explained this dissonance:

 Civ. 19.17 (CSEL 47:685; WSA I/7:375, trans. Babcock): “Haec ergo caelestis civitas dum peregrinatur in terra, ex omnibus gentibus cives evocat atque in omnibus linguis peregrinam colligit societatem, non curans quidquid in moribus, legibus institutisque diversum est, quibus pax terrena vel conquiritur vel tenetur . . . quod licet diversum in diversis nationibus, ad unum tamen eumdemque finem terrenae pacis intenditur, si religionem, qua unus summus et verus deus colendus docetur, non impedit.”

236

David Meconi

since the coming of Christ, until the end of the world, all history is homogeneous . . . it cannot be mapped out in terms of a pattern drawn from sacred history . . . it can no longer contain decisive turning-points endowed with a significance in sacred history. Every moment may have its unique and mysterious significance in the ultimate divine tableau of men’s doings and sufferings; but it is a significance to which God’s revelation does not supply the clues.43

We may read the Scriptures to understand ourselves and our world more fully, what we cannot do is link human prosperity with divine blessing, earthly hardship with God’s punishment. Rejecting any correspondence theory between the ephemeral events of human history and the authority of Scripture, Augustine has come to learn that the Scriptures are given to us to offer inerrant and eternal truths and are not to be mocked because they somehow fail to support an anthropomorphism or a human interpretation of a particular worldly occurrence. What Augustine does with Scripture throughout Civ. is to try to convince his audiences that all of human history is God’s invitation to holiness for each and every one of us. What our author refuses to do is to forge a direct causal link between God’s mind and man’s deeds (gesta). Augustine simply knows that earthly kingdoms will surely pass away and that “of God’s kingdom there will be no end” (Lk 1:33). Going on to delineate the passing of Rome, Augustine once taught that: This kingdom which you have bestowed without end, O you that have bestowed precisely nothing, is it on earth or in heaven? On earth, of course. And even if it were in heaven, “heaven and earth shall pass away” (Luke 21:33). What God himself made shall pass away; how much more rapidly what Romulus founded?44

This leads us to the second main point. Augustine’s political agnosticism did not excuse his flock from withholding political allegiance; his understanding of otherworldly providence did not sap his position from any civic commitment. In fact, he will argue just the opposite: the virtues fostered by Christianity makes individuals the best possible citizens because they alone can practice true justice and they alone can love and forgive their neighbor rightly. Furthermore, Christians alone are able to counsel their rightful authorities by judging the liceity of their earthly orders vis-à-vis the divine law, precisely because all rightful authority flows from God’s own power: And let [the Christian] not suppose that in this life’s journey he should not keep his place, nor let him suppose he ought not be subordinate to those higher authorities who, for the time being, may govern temporal things. For we are both soul and body, and however long we exist in this temporal life, we use temporal things to support it. . . . But concerning our spiritual selves, by

 R. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 20–21.  Sermo 105.10 (PL 38:622–3; WSA III/4:93, trans. Hill): “Regnum hoc, quod sine fine dedisti, o qui nihil dedisti, in terra est, an in coelo? Utique in terra. Et si esset in coelo: coelum et terra transient. Transient quae fecit ipse deus; quanto citius quod condidit Romulus?”

9 Scripture in Augustine’s De ciuitate Dei

237

which we believe in God and are called into his kingdom, we should not submit to any man desiring to destroy that very thing in us which God deigned to give us eternal life.45

Accordingly, we see how Civ. is not a universal history per se but, rather, is actually a theological chronicle. It is the narrative of the Bible that best describes the history of civilizations; Augustine is not really all that interested in the annals of ancient Rome or the beginnings of various kingdoms of the East for their own sake. He draws from these stories so dear to so many only because he is interested in how the permissions and the purposes of the Triune God long to be lived out in each and every human heart. Those drawn to Augustine’s words are comforted, hearing from this looming figure in a sermon dated just after the 410 CE sack of Rome that, “You are, quite certainly a city of Zion, not of Babylon. I mean that you do not belong to the city of this world, the city doomed to perish, but to Zion, the city which is struggling and exiled at present but destined to reign for eternity.”46 It was the story of the Christian Scriptures that allowed Augustine to bring such solace to those looking for answers; it was the Christian Scriptures that not only framed the battle between Jerusalem and Babylon, but empowered those pilgrimaging to their heavenly homeland with perseverance and purpose.

Conclusion James O’Donnell once commented rightly that “Augustine never saw a Bible,” but his Bible he knew better than most.47 For it is the scenes of Scripture that fuels both his shaping and his selections of scenes that make up his massive Civ. From the nature of God to the goodness of creation, from the effects of the fall and all the history unfolding therein up to the salvation of humanity in Christ, these twenty-two books of

 Exp. quaest. Rom. §72 (CSEL 84:44–45; trans., P. Fredriksen Landes [Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982], 41): “Omnis anima potestatibus sublimioribus subdita sit; non est enim potestas nisi a deo, rectissime admonet, ne quis ex eo, quod a domino suo in libertatem vocatus est, factusque christianus, extollatur in superbiam et non arbitretur in hujus vitae itinere servandum esse ordinem suum et potestatibus sublimioribus, quibus pro tempore rerum temporalium gubernatio tradita est, putet non se esse subdendum . . . . . . ex illa vero parte, qua credimus deo et in regnum ejus vocamur, non nos oportet esse subditos cuiquam homini idipsum in nobis evertere cupienti, quod deus ad vitam aeternam donare dignatus est.” For more on this, see my “From Ordo to Potestas: Romans 13 and Saint Augustine’s Chastened Civil Confidence,” Sacred Scripture and Secular Struggles, ed., D. Vincent Meconi, SJ (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 250–63.  Enarrat. Ps. 145.20 (CSEL 40:2120; WSA III/20:419, trans. Boulding): “Es certe civis de Sion, non de Babylonia; id est, non de civitate peritura hujus saeculi, sed de Sion ad tempus laborante et peregrinante, in aeternum autem regnatura.”  J.J. O’Donnell, “Bible,” in ATAE, 99.

238

David Meconi

theological exhortation contextualize fleeting events in a greater story, namely, that of God’s providence unfolding in his saints, as evidenced in Scripture. This is an unfolding, however, that is done in secret and in God’s ways, not ours. In this visible mixture of the two cities being worked out and sifted apart, we encounter angelic warfare, we see both Jerusalem and Babylon being built, meet Abel and Cain, and come to the civitas terrena and the civitas Dei. These two antithetical realities are cities representing two antithetical ways of life, two opposed eternities. Civ. was thus composed to assist both those jarred out of their earthly comfort as well as those intent on their heavenly homeland already, that this world is an intermixture of two ways of being human, two ways of being community: one divine, one diabolical. The narrative trajectory and all the main characters of Scripture serve as the foundation of the movement and themes of Civ. When Augustine finally allowed the Christian Scriptures to speak to him, he found that the history of all humankind began in God, was providentially sustained in God, and was stumbling toward final completion in God, the one who alone can offer the peace, the quies, that every human heart desires. Along the way there would inevitably be sins and scandals interwoven with saints and salvation, but this in no way lifts the Christian out of history but immerses those who belong to the civitas Dei directly back into the messiness of human affairs with both their eyes and heart always oriented heavenward.

Further Reading Primary Sources Augustine. De Civitate Dei, edited by Bernhard Dombart and Alfons Kalb. Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina 47. Turnhout: Brepols, 1955. Augustine. The City of God, 2 volumes, translated by William Babcock. Part I, vol. 6 and vol. 7, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, edited by Boniface Ramsey. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2012, 2013. Augustine. The Confessions, translated by Maria Boulding. Part I, vol. 1, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, edited by Boniface Ramsey. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2012. Augustine. Instructing Beginners in the Faith, translated by Raymond Canning. The Augustine Series 5. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2006. Quintus Aurelius Symmachus. Der Streit um Den Victoriaaltar, edited by Richard Klein. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972.

9 Scripture in Augustine’s De ciuitate Dei

239

Secondary Sources Bochet, Isabelle. “The Role of Scripture in Augustine’s Controversy with Porphyry.” Augustinian Studies 41 (2010): 7–54. Bowrsock, G. W. Martyrdom and Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Dodaro, Robert. Christ and the Just Society in the Thought of Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Fitzgerald, Allan, Karla Pollmann, and Mark Vessey, eds. History, Apocalypse, and the Secular Imagination: New Essays on Augustine’s City of God. Bowling Green, Ohio: Philosophy Documentation Center, 1999. Lepelley, Claude. Aspects de l’Afrique romaines: Les cites, la vie rurale, le Christianisme. Bari: Casa editrice Edipuglia, 2001. MacMulen, Ramsay. Changes in the Roman Empire: Essays in the Ordinary. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Markus, Robert. Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of Saint Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. O’Donovan, Oliver and Joan Lockwood. Bonds of Imperfection: Christian Politics, Past and Present. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Press, 2004. van Oort, Johannes. Jerusalem and Babylon: A Study into Augustine’s City of God and the Sources of his Doctrine of the Two Cities. Leiden: Brill, 1991. Wetzel, James. Augustine’s City of God: A Critical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Giulio Malavasi

10 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 411–418 CE Introduction Original sin and human righteousness, divine grace and human free will, sexuality and carnal concupiscence, divine predestination and human perseverance were debated in a comprehensive way for the first time at the beginning of the fifth century during the Pelagian controversy. Augustine of Hippo firmly asserted that because all human beings participate in Adam’s sin, nobody can achieve anything good in this life without God’s grace. Pelagius, Caelestius, and Julian of Aeclanum were the most important spokespersons of those who countered the Augustinian theology of original sin. The Pelagian controversy can be divided in three phases. In the first phase, from 411 to 418, Pelagius and Caelestius were the main opponents of Augustine. In the following phase, from 418 to 431, Julian of Aeclanum, refusing to condemn Pelagius and Caelestius, continued the theological debate. Finally, a third phase, from 425 onwards, concerns the initial reception of Augustine’s theology and the doubts raised in Africa by the monks of Hadrumetum and in Marseille by unnamed theologians regarding several of the most problematic aspects of Augustine’s theology, such as divine predestination. A common feature of all these phases of the controversy was the importance reserved to biblical interpretation. In fact, the Pelagian controversy was not primarily an abstract theological or philosophical debate. This controversy is better conceived as a running debate on the correct exegesis of a set of recurring biblical verses.

Historical Background The Pre-History of the Pelagian Controversy To fully understand the theological debate of the Pelagian controversy it is necessary to assemble the scattered evidence at our disposal on the controversy’s Roman pre-history.

✶

Giulio Malavasi (Ph.D. Padova University, 2017) is an independent scholar and a civil servant in the Italian government. He publishes regularly on the Pelagian controversy, with foci on the historical construction of Pelagianism as a heresy, on the theological differences within the so-called Pelagian movement, and on the history of Pelagianism in the East.

Giulio Malavasi, Independent Scholar https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-011

242

Giulio Malavasi

We know, for example, that different interpretations of Adam’s sin were debated in Rome prior to the outbreak of the controversy. Pelagius was probably born ca. 350 in Britain.1 At an uncertain date he moved to Rome, where he was active as spiritual guide for members of some of the city’s aristocratic circles.2 The presence in Rome of both Pelagius and Caelestius is witnessed by the Commonitorium lectori adversum haeresim Pelagii et Caelestii vel etiam scripta Juliani (Adv. Pel. Cael.), a treatise written after the death of Augustine by Marius Mercator, an anti-Pelagian polemicist. Mercator, a lay person, was first active in Rome around 418, when he wrote against unknown Pelagian enemies. Unfortunately, Mercator’s works from this period are completely lost. He moved to Constantinople during the final stage of the Pelagian controversy. The Commonitorium opens with a brief reconstruction of how the Pelagian controversy erupted in Rome. According to Mercator, the debate on Adam’s original state and on the limited effects of his sin was discussed in the East, especially by Theodore of Mopsuestia. Later, a certain Rufinus brought this controversy in Rome at the beginning of the fifth century under Pope Anastasius I. While in Rome, this Rufinus instructed Pelagius, who, in turn, did the same for Caelestius.3 The historical trustworthiness of this account is difficult to assess in all its details, especially because it was drafted after the death of Augustine at an imprecise date.4 However, it is possible to accept that at the beginning of the fifth century in Rome, Pelagius and Caelestius were involved in a debate on Adam’s original status and on the effects of his sin, even if their real relationship, traditionally described as Caelestius being the disciple of Pelagius, is difficult to verify and may well be misleading.5 Further evidence of the existence of an ongoing theological debate in Rome before the controversy can be found in Pelagius’s commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans, written (probably) ca. 406–409 while he was still in Rome. Pelagius inserted a quotation  Augustine, Ep. 186.1 (CSEL 57:45), Marius Mercator, Adv. Pel. Cael. (ACO 1.5.1:5) and Orosius, Liber apologeticus (Lib. apol.) 12 (CSEL 5:620). It is less likely that Pelagius came from Ireland as some scholars have claimed based on Jerome, Comm. Jer. 3.1.4 (CCSL 74:120).  P. Brown, “Pelagius and his Supporters: Aims and Environments,” JTS 19 (1968): 93–114; and P. Brown, “The Patrons of Pelagius: The Roman Aristocracy between East and West,” JTS 21 (1970): 56–72. According to R. F. Evans, Pelagius: Inquiries and Reappraisals (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1968), 31–37, the first attested presence of Pelagius in Rome occurs in Jerome’s Ep. 50 (to Domnio), which was written around 394. However, Y.-M. Duval, “Pélage est-il le censeur inconnu de l’Adversus Iovinianum a Rome en 393? Ou: du ‘Portrait-Robot’ de l’hérétique chez s. Jérôme,” RHE 75 (1980): 526–57, has convincingly countered this identification and shown that Jerome’s description of the unnamed monk in this letter, rather than offering information on Pelagius’s activity in the 390s, should be considered as a generic heresiological identikit without reference to a specific historical person.  Adv. Pel. Cael. (ACO 1.5.1:5–6). Also Jerome, Ep. 130.16 (CSEL 56:196) refers to theological issues stemming from the Origenist controversy that arose during the time of Anastasius.  S. Prete, Mario Mercatore. Polemista antipelagiano (Turin: Marietti, 1958), 26–27.  A. Dupont and G. Malavasi, “When did Caelestius become known as a disciple of Pelagius? Reassessing the Sources,” JECS 30, no.3 (2022): 343–71.

10 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 411–418 CE

243

containing the arguments of those who oppose the transmission of Adam’s sin, which is useful to cite in full: “If Adam’s sin,” they say, “harmed even those who were not sinners, then Christ’s righteousness helps even those who are not believers. For he says that in like manner, or rather to an even greater degree are people saved through the one than had previously perished through the other.” Secondly, they say: “If baptism washes away that ancient sin, those who have been born of two baptized parents should not have this sin, for they could not have passed on to their children what they themselves in no wise possessed. Besides, if the soul does not exist by transmission, but the flesh alone, then only the flesh carries the transmission of sin and it alone deserves punishment.” Thus, declaring it to be unjust that a soul which is born today, not from the lump of Adam, bears so ancient a sin belonging to another, they say that on no account should it be granted that God, who forgives a person his own sins, imputes to him another’s.6

The arguments Pelagius quoted are based on Scripture as well as on both philosophical and theological principles. For instance, the last argument is clearly reminiscent of a series of Old Testament passages, such as Deut 24:16 (“Parents shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their parents; only for their own crimes may persons be put to death”),7 in which God prohibits the punishment of a child for the sins of his parents or of any person for the sins of someone else. This topic was subsequently debated in significant detail during the Pelagian controversy.8 It is important to emphasize that these arguments are not Pelagius’s own opinion but the position of unnamed theologians who oppose those who teach the transmission of original sin. Moreover, Augustine, one of the first who commented on this passage, carefully notes that Pelagius did not introduce these arguments in his own name, and he concludes that Pelagius does not hold these opinions.9 The witness of Arnobius the

 Pelagius, Rom. 5.15 (A. Souter, Pelagius’ Expositions of Thirteen Epistles of St. Paul II: Text and apparatus criticus [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926], 46–7; trans. T. De Bruyn, Pelagius’ Commentary on St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: Translated with Introduction and Notes [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993], 94): “Si Adae,’ inquiunt, ‘peccatum etiam non peccantibus nocuit, ergo et Christi justitia etiam non credentibus prodest; quia similiter, immo et magis dicit per unum salvari quam per unum ante perierant’. Deinde aiunt: ‘Si baptismum mundat antiquum illut delictum, qui de duobus baptizatis nati fuerint debent hoc carere peccato: non enim potuerunt ad filios transmittere quod ipsi minime habuerunt. Illut quoque accidit quia, si anima non est ex traduce, sed sola caro, ipsa tantum habet traducem peccati et ipsa sola poenam meretur’. Injustum esse dicentes ut hodie nata anima, non ex massa Adae, tam antiquum peccatum portet alienum, dicunt etiam nulla ratione concedi ut deus, qui propria homini peccata remittit, imputet aliena.”  Citations of Scripture that appear between parenthesis follow the NRSV. They are not translations of the ancient version(s) of the Bible cited as by the various factions of the Pelagian controversy.  A. Dupont and G. Malavasi, “Imitazione o trasmissione dei peccati dei padri nei figli? Dibattiti teologici sul concetto veterotestamentario di peccata patrum nella controversia pelagiana,” Greg. 100 (2019): 487–519.  Augustine, Pecc. merit. 3.3.5–6 (CSEL 60:131–3).

244

Giulio Malavasi

Younger offers further details on the identity of the author of the theses quoted by Pelagius.10 Probably in the decade after Augustine’s death, Arnobius wrote a treatise entitled Praedestinatus (Praed.). Arnobius’s main aim was to refute Augustine’s doctrine of predestination, which was considered by many to be the most problematic element of Augustine’s later theology. Significantly, the first book provides a catalogue of heretics, which relies on Augustine’s De haeresibus (haer.). Arnobius’s list adds multiple details that are absent from Augustine’s treatise, including that Caelestius was the first to write against the transmission of original sin and that Pelagius, in the passage quoted above, reported Caelestius’s account.11 A third piece of evidence for Pelagius’s activity in Rome is found in Augustine’s De dono perserverantiae (Persev.), one of his final treatises. Augustine recalls the notoriety of his Confessiones (Conf.), which was written ca. 401, well before the start of the Pelagian controversy. During a reading, Pelagius heard the famous prayer “Grant what you command and command what you will” (“da quod jubes et jube quod vis”) and reacted harshly both to it and to the unnamed bishop doing the reading.12 It is likely that what Pelagius found unacceptable in Augustine’s prayer is the need to ask God to graciously give what is necessary to keep God’s commandments. Pelagius believed that human beings are created with the ability to keep God’s commandments and, thus, disagrees with Augustine’s concept of prevenient grace. In fact, in De gestis Pelagii (Gest. Pelag.) a treatise composed around 417, Augustine reported that he first heard the name of Pelagius while the latter was in Rome arguing against God’s grace.13 While he (probably) was still in Rome, Pelagius wrote a treatise entitled De natura.14 Timasius and James, two former disciples of Pelagius, gave Augustine a copy of this treatise,15 the extant fragments of which can be found in Augustine’s De natura et gratia (nat. et. gr.). In it Pelagius wanted to show that remaining sinless was possible for human

 R. Villegas Marin, “Arnobe « le Jeune »: esquisse d’une biographie et d’un portrait intellectuel,” REAug 66 (2020): 165–84. Arnobius’s trustworthiness is difficult to assess since the writings of Caelestius are almost entirely lost; nevertheless, this attribution is generally accepted in modern scholarship. See, e.g., E. TeSelle, “Rufinus the Syrian, Caelestius, Pelagius: Explorations in the Prehistory of the Pelagian Controversy,” AugStud 3 (1972): 61–95, esp. 76; and Y.-M. Duval, “Pélage en son temps: Données chronologiques nouvelles pour une présentation nouvelle,” in StPatr 38 (2001):95–118, esp. 100n19.  Arnobius the Younger, Praed. 1.88 (CCSL 25B:52).  Augustine, Persev. 20.53 (PL 45:1026). It is noteworthy that this prayer is offered again in the second book of Augustine’s Pecc. merit., his first anti-Pelagian treatise. See 2.5.5 (CSEL 60:75–76).  Augustine, gest. Pelag. 22.46 (CSEL 42:100–1). In this paragraph Augustine recounts how he became acquainted with Pelagius. Particularly interesting is the interpretation proposed by C. C.-Y. Yam, Trinity and Grace in Augustine. An Analysis of De trinitate 8–10 in Light of De spiritu et littera (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2019), 152–4.  Y.-M. Duval, “La date du De natura de Pélage: Les premières étapes de la controverse sur la nature de la grâce,” REAug 36 (1990): 257–83, esp. 270–4. See also W. Löhr, “Pelagius’ Schrift De natura: Rekonstruktion und Analyse,” RechAug 31 (1999): 235–94.  Augustine, Nat. grat. 1.1 (CSEL 60:233); and Ep. 179.2 (CSEL 44:692).

10 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 411–418 CE

245

nature – regardless of whether sinless human beings had ever existed16 – because God bestows this ability on every human being.17 However, Pelagius goes on to list scriptural evidence that confirms the existence of righteous human beings. Pelagius then poses an objection against those who think that every naturally-born human being is a sinner. In subsequent centuries, given the multitude of people who had lived, it is possible that Scripture refrained from mentioning the sins of everyone. However, at the beginning, when there were only four people, Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel, Scripture makes it clear that three of them sinned. From this it follows that the fourth, Abel, must have lived righteously and without sinning.18 The sources analyzed in the foregoing show that several of the theological issues that proved central to the Pelagian controversy had already been discussed, at least in part, in Rome at the beginning of the fifth century and that Scripture, especially the interpretation of Adam’s sin it reports, played a vital role. This theological discussion took place before the official starting point of the Pelagian controversy, traditionally identified with the trial of Caelestius held in 411 in Carthage.

Carthage in 411 CE Fleeing Alaric’s invading army, both Pelagius and Caelestius, together with members of the Roman aristocracy, found refuge in North Africa. In Carthage, Caelestius tried to obtain ordination as a presbyter, but, instead, was charged with heresy by Paulinus, a deacon of the church of Milan,19 in a trial chaired by Aurelius of Carthage. Despite Augustine’s absence, this event is traditionally regarded as the official starting point of the Pelagian controversy, even though several important aspects of it remain hazy due to the loss of almost all of the relevant official sources generated by it. Only a short fragment from the official proceedings is preserved in Augustine;20 fortunately, the six theses Caelestius was accused of holding to are archived within various sources.21 Notwithstanding the scarcity of the sources, the importance of this event can hardly be overemphasized. Caelestius was charged with holding six theologically dangerous statements: 1) Adam was created mortal so that he would die whether he sinned or not, 2) the sin of Adam harmed him alone and not the human race, 3) the law leads to the kingdom just as the gospel does, 4) before the coming of Christ there were human beings without sin, 5) newly born infants are in the same state in which Adam was before his

 Nat. grat. 7.8 (CSEL 60:237–8).  Nat. grat. 10.11 (CSEL 60:239–40); and 45.53 (CSEL 60:271–2).  Nat. grat. 37.43–44 (CSEL 60:264–5).  A. Paredi, “Paulinus of Milan,” SacEr 14 (1963): 206–30.  Augustine, Grat. Chr. 2.3–4 (CSEL 42:167–9).  Gest. Pelag. 11.23 (CSEL 42:76); Grat. Chr. 2.11.12 (CSEL 42:174); and Marius Mercator, Com. nom. Cael. (ACO 1.5.1:66).

246

Giulio Malavasi

transgression, 6) the whole human race does not die through the death or transgression of Adam, nor does the whole human race rise through the resurrection of Christ.22 It is evident that Caelestius’s primary concerns were the interpretation of Adam’s original state and the effect of his sin on his descendants. Caelestius radically minimized the effects and the importance of Adam’s sin, which was not the cause of his death, since he was created mortal, and it has no negative effects on the human race since infants are born in the same condition which Adam experienced before his first sin. In the fragment of the official proceedings preserved by Augustine, Aurelius of Carthage ordered that Caelestius’s statement that Adam’s sin harmed Adam alone and not the human race be read aloud. Caelestius replied that he doubted the transmission of sin, an idea he heard from a certain Rufinus who lived in Rome.23 Regardless of the identity of this Rufinus, it is important to underline that this fragment of the record of Caelestius’s trial offers further proof that, in Rome at the beginning of the fifth century, there was an ongoing debate about the transmission of Adam’s sin. This Italian debate flourished before both the official outbreak of the Pelagian controversy in Africa and the direct involvement of Augustine of Hippo. Perhaps it was not a coincidence that the official prosecutor of Caelestius in Carthage was a deacon of the Milanese church.

Augustine’s Involvement in the First Phase of the Pelagian Controversy As noted above, Augustine was not present at the trial of Caelestius in Carthage in 411. Apart perhaps for a few sermons preached in 411,24 Augustine’s official involvement in the Pelagian controversy coincided with the drafting of his first anti-Pelagian treatise, De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo parvulorum (Pecc. Merit.).25 In it Augustine treated all the main theological issues of the Pelagian controversy, including original sin, infant baptism, and human righteousness. Scripture is frequently invoked in Book 1, where explicit quotations comprise approximately one quarter of the words in the most recent translation.26 The universal need of baptism for the remission of original sin for every human being, including infants, and the role of Christ as the only redeemer of humanity is supported via more than sixty scriptural quotations.27 Augustine does not offer an individual exegesis of each passage; rather, he strings together

 Gest. Pelag. 11.23 (CSEL 42:76).  Grat. Chr. 2.3.3 (CSEL 42:168).  Retract. 2.33 (CSEL 36:170).  B. Delaroche, Saint Augustin lecteur et interprète de Saint Paul dans le De peccatorum meritis et remissione (hiver 411–412), EAA 146 (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1996).  Cf. WSA I/23:23.  Pecc. merit. 1.26.39–1.28.56 (CSEL 60:37–55).

10 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 411–418 CE

247

numerous quotations in order to underline the biblical character of his theology in contrast to the unscriptural innovations of his adversaries. At the same time it is notable that Augustine did not reveal the identity of his adversaries: Pelagius is explicitly mentioned only in Book 3, and, even there, it is done in a thoroughly praiseworthy manner.28 Pelagius remained in Africa for only a short period, a fact which precluded a personal meeting with Augustine. For his part, Augustine simply addressed a polite letter of greeting to Pelagius.29 Augustine also claimed to have seen Pelagius from a distance on a couple of occasions while Augustine was in Carthage for the conference against the Donatists.30 Augustine’s Pecc. Merit. was read by Marcellinus, who was dissatisfied with the claim that Augustine made in Book 2 that, while it is theoretically possible for a human being to live without sin if that person’s will is helped by divine grace, no such person has ever actually existed – Christ alone excepted. In order to better define his position, Augustine wrote his second anti-Pelagian treatise, De spiritu et littera (Spir. et litt.). In this work, Augustine explains that, as 2 Cor 3:6 (“the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life”) makes clear, the letter of the law, which refers not only to the Old Testament prescriptions in se, but also to all moral precepts that have been imposed on human beings, is fatal. Moreover, it abandons us in the face of the impossibility of keeping what has been commanded. By contrast, the Holy Spirit, which Rom 5:5 (“God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us”) labels as the agent for infusing the love of God into human hearts through faith, gives life and makes it possible for us to keep all that has been prescribed both in spirit and according to the letter.31 In De perfectione justitiae hominis (Perf.) and De natura et gratia (Nat. grat.), Augustine directly countered the primary sources that his Pelagian adversaries had produced. In the former, Augustine replied to Definitiones, a treatise attributed to Caelestius, which is comprised of a series of statements followed by citations from Scripture either

 Pecc. merit. 3.1.1 (CSEL 60:129).  For the text of the letter, see gest. Pelag. 27.52 (CSEL 42:105–6). According to gest. Pelag. 26.51 (CSEL 42:104–5), Pelagius had already been critiqued in this letter. Note that Evans, Pelagius, 80; J. Den Boeft, “Augustine’s Letter to Pelagius,” in Augustiniana Traiectina. Communications présentées au Colloque international d’Utrecht 13–14 novembre 1986, eds. J. Den Boeft and J. Van Oort (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1987), 73–84, esp. 79–80; and J. Ebbeler, Disciplining Christians. Correction and Community in Augustine’s Letters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 198–202, are all sceptical of Augustine’s reconstruction, while Y.-M. Duval, “La correspondance entre Augustin et Pélage,” REAug 45 (1999): 363–84, esp. 372–83, trusts it.  Gest. Pelag. 22.46 (CSEL 42:100).  I. Bochet, “La lettre tue, l’Esprit vivifie. L’exégèse augustinienne de 2 Co 3, 6,” NRTh 114 (1992): 341–70; and A.–M. La Bonnardière, “Le verset paulinien Rom., v. 5 dans l’oeuvre de saint Augustin,” in Augustinus Magister. Congrès International Augustinien. Paris, 21–24 Septembre 1954, vol. 2 (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1955), 2:657–65. For additional Scriptural passages, see Yam, Trinity and Grace, 431–9.

248

Giulio Malavasi

opposing or supporting the author’s views. In the latter, Augustine refuted Pelagius’s De natura. Interestingly, although Pelagius’s theological positions are strenuously challenged, Augustine expresses respect for Pelagius’s good intentions.32 In Nat. grat. Augustine warned his readers of the danger he saw in Pelagius’s treatise, namely, the claim that one could become righteous by keeping divine commandments solely through human effort. According to Augustine, human beings cannot attain salvation without the grace of Christ. If they could, Christ would have died in vain, a point supported by Gal 2:21 (“if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died for nothing”).33 Meanwhile, Pelagius left Africa for Palestine, where a dispute with Jerome soon erupted.34 In 415, Orosius, a Spanish priest, was sent by Augustine to Palestine with some letters and treatises for Jerome as well as with a letter and a message for Pelagius.35 During that same year, two synods were held in Palestine to verify Pelagius’s orthodoxy, one in Jerusalem in July and one in Diospolis in December. At Jerusalem, although Orosius presented a summary of Caelestius’s trial at Carthage as evidence against Pelagius, no decisions were taken;36 at Diospolis, Pelagius was declared orthodox.37 Augustine’s attitude toward Pelagius was gradually changing. In the immediate aftermath of Diospolis, he continued to see himself as correcting a friend,38 not (yet) confronting a heretic.39 In 416 news of an attack on Jerome’s monasteries reached Augustine along with a letter Pelagius composed regarding his acquittal at Diospolis. Both contributed to Augustine’s change of attitude towards Pelagius.40 Two synods were held in 416 to condemn Pelagius and Caelestius, one in Milevis and one in Carthage. Augustine clearly influenced the decisions of the African church. Two letters from these synods were sent to Innocent I, bishop of Rome, together with a longer third letter signed by Augustine and other four African bishops. These letters represented the official African reaction against the heresy of Pelagius and Caelestius, whose condemnation was further confirmed by Innocent’s three responses. Innocent’s condemnation of Pelagius and Caelestius did not, however, mean that the Pope adhered to the North African view of original sin. In fact, Innocent, whose

 Nat. grat. 1.1 (CSEL 60:233).  Gal 2:21 is cited with some frequency by Augustine: see, e.g., Nat. et grat. 1.1 (CSEL 60:233); 2.2 (CSEL 60:234–5); 9.10 (CSEL 60:239); and 40.47 (CSEL 60:268).  B. Jeanjean, Saint Jérôme et l’hérésie (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1999), 63–72, 245–69, and 387–432.  Sermo 348/A.6 (F. Dolbeau, “Le sermon 348A de saint Augustin contre Pélage. Édition du texte intégral,” RechAug 28 (1995): 37–63, esp. 56).  Lib. apol. 3–6 (CSEL 5:606–11).  Gest. Pelag. 20.44 (CSEL 42:99).  Ep. 19✶.3 (CSEL 88:93).  Cf., however, the different position Augustine adopted in Ep. 169.4.13 (CSEL 44:621).  Sermo 348/A.7 (Dolbeau, “Le sermon 348A,” 57); and Gest. Pelag. 35.66 (CSEL 42:121–2). However, J. Lössl, “Who Attacked the Monasteries of Jerome and Paula in 416 AD?,” Aug 44 (2004): 91–112, has demonstrated that it is unlikely that Pelagius was directly involved.

10 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 411–418 CE

249

theological anthropology was more positive than that of the Africans, remained silent on this issue. As for the role played by Scripture in the letters from Africa, references to verses that had already become touchstones in support of original sin, such as Rom 5:12, do appear.41 Innocent, by contrast, based his position on more positive statements concerning the gift of life and the promises of the world to come, such as John 6:54 (“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day”).42 The theology of the North African letters is also more complex than what we find in Innocent I’s letters, a fact reflected on a quantitative level: the African letters quote far more verses of Scripture (and do so with greater frequency) than do Innocent’s responses.43 In the meantime, Augustine, thanks to Cyril of Alexandria, obtained a copy of the official proceedings of the synod of Diospolis. He then wrote a commentary on them, the Gest. Pelag., in order to show that, though the Palestinian bishops had acquitted Pelagius, they nonetheless had condemned the heretical tenets attributed to him. Soon after Innocent’s death in early 417, Zosimus was elected Pope. While he was initially positively-inclined toward both Pelagius and Caelestius, he ultimately condemned the Pelagian movement due to both African (theological) and imperial (political) pressure when, in 418, he circulated his Epistula tractoria. Unfortunately, this crucial historical document is extant only in fragments. Like Innocent, Zosimus remained vague on the issue of original sin. With regard to the problematic relationship between divine grace and human free will, Zosimus defended the need of divine grace for every good human action, as witnessed by Rom 7:24–25 (“Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”) and 1 Cor 15:10 (“But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them – though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me”).44 Zosimus also never explicitly subscribed to Augustine’s complex doctrine of prevenient grace.45 After 418, Pelagius seems to have withdrawn from the controversy and from history. Indeed, neither where nor when he died is known. Caelestius remained active in certain circles, even as the role of antagonist to Augustine’s theological vision was taken over by Julian of Aeclanum. Julian rose to prominence by refusing both to sign  Ep. 176.2 (CSEL 44:666); and Ep. 177.11 (CSEL 44:680).  Ep. 182.5 (CSEL 44:720).  O. Wermelinger, Rom und Pelagius. Die theologische Position der römischen Bischöfe im pelagianischen Streit in den Jahren 411–432 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1975), 94–108 and 116–33; and P. J. Carefoote, Augustine, the Pelagians and the Papacy: An Examination of the Political and Theological Implications of Papal Involvement in the Pelagian Controversy (Leuven: unpublished doctoral dissertation, 1995), 147–76.  Celestine I, Ep. 21.9.10 (PL 50:533–4).  F. Floëri, “Le pape Zosime et la doctrine augustinienne du péché originel,” in Augustinus Magister. Congrès International Augustinien. Paris, 21–24 Septembre 1954, vol. 2 (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1955), 2:755–61; Wermelinger, Rom und Pelagius, 146–65; and Carefoote, Augustine, the Pelagians and the Papacy, 245–71.

250

Giulio Malavasi

Zosimus’s Epistula tractoria and to condemn Pelagius and Caelestius. These refusals, which also drew Augustine’s attention, mark the beginning of the second phase of the Pelagian controversy.

Pelagius and Caelestius’s Relation with Scripture What follows will treat the relationship of both Pelagius and Caelestius to Scripture. In particular, it will show that both Scripture and its exegesis were of central import for both men, and that this was especially the case in their controversy with Augustine. Unfortunately, evidence of Caelestius’s exegetical activity prior to or apart from that controversy is wanting. Conversely, Pelagius, precisely because he was active as exegete and spiritual director prior to the controversy, generated important sources that require careful study in order to understand his relationship with Scripture both before and beyond the Pelagian controversy. Pelagius’s relationship with Scripture is best exemplified by his most important exegetical work: his commentary on the Pauline epistles. This commentary probably grew out of a series of spiritual conferences that Pelagius organized for groups of aristocratic Christians in Rome. They are best contextualized by placing them within a rising tide of interest in Pauline theology more generally that, in turn, prompted the production of multiple commentaries both in Greek and in Latin during the late fourth and early fifth centuries.46 Generally speaking, Pelagius commented upon a biblical text that is very close to what would later be known as the Vulgate, a translation initiative commissioned by Pope Damasus in the 380s. The idea was to replace the various versions that had long been in circulation, known collectively as the “Vetus Latina” or the Old Latin versions,47 with an updated version based on the best manuscripts available. The aim of Pelagius’s commentaries was to explain Paul’s letters as clearly as possible via short observations, literal exegeses, and a simple style. His overall goal was to make Paul more accessible to his audience. The important role played by Scripture in the thought and teaching of Pelagius is further confirmed by his so-called Letter to Demetrias. Demetrias was a female member of the ancient and patrician Anicii family who, ca. 413, decided to devote herself to God and remain a virgin rather than marry (as both her social class and her family expected her to do). Her mother Juliana asked Pelagius to write to her daughter and

 M. G. Mara, “Il significato storico-esegetico dei commentari al corpus paolino dal IV al V secolo,” Annali di storia dell’esegesi 1 (1984): 59–74.  P. W. Stelzer, A New Reconstruction of the Text of 2 Corinthians in Pelagius’s Commentary on the Pauline Epistles (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2018). On the biblical texts used in late antique Africa, see: H. A. G. Houghton, “Scripture and Latin Christian Manuscripts from North Africa,” in BCNA I, 15–50.

10 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 411–418 CE

251

to provide her with guidance for her new endeavor. In paragraph 23 of this letter, Pelagius invites Demetrias to read the Scriptures and to remember that God commands that his Law not only be known and studied, but that it also be put into practice. Pelagius’s clear aim was to deepen her knowledge of Scripture and to bind that knowledge closely together with ascetic practice. Every portion of the Old Testament, from the historical books, to the Psalms, to the wisdom of Solomon, and the prophets can be read with profit. Moreover, the Gospels and the epistles can help to integrate Christ and his teaching into one’s asceticism and pursuit of holiness. At the same time, Pelagius warns Demetrias to read Scripture with moderation,48 an admonition probably intended to help her (and other would-be ascetics) avoid living an unbalanced spiritual life marked by excessive study, pride in one’s own learning, and/or a love of knowledge for its own sake, since any of these could easily distract one from authentic ascetic practice. Furthermore, Pelagius’s Liber testimoniorum clearly shows just how deeply rooted in Scripture his theological program was. Unfortunately, this work survives only in fragments quoted by his adversaries. Nevertheless, we know that it consisted of one hundred aphoristic sentences that were supported by biblical references. As he composed it, Pelagius followed the example of Cyprian’s Ad Quirinum testimonia adversus Judaeos.49 The most important and contested statement is the hundredth proposition, an idea that seems to have lain near the center of Pelagius’s pedagogical efforts. It asserted that one can be without sin and can easily keep the commandments of God if one is willing.50 Unfortunately, the biblical passages quoted by Pelagius in support of this assertion are not recorded by his adversaries. Crucially, however, while being examined during the Synod of Diospolis in 415, Pelagius explained what he was trying to communicate: We said that a human being can be without sin and observe God’s commandments, if he wants. For God gave him this ability. We did not, however, say that there is anyone who never sinned from infancy to old age, but that one who has turned away from sin can by his own effort and by the grace of God be without sin. Nor did we say that the one who has turned away cannot return to sin in the future.51

Caelestius’s own theological position was also firmly grounded in Scripture. This is demonstrable from his Definitiones, a composition that was excerpted by Augustine and responded to in detail in the latter’s Perf. Definitiones was divided into two parts. In part one, Caelestius explains his theological position through a series of statements and logical

 Pelagius, Dem. 23 (PL 30:37–8).  See E. Murphy, “Scripture in the Letters of and Councils under Cyprian of Carthage,” in BCNA I, 119–41, esp. 120.  Jerome, Pelag. 1.33 (CCSL 80:40).  Gest. Pelag. 6.16 (CSEL 42:68–69; WSA I/23:336, trans. Teske [slighly modified]): “Posse quidem hominem esse sine peccato et dei mandata custodire, si velit, diximus; hanc enim possibilitatem deus illi dedit. Non autem diximus quod inveniatur aliquis ab infantia usque ad senectam qui numquam peccaverit, sed quoniam a peccatis conversus proprio labore et dei gratia possit esse sine peccato, nec per hoc tamen in posterum inconversibilis.”

252

Giulio Malavasi

demonstrations. His main goal was to show that human beings ought to be without sin since God both wills it and has made it possible. Part two consists of a plethora of scriptural quotations that Caelestius sees as supporting his theses. Caelestius quotes no less than fifteen passages in support of the claim that human beings were commanded to be without sin,52 and three additional passages in support of the claim that God’s commandments are not difficult to keep.53 Caelestius then cites the testimonies from Scripture that have been employed by his opponents and an additional set of testimonies that one might use to counter his adversaries’ views.54 Unfortunately, Caelestius never offers his own exegesis of any of the passages he cites. Still, and by way of a summary, it seems best to regard both Pelagius’s Liber testimoniorum and Caelestius’s Definitiones as handbooks designed to help both themselves and their sympathizers to use the Bible efficiently, to support their own positions effectively, and to refute soundly the positions of their adversaries.

Exegesis The aim of the following section is to demonstrate that the theological discussions of the Pelagian controversy were thoroughly grounded in Scripture and its exegesis. To this end, four case studies have been selected: Rom 5:12 (“therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned”); Phil 2:13 (“for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure”); Luke 1:6 (“both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord”); Rom 7:18–20 (“for I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me”). These passages were selected using two main principles: the comprehensiveness of the theological issues being debated and the existence of opposing interpretations. In fact, these case studies cover many of the theological issues central to the Pelagian controversy: original sin in Rom 5:12; the relationship between divine grace and human free will in Phil 2:13; human righteousness in Luke 1:6; and carnal concupiscence in Rom 7:18–20. Moreover, ancient sources – especially but not exclusively Augustine’s anti-Pelagian treatises – have preserved the interpretations of both camps. Therefore,

 Perf. 9.20 (CSEL 42:18–20).  Perf. 10.22 (CSEL 42:22–3).  Perf. 11.23–19.40 (CSEL 42:23–43).

10 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 411–418 CE

253

Augustine’s interpretation of each passage will be analyzed relative to the interpretation supplied by Pelagius and/or Caelestius.55

Romans 5:12 and Original Sin Romans 5:12 is fundamental for understanding both Augustine’s theology of original sin and that of his adversaries. The exegesis of this passage is dependent upon a peculiar Latin translation that reads: per unum hominem peccatum in hunc mundum intravit, et per peccatum mors, et ita in omnes homines pertransiit, in quo omnes peccaverunt (“through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death, and thus it was passed on to all human beings in whom all have sinned”). This version raises two exegetical problems: the subject of the verb pertransiit (“passed on”; dielthen [διῆλθεν] in Greek), and the meaning of the phrase in quo (“in which” “in that” or “in whom”; ef’ho [ἐφ’ᾧ] in Greek). Exegetes of the Greek typically understand that it was death that passed on to all human beings. According to Paul, the wages of sin is death and everyone has sinned, ergo everyone has become subject to the death. They also typically understand that the phrase ef’ho makes the most sense when it is read causally, i.e., when it is read as an explanation of why sin “passed on.”56 A different exegesis is proposed by Ambrosiaster, a Roman Christian who flourished in the second half of the fourth century and who produced a commentary on the Pauline epistles.57 Ambrosiaster does not weigh in on the subject of “passed on.” But he does clarify the meaning of in quo: “all have sinned in Adam as though in a lump. For being corrupted by sin himself, all those whom he fathered were born under sin. For that reason we all are sinners, because we all descend from him.”58 Ambrosiaster

 What follows focuses on Augustine’s anti-Pelagian treatises. However, other sources also provide useful insights into the important role played by Scripture in Augustine’s theology. His sermons, for example, have been thoroughly analysed by A. Dupont, Gratia in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum during the Pelagian Controversy. Do Different Contexts Furnish Different Insights? (Leiden: Brill, 2013). Before discussing the case studies in detail, a caveat is in order. Augustine played a major role in the Pelagian controversy. Indeed he became the de facto spokesperson for the African church. However, the Pelagian controversy was not simply a debate between Pelagius and Augustine. Other theological perspectives were represented, e.g., those of Jerome and the Roman bishops, and these views did not fully align with those of Augustine or Pelagius. A thorough exploration of all these perspectives, while necessary for a comprehensive understanding of the Pelagian controversy is beyond the scope of this chapter.  S. Lyonnet, “Le sens de ἐφ’ᾧ en Rom 5,12 et l’exégèse des pères grecs,” Bib 36 (1955): 436–56.  For a general presentation of Ambrosiaster, see D. G. Hunter, “The Significance of Ambrosiaster,” JECS 17 (2009): 1–26.  Ambrosiaster, Comm. Ep. Paul. (Rom.) 5.12 (CSEL 81/1:165; trans. G. L. Bray, Commentaries on Romans and 1–2 Corinthians. Ambrosiaster [Drowners Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009], 40): “Omnes in

254

Giulio Malavasi

introduces elements that will be fully developed by Augustine, who, in his Contra duas epistulas pelagianorum (C. du. ep. Pelag.), a treatise composed during the second phase of the Pelagian controversy, quotes this passage from Ambrosiaster’s commentary to support his theology of original sin.59 However, from this it does not necessarily follow that all elements of Augustine’s doctrine of original sin were already present in Ambrosiaster’s commentary. It is true that Ambrosiaster emphasizes the participation of all human beings in Adam’s sin using the image of the lump, and that he reads the phrase “in quo” as having a relative, not a causal, meaning. However, according to Ambrosiaster, the effects of Adam’s sin do not result in a universal sinfulness, as Augustine proposes, but only in a universal participation in this mortal life.60 From the outset of the Pelagian controversy, Augustine was aware of the exegesis of his adversaries, whose main aim was to counter the claim that Adam’s sin is automatically transmitted to his descendants. In the first book of Pecc. Merit., Augustine notes that, according to one of his adversaries, “this sin passed from the first man to other human beings not by propagation, but by imitation. Hence, they refuse to believe that in the case of little children original sin is removed by baptism, since they maintain that there is no sin at all in newborns.”61 It is evident that the transmission of Adam’s sin by imitation is precisely how Pelagius interpreted Rom 5:12 in his Pauline commentary. Pelagius states that Adam’s sin passed on by example or by pattern, clear evidence that any theology which favors the transmission of Adam’s sin to his descendants apart from personal involvement and, thus, apart from personal responsibility is unacceptable for Pelagius.62 A similar position can be found in Pelagius’s De natura where he claimed that “the statement that all have sinned in Adam was not uttered on account of a sin contracted by reason of their origin through being born, but on account of their imitation of Adam’s sin.”63 Furthermore, Pelagius both understood death to be the subject of “passed on” and interpreted the phrase in quo causally: “as long as they sin the same way, they likewise die.”64 Still another important feature of Pelagius’s exegesis concerns the meaning of the word “omnes” (“all”) and its relationship to the verb peccaverunt (sinned): all does not mean that all human beings have sinned because such a

Adam peccasse quasi in massa, ipse enim per peccatum corruptus quos genuit, omnes nati sunt sub peccato. Ex eo igitur cuncti peccatores, quia ex ipso sumus omnes.”  Augustine, C. du. ep. Pelag. 4.4.7 (CSEL 60:528).  G. Raspanti, “Il peccato di Adamo e la grazia di Cristo nella storia dell’umanità. Rilettura del Commento di Ambrosiaster a Rom. 5,12–21,” Aug 48 (2008): 435–79, esp. 454–60.  Pecc. merit. 1.9.9 (CSEL 60:10; WSA I/23:38, trans. Teske): “Ipsum peccatum non propagatione in alios homines ex primo homine, sed imitatione transisse. Hinc enim etiam in parvulis nolunt credere per baptismum solvi originale peccatum quod in nascentibus nullum esse omnino contendunt.”  Rom. 5.12 (Souter, Pelagius’ Expositions, 45).  Nat. grat. 9.10 (CSEL 60:238; WSA I/23:220, trans. Teske): “In Adam peccasse omnes non propter peccatum nascendi origine adtractum, sed propter imitationem dictum est.”  Rom. 5.12 (Souter, Pelagius’ Expositions, 45; trans. De Bruyn, Pelagius’ Commentary, 92).

10 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 411–418 CE

255

reading makes no exception for the few righteous people who have lived.65 This aspect of Pelagius’s exegesis connects easily with his belief that living sinlessly is possible. Augustine’s interpretation of this passage is in tension with the exegesis offered by the Greek church fathers. According to Augustine, the subject of the verb pertransiit (“passed on”) is sin and the phrase in quo is best taken relatively and as referring back to Adam. This interpretation obviously impacts Augustine’s exegesis. The in quo corroborates his doctrine of original sin if it is interpreted as teaching a universal participation in Adam’s sin since he is the one “in whom” everyone has sinned: For if you have here understood the sin that entered the world through the one man in which sin all have sinned, it is certainly clear that personal sins of each person by which they alone sinned are distinct from this one in which all have sinned, when all were that one man. But if you have understood, not the sin, but that one man, in which one man all have sinned, what could be clearer than that clear statement?66

This quotation highlights several primary features of Augustine’s doctrine of original sin.67 In fact, all the other aspects of his theological reaction to Pelagius and Caelestius derive from his interpretation of Adam’s sin. According to Augustine, the sin of the first man has had a decisive impact on the lives of his descendants for at least three reasons. The first impact is death. Augustine states that Adam was created in Eden in a quasineutral position so that he would have reached immortality if he had not sinned. By his disobedience, however, Adam condemned himself to death.68 The second consequence is that, as a descendant of Adam, every human being inherits a punishment. This punishment manifests in numerous ways in human life, including physical and psychological difficulties. But it is particularly seen in the carnal concupiscence that prevents human beings from controlling their carnal desires and natural impulses.69 Concupiscence is

 Rom. 5.12 (Souter, Pelagius’ Expositions, 45) and Nat. grat. 41.48 (CSEL 60:268).  Pecc. merit. 1.10.11 (CSEL 60:12; WSA I/23:39–40, trans. Teske): “Si enim peccatum intellexeris, quod per unum hominem intravit in mundum, in quo peccato omnes peccaverunt, certe manifestum est alia esse propria cuique peccata, in quibus hi tantum peccant, quorum peccata sunt, aliud hoc unum, in quo omnes peccaverunt, quando omnes ille unus homo fuerunt. Si autem non peccatum, sed ipse unus homo intellegitur, in quo uno homine omnes peccaverunt, quid etiam ista manifestatione manifestius?” See also C. du. ep. Pelag. 4.4.7 (CSEL 60:527–8), a treatise written in the second phase of the Pelagian controversy, where preference is given to Adam as the reference of in quo. S. Lyonnet, “Rom. V, 12 chez Saint Augustin. Note sur l’élaboration de la doctrine augustinienne du péché originel,” in L’homme devant Dieu. Mélanges offerts au Père Henri de Lubac, Vol I: Exégèse et patristique (Paris: Aubier, 1963), 327–39; G. Bonner, “Augustine on Romans 5, 12,” SE 5 (1968): 242–7; and G. Di Palma, “Ancora sull’interpretazione agostiniana di Rom 5, 12: et ita in omnes homines pertransiit, in quo omnes peccaverunt,” Aug 44 (2004): 113–34, esp. 113–20.  For a general presentation of this doctrine, see M. Lamberigts, “Peccatum originale,” in AugLex, 3.3–4:599–615; and J. Couenhoven, “St. Augustine’s Doctrine of Original Sin,” AugStud 36 (2005): 359–96.  Pecc. merit. 1.2.2 (CSEL 60:3–4).  Pecc. merit. 1.29.57 (CSEL 60:56–7); 2.22.36–37 (CSEL 60:107–9). See also T. Nisula, Augustine and the Functions of Concupiscence (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

256

Giulio Malavasi

both the penalty for original sin and a sin itself because it is both the result of Adam’s sin and the source of actual sins.70 The third consequence of original sin is the guilt which is imputed to all human beings at birth.71 In baptism, the guilt of Adam’s sin is removed, even if its negative effects on human nature persist.

Philippians 2:13 and Human Good Will If taken literally, Phil 2:13 may lead to determinism insofar as it asserts that both human willing and human doing are controlled by God. This interpretation was countered by Origen of Alexandria (ca. 185–253/4 CE), the ever-influential theologian and exegete whose writings profoundly influenced the Christian tradition. At the beginning of Book 3 of De principiis (Princ.), Origen recounts several deterministic exegeses offered by unnamed adversaries, one of which treated Phil 2:13. According to Origen’s adversaries, if willing and working comes from God, then both good and bad willing and working come from God and, thus, there is no freedom. Origen replies that willing and working come from God, while good or bad willing and working depend on human beings, a move that preserves human freedom.72 Similarly, Ambrosiaster, in his commentary on Philippians, defended both human free will and freedom of action. He states that “Paul testifies that God helps those who make a good effort. He always refers every grace back to God, so that it is ours to will but God’s to perform.”73 A different exegesis was proposed by Augustine during the Pelagian controversy. Phil 2:13 was one of several prooftexts that he used to explain his position on human willing, one of the most complex aspects of his theology. The most convenient way to understand Augustine’s exegesis of this verse is to briefly present Augustine’s antiPelagian theology of the will. Augustine’s account of original sin has important consequences for his understanding of the fallen human will. Augustine never said that human nature after the fall was transformed into a bad or evil nature. However, he consistently claimed that original sin had vitiated human nature such that it is now in need of a “doctor,” i.e. Christ, to be healed. Augustine believed that original sin weakened the human will, so that it is no longer able to will the good; the will is no longer even oriented towards the good. Unaided human will is only able to will evil. It is only

 Augustine’s remarks from the second phase of the Pelagian controversy are clarifying. See, e.g., Nupt. 1.23.25 (CSEL 42:237–8); and C. du. ep. Pelag. 1.13.27 (CSEL 60:445–6).  Pecc. merit. 1.11.13 (CSEL 60:13–14); 1.13.16 (CSEL 60:16).  Origen, Princ. 3.1.20 (J. Behr, Origen: On First Principles, vol. 2 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017], 2:358–60). For an introduction to Origen and to the third book of Princ., see L. Perrone, Il cuore indurito del Faraone. Origene e il problema del libero arbitrio (Genoa: Marietti, 1992).  Ambrosiaster, Comm. Ep. Paul. (Fil.) 2.13 (CSEL 81/3:146; trans. G. L. Bray, Commentaries on Galatians – Philemon. Ambrosiaster [Drowners Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009], 72): “Deum bonos conatus adiuvare testatur. Omnem enim gratiam semper reportat ad deum, ut nostrum sit velle, perficere vero dei.”

10 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 411–418 CE

257

thanks to the prevenient operation of divine grace that the human will is able to again will the good.74 In the second book of Pecc. Merit., Augustine tries to show that both free will and a good will are gifts of God: we must maintain not only that the choice of the will . . . but also that the good will, which already belongs to those goods which cannot be misused, can come to us only from God. Otherwise, I do not know how we are going to defend the words of Scripture “after all, what do you have that you have not received” (1 Cor 4:7). For, if we have from God a free will that can become either good or bad, while the good will comes from us, what comes from us is better than what comes from God. But if that is a ridiculous claim to make, we must admit that we obtain a good will from God.75

Augustine’s exegetical demonstration starts with 1 Cor 4:7. He is certain that Paul’s statement must also apply to human willing. If free will, which can become either good or bad, is from God, but willing the good is from human beings, then what comes from human beings is better than what comes from God. This is unacceptable. Therefore, it is necessary to believe that both free will and good will come from God. Augustine concludes his argument quoting several passages from Scripture, including Phil 2:13. In Spir. et litt., Augustine explains the way in which divine grace operates whenever human beings will the good. As shown above, a crucial issue in this treatise is the distinction between the letter that kills and the Spirit that gives life. This is the identical distinction between the Old Testament, signified by the Law written on tablets which strikes fear from without, and the New Testament, signified by the law written upon hearts which produces delight within. In the first case, man becomes a transgressor of a law that he cannot keep by his efforts alone, while in the second case, he becomes a lover of the things of God thanks to the Spirit that gives life. Augustine concludes Spir. et litt. 25.42 by quoting Phil 2:13 in order to demonstrate that God, through the indwelling Holy Spirit, operates on human beings internally.76 At the end of the same treatise, Augustine discusses the relationship between faith, human will, and divine grace, an issue also known as the problem of the initium fidei. If

 For a presentation of Augustine’s theology of the will, see A. Dupont and G. Malavasi, “The Question of the Impact of Divine Grace in the Pelagian Controversy. Human posse, uelle et esse according to Pelagius, Jerome, and Augustine,” RHE 112 (2017): 539–68 and H.-L. Kantzer Komline, Augustine on the Will: A Theological Account, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).  Pecc. merit. 2.18.30 (CSEL 60:101–2; WSA I/23:97, trans. Teske): “Non solum voluntatis arbitrium [. . .] sed etiam voluntatem bonam, quae jam in eis bonis est, quorum esse usus non potest malus, nisi ex deo nobis esse non posse, nescio quemadmodum defendamus quod dictum est: quid enim habes quod non accepisti? Nam si nobis libera quaedam voluntas ex deo est, quae adhuc potest esse vel bona vel mala, bona vero voluntas ex nobis est, melius est id quod a nobis quam quod ab illo est. Quod si absurdissime dicitur, oportet fateamur etiam bonam voluntatem nos divinitus adipisci.”  Spir. et litt. 25.42 (CSEL 60:195–6).

258

Giulio Malavasi

framed as a question, this problem asks, “who takes the first step in human faith: man or God?”77 After a lengthy argument, Augustine concludes in favor of God.78 His point of departure is to establish whether faith is in man’s power. Augustine states that human assent to faith is an act of someone who wants to believe, and this is in our power.79 However, according to Augustine, it is possible to believe only when we want to believe. In other words, before we can choose to believe, it is necessary that we already have the will to believe within us. If this step were in our power, then the assertion of 1 Cor 4:7 would be false. According to Augustine, Phil 2:13 shows that the will to believe is a gift of God.80 Augustine also clashed with Pelagius’s interpretation of human will in relation to Phil 2:13 in De gratia christi et de peccato originali (Grat. Chr.), the last treatise of the controversy’s first phase. In Grat. Chr. Augustine excerpted several passages from Pelagius’s Pro libero arbitrio, a treatise published soon after the synod of Diospolis. Pelagius distinguishes three moments in every action: the ability, posse; the willing, velle; and the being, esse. He believes that the ability belongs entirely to God, because God bestows the possibility of doing something on each creature. The willing and the being are attributed to the human person because they proceed from choice. However, Pelagius specifies that velle and esse belong also to God who bestows the ability and who always supplements this ability with grace.81 Augustine rejects this final claim. He sees Pelagius’s position as entrusting both the willing and the being of every action to humans. According to Augustine, Phil 2:13 shows that both willing and being derives from God.82 In his Pro libero arbitrio, Pelagius interprets Phil 2:13 as follows: God uses the promise of stillfuture glory and rewards to produce good willing in human beings. He does this through his divine wisdom and by consistently urging human beings towards the good. Augustine, however, interpreted Pelagius’s explanation as if it concerns only an external operation of divine grace on human willing and not also as a change of the human will from within, a point repeatedly stressed by Augustine in his anti-Pelagian theology.83

 Augustine also treated the problem of initium fidei before the Pelagian controversy, see V. H. Drecoll, “Paul as Scripture in the Young Augustine,” in BCNA I, 239–65, esp. 250, 252 and 259–61.  Spir. et litt. 31.53–34.60 (CSEL 60:209–21). See also D. Marafioti, L’uomo tra legge e grazia. Analisi teologica del De spiritu et littera di S. Agostino (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1983), 179–210; and Yam, Trinity and Grace, 541–77.  Spir. et litt. 31.54 (CSEL 60:210–2).  Spir. et litt. 33.57 (CSEL 60:215–6).  Grat. Chr. 1.4.5 (CSEL 42:127–8).  Grat. Chr. 1.5.6 (CSEL 42:128–30).  Grat. Chr. 1.10.11 (CSEL 42:133–5).

10 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 411–418 CE

259

Luke 1:6 and Human Righteousness Whether human beings are able to live sinlessly is another issue that was debated in the Pelagian controversy. Throughout the controversy, biblical characters were appealed to in order to discuss the possibility or the impossibility of a sinless life. What follows will explore how the righteousness of Zechariah and Elizabeth, as witnessed by Luke 1:6, was interpreted during the controversy. In Luke 1 the parents of John the Baptist, Zechariah and Elizabeth, are presented as praiseworthy worshipers of God. Long before the Pelagian controversy, Ambrose (d. 397), the well-regarded bishop of Milan whose authority was frequently invoked during the controversy, offered an explanation of this passage.84 As a prelude, it is noteworthy that the passage of Ambrose’s commentary on Luke in which the righteousness of Zechariah and Elizabeth is explained is heavily dependent upon Origen’s homily dedicated to this same passage.85 Ambrose begins his exegesis by invoking Job 14:4 to counter those who want to excuse their sins by claiming that no one is able to live without sin. Ambrose distinguishes between the complete absence of sins, which is impossible for human beings, and the possibility that one might cease sinning, which he sees as the true meaning of being without sin. Eph 5:27 (“so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind”), for instance, clearly shows that the members of the church are not spotless because they never had spots, but they are spotless because they ceased to have spots. Ambrose also underlines the necessity of divine grace in cooperation with human efforts to reach this result.86 Ambrose’s exegesis is particularly relevant because Pelagius quoted a passage from Ambrose’s commentary on Luke 1:6 in two of his treatises, De natura and Pro libero arbitrio. Unfortunately, Pelagius’s treatises are preserved almost exclusively as quotations embedded in works by Augustine, who simply reported that Pelagius quoted Ambrose, not the reasons why he did so.87 However, it is likely that Pelagius found Ambrose’s exegesis remarkably close to several core aspects of his own theology. The first similarity concerns the possibility of being without sin (posse esse sine peccato). Pelagius was particularly interested in preaching this possibility, even though his view was misinterpreted by his enemies. Jerome, for example, claimed that Pelagius preached sinlessness (impeccantia), by which he meant a degree of sanctification in which it is no longer

 For more on the use of Ambrose’s thought, writing, and legacy in the Pelagian controversy, see V. Grossi, “Sant’Ambrogio e sant’Agostino. Per una rilettura dei loro rapporti,” in Nec Timeo Mori. Atti del Congresso internazionale di studi ambrosiani nel XVI centenario della morte di sant’Ambrogio. Milano, 4–11 Aprile 1997, eds. L. F. Pizzolato and M. Rizzi (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1998), 405–62, and the literature cited there.  G. Malavasi, “’Erant autem ambo iusti ante Deum’ (Lc 1,6). Girolamo e l’accusa di origenismo contro Pelagio,” Adamantius 23 (2017): 247–54, esp. 251.  Ambrose, Exp. Luc. 1.17–18 (CSEL 32:21–2).  Nat. grat. 63.74 (CSEL 60:289); and Grat. Chr. 1.48.53 (CSEL 42:164).

260

Giulio Malavasi

possible to sin. Pelagius, however, never intended to preach such a doctrine: human beings need to be exhorted to perfection, but sin always remains a possibility in this life.88 The second similarity is that, even if it is impossible to find any human being who has not sinned from infancy to old age, it remains possible to stop sinning, as Pelagius himself claimed at the synod of Diospolis.89 Exegeses of the Zechariah and Elizabeth passage are also present in other sources penned during the Pelagian controversy. According to Augustine, Caelestius answered those who claimed that it is impossible for a human being to be righteous, as witnessed by Ps 143:2 (“no one living is righteous before you”), by quoting the example of Zechariah and Elizabeth.90 And both Jerome’s Dialogus adversus Pelagianos (Pelag.)91 and Orosius’s Liber apologeticus (Lib. apol.) discussed the importance of Luke 1:6 to Pelagius.92 Neither the possibility of living a sinless life nor of keeping God’s commandments is theoretically denied by Augustine, despite his insistence that both of these only become possible with the help of divine grace.93 For Augustine, the only one to ever fully realize these possibilities was Jesus Christ.94 Augustine claimed that no naturally-born human being was, is, or will be without sin because of original sin, of which every human being is guilty, and because of the natural inclination towards sin. As early as Pecc. Merit. Augustine was aware that Zechariah and Elizabeth were used by his adversaries as a proof that human beings can live without sin. In this treatise, Augustine counters this exegesis with a double demonstration of his own. First, Heb 7:26–27 (“For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he has no need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for those of the people; this he did once for all when he offered himself”) directly supports the idea that Zechariah, a high priest, though righteous and praiseworthy, is not without sins. Augustine observes that: to this series of priests there belonged Zechariah, Phinehas, and Aaron, who was the first in this order, as well as all the others who lived praiseworthy and righteous lives in that priesthood. Nonetheless, they needed to offer sacrifice first for their own sins, since Christ, whom they prefigured, was the only one who, as a spotless priest, did not need to do this.95

 M. Annecchino, “La nozione di impeccantia negli scritti pelagiani,” in Giuliano d’Eclano e l’Hirpinia Christiana: Atti del convegno 4–6 giugno 2003, ed. A. V. Nazzaro (Naples: Arte tipografica, 2004), 73–86.  Gest. Pelag. 6.16 (CSEL 42:68–9).  Perf. 17.38 (CSEL 42:38).  Pelag. 1.12 (CCSL 80:14).  Lib. apol. 21 (CSEL 5:637–8).  Pecc. merit. 2.6.7 (CSEL 60:77–8).  Pecc. merit. 2.20.34 (CSEL 60:105–6).  Pecc. merit. 2.13.19 (CSEL 60:91; WSA I/23:91, trans. Teske): “In hoc sacerdotum numero Zacharias, in hoc Finees, in hoc ipse Aaron, a quo iste ordo exorsus est, fuit et quicumque alii in illo sacerdotio laudabiliter justeque vixerunt, qui tamen habebant necessitatem sacrificium primitus pro suis offerre

10 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 411–418 CE

261

Apart from Christ, all the high priests, including Zechariah, had to offer sacrifices for their own sins, a fact which provides clear proof that they were not without sins. Second, Augustine offers an alternate explanation in which he compares the apostle Paul with Zechariah and Elizabeth. In Phil 3, Paul confesses his own imperfection, another valid reason to not consider the righteousness of Zechariah and Elizabeth as a proof of their actual sinlessness. Augustine concludes that “we are, then, so far from believing on the basis of those earlier words that Zechariah and Elizabeth possessed perfect righteousness without any sin that we do not think that even the apostle was perfect by the same lofty standard.”96 The same exegetical solution, at least in part, was also used in the other anti-Pelagian treatises. For example, in Perf., Augustine quotes Heb 7:26–27 to claim that Zechariah, like all the other human high priests, is not without sin.97 In Grat. Chr., in order to counter Pelagius’s appropriation of Ambrose, Augustine again proposes his explanation of the righteousness of Zechariah and Elizabeth, though he used only the second part of the explanation that is found in Pecc. Merit., namely, the comparison with the apostle Paul on the basis of Phil 3.98 Finally, Augustine also addresses the problem of Zechariah and Elizabeth in his Epistula (Ep.) 177. In this letter, his solution is only briefly referenced as he summarily links the role of Zechariah as a high priest with the necessity that high priests offer sacrifices first for their own sins and then for those of the people (cf. Heb 7:26–27).99

Romans 7:18–20 and Carnal Concupiscence In Rom 7, Paul recognizes the positive role played by the Law in teaching humanity what sin is even though, by itself, the Law cannot save. Here too Paul describes the situation of a man who is unable to do what he wants, even as he does what he hates thanks to the sinfulness that dwells within him. Only God, through the Lord Jesus Christ, will deliver and save such a wretched human being. It thus becomes clear that carnal concupiscence and its enduring effects are central to the passage’s meaning. The first exegetical problem related to this passage is the subject of Paul’s words. The tradition’s most common exegetical solution was to claim that Paul was not referring

peccatis solo Christo existente, cujus venturi figuram gestabant, qui hanc necessitatem sacerdos incontaminabilis non haberet.”  Pecc. merit. 2.13.20 (CSEL 60:92; WSA I/23:91–2, trans. Teske): “Tantum ergo longe est, ut propter illa verba Zachariam et Elisabeth credamus sine ullo peccato perfectam habuisse justitiam, ut nec ipsum apostolum ejusdem regulae summitate arbitremur fuisse perfectum.”  Perf. 17.38 (CSEL 42:38–9). Note that in this context no reference is made to any part of Paul’s letter to the Philippians.  Grat. Chr. 1.48.53 (CSEL 42:164). In this context, neither Heb 7:26–7 nor the role of Zechariah as high priest is mentioned by Augustine.  Augustine, Ep. 177.16 (CSEL 44:685–6). See also L. Dalmon, “La lettre 177,16–18 de saint Augustin, écho atténué à un conflit d’exégèse patristique au temps de la controverse pélagienne?,” ZAC 12 (2008): 544–61.

262

Giulio Malavasi

to himself even though he wrote in first person. For instance, Origen, in his commentary on the letters to the Romans, states that “it is the custom of Holy Scripture to imperceptibly change the personae and the subject matter and the reasons that it seems to discuss and the designations.”100 According to Origen, in this passage, Paul is not describing himself, but has taken up and is describing the situation of the weak person.101 A similar exegetical solution was adopted by Augustine in his writings prior to the Pelagian controversy such as Ad Simplicianum (Div. quaest. Simpl.). There he states that Paul is “speaking in the person of someone who is living under the Law and not yet under grace, who is actually drawn to do wrong under the mastery of covetousness and by the deceptive sweetness of forbidden sin.”102 Pelagius can be considered part of this same exegetical tradition. For instance, commenting on Rom 7:7, Pelagius states that “from here on he speaks in the person of one who accepts the law, that is, who first comes to know God’s commandments while he is still in the habit of breaking them.”103 In a fragment of his Pro libero arbitrio quoted by Augustine, Pelagius underlines that the subject of Rom 7 cannot be the converted Paul; rather, it must be a sinner still under the law: You want to interpret this as referring to the apostle, but all the men of the Church claim that he said this in the name of a sinner and a person still subject to the law, one who was held in the grip of a long-standing habit of sin as though forced to sin and who, though desiring the good with the will, still fell into evil in action.104

It is interesting to note that Pelagius’s Pro libero arbitrio was written to counter Jerome’s anti-Pelagian writings and that the latter’s Pelag. claims that in Rom 7 Paul is speaking about his own experiences.105 Modern scholars’ account of Augustine’s exegesis of this passage during the Pelagian controversy is not as uniform as one might expect. For instance, Marie-François  Origen, Comm. Rom. 6.9 (C. P. Hammond Bammel, Der Römerbriefkommentar des Origenes. Kritische Ausgabe der Übersetzung Rufins. Buch 4–6 [Freiburg: Verlag Herder, 1997], 508; trans. T. Scheck, Origen: Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Books 6–10 [Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2002], 37): “Moris est scripturae divinae et personas latenter et res et causas de quibus dicere videtur et nomina commutare.”  Comm. Rom. 6.9 (Hammond Bammel, Der Römerbriefkommentar, 509).  Div. quaest. Simpl. 1.1.9 (CCSL 44:14; WSA I/12:179, trans. Ramsey): “Loquitur enim adhuc ex persona hominis sub lege constituti nondum sub gratia, qui profecto trahitur ad male operandum concupiscentia dominante atque fallente dulcedine peccati prohibiti.”  Rom. 7.7 (Souter, Pelagius’ Expositions, 56; trans. De Bruyn, Pelagius’ Commentary, 102): “Hinc in persona ejus hominis loquitur qui legem accipit, id est, qui primum Dei mandata cognoscit, cum consuetudinem habeat delinquendi.”  Grat. Chr. 1.39.43 (CSEL 42:156; WSA I/23: 411, trans. Teske): “Hoc enim, quod tu de apostolo intellegere cupis, omnes ecclesiastici viri in peccatoris et sub lege adhuc positi asserunt eum dixisse persona, qui nimia vitiorum consuetudine velut quadam teneretur necessitate peccandi et quamvis bonum appeteret voluntate, usu tamen praecipitaretur in malum.”  Pelag. 2.2–3 (CCSL 80:54–56).

10 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 411–418 CE

263

Berrouard believes that Augustine gradually changed his interpretation. Before his debates with Julian of Aeclanum, Augustine understood Rom 7 as referring to a man still under the law and not yet freed by grace. It is only with the first book of De nuptiis et concupiscentia (Nupt.), that is, early in the controversy’s second phase, that Augustine ascribed this passage to the apostle Paul personally, i.e., that he claimed that in Rom 7 Paul was writing as a man under grace who was currently struggling against concupiscence.106 However, other scholars have pointed out that as early as Pecc. Merit. Augustine was reading Rom 7 as referring to a human being under grace and, to be more precise, to the apostle Paul himself.107 Regardless of the subject of Romans 7, Augustine frequently uses portions of this chapter, e.g., 7:18–20, to illustrate his theological position on carnal concupiscence. In Pecc. Merit. Book 2, Augustine explains that carnal concupiscence: is present in the little ones at birth, though its guilt is removed when little ones are baptized. It remains for the combat that is life, but it does not punish with damnation those who die before engaging in that combat. It holds unbaptized little ones enmeshed in guilt and draws them to damnation, like children of anger, even if they die as little ones. But in the case of baptized adults who have the use of reason, whenever the mind consents to that same concupiscence in order to sin, it is due to one’s own will.108

Human nature, therefore, is wounded by an evil which remains in the flesh, not because of the nature with which human beings were created, but because of its own subsequent sinfulness. As explained above, Augustine believes that the whole human race was present in Adam and that carnal concupiscence is one of the fundamental effects of Adam’s sin. According to Augustine, the evil present in human beings, i.e., carnal concupiscence, is perfectly described in Rom 7:18.109 Furthermore, Augustine quotes Rom 7:19–20 to describe the situation of a man who interiorly finds genuine pleasure in the

 M.-F. 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,” RechAug 16 (1981): 101–96. See also Kantzer Komline, Augustine on the Will, 161–5.  See, e.g., Pecc. merit. 2.12.17 (CSEL 60:89–90). Augustine does not explicitly state that Rom 7 refers to the apostle Paul, but this seems implicit. See J. Patout Burns, “The Interpretation of Romans in the Pelagian Controversy,” AugStud 10 (1979): 43–54, esp. 45; Delaroche, Saint Augustin, 264–8; and R. Dodaro, “Ego miser homo. Augustine, the Pelagian Controversy and the Paul of Romans 7:7–25,” Aug 44 (2004): 135–44. For a more moderate position, see: F. Van Fleteren, “Augustine’s Evolving Exegesis of Romans 7:22–23 in its Pauline Context,” AugStud 32 (2001): 89–114, esp. 108–13. See also T. F. Martin, Rhetoric and Exegesis in Augustine’s Interpretation of Romans 7:24–25a (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001).  Pecc. merit. 2.4.4 (CSEL 60:73; WSA I/23:80, trans. Teske): “Concupiscentia igitur tamquam lex peccati manens in membris corporis mortis hujus cum parvulis nascitur, in parvulis baptizatis a reatu solvitur, ad agonem relinquitur, ante agonem mortuos nulla damnatione persequitur; parvulos non baptizatos reos innectit et tamquam irae filios, etiamsi parvuli moriantur, ad condemnationem trahit. In grandibus autem baptizatis, in quibus jam ratione utentibus quicquid eidem concupiscentiae mens ad peccandum consensit, propriae voluntatis est.”  Pecc. merit. 2.4.4 (CSEL 60:73–5).

264

Giulio Malavasi

law of God, but also feels another law, i.e., carnal concupiscence, fighting against him in his members. It is the presence of carnal concupiscence that prevents this human being from doing the good.110 Finally, in Gest. Pelag., Augustine makes it clear that he reads Rom 7:18 as describing postlapsarian human nature as defective. It is noteworthy that Augustine never described human nature as evil in se. The defective human nature outlined in Rom 7 lacks the strength to act righteously or to attain perfection unless it is both liberated and enabled by divine grace.111

Conclusion Scripture and its interpretation were paramount during the Pelagian controversy. Pelagius’s commentary on the Pauline epistles and two Pelagian handbooks, one authored by Pelagius, the Liber Testimoniorum, and the other authored by Caelestius, the Definitiones, have clearly demonstrated the import of Scripture for Pelagius and Caelestius – both before and during the controversy. In fact, the protagonists in the controversy’s first phase, Augustine on one side and Pelagius and Caelestius on the other, opposed each other on multiple theological issues by grounding their argument in biblical exegesis. The case studies above are only a small sample culled from the lengthy list of biblical verses that were debated during this phase of the controversy. For instance, according to Augustine’s doctrine of original sin, every human being is guilty of Adam’s sin, an idea vigorously opposed by Pelagius and Caelestius. This debate was not based only – or even primarily – on Rom 5:12; it also depended on 1 Cor 15:22 (“For as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ”). Augustine sees the relationship between free will and divine grace such that the latter is required if humans are to will the good, a position completely foreign to Pelagius. This theological difference is based on Phil 2:13 and on Rom 9:16 (“so it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy”). Similarly, Pelagius, Caelestius, and Augustine all take the possibility of genuine human righteousness seriously, but with different views on the likelihood that it will be realized in this life. Pelagius and Caelestius believe that Zechariah and Elizabeth were completely righteous; Augustine downplays their righteousness. This debate involved not only Zechariah and Elizabeth, but also Job. Finally, carnal concupiscence, which, according to Augustine, is present in every human being – including Paul – as a penalty for Adam’s sin, was not only debated in relation to Rom 7, but also in relation to Gal 5:17 (“for what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want”). It is fair to claim that much of the complexity of the exegetical ramifications of the theological issues discussed during the Pelagian controversy is incompletely grasped by

 Pecc. merit. 2.12.17 (CSEL 60:89–90).  Gest. Pelag. 9 (CSEL 42:74).

10 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 411–418 CE

265

modern research. Many specific exegeses proposed during the controversy have not yet been thoroughly studied.112 Notwithstanding the amount of scholarly research yet to be done, the importance of exegesis during the Pelagian controversy naturally requires historical contextualization. Augustine and his adversaries, Pelagius and Caelestius, proposed completely different exegeses of numerous biblical passages. Moreover, both sides of the controversy charged the other with introducing new and innovative interpretations,113 interpretations that lacked any obvious connection to the mainstream of the church’s ancient tradition. However, the biblical interpretations of Augustine, Pelagius, and Caelestius, were, at least in part, all connected with specific strands of the Christian tradition. For instance, Origen influenced both Augustine and Pelagius, albeit in diverse ways,114 and Augustine’s doctrine of original sin can be traced back to the African tradition of Tertullian and Cyprian.115 At the same time, neither Augustine nor Pelagius simply reproduced the exegeses of their predecessors. Both produced new interpretations according to their own theological readings of Scripture. The protagonists of the Pelagian controversy contributed to the plurality and diversity of the exegetical positions within ancient Christianity. It would thus be a mistake to read any of them using the rigid categories of heresy and orthodoxy. Augustine, Pelagius, and Caelestius represented different facets of the efforts of the ancient church to comprehend and explain the manifold meanings of Scripture, especially those embedded within the letters of Paul. Given the vast number of Pauline passages debated during the Pelagian controversy, it would not be inaccurate to describe the Pelagian controversy as an extended debate about how to read and how to apply Paul’s thought.

 For instance, Ps 143:2 and Jas 2:10.  For Augustine’s accusation that the Pelagians were introducing novelties, see, e.g., Pecc. merit. 3.1.1 (CSEL 60:129). In sermo 294.20.19 (PL 38:1347), Augustine acknowledges that his enemies, i.e., the Pelagians, had accused him of introducing novelties.  G. Heidl, Origen’s Influence on the Young Augustine. A Chapter of the History of Origenism (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2009); A. J. Smith, “The Latin Sources of the Commentary of Pelagius on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans,” JTS 19 (1917–1918): 162–231; 20 (1919–1920): 53–65; 127–77; and S. Matteoli, Alle origini della teologia di Pelagio: Tematiche e fonti delle Expositiones XIII Epistularum Pauli (Pisa–Rome: Fabrizio Serra Editore, 2011).  A. Dupont, “Original Sin in Tertullian and Cyprian: Conceptual Presence and Pre-Augustinian Content?,” REAug 63 (2017): 1–29.

266

Giulio Malavasi

Further Reading Primary Sources Augustine. Answer to the Pelagians, translated by Roland J. Teske. Part I, vol. 23, The Works of Saint Augustine. A Translation for the 21st Century, edited by John E. Rotelle. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1997. Augustine. Sancti Aureli Augustini opera (sect VIII pars I): De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo parvulorum ad Marcellinum libri tres, De spiritu et littera liber unus, De natura et gratia liber unus, De natura et origine animae libri quattuor, Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum, edited by Carolus F. Urba and Iosephus Zycha. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 60. Vienna: Tempsky, 1913. Augustine. Sancti Aureli Augustini (sect. VIII, pars II). De perfectione iustitiae hominis, De gestis Pelagii, De gratia Christi et de peccato originali libri duo, De nuptiis et concupiscentia ad Valerium comitem libri duo, edited by Carolus F. Urba and Iosephus Zycha. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 42. Prague: Tempsky, 1902. Pelagius. Pelagius’ Commentary on St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: Translated with Introduction and Notes, translated by Theodore De Bruyn. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Pelagius. Pelagius’ Expositions of Thirteen Epistles of St. Paul II: Text and apparatus criticus, edited by Souter, Alexander. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926.

Secondary Sources Dalmon, Laurence. Un dossier de l’épistolaire augustinien: la correspondance entre l’Afrique et Rome à propos de l’affaire pélagienne (416–418): traduction, commentaire et annotations. Studia Patristica Supplements 3. Leuven: Peeters, 2015. Delaroche, Bruno. Saint Augustin lecteur et interprète de Saint Paul dans le De peccatorum meritis et remissione (hiver 411–412). Collection des Études Augustiniennes, Série Antiquité 146. Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1996. Dupont, Anthony. Gratia in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum during the Pelagian Controversy. Do Different Contexts Furnish Different Insights? Brill’s Series in Church History 59. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013. Kantzer Komline, Han-Luen. Augustine on the Will: A Theological Account. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Matteoli, Sara. Alle origini della teologia di Pelagio: Tematiche e fonti delle Expositiones XIII Epistularum Pauli. Pisa: Fabrizio Serra Editore, 2011. Nisula, Timo. Augustine and the Functions of Concupiscence. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 116. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Squires, Stuart. The Pelagian Controversy. An Introduction to the Enemies of Grace and the Conspiracy of Lost Souls. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2019. Wermelinger, Otto. Rom und Pelagius. Die theologische Position der römischen Bischöfe im pelagianischen Streit in den Jahren 411–432. Papste und Papsttum 7. Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1975.

Mathijs Lamberigts

11 Scripture in the Debate between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine, 418–430 CE Introduction With the condemnation of Pelagius and Caelestius by Emperor Honorius,1 as well as by the Council of Carthage (1 May 418) and Zosimus, the bishop of Rome (June 418), the latter being forced to follow the decisions of both Honorius and the bishops of Africa, the Pelagian controversy had seemingly come to an end.2 The change that Zosimus underwent with respect to this dossier, however, is remarkable. First, he had exonerated Pelagius and Caelestius on 21 September 417, a decision he made after a careful examination of their libelli fidei. He had summoned Paulinus of Milan3 to Rome (within two months) to make his case;4 however, half a year later, he condemned Pelagius and Caelestius and sent an Epistula tractoria to bishops all over the world informing them of his decision. The letter is only preserved in three fragments, and it is unclear whether Zosimus shared all the African positions.5 In any case, neither his predecessor Innocent nor Zosimus himself showed great familiarity with the African doctrine of original sin.6

 Rescript of Honorius (PL 56:490–2).  M. Lamberigts, “Co-operation between Church and State in the Condemnation of the Pelagians,” in Religious Polemics in Context. Papers presented to the Second International Conference of the Leiden Institute for the Study of Religions (LISOR) held at Leiden, 27–28 April 2000, eds. T. L. Hettema and A. van der Kooij, Studies in Theology and Religion 11 (Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 2004), 365–75.  On Paulinus, see C. Sotinel, “Paulinus,” AugLex 4:538–40.  See his letter Magnum pondus 8 (CSEL 35/1:102).  For the fragments, see O. Wermelinger, Rom und Pelagius. Die theologische Position der römischen Bischöfe im pelagianischen Streit in den Jahren 411–432, Päpste und Papsttum 7 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1975), 307. For analysis of their content, which are silent about crucial issues such as the guilt of original sin, see O. Wermelinger, “Das Pelagiusdossier in der Tractoria des Zosimus,” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 26 (1979): 336–68.  M. Lamberigts, “Was Innocent Familiar with the Content of the Pelagian Controversy? A Study of his Answers to the Letters sent by the African Episcopacy,” in Scrinium Augustini. The World of Augustine’s Letters, eds. P. Nehring, M. Strózynski, and R. Toczko, Research on the Inheritance of Early and Medieval Christianity 76 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 203–23. ✶

Mathijs Lamberigts is emeritus professor History of Church and Theology (Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies) KU Leuven. He is the director of the Augustinian Historical Institute. His publications in Latin Patrology mostly focus on the second phase of the Pelagian Controversy. Mathijs Lamberigts, KU Leuven https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-012

268

Mathijs Lamberigts

Some bishops were reluctant to sign the letter, and a group of eighteen or nineteen bishops from southern Italy openly refused to do so.7 Their leader was Julian of Aeclanum.

Julian of Aeclanum: A Biographical Sketch up to His Involvement in the Pelagian Controversy Julian of Aeclanum8 was born about 380 in Apulia, maybe in Aeclanum,9 where his father, Memor(ius) may have been bishop.10 Memorius was married to Juliana, and the family had three children: Julian and two daughters.11 The young Julian received a solid education and was familiar with classical and Christian literature.12 In the context of Julian’s formation, Memorius asked Augustine in 408/409 to send a copy of his De musica; at that time Julian was already a deacon.13 Augustine invited Memorius to send his son to Hippo, but there is no evidence that Julian ever went there. We do know, however, that Julian visited Carthage, probably in 409–410, where he met the Manichaean Honoratus, a friend of Augustine.14 In his controversy with Augustine, Julian would also demonstrate familiarity with other works of Augustine such as De duabus animabus and Confessiones (Conf.).15 Augustine would later describe him as the architect of the Pelagian doctrine.16 Meanwhile, Julian, who was then a lector in the church, married Ia or Titia, probably the daughter of the bishop of Beneventum, Aemilius. For this occasion, Paulinus of Nola, who was a friend both of Julian’s family and of Augustine, as well as an acquaintance of

 On the basis of what Augustine says in C. du. ep. Pelag. 1.1.3 (CSEL 60:424) it is difficult to determine whether Julian should be included among the eighteen bishops mentioned there.  On Julian of Aeclanum, see J. Lössl, Julian von Aeclanum. Studien zu seinem Leben, seinem Werk, seiner Lehre und ihrer Überlieferung, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 60 (Leiden: Brill, 2001); M. Lamberigts, “Iulianus Aeclanensis,” AugLex 3:836–47; and S. Squires, The Pelagian Controversy. An Introduction to the Enemies of Grace and the Conspiracy of Lost Souls (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2019), 144–60.  J. Lössl, “‘Te Apulia genuit’ (C. Jul. op. imp. 6.18). Some Notes on the Birthplace of Julian of Eclanum,” REAug 44 (1988): 223–39.  J. Lössl, Julian von Aeclanum, 44–7.  See Marius Mercator, Commonitorium lectori adversus haeresim Pelagii et Caelestii vel etiam scripta Juliani (ACO 1.5.1:9).  See Gennadius, De viris illustribus 46 (TU 14.1a:78). For further details and discussion, see M. Lamberigts, “Iulianus IV (Iulianus von Aeclanum),” RAC 19 (2001): 483–505; and Lössl, Julian von Aeclanum, 74–146.  Augustine, Ep. 101.4 (CCSL 31B:6).  Ad Florum 5.26 (CSEL 85/2:220). For more on Honoratus, see I. Bochet, “Honoratus: le destinataire de la Lettre 140 est-il l’ancien ami manichéen d’Augustin?,” in StPatr 38:8–15.  Lamberigts, “Iulianus Aeclanensis,” 836.  C. Jul. 6.11.36 (PL 44:842).

11 Scripture in the Debate between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine, 418–430 CE

269

Pelagius, wrote a wedding song (Carmen 25).17 We do not have any information about the marriage, but at the time of the controversy with Augustine Julian was living a life of continence.18 Julian became the bishop of Aeclanum during the pontificate of Innocent I.19 As bishop Julian took care of the poor during a famine.20 His education, marriage, and care for the poor make clear that he belonged to an aristocratic and well-to-do milieu, one in which Pelagius’s teaching was well received.21

Julian Enters the Debate When Zosimus sent out his Epistula tractoria, Julian, together with eighteen or nineteen colleagues from southern Italy refused to sign it.22 They could not accept that Zosimus had first acquitted Pelagius and Caelestius,23 and then, without organizing a council or even consulting bishops,24 had condemned them under pressure25 from the emperor and some Africans of doubtful orthodoxy.26 Zosimus forced simple bishops to submit to the condemnation of Pelagius and Caelestius.27 At first, Julian, via a conciliatory letter, asked Zosimus to reconsider his decision. In that letter Julian seemed to accept that death is the result of Adam’s fall and that Adam’s sin thus also harmed Adam’s progeny. Whether babies, God’s work, have the same status as Adam before the fall, however, was among the topics on which no authoritative decision had yet to be taken (indisciplinatas quaestiones).28 Neither a visit to Rome nor Julian’s appeal to Zosimus were successful.29 Julian was condemned by Zosimus.30

 For details, see Lössl, Julian von Aeclanum, 65–71.  C. Jul. 3.21.46 (PL 44:725); 5.12.46 (PL 44:810); and C. Jul. op imp. 3.177 (CSEL 85/1:477).  I.e., prior to 417. See Marius Mercator, Commonitorium super nomine Caelestii (ACO 1.5:68).  Gennadius, De viris illustribus 46 (TU 14,1a:78).  Julian, however, seldom mentions Pelagius by name in his debates with Augustine; cf. Ad Florum 4.88 (CSEL 85/2:91); and 4.112 (CSEL 85/2:119).  Augustine, C. du. ep. Pelag. 1.1.3 (CSEL 60:424). Opposition arose not only in southern Italy but also in Sicily and in northern Italy. See Ch. Pietri, Roma Christiana. Recherches sur l’Église de Rome, son organisation, sa politique, son idéologie de Miltiade à Sixte III (311–440), BEFAR 224 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1976), 947–8.  Julian, Turb. frg. 275 (CCSL 88:387).  Julian, Ep. ad Rufum, frg. 28 (CCSL 88:340); Turb. frg. 9 (CCSL 88:342); and frg. 271b (CCSL 88:387).  Julian, Ep. ad Rufum, frg. 2a (CCSL 88:337).  Julian, Turb. frg. 51 (CCSL 88:352).  Julian, Ep. ad Rufum, frg. 28 (CCSL 88:340).  For the content of this letter, see Marius Mercator (ACO 1.5.1:11–12). The fragments are listed in the Epistula ad Zosimum (CCSL 88:335–6).  Julian, Epistula ad Zosimum (CCSL 88:335–6).  A detail that is (at least) suggested by Augustine in C. Jul. 1.4.13 (PL 44:648).

270

Mathijs Lamberigts

The Initial Debates with Augustine As noted above, over the course of a dozen years, Julian and Augustine carried on a complex, detailed, and rather public debate.31 In this section, the extant remnants of the compositions through which this debate was conducted will be briefly summarized.

Book 1 of De nuptiis et concupiscentia32 In 418 or early 419 Augustine finished Book 1 of his work De nuptiis et concupiscentia (Nupt.), which he offered to Valerius.33 Central issues in this book are the question of original sin and the reality of innate carnal concupiscence, the former being the result of the fall and the latter making the baptism of children salvifically necessary (Nupt. 1.1.1).34 These topics were to arise repeatedly throughout the rest of the controversy. In Nupt. 1, Augustine argues that conjugal chastity is, like virginity, a gift of God,35 thus excluding any value in the chastity of pagans (Nupt. 1.3.3–1.4.4).36 Much attention is paid to the presence of carnal concupiscence.37 Concupiscence was absent from paradise before the fall but is now in revolt against human reason as a punishment for the revolt of Adam against God (Nupt. 1.5.6–1.6.7). Augustine distinguishes between concupiscence and marriage, describing marriage as a sacramentum (and thus indissoluble), intended for procreation (proles), and characterized by faithfulness (fides).38 The best marriage  For a concise chronological survey, see Lamberigts, “Iulianus Aeclanensis,” 840. With regard to Julian’s rhetorical skills, see D. Weber, “‘For What Is So Monstrous as What the Punic Fellow Says?’ Reflections on the Literary Background of Julian’s Polemical Attacks on Augustine’s Homeland”; and M. Lamberigts, “The Italian Julian of Aeclanum about the African Augustine of Hippo,” in Augustinus Afer: Saint Augustin, africanité et universalité: actes du colloque international, Alger-Annaba, 1–7 avril 2001, eds. P.-Y. Fux, J.-M. Roessli, and O. Wermelinger, Paradosis 45/1 (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires, 2003), 75–82 and 83–93, respectively.  In many senses, Augustine is urged to defend himself. Cf. T. Nisula, Augustine and the Functions of Concupiscence, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 116 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 213–5.  For the date, see Lamberigts, “Iulianus Aeclanensis,” 840; and J. Lössl, “Nuptiis et concupiscentia (De),” AugLex 4:261.  Rom 5:12 does not play an important role in Book 1; in fact, it is quoted only in that book’s introductory chapter.  On Augustine’s view of chastity, see A. Zumkeller, “Castitas, castus,” AugLex 1:784–7.  The requirements of conjugal chastity are also discussed in Nupt. 1.13.14–1.17.19. Augustine pays much attention to 1 Cor 7 and uses it to support his claim that sexual intercourse in the context of marriage without the intention to procreate is a venial sin. For Augustine’s view of venial sins, see M. Lamberigts, “Peccatum,” AugLex 4:594–6.  Augustine’s view of concupiscentia sexualis is most visibly present in his debate with Julian. See G. Bonner, “Concupiscentia,”AugLex 1:1119–21.  For a survey of Augustine’s view in the debate with Julian, see E. Schmitt, Le mariage chrétien dans l’œuvre de saint Augustin. Une théologie baptismale de la vie conjugale (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1983), 192–212.

11 Scripture in the Debate between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine, 418–430 CE

271

was that of Joseph and Mary, united in virginity (cf. Luke 2 and Nupt. 1.7.8–1.12–13). After the fall, human beings were tainted with carnal concupiscence, which has resulted in the body’s disobedience (especially the sexual organs) to the soul, and in original sin,39 which is present in all from the day of their birth and is the reason why the baptism of children is needed (Nupt. 1.18.20; 1.22.24; and 1.24.27). The agitation of concupiscence remains in the baptized, but by the grace of God through Christ people can gradually overcome it, especially as they get older. Nevertheless, the complete absence of concupiscence is not for this life, as becomes clear from the case of Paul in Rom 7:7–25 (Nupt.1.25.28–1.33.39).40

Julian’s Reply: Ad Turbantium Julian replied to this work with the four books of Ad Turbantium (Turb.), which was written in 419,41 and which was directed to his episcopal colleague Turbantius, who had initially refused to sign the Epistula tractoria but who later changed his mind.42 In the

 See P. van Geest, “Nuptiae,” AugLex 4:255–6, with further bibliography. For a detailed study of Augustine’s view of original sin, see M. Lamberigts, “Peccatum originale,” AugLex 4:599–615, with further bibliography.  Rom 7:7–25, in which Paul describes the agitation of the flesh, is central for Augustine. Verses 15 (“For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate”), 18 (“For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh, For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out”), 23 (“But I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members”), and 24 (“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death”) are all incorporated in order to argue that, because of the fall, the inner harmony in human beings has been disturbed and that all suffer from the evil of carnal concupiscence. On Augustine’s evolution with regard to the exegesis of Romans 7, see M.-F. 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’,” RechAug 16 (1981): 101–95. Against Julian, Augustine argues that the Christian Paul is speaking about his ongoing and deplorable situation, despite the fact that Paul had already been baptized.  Given Julian’s quick response (the excerpts were ready before Alypius left Italy in the spring of 420), it seems likely that Julian was still in Italy when he wrote Turb. M. Zelzer, “Iulianum (Contra -),” AugLex 3:812, suggests that Julian only completed this book after he was with Theodore of Mopsuestia. For support she refers to Marius Mercator, Commonitorium lectori adversus haeresim Pelagii et Caelestii vel etiam scripta Iuliani (ACO 1.5:23). However, Mercator only speaks about the eight books of Ad Florum; he says nothing about Turb. Moreover, if Julian had been with Theodore, it seems difficult to see how Julian’s answer could have made it back to Italy in 419 or early 420, i.e., in time for the aforementioned excerpts to be generated.  On Turbantius, see Ch. Pietri-L. Pietri, Prosopographie de l’Italie chrétienne (314–604), PCBE 2 (Rome: École française de Rome, 2000), 2218–9, s.v. Turbantius. When Julian wrote his Ad Florum, he still regarded Turbantius as a confrere; see, e.g., Ad Florum 1.1 (CSEL 85/1:5); and 4.30 (CSEL 85/2:29). In his reply, Augustine makes it clear that Turbantius abandoned the Pelagian positions. See C. Jul. op. imp. 1.1 (CSEL 85/1:5); 2.11 (CSEL 85/1:170); 4.30 (CSEL 85/2:29); and 5.4 (CSEL 85/2:172). We also know

272

Mathijs Lamberigts

preserved fragments of Turb., Julian accuses Augustine of still being a Manichaean in his views about human nature, sexuality, and the like.43 Julian also complains that no serious judgment had been allowed with regard to this matter. He criticizes the way in which the Africans had caused unrest in Italy, thus disturbing the peace of the Italian church. Julian also defends himself against accusations such as being opposed to baptism of children. He defends the goodness of Creator and creation, of marriage, sexual intercourse within the context of marriage, and children, the fruit of marital intercourse. He also insists that grace and free will do not exclude each other.44

Book 2 of De nuptiis et concupiscentia Excerpts (chartulae) of this treatise that truncated the content of Julian’s book were sent by Valerius to Augustine via Alypius,45 who had recently returned from Italy.46 Augustine refutes these excerpts in the second book of Nupt., which was finished in 420/1.47 Against the objections found in the Chartulae, Augustine uses John 8:36 to argue that true freedom is a gift of grace (Nupt. 2.3.8).48 Augustine defends himself against the accusation of Manichaeism, distinguishing between the good creation, harmed and vitiated but in essence still good, and the Manichaean dualism between two substances, one good, the other evil (Nupt. 2.3.9). He pays much attention to concupiscence and its relation to sin and marriage,49 considering lust, a vice, to be the problem. Human beings, who are created by God, are not the problem (Nupt. 2.4.10–2.9.22).50 He argues that concupiscence (an evil) is still useful for procreation, which is a good (malo bene utitur; Nupt. 2.10.23–2.15.30). Replying to Julian’s objections against original sin, he distinguishes between the good of

that, by 428, Turbantius had reconciled with Pope Celestinus. In Ep. 10.1 (CSEL 88:46), addressed to Alypius, Augustine states that he learned this detail from a trustworthy source.  Julian repeated this accusation throughout the controversy. See M. Lamberigts, “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), eds. J. van Oort, O. Wermelinger, and G. Wurst, Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 49 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 113–36. J. van Oort, “Was Julian Right? A Re-Evaluation of Augustine’s and Mani’s Doctrines of Sexual Concupiscence and the Transmission of Sin: Part 2,” Journal of Early Christian History 8.2 (2018): 1–15, suggests that Julian was right.  See M. Lamberigts, “Julian of Aeclanum: A Plea for a Good Creator,” Augustiniana 38 (1988): 5–24.  It also truncated Augustine’s positions. Indeed, in his summary Augustine complains about several omissions of his own words; see Nupt. 2.2.3–2.2.6 (CSEL 42:254–8).  See Nupt. 2.1.1–2.2.2 (CSEL 42:253–4).  For the date, see Lamberigts, “Iulianus Aeclanensis,” 840; and J. Lössl, “Nuptiis et concupiscentia (De),” 261–2. Cf. n33 supra.  See V. H. Drecoll, “Gratia,” AugLex 3:216–20, with further bibliography.  See Nisula, Augustine and the Functions of Concupiscence, 115–6.  In this regard, Augustine uses the concept natura vitiata. See J. Söder, “Natura,” AugLex 4:173–5, with bibliography.

11 Scripture in the Debate between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine, 418–430 CE

273

marriage and the evil of concupiscence, and he refutes the critique that accepting original sin may result in rejecting the goodness of marriage (Nupt. 2.19.34–2.24.39). Here, Augustine offers an extensive, contextual exegesis of Rom 5:12 and, on the basis of many passages of Scripture as well as an appeal to tradition,51 concludes that original sin exists (Nupt. 2.25.40–2.32.55) and that it is the reason why children must be baptized. Pelagians are accused of questioning the need for baptism because they deny the existence of an original sin,52 and are asked to allow parents to offer their children to Jesus, the one who died for all, including infants (Nupt. 2.33.55–2.35.60).

Two Letters by Julian During a visit to Boniface, the new bishop of Rome, Alypius received from him, sometime before March 420,53 a copy of a letter that Julian had sent to people in Rome after his rupture with Zosimus54 as well as a copy of the letter that Julian had sent to Rufus of Thessalonica.55 In the first letter, Julian accuses Augustine of Manichaeism. He sums up his views in a list of consequences when one is expected to accept the doctrine of original sin: people will lose the freedom to do the good, for they are put under the necessity of the flesh (C. du. ep. Pelag. 1.2.4).56 Julian maintains that in such a view marriage was not founded by God (C. du. ep. Pelag. 1.5.9). The letter further maintains that, under the doctrine of original sin, the saints of the Old Testament passed away in sin (C. du. ep. Pelag. 1.7.12), and that the same was to be said for the apostles (C. du. ep. Pelag. 1.8.13). Even Christ was not without sin (C. du. ep. Pelag. 1.12.25). Finally, baptism was regarded as ineffective, since the roots of evil remain in the flesh (C. du. ep. Pelag. 1.13.26). A correct, Catholic view would be that human beings naturaliter possess a free will (C. du. ep. Pelag. 1.15.29), that God is the founder of marriage, that sexual intercourse is willed by God (Gen 1:28; C. du. ep. Pelag. 1.15.30ff), and that human beings as creations of a good God are themselves responsible for their good and evil deeds (C. du. ep. Pelag. 1.18.36). The letter insists on the need for all, including babies, to be baptized (C. du. ep. Pelag. 1.22.40). The letter condemns the idea that baptism does not forgive all sins (C. du. ep. Pelag. 1.23.41).

 The following verses are repeatedly invoked throughout the debate: Ps. 50:7: “I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins my mother nourished me in the womb”; Sir 40:1: “There is a heavy yoke upon the children of Adam from the day they leave the womb of their mother until the day of their burial in the mother of all”; 1 Cor 15:22a: “In Adam all die.”  On this issue, which very much dominated the Pelagian controversy, see G. Bonner, “Baptismus parvulorum,” AugLex 1:595–8. Neither Pelagius nor Julian ever held this position; for discussion, see esp. 1:595–6.  See Ep. 22.1.1 (CSEL 88:113).  For the fragments, see Epistula quam ad Romanos misisse dicebatur Iulianus (CCSL 88:396–8).  C. du. ep. Pelag.1.1.3 (CSEL 60:425). For the preserved fragments, see CCSL 88:336–40.  With regard to Julian’s view that necessitas was an essential part of one’s created nature, and for the distinction between this natural order and the order of the will, see, e.g., F. Refoulé, “Julien d’Éclane, theologie et philosophe,” RSR 54 (1964): 42–84.

274

Mathijs Lamberigts

In the second letter, more elaborate than the first but tackling similar ideas, the accusation of Manichaeism returns (C. du. ep. Pelag. 2.1.1). The second letter also accuses the Roman clergy of treachery (C. du. ep. Pelag. 2.3.5 and 2.4.8) and complains that bishops had been forced to subscribe to decisions made without their knowledge or consultation (C. du. ep. Pelag. 4.12.34). The African concept of grace is described as a promotion of the Stoic fatum (C. du. ep. Pelag. 2.5.9).57 It is suggested that in this view grace does not fully forgive sins (cf. the carnal concupiscence that remains; C. du. ep. Pelag. 3.3.4). The doctrine of the transmission of sin is also criticized (C. du. ep. Pelag. 3.10.26).58 The letter defends the freedom of the will (C. du. ep. Pelag. 4.2.2).59 Crucially Julian asserts that only Adam’s death went over to his progeny, not the guilt of his sin (C. du. ep. Pelag. 4.1.1; 4.2.2; and 4.4.6). The letter also defends the goodness of the Law (C. du. ep. Pelag. 4.5.10), describes grace in terms of help given by the Holy Spirit, who supports good intentions, but who does not compel people (C. du. ep. Pelag. 4.2.2) and concludes that the doctrine of original sin is stupid and impious (C. du. ep. Pelag. 4.12.33).

Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum: Refuting Julian’s Letters In the four books of C. du. ep. Pelag., which were written in 420/421,60 Augustine replies to both Pelagian letters.61 This work was probably delivered to Boniface by Alypius before 4 September 422, the day Boniface died.62 In Book 1 Augustine first defends his view of free will, primarily by quoting Rom 6:20–22 and insisting on the truth of John 8:36: “If

 For Julian’s view of grace as relational and, thus, as presupposing a responsible answer from a free human being, see M. Lamberigts, “Julian of Aeclanum on Grace: Some Considerations,” in StPatr 27:342–9.  P. F. Beatrice, The Transmission of Sin: Augustine and the pre-Augustinian Sources (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 220, sees similarities between the Greek critique of original sin and Julian’s position, a suggestion that deserves further research.  The letter also mentions the question of the soul’s origin. For Augustine the question was irrelevant; for Julian, however, it was essential. Julian believed that God alone was the Creator of the soul and, therefore, that no sin could be found in babies, since sin is always to be situated on the level of the soul. See M. Lamberigts, “Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine on the Origin of the Soul,” Augustiniana 46 (1996): 243–60.  Augustine’s positions – at least with regard to concupiscence – are redundant; see Nisula, Augustine and the Functions of Concupiscence, 117.  See Lamberigts, “Iulianus Aeclanensis,” 840; and T.G. Ring, “Duas epistulas Pelagianorum (Contra -),” AugLex 2:673.  Julian, Ad Florum 1.85 (CSEL 85/1:97). On Alypius’ travels, see O. Perler, Les voyages de saint Augustin (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1969), 363. M.-F. Berrouard, “Un tournant dans l’Église d’Afrique: les deux missions d’Alypius en Italie à la lumière des Lettres 10*, 15*, 16*, 22* et 23*A de saint Augustin,” REAug 31 (1985): 46–70, esp. 62–63, questions Julian’s trustworthiness. However, O. Wermelinger, “Alypius,” AugLex 1:263–4, offers good arguments for the plausibility of such travel. Julian informs the reader that Book 2 of Nupt. was brought to Valerius by Alypius; see Ad Florum 1.52 (CSEL 85/1:45).

11 Scripture in the Debate between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine, 418–430 CE

275

the Son sets you free, then you will truly be free” (C. du. ep. Pelag. 1.2.4–1.4.8).63 Augustine emphasizes the goodness of Christian marriage and procreation (cf. Gen 2:24), even though babies are born subject to original sin (C. du. ep. Pelag. 1.5.9–1.6.11). Regarding concupiscence, Augustine offers an extensive exegesis of Rom 7,64 making it clear that Paul himself, even as a Christian, had admitted that he did not do what he wanted to do, thus emphasizing the need for Christ’s grace (C. du. ep. Pelag. 1.8.13–1.11.24). The problematic character of concupiscence (cf. shame; difficulty in controlling it; now part of our vitiated nature) is discussed in C. du. ep. Pelag. 1.16.32–1.17.36. In the second part of Book 1, Augustine offers his view of the relationship between grace and free will (cf. 1.18.36–1.20.38). He insists that, although baptism takes away guilt, concupiscence remains in the baptized and that its presence is proof that original sin was transmitted from Adam to his progeny and that all are born with guilt (cf. 1.22.40–1.23.41). Throughout the work, Augustine repeatedly refutes the accusation that he remains a Manichaean. The letter to Rufus received much attention: Augustine devoted Books 2, 3, and 4 to refuting it.65 At the beginning of Book 2, he offers a careful analysis of the differences between Manichaeism, Pelagianism, and the Catholic position (cf. C. du. ep. Pelag. 2.1.1–2.2.4). He defends and justifies the attitude of the Roman clergy in the Pelagian affair (he had received the letter from Pope Boniface; cf. C. du. ep. Pelag. 2.3.5–2.4.8). He challenges the idea that his view of grace amounts to fatum (“fate” or “destiny”). In this context and while paying substantial attention to Rom 9, he comments on the inscrutable justice of God who elects one (Jacob) but not the other (Esau), thus demonstrating grace’s gratuity (cf. C. du. ep. Pelag. 2.5.9–2.10.22). In Book 3, much time and energy are invested in the effects caused by baptism, even though sinfulness remains (C. du. ep. Pelag. 3.2.2–3.3.5). On both the relationship between the Old and the New Testaments and the lives of the Old Testament saints, Augustine, appealing to Paul, offers his own view in C. du. ep. Pelag. 3.4.6–3.4.14., showing the centrality of Christ in the whole process. Augustine insists on the importance of faith in salvation: merits are a result of faith, not its cause. Augustine also argues that the faithful are able to make spiritual progress in this life (cf. C. du. ep. Pelag. 3.5.14–3.6.17), but that perfection will only be received and realized in the life to come (C. du. ep. Pelag. 3.7.17–23). Augustine avoids discussing the origin of the soul, considering it unnecessary (C. du. ep. Pelag. 3.10.26).66  This argument will return in C. du. ep. Pelag. 2.2.2.  Rom 7 had already received substantial attention in Nupt. 1.27.30–1.31.36 (CSEL 42:242–8) and it would become one of Augustine’s favorite passages of Scripture for emphasizing the internal struggle between flesh and spirit.  It is interesting to note that Augustine, who constantly accused Julian of loquacity, needed four books in order to answer these two letters.  Augustine struggled with the problem of the soul’s origin until the end of his life, admitting that it was an obscure and exceedingly difficult question. For discussion, see, e.g., J. Rist, Augustine. Ancient Thought Baptized (Cambridge: CAP, 1994), 317–20; and Lamberigts, “Julian and Augustine on the Origin of the Soul,” 250–1.

276

Mathijs Lamberigts

In Book 4, Augustine reintroduces the five things that the Pelagians praise: creation, marriage, law, free will, and the saints. In this list he detects three heresies: (1) the denial of original sin (in context, Augustine exegetes Rom 5:12; cf. C. du. ep. Pelag. 4.4.7–8); (2) the exaltation of free will while reducing the definition of grace down to simple help; and (3) the insistence that holiness in this life is possible for the saints,67 coupled with the implication that prayer for forgiveness is unnecessary.68 Augustine responds to all these heretical points by drawing heavily from the letters of Paul (esp. Romans and Galatians) and by quoting Ezek 36 extensively (cf. C. du. ep. Pelag. 4.2.2–4.7.19). As in Nupt. 2, the book ends with an impressive dossier of auctoritates, with an especial reliance upon Cyprian and Ambrose (C. du. ep. Pelag. 4.8.20–4.11.31). Although Julian seemingly was aware of the existence of these two letters,69 no reply to them is preserved.

Contra Julianum: Augustine’s Full Reply to Ad Turbantium Meanwhile Augustine received the full text of Julian’s Turb. and realized that he had replied to a truncated text.70 He thus decided to offer an extensive answer to the four books of Turb.71 Because Julian had complained about the absence of a valid jury to judge his case, Books 1–2 survey the positions of auctoritates as requested by Julian.72 The subject of Book 3 was the defence of the goodness of marriage. The presence of concupiscence in sexual intercourse and the suffering of children are invoked as proof of the transmission of original sin (cf. 3.2.7–3.6.13). Augustine defends at length his view that the presence of evil in human beings does not contradict the goodness of creation as such (cf. 3.8.17–3.11.23). The topic of marriage and concupiscence comes up again in 3.13.26–3.21.51, where Augustine observes that the two sides’ differing views of marriage and concupiscence constitute the heart of the dispute. In 3.26.59–66 Augustine argues

 Julian’s point is not that the saints of the Old Testament were sinless but that they were capable of being converted. The doctrine of impeccantia is developed neither in Pelagius, nor in Julian. The accusation of holding to that doctrine is levelled against them by Jerome. See his Dialogi contra Pelagianos 1.26; 2.16; 3.3; and 3.12 (CCSL 80:33; 74–5; 100–1; and 113).  On the role of prayer in Augustine’s debate with the Pelagians, see A. Vinel, “L’argument liturgique opposé par Saint Augustin aux Pélagiens,” Questions Liturgiques 68 (1987): 209–41.  Ad Florum 1.94 (CSEL 85/1:106–9).  Nisula, Augustine and the Functions of Concupiscence, 118, rightly observes that it is at this point that the conflict begins escalating.  Ep. 207 (CSEL 57:341–2), written to Bishop Claudius, who had forwarded the full text of Julian’s Turb., makes this very clear. Augustine was very concerned about his reputation and took great pains to show that he had no hand in generating the truncated version. Cf. also Retract. 2.62 (CCSL 57:139).  see M. Lamberigts, “Augustine’s Use of Tradition in the Controversy with Julian of Aeclanum,” Augustiniana 60 (2010): 11–61; and M. Ribreau, “La constitution du dossier patristique du Contra Iulianum d’Augustin,” Augustiniana 69 (2019): 239–75 (including a helpful list of the invoked authorities on 265–75).

11 Scripture in the Debate between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine, 418–430 CE

277

that the first sin changed human nature as is evident from reading Paul (cf. Rom 7:15–25 and Gal 5:16–21).73 In Book 4, Augustine criticizes Julian’s view that one can speak of virtues and of an ethical way of life among pagans, a position defended by Julian on the basis of Rom 2:14 (4.3.14–33).74 For Augustine, one can only qualify ethical life as good when it is done within the context of the Christian faith and, thus, propter Deum. Augustine insists on the importance of salvation through Christ (with quotations from and references to Rom 5:9 and related verses), and on the fact that the first initiative for salvation can only come from God (4.8.40–52). That the first sin caused shame is for Augustine an argument for a negative evaluation of concupiscence (cf. 4.9.53–4.14.74). Going further regarding concupiscence, Augustine repeats that it is an evil that married people can make good use of when they procreate. In Book 5, Augustine criticizes Julian’s view concerning the goodness of nature by referring to the suffering and death that babies frequently undergo while they are still babies. Gen 3:7ff., on the shame of Adam and Eve after the fall, is proof that concupiscence is an evil. Augustine also pays considerable attention to sin as poena peccati (5.2.5–5.3.10). Furthermore, Augustine explains that, because of original sin, all are vasa irae (5.3.13–5.4.14; cf. Rom 9:22). He avoids answering the question of how original sin can be present in a soul created by God (5.4.17), but extensively discusses the struggle between carnal concupiscence and the human mind (5.5.19–5.7.30). Augustine rejects the idea that concupiscence belongs to the ordo creationis and thus is natural to being human. By appealing to the family of Nazareth, among other arguments, he refutes Julian’s view that a marriage without sexual intercourse, for which concupiscence is needed, can no longer be qualified as a physical, as opposed to a spiritual, marriage (cf. 5.8.31– 5.12.48). Unbaptized children who pass away end up in hell, though their punishment will be very mild (5.11.44).75 At the end of Book 5, Augustine deals with Julian’s objection that original sin cannot be present in baptized parents. In his answer Augustine will invoke the idea that Christ came into the world in the “likeness” of the caro peccati (5.15.52–58; Rom 8:3).76 Augustine then turns the tables on Julian by asserting that it is Julian, not Augustine, who is the true Manichaean (5.16.59–64). In Book 6, Augustine repeats the claim that postlapsarian humanity is under the devil’s power due to concupiscence (6.2.3–5). Augustine offers a long explanation about the

 See Nisula, Augustine and the Functions of Concupiscence, 334–40. On Gal 5:17 in Augustine’s debate with Julian, see M. Ciccarelli, “L’esegesi di Gal. 5,17 nella polemica di Agostino con Giuliano d’Eclano,” in Giuliano d’Eclano e l’Hirpinia Christiana. Giuliano il biblista e l’agiografia irpina (secoli V–IX). III Convegno internazionale Mirabella Eclano, 22–24 ottobre 2015, ed. J. A. Gaytán Luna (Avellino: Printì, 2019), 187–215.  On Augustine’s view of pagans, see Chr. Tornau, “Paganus,” AugLex 4:446–55, with further bibliography.  C. Jul. 5.11.44 (PL 44:809): “. . . in damnatione omnium levissima.”  On Rom 8:3, see D. Keech, The Anti-Pelagian Christology of Augustine of Hippo, 396–430, Oxford Theological Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 101–4.

278

Mathijs Lamberigts

purpose of Romans (with many quotations from Rom 5 and 6), thus providing scriptural support for his doctrine of original sin and his emphasis on the need for Christ’s grace (cf. 6.4.8–6.5.14). In answer to Julian’s arguments that both on a logical and ontological level one cannot demonstrate the fact of original sin and that the presence of original sin in babies born of baptized parents is implausible, Augustine appeals to the example of the domesticated and wild olive trees and distinguishes between personal sins and original sin (cf. 6.6.15–6.10.33). Augustine also attempts to reconcile original sin and guilt with God’s justice.77 The relation between body, concupiscence, and sin is discussed at length in 6.14.41–6.18.58: Augustine explains that baptism takes away guilt, but not suffering, death, or carnal concupiscence. We will only be liberated from these elements in the life to come (cf. 6.19.58–62). At the end of Book 6 Augustine first discusses the correct understanding of Rom 7 (cf. 6.23.70–74) and Julian’s view of Rom 5:12 (cf. 6.24.75–6.25.82).

Julian in Exile: Ad Florum versus Contra Julianum opus imperfectum When the Pelagians were condemned again in the spring of 419, Julian and his colleagues went into exile.78 We do not know exactly when they left Italy.79 Julian initially took refuge with Theodore of Mopsuestia,80 who, in a treatise entitled Against Those Who Imagine that Humans Sin by Nature and Not by Decision Making, was probably criticizing Jerome’s work against the Pelagians, a view that made him sympathetic to someone like Julian.81 Although it is unclear whether he was still in Italy or already with Theodore, it was about this time that Julian had received Book 2 of Nupt. Julian

 On this issue, see infra.  For the details, see M. Lamberigts, “Augustine and Julian of Aeclanum on Zosimus,” Augustiniana 43 (1993): 323–8.  See Lössl, Julian von Aeclanum, 288–9.  See Lössl, Julian von Aeclanum, 292–4. G. Di Palma, “Rom. 5,12 nella polemica tra Agostino e Giuliano di Eclano,” in Giuliano d’Eclano e l’Hirpinia Christiana, 253–4.  On Theodore, see G. Malavasi, “The Involvement of Theodore of Mopsuestia in the Pelagian Controversy. A Study of Theodore’s Treatise Against Those Who Say That Men Sin by Nature and Not by Will,” Augustiniana 64 (2014): 227–60; and N. Kavvadas, “An Eastern View. Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Against the Defenders of Original Sin,” in Grace for Grace. The Debates after Augustine and Pelagius, eds. A. Y. Hwang, B. J. Matz, and A. Casiday, (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2014), 271–93. For the suggestion that Theodore adopted Julian’s ideas when the former was writing against the teachings of Jerome and Augustine on original sin, see J. Lössl, “Julian of Aeclanum’s Tractatus in Osee, Iohel, Amos. Some Notes on the Current State of Research,” Augustiniana 51 (2001): 18–19.

11 Scripture in the Debate between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine, 418–430 CE

279

was (rightly) upset about the way his views were presented in the excerpts,82 and he answered it with Ad Florum, a very long, i.e., eight-book reply. This book was written sometime between 422 and 427 and addressed to Julian’s colleague Florus.83 Alypius obtained a copy while he was in Rome in 427/428, and immediately asked Augustine to generate a reply.84 This unique response, known as Contra Julianum opus imperfectum (C. Jul. op. imp.), was forestalled when, in August of 430, Augustine died. At that point, he had only replied to the first six books. For each point Augustine quotes the complete text of Julian and then offers an answer. Augustine clearly wanted to avoid further complaints about truncating and falsifying Julian’s work. If one truly wishes to know Julian’s views on Augustine’s doctrine of original sin and its consequences, on grace and free will, etc., then one must concentrate on this work, precisely because it features a constant interplay between Julian and Augustine.85 By way of introduction, it bears noting that Julian’s accusation that Augustine had remained a Manichaean is a consistent feature of Ad Florum as a whole (see, e.g., 1.1–2; 1.49–51; 2.117–21; 2.31–7; 2.52–3; 2.104–5 etc.). God’s justice, which, according to Julian, Augustine called into question is discussed in 1.28–40. The next issue in the debate is how to define sin (1.41–48). The reason for baptizing infants (the disagreement is not about whether they need to be baptized, but why) is debated in 1.53–58. Julian’s critique that original sin de facto leads to a condemnation of marriage and of human nature is the focus of 1.61–67. It goes without saying that the two opponents interpret the reality of suffering and death differently (1.68–72), a fact made clear in their respective treatments of Rom 7 and Gal 5.86 In 1.78, Julian offers his definition of free will and relates it to the just character of God’s judgements. Julian underpins his arguments by discussing the freedom promised by Jesus in detail (1.78–94). Julian then explains his view of grace (1.95–98). Julian accuses Augustine of teaching that sin is a necessity (necessitas; 1.99–108).87 Julian presents his view of God as just and loving in 1.122–7. The correct understanding of Rom 9 (the election of Jacob and the rejection of Esau; the imagery of God as the potter of clay vessels) is the subject of debate in 1.131–140.

 See his vehement reaction in Ad Florum 1.16 (CSEL 85/1:13); 1.17 (CSEL 85/1:16); 1.21 (CSEL 85/1:17); 1.22 (CSEL 85/1:18–19); 1.23 (CSEL 85/1:20); and 5.6 (CSEL 85/2:173).  See Marius Mercator, Commonitorium lectori adversus haeresim Pelagii et Caelestii vel etiam scripta Iuliani (ACO 1.5:23). While Mercator must always be read with care, he seems more trustworthy here. On Mercator’s reliability, see W. Dunphy, “Marius Mercator on Rufinus the Syrian: Was Schwartz mistaken?,” Aug 32 (1992): 279–88.  See Ep. 224.2 (CSEL 57:451–4). For this letter’s date, see J. Divjak, “Epistulae C II 1,” AugLex 2:997; and Berrouard, “Un tournant dans la vie de l’Église d’Afrique,” 64.  Since Augustine’s procedure is to quote Julian’s Ad Florum in full and then refute Julian’s views point-by-point, in what follows both works will be discussed together.  Nisula, Augustine and the Functions of Concupiscence, 344–5.  Nisula, Augustine and the Functions of Concupiscence, 340–2.

280

Mathijs Lamberigts

In Book 2, the focus is on Rom 5:12–21 in the broader context of Paul’s letter. Julian first refutes Augustine and then offers his own interpretation. Augustine defends, at length and for the last time, the legitimacy of his interpretation. The correct understanding of justice is the focus of Book 3. Here, again, Scripture (and esp. Deut 24:14–18 and Ezek 18) plays an important role in Julian’s interpretation. Book 3 also offers interesting material on new Manichaean sources such as the Epistula ad Menoch,88 and a comparison of the Manichaean doctrine with Augustine’s positions (3.153–94). In Book 4, the focus is on concupiscence. The question of its presence or absence in Christ is raised. Julian insists that, if concupiscence was absent in Christ, then he is no longer a truly human being like us and cannot serve as a model (4.48–87).89 In the rest of the book, Augustine must defend himself against accusations that his views call into question freedom, moral behavior, marriage, and the like. Augustine appeals to authorities, but also insists that his view discredits neither free will nor marriage (4.114). The focus of Book 5 is Julian’s critique of Nupt. 2.12.25–2.23.48. Much attention is paid to, inter alia, the goodness of the Creator and created nature, as well as to marriage and its fruit, namely babies, who are endowed by God with a soul. According to Julian, the concept of natural sin disparages all of this (5.5–13). For Julian, sexuality today is the same as it was in paradise; thus, he asks Augustine what kind of sexuality he thinks Adam and Eve experienced in paradise (5,15–16). Julian aims to support his own position by appealing to Rom 1:27, which, for him, makes clear that Paul’s critique concerns indecent sexual acts and does not impugn the natural goodness of intercourse, which, within marriage, is good and licit (5.17–23). Julian again explains his view of sin in 5.26–29, but Augustine refutes it by referring to Rom 7:20: “But if I do what I do not will, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me.” Augustine explains that creatio ex nihilo is the prerequisite for change: people can change and therefore, sin because they are created by God, not ex Deo (5.31–38).90 Julian offers a long explanation concerning the origin of Adam’s sin, which, like all sins, was voluntary (5.38–53). Freedom can never be the result of necessity or predetermination (5.56–60). In any case, accepting the existence of natural sin brings an end to every form of ethical life (5.61–62). Book 6, which contains Julian’s critique of Nupt. 2.34.57–58, is a lengthy discussion of Adam’s status while living in paradise before the fall, the importance of our first parents’ sin,91 the possible consequences of that sin, such as the loss of freedom (6.7–15),

 See M. Stein, ed., Manichaica Latina 1. Epistula ad Menoch. Text, Übersetzung, Erlauterungen, Papyrologica Coloniensia 27.1 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1998).  See M. Lamberigts, “Competing Christologies: Julian and Augustine on Jesus Christ,” AugStud 36 (2005): 159–94; and Keech, The Anti-Pelagian Christology of Augustine of Hippo, 147–50.  On this important issue, see G. May, Schöpfung aus dem Nichts, Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte 48 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1978).  In Ad Florum 6.21, Julian argues that there is no structural difference between the first sin and subsequent forms of sinning.

11 Scripture in the Debate between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine, 418–430 CE

281

and the experience of shame. Augustine argues that Gen 3:7 (“. . . the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves”) proves that shame is the result of the fall and, by extension, shows that carnal concupiscence is an evil. Julian contends that the goodness of creatures cannot be reconciled with the doctrine of “transmission of sin” (tradux peccati) and that such a doctrine mixes will and “seed” (semina), all the while extolling the power of the devil (6.16–20). Adam’s sin and its consequences are the subject of 6.23–25. Further on, Julian refutes the idea that the pains of childbirth or death are to be considered as punishments (6.27). The book ends with a discussion of 1 Cor 15:12–57, in which, as usual, Julian offers an interpretation of 1 Cor 15:21–22 (“For by one man came death, and by one man came also the resurrection of the dead. All die in Adam and all will be brought to life in Christ”) within the broader context of the chapter (6.31–40).

Julian and Augustine: Two Antagonists Appealing to Scripture In this section, two case studies will be offered. In each the differing exegeses of Julian and Augustine, which clearly derive from vastly different theological presuppositions, will be discussed in detail. First, we will examine Augustine’s interpretation of Rom 5:12–21 in Nupt. and Julian’s lengthy response in Ad Florum 2.92 Then we will examine Julian’s appeal to Old Testament texts to support his view of God’s justice before reviewing Augustine’s replies.93 It should be noted at the outset that, for Julian, reading the Bible is an intellectual activity done by a rational being. And the activity is an attempt to understand a scriptural text in its context. Like Augustine, Julian is convinced that his interpretation of Scripture is correct; like Augustine, his point of departure is doctrinal.94 Both Julian and Augustine developed their arguments in a polemical context; in Julian’s case, this means that reason, which itself is a gift of God, and Scripture, which is God’s revelation, support each other.95

 Augustine’s reply as found in C. Jul. op. imp. will not be treated since his arguments there are the same as those made in previous works.  Much has been written about Julian’s exegetical approach, which has been described as deeply “rationalist” and even “atheist”; see, e.g., A. Bruckner, Julian von Eclanum. Sein Leben und seine Lehre. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Pelagianismus, TU 15.3 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1897), 176. For a detailed discussion of Bruckner, see J. Lössl, “Julian of Aeclanum’s ‘Rationalist’ Exegesis. Albert Bruckner Revisited,” Augustiniana 53 (2003): 77–106.  See Lössl, “Julian of Aeclanum’s ‘Rationalist’ Exegesis,” 83–4.  See Turb. frg. 313 (CCSL 88:394): “Cum igitur liquido clareat, hanc sanam et veram esse sententiam, quam primo loco ratio, deinde scripturarum munivit auctoritas.”

282

Mathijs Lamberigts

How to Interpret Romans 5:12–21? In the debate with Julian of Aeclanum, Augustine repeatedly refers to Rom 5:12 to demonstrate that all human beings are born with guilt because they belong to Adam “in whom all sinned” (in quo omnes peccaverunt).96 Augustine’s discussion of Rom 5:12 in Nupt. 2.27.45–46 forms the starting point for Julian’s extensive reply found in Book 2 of Ad Florum. Because Augustine offers in Nupt. an exegesis of Rom 5:12 in the broader context of 5:12–19, Julian also exegetes the passage as a whole. In Nupt., Augustine argues that Paul does not blame the will of babies, since they are not yet able to sin.97 For Augustine, the guilt of babies is manifestly proven by Rom 5:12.98 Augustine rejects Julian’s interpretation that Adam’s sin should be considered merely as a “model of sin” (exemplum peccati). Defending the significance of procreation (generatio) as the source of sin, Augustine suggests that, had Paul meant the former, he would have written that “sin entered through the devil” (per diabolum peccatum intrasse). After all, regarding the relationship between human beings and the devil, Wis 2:25 says: “But those who belong to his party, imitate him” (imitantur autem eum, qui sunt ex parte ipsius). Sin, however, came into the world through Adam, the first progenitor; Augustine concludes, ergo, that original sin is transmitted “through procreation” (per generationem).99 Augustine interprets Rom 5:13 (“But sin was not imputed when the Law did not exist”) as follows: while death reigned (Rom 5:14), sin existed but was not imputed, since it had not yet been revealed; death was not taken away by the Law, thus making clear that this reign of death leads to the second, eternal death.100 Christ’s grace, however, abounds (Rom 5:15); those who are liberated by Christ die a temporal death because of Adam’s sin, but they live eternally because of Christ.101 Rom 5:16 makes clear that grace forgives both original sin and the many sins committed by individual human beings. Augustine concludes this based on the distinction between “one” sin and “many” sins. After quoting Rom 5:17–18, Augustine asks his opponents to persist in their vain thoughts and maintain that the one man did not transmit the heritage of sin; rather, his sin was

 For the exegetical debates around this crucial passage in the first phase of the Pelagian controversy, see the chapter entitled “Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 411–418 CE,” by G. Malavasi in this volume.  Nupt. 2.27.45 (CSEL 42:298): “. . . quae propria in illo nondum est ad peccandum . . .”  Augustine accuses Julian and his ilk of lacking Catholic ears and minds, of being opposed to the faith and the grace of Christ, and of vainly rejecting the plain sense of Paul’s words by trying to force them into their own haereticum sensum, for which see Nupt. 2.27.45 (CSEL 42:299). Such a comment in a work that offers a truncated view of Julian’s positions (partly) explains the vehemence of Julian’s replies.  Nupt. 2.27.45 (CSEL 42:299). This text is quoted by Julian in extenso in Ad Florum; its extended treatment is clearly in reaction to Augustine’s use of a truncated text.  In what follows, Augustine paraphrases Paul; cf. Nupt. 2.27.46 (CSEL 42:299–300).  Nupt. 2.27.46 (CSEL 42:300): “Omnes qui per Christum liberantur, temporaliter propter Adam moriuntur, propter ipsum autem Christum sine fine victuri sunt?”.

11 Scripture in the Debate between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine, 418–430 CE

283

merely an example.102 Indeed, Augustine continues, Paul speaks about the condemnation of all through the sin of the one (Adam), clearly indicating that this one sin also leads to the condemnation of babies who die without being reborn in Christ. According to Augustine, Paul plainly answers Julian’s question regarding how sin comes to be present in babies.103 Through Adam, all are condemned, while all those who are justified, are justified through Christ, though Christ clearly does not bring all who die in Adam to life. Thus, Augustine’s interpretation of “ita et per unius justificationem in omnes homines ad justificationem vitae” is restrictive: the “all” (omnes) does not literally mean “all” but only “many” (cf. Rom 5:19).104 In Ad Florum 2.1–150, Julian refutes Augustine’s exegesis, while in 2.151–222 he explicates his own position. In the latter, Julian first sketches what he sees as the intention of Romans and sets Rom 5:12ff. in the broader context of 4:13–5:11 (cf. 2.151–72). In 2.173–222 he exegetes the text. In what follows, these two distinct parts will be treated simultaneously.105 For Julian, sin is the personal action of a human being.106 He thus rejects the view that sins are transmitted from fathers to their children or from Adam to his progeny. If that were the case, the sin belongs to our nature. Julian speaks of a “natural sin” (peccatum naturale), and as such, could never be overcome.107 For Julian, Christ died for our personal sins. Paul nowhere speaks of an original sin;108 moreover, the argument developed in Rom 5 never mentions babies.109 The promise of Rom 4 is related to faith (an act of the human being) and is not rooted in one’s origin or nature. It is within this framework that Julian discusses Rom 5:12–21, which, for him, is a text that deals with one’s personal morality. According to Julian, Paul wrote Romans to bring disputes between Jews and pagans to an end. Both groups are criticized. The pagans neglected their “natural knowledge” of  Nupt. et conc 2.27.46 (CSEL 42:301): “Adhuc permaneant in vanitate mentis suae et dicant unum hominem non propaginem trajecisse, sed exemplum praebuisse peccati.”  Nupt. 2.27.46 (CSEL 42:301): “Quid ergo a nobis quaerit iste, quod non vult ab apostolo audire, per quid peccatum inveniatur in parvulo: utrum per voluntatem an per nuptias an per parentes? Ecce audiat per quid, audiat et taceat, per quid peccatum inveniatur in parvulo: per unius delictum, inquit apostolus, in omnes homines ad condemnationem.” However, a comparison between this passage and Turb. frg 75 (CCSL 88:359–60) makes it clear that Julian’s argument was far more developed than Augustine represents it to be.  Nupt. 2.27.46 (CSEL 42:301–2).  On this text, see also Lössl, Julian von Aeclanum, 211–9.  Lamberigts, “Julian of Aeclanum: A Plea for a Good Creator,” 10–11; and 13–14.  See Di Palma, “Rom. 5,12 nella polemica tra Agostino e Giuliano,” 258–59, and C. Sheppard, “The Transmission of Sin in the Seed: A Debate between Augustine of Hippo and Julian of Eclanum,” AugStud 27 (1996): 97–106. P. L. Barclift, “In Controversy with Saint Augustine: Julian of Eclanum on the Nature of Sin,” RTAM 58 (1991): 17–18, underestimates Julian’s emphasis on both the need for grace and for God’s mercy. What Julian defends is the existence of a free and, thus, responsible human being.  See Ad Florum 2.62 (CSEL 85/1:208).  See e.g. Ad Florum 2.35 (CSEL 85/1:187).

284

Mathijs Lamberigts

God: although they could have venerated the one God on the basis of innate reason, they gave themselves over to idolatry. Jews, having received the Law, thought that they were superior to the pagans and, thus, needed less of Christ’s grace. Paul, however, criticizes them and claims that they need even more grace because they sinned despite the clear requirements of the Law.110 Paul, according to Julian, makes clear in Rom 4:13–22 that both Jews and pagans need Christ’s grace.111 That passage clearly states that Abraham received the promise that he would become the father of many peoples, not of the Jews only, as a reward for his faith: if other nations believe in God, they will not be excluded from the reward.112 Faith, then, is accounted as righteousness for those who believe in the God who raised Christ from the dead.113 The promise to Abraham was made before the promulgation of the Law, and it was made on the basis of Abraham’s virtues.114 God’s promise is thus not to be restricted to the time of the Law.115 Furthermore, Paul states that faith is meaningless and destroys the promise made to Abraham if those under the Law are the only ones to become heirs of the promise (cf. Rom 4:14). For Paul, both the circumcised and the uncircumcised belong to Abraham’s progeny; clearly the latter group are also sons of Abraham.116 It follows that faith is the condition for becoming an heir of the promise. The Law only leads to punishment. Where there is no Law, there is no “transgression” (praevaricatio; Rom 4:15). Praevaricatio has to do with sins of adults, not with the Law nor with babies.117 Christ died for our sins (Rom 4:25), which are legion. Julian here insists on the plural: “sins.” Paul does not speak of “a single and alien (sin) of someone who died long ago” (unum et alienum [peccatum] et olim defuncti hominis mortem).118 Moreover, Paul does not speak of a peccatum traducis. Justification ex fide (cf. Rom 5:1–2)

 Ad Florum 2.151 (CSEL 85/1:274). See also Bruckner, Julian von Eclanum, 112–3; and S. M. De Simone, Il problema del peccato originale e Giuliano d’Eclano (Posillipo-Napoli: Pontificia Facolta Teologica ‘S. Luigi’, 1949), 19. The parallels between Julian’s introduction and that of Pelagius are clear; see Pelagius’ In epistolam ad Romanos (A. Souter, Pelagius’ Expositions of Thirteen Epistles of St. Paul II: Text and apparatus criticus [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926], 6–7).  Julian notes that he had already discussed this passage in Turb. frg. 54 (CCSL 88:352–3). See also Ad Florum 2.153–4 (CSEL 85/1:276–7). Because Augustine does not discuss this passage at length in either Nupt. or C. Jul., we do not know exactly what Julian wrote.  Ad Florum 2.154 (CSEL 85/1:277); cf. also De Simone, Il problema del peccato originale e Giuliano d’Eclano, 20.  Julian quotes Rom 4:23–5 in Ad Florum 2.154 (CSEL 85/1:277); cf. 2.162 (CSEL 85/1:283).  Ad Florum 2.155–6 (CSEL 85/1:278).  Ad Florum 2.160 (CSEL 85/1:282).  Ad Florum 2.157 (CSEL 85/1:279).  Ad Florum 2.161 (CSEL 85/1:282–3); cf. Bruckner, Julian von Eclanum, 113; and De Simone, Il problema del peccato originale e Giuliano d’Eclano, 20–1.  Ad Florum 2.163 (CSEL 85/1:284). Indeed, for Julian, Adam was merely a man who died long ago. And his story is merely about eating some forbidden fruit. See De Simone, Il problema del peccato originale e Giuliano d’Eclano, 21; and M. Lamberigts, “Julien d’Éclane et Augustin d’Hippone: deux conceptions d’Adam,” Augustiniana 40 (1990): 381–2.

11 Scripture in the Debate between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine, 418–430 CE

285

is understood as a justification which results from the remission of our personal sins, not the deficiencies of our nature.119 Commenting on Rom 5:3–5,120 Julian emphasizes that the possession of virtue makes us happy in difficult periods: persecution does not disturb our happiness; rather, it tests our patience. We consider not sinning a reward in se.121 Rom 5:5 (the infusion of God’s love in our hearts through the Holy Spirit) reveals that the greatness of God’s love is a guarantee of the faithfulness of his promise: God loves humanity.122 Skipping to Rom 5:12, Julian rejects the link between per unum hominem and procreation. Sin is the result of an act of an evil will that remains capable of avoiding evil.123 Paul is thinking of imitation.124 Adam offers an example for his progeny.125 Human beings sin by imitating Adam’s bad example: Augustine’s argument that Paul had to write “per diabolum” does not make sense,126 for imitation is not to be reduced to the devil.127 Imitation is always an activity of the human mind, which makes choices to imitate either good or bad examples.128 Counterattacking Augustine, in a sense, Julian suggests that if Paul had had “per generationem” in mind, then he ought to have said “per duos homines.”129 For Julian, sin has to do with behavior, not with created nature as such: will and created nature are two different entities. Paul, who was inspired by the Holy Spirit and who foresaw the errors of the fifth century, made clear what he meant by “unus.”130 “Unus” suffices when we think of an example, but it does not suffice when we think of procreation.131 Julian adds that if Paul had been thinking of procreation, then he ought to have used per carnem, since procreation belongs to the natural order. If Paul had been thinking about the  Ad Florum 2.165 (CSEL 85/1:286): “Et eos, quos justitia reos tenebat, quia reos nos non natura fecerat, sed voluntas, libertati reddidit et eripuit ultioni.” Emphasis added.  Quoted in Ad Florum 2.166 (CSEL 85/1:286–7).  Ad Florum 2.166 (CSEL 85/1:287).  Ad Florum 2.167–168 (CSEL 85/1:288).  This definition is Julian’s starting point in this book. See, e.g., Ad Florum 2.17 (CSEL 85/1:174); and 2.38 (CSEL 85/1:190).  Ad Florum 2.173 (CSEL 85/1:293); and 2.177 (CSEL 85/1:296).  Ad Florum 2.53 (CSEL 85/1:201–2).  Ad Florum 2.48 (CSEL 85/1:196–7). In 2.52 (CSEL 85/1:200), Julian offers a scriptural catena that highlights exhortations to follow good examples (Matt 5:48; Matt 6:10; and 1 Cor 2:1), while avoiding bad ones (Wis 2:25; Matt 6:16; and Ps 37:9).  Ad Florum 2.50 (CSEL 85/1:199); see also De Simone, Il problema del peccato originale e Giuliano d’Eclano, 20–1.  Ad Florum 2.55 (CSEL 85/1:202–3).  Ad Florum 2.56 (CSEL 85/1:203): “Ostendit apostolus non a se dictum esse peccatum generatione transisse, quando nominans hominem adjecit unum . . . per unum, inquit, hominem peccatum in hunc mundum intravit. hic autem unus praebendae imitationi sufficit, generationi implendae non sufficit; peccatum autem transiit, sed per unum. Manifestum est imitationem hic, non generationem coargui, quae nisi per duos fieri non potest.” Cf. 2.64 (CSEL 85/1:210–1); 2.69 (CSEL 85/1:214); 2.75 (CSEL 85/ 1:218); 2.183 (CSEL 85/1:301); and 2.194 (CSEL 85/1:309). See also De Simone, Il problema del peccato originale e Giuliano d’Eclano, 22.  Ad Florum 2.56 (CSEL 85/1:204).  Ad Florum 2.57 (CSEL 85/1:205).

286

Mathijs Lamberigts

transmission of original sin through procreation, then he certainly would have said per carnem.132 Augustine therefore confuses two autonomous domains by ascribing to seed what belongs to the order of the will.133 In fact, if one wishes to discuss guilt in children, one must never blame procreation. Elsewhere, Julian will even defend the case of Adam: if through Adam’s evil will all have sinned, then Adam is blamed out of all proportion to his actual role.134 According to Julian, it was not sin but (spiritual) death that passed to all; in Julian’s view the betrayal was a matter of moral vices not of corporeal seed.135 This death is an eternal death: mors perpetua.136 Those who imitate Adam’s sin (forma peccati) will receive that punishment.137 Death is a mors judicalis,138 a punishment for those who sin freely.139 Although Eve sinned first, Adam possesses the magisterium delicti per privilegium sexus.140 The threat of punishment has been announced to all sinners because all have sinned.141 For Julian, in quo is to be understood as “because all sinned” (quia omnes peccaverunt).142 Here, as previously in Turb.,143 Julian refers to Ps 118:9 where the in quo is also to be understood as causative (propter quod or per quod), a detail that becomes clear in the answer: “in custodiendo sermones tuos.”144 Contemporary exegesis, appealing to the Greek text, offers the same causative interpretation, for the Greek hèmarton means that all have personally sinned.145 Because all have sinned, all must die, and people must

 Ad Florum 2.59–61 (CSEL 85/1:206–8). See De Simone, Il problema del peccato originale e Giuliano d’Eclano, 26; and Keech, The Anti-Pelagian Christology of Augustine of Hippo, 143ff.  Ad Florum 2.83 (CSEL 85/1:220) and 2.145 (CSEL 85/1:267).  Ad Florum 4.104 (CSEL 85/2:108). See also M. Lamberigts, “Julien d’Éclane et Augustin d’Hippone: deux conceptions d’Adam,” 376.  Ad Florum 2.63 (CSEL 85/1:209–10).  Ad Florum 2.66 (CSEL 85/1:211); and 2.173 (CSEL 85/1:293).  Ad Florum 2.67 (CSEL 85/1:212).  Ad Florum 2.68 (CSEL 85/1:212). See also De Simone, Il problema del peccato originale e Giuliano d’Eclano, 23.  Ad Florum 2.196 (CSEL 85/1:310).  Ad Florum 2.173 (CSEL 85/1:293).  Ad Florum 2.173 (CSEL 85/1:293).  Ad Florum 2.174 (CSEL 85/1:294): “In eo ergo corrigi dicitur, per quod et corrigitur. ita et apostolus in eo dixit pertransisse mortem, in quo omnes propria voluntate peccaverunt, non ut hoc: in quo aut Adam aut peccatum videatur ostendere, sed in quo quoniam intellegatur exprimere.” See also Di Palma, “Rom 5,12 nella polemica tra Agostino e Giuliano,” 259–60.  CCSL 88:395.  Some suggest that this interpretation required thorough knowledge of Greek; see, e.g., H. Rondet, Le péché originel dans la tradition patristique et théologique (Paris: Fayard, 1967), 152; and D. Weaver, “From Paul to Augustine: Romans 5:12 in Early Christian Exegesis,” Saint Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 27 (1983): 187–206, esp. 203. Such an argument is unnecessary. Julian defends his interpretation on the basis of other Latin examples and never appeals to the Greek original. Moreover, this interpretation is also present in other Latin commentaries of the period, e.g., Pelagius, In epistolam ad Romanos 5,12 (Souter, Pelagius’ Expositions, 45). Cf. also Bruckner, Julian von Aeclanum, 113.  C. Jul. 6.24.75 (PL 44:868) qualifies Julian’s interpretation as absurd and as “sensum alium novum atque distortum et a vero abhorrentem.” Nevertheless, it is apparently correct. Cf., e.g., S. Lyonnet,

11 Scripture in the Debate between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine, 418–430 CE

287

die insofar as they sin.146 Peccaverunt thus makes it clear that Paul is not thinking of “procreation” (generatio) since an act committed by one person cannot directly impact all of his descendants.147 Peccaverunt thus expresses the personal activity of human beings who freely imitate Adam’s example and sin by their will.148 When Paul speaks of “all” (omnes), Julian thinks it should not be taken literally since, exegetically, it has the same meaning as the “many” (multi) that occurs in Rom 5:19.149 Paul is thinking of a multitude, not literally of all:150 many will be punished because of their personal sins.151 Commenting on Rom 5:13–14, Julian first focuses on Augustine’s argument: Paul makes it clear that the Law was unable to take away sins (cf. supra). Julian does not believe that “sin” in Rom 5:13 points to natural sin. Paul speaks of usque ad legem (an indication that sin will eventually cease). Clearly Paul was not thinking of a peccatum naturale, for what belongs to nature cannot be changed, much less stopped, by any purely moral principle or choice.152 Julian also states that the Law is given in order that human beings discover what sin is so that it might be avoided.153 In any case, there is no trace in the text of the transmission of sin. For Julian, Paul accuses sin before the gift of the Law, praevaricatio after the gift of the Law, and both are activities of a free will.154 Paul consciously brings in a distinction between sin and transgression.155 Pagans sin; Jews commit a transgression (precisely because they have the Law).156 There is, as it were, a ranking: betrayal is graver than sin and results in a greater debt. While people can sin by neglecting the innate knowledge of what is or is not permitted, the Law offers a clear model for ethical behavior.157 People neglected

“Rom. 5,12 chez saint Augustin. Note sur l’élaboration de la doctrine augustinienne du péché originel,” in L’homme devant Dieu. Mélanges offerts au père Henri de Lubac, Théologie 56 (Lyon: Aubier, 1963), 327–39, who has shown that peccaverunt is best understood as referring to personal acts of sinning.  Ad Florum 2.174 (CSEL 85/1:294).  Ad Florum 2.177 (CSEL 85/1:296).  Ad Florum 2.184 (CSEL 85/1:301); and Ad Florum 2.197 (CSEL 85/1:310).  Ad Florum 2.176 (CSEL 85/1:296); see also Turb. frg. 326 (CCSL 88:395–6).  Ad Florum 2.68 (CSEL 85/1:212). In Ad Florum 2.175 (CSEL 85/1:294–5), Julian supports this interpretation by referring to Luke 23:21. See also De Simone, Il problema del peccato originale e Giuliano d’Eclano, 24.  Ad Florum 2.176 (CSEL 85/1:296).  Ad Florum 2.70–71 (CSEL 85/1:214–5). See also De Simone, Il problema del peccato originale e Giuliano d’Eclano, 29–30.  Ad Florum 2.72 (CSEL 85/1:216); see also 2.77 (CSEL 85/1:218–9).  Ad Florum 2.201 (CSEL 85/1:313).  Ad Florum 2.185 (CSEL 85/1:302). See also De Simone, Il problema del peccato originale e Giuliano d’Eclano, 30–31.  Ad Florum 2.187 (CSEL 85/1:304–5).  Ad Florum 2.185 (CSEL 85/1:302) and 2.220 (CSEL 85/1:331).

288

Mathijs Lamberigts

ratio and thus sinned; consequently, (punitive) death existed before the Law.158 The difference between sin and betrayal implies a difference in guilt,159 which is the reason why Rom 5:12 cannot be referencing natural sin.160 If it were, then everyone would be on the same level.161 Paul thus has in mind an “indictment of morals” (crimina morum).162 Having discussed the Adam–Christ antithesis in Rom 5:14 (Christ being considered the greatest but not the first example of righteousness, and Adam the greatest [because of his paternal authority] but not the first example of a sinner),163 Julian focuses on Rom 5:15. The point of contention here is “much more has the grace of God and the gift in the grace of the one man Jesus Christ abounded for more people” (multo magis gratia Dei et donum in gratia unius hominis Jesu Christi in plures164 abundavit).165 Julian is convinced that Christ’s grace surpasses Adam’s sin. Defending the idea of natural sin results in condemnation of all in such a way that Adam altered for the worse all of the goods that God had endowed human nature with at creation:166 if Augustine is correct, then human freedom is lost for all after a single sin of the first man.167 Moreover, given the abundance of grace, one may expect that Christ’s grace immediately restores all that Adam destroyed: the end of libido, the end of trepidation during intercourse, the restoration of free will, and the end of physical death,168 which it clearly does not. From this it follows that either grace is powerless or Augustine is wrong.169 However, Julian considers Christ’s grace superior to Adam’s sin: on a quantitative level, more people will be saved than will be lost,170 a prospect that is unlikely if original sin actually exists, for, in that case, all are sinners, yet only a few will be saved.171 Julian cannot understand how one can maintain the idea of an “overflowing abundance of grace” (cf. 5:15) if one first claims that all die propter Adam and that many of those who died will live in eternity because of Christ. If Adam’s sin is only a corruptio temporalis, one cannot conclude that an

 Ad Florum 2.186 (CSEL 85/1:303–4).  Ad Florum 2.191 (CSEL 85/1:308).  Ad Florum 2.191–2 (CSEL 85/1:308).  Ad Florum 2.193 (CSEL 85/1:309).  Ad Florum 2.194 (CSEL 85/1:309); 2.202 (CSEL 85/1:314); and 2.203 (CSEL 85/1:315).  Ad Florum 2.189 (CSEL 85/1:306).  Augustine reads “in multos,” Julian (more correctly) “in plures.”  Ad Florum 2.204 (CSEL 85/1:316).  Ad Florum 2.87 (CSEL 85/1:223).  Ad Florum 2.89 (CSEL 85/1:224–5): “Ipsam postremo arbitrii libertatem unius peccati impulsione subrueret, ut nemo deinceps in potestate haberet vetera crimina virtutis electione respuere, sed uno omnes in condemnationem eversae humanitatis torrente raperentur.”  Ad Florum 2.91–92 (CSEL 85/1:225–6).  Ad Florum 2.94 (CSEL 85/1:227); 2.97 (CSEL 85/1:228); and 2.139 (CSEL 85/1:263). See also De Simone, Il problema del peccato originale e Giuliano d’Eclano, 31–2.  Ad Florum 2.204 (CSEL 85/1:316). See also Bruckner, Julian von Eclanum, 114.  Ad Florum 2.205 (CSEL 85/1:316).

11 Scripture in the Debate between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine, 418–430 CE

289

eternal punishment is transmitted. And, if eternal punishment is not transmitted, then no transmission of sin exists.172 Paul is therefore only criticizing human moral depravity.173 In Nupt. 2.27.46, Augustine explains the “gratia ex multis delictis” (“the grace following many sins”) as follows: grace washes away both original sin and our personal sins. Augustine sees this interpretation as confirmed in Rom 5:17–18. It is especially 5:18, which states that through the sin of one person all are condemned, that is decisive for the argument that Paul is thinking of procreation and not of Adam’s bad example. The condemnation, Augustine argues, affects all who are born from Adam. Therefore, all must be reborn in Christ if they are to be saved. Augustine considers his interpretation a clear refutation of Julian’s statement that no sin is present in babies.174 Julian again observes that Paul does not speak of natural sin,175 which would lead all to destruction, and which would be the end of human freedom. When evil is situated in the semina, there is no space for freedom, and without freedom, which is required for any real choice, we would be unable to sin.176 Such a defective interpretation would call into question the efficacy of Christ’s grace; for the vices, inherited because of Adam’s fall, continue to exist. In sum, Augustine makes Christ’s grace worthless because all the effects of the fall such as death, suffering, and carnal concupiscence, continue to exist after his coming. Julian concludes that Paul criticizes only the voluntary sins committed by adults; according to Julian, Augustine condemns human nature as created by God.177 Julian insists that according to the Bible, Adam is condemned because of one sin. The “ex multis delictis” of Rom 5:16b refers to our sins and to the abundant power of grace.178 Moral evil has to do with actions, not with semina,179 and definitely not with babies, who, while they do need God’s grace, do not need it for the remission of original sin.180 Christ’s grace

 Ad Florum 2.98–9 (CSEL 229–30).  See Ad Florum 2.101 (CSEL 85/1:232).  CSEL 42:301–2; cf. supra.  Ad Florum 2.104 (CSEL 85/1:236); see also 2.110 (CSEL 85/1:242); and 2.129 (CSEL 85/1:256).  Ad Florum 2.105 (CSEL 85/1:237–8): “Si libertas arbitrii primo est eversa peccato et in omni deinceps hominum genere manca adeo remansit, ut non sit ei possibile nisi tantummodo malum facere, non autem habeat in facultate electionem partis alterius, id est recedere a malo et facere bonum, sed iniquitatis necessitate depressa appetentiae criminum parere compellitur.”  Ad Florum 2.107 (CSEL 85/1:240): “Apostolus enim ait multa delicta gratiae liberalitate donari; dogma vero tuum asserit unum peccatum naturale, quod legem peccati vocas, in cunctis hominibus desideria iniquitatis effingere. In absoluto itaque est a te naturam, quae est opus dei, ab illo argui voluntatem.” See also De Simone, Il problema del peccato originale e Giuliano d’Eclano, 33.  Ad Florum 2.109 (CSEL 85/1:241).  Ad Florum 2.112 (CSEL 85/1:243).  Ad Florum 2.114 (CSEL 85/1:245): “. . . aut ergo doce parvulos multis obnoxios esse criminibus . . . aut confitere Paulum nihil in his locis de parvulis, nihil de hominum disputasse natura.” Julian is probably right when he claims that Paul did not have babies in mind. See also De Simone, Il problema del peccato originale e Giuliano d’Eclano, 34.

290

Mathijs Lamberigts

forgives many sins.181 After observing that “ob unius delictum” (“on account of one sin”) refers to Adam’s sin, which also functions as a model for all who transgress a command, Julian again insists that eternal death only overtakes those who freely follow Adam’s example. As he did with verses 12 and 15, Julian interprets the “all” (omnes) of verse 18 as “many” (multi).182 Furthermore, if one were to take the “omnes” literally, innocent people would also be punished on account of a sin for which they are in no way responsible.183 Julian returns to his point about the change of the natural order: if Adam had changed the natural order, then we should also expect Christ to have changed it.184 Because such reciprocity has not happened, and given that our natural characteristics remain the same before and after we receive grace, Julian concludes that one should not search for either blessing (including salvation) or curse on the level of the natural, created order, but on the level of one’s ethical commitment. Julian cannot accept that natural “necessitas” and not free will is the driving force of the Christian life.185 If Paul really had defended Augustine’s error, then Paul would have explicitly stated that all are condemned for being born from Adam, not for their own disobedience. Indeed, terms such as obedience and disobedience deal with an activity of the will and are in no way related to the natural order of procreation.186 For Rom 5:19, too, Julian maintains that punishment and reward are related to one’s merits; thus the one who follows Adam is a betrayer and deserves punishment, while the one who follows Christ deserves a reward since such a person aims at imitating

 Ad Florum 2.117 (CSEL 85/1:248–9); and 2.122 (CSEL 85/1:252–3).  Ad Florum 2,135 (CSEL 85/1:260). Paul’s use of “omnes” and “multi” in this passage is still a crux interpretum in contemporary exegesis: O. Kuss, Der Römberbrief. Erste Lieferung (Röm 1,1 bis 6,11) (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1957), 238–39, considers Paul’s statement as difficult to interpret and observes that Chrysostom had also already struggled with it; A. H. Hultgren, Paul’s Letter to the Romans. A Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI.: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011), 229, thinks that “the many” is identical with “all,” seeing “many” as a Semitism that means “all.” However, Th. De Kruijf, Het Nieuwe Testament. De brief van Paulus aan de Romeinen (Boxtel: Katholieke Bijbelstichting, 1986), 127–28, thinks that any attempt to equate the two conflicts with reality, as Rom 9–11 illustrates.  Ad Florum 2.139 (CSEL 85/1:263).  Ad Florum 2.138 (CSEL 85/1:263).  Ad Florum 2.138 (CSEL 85/1:263): “Sin autem his omnibus in eo, quem suscipiunt a natura, ordine permanentibus adhortationibus, signis, exemplis, promissione vel munerum vel poenarum ad fidem voluntas sine indictione necessitatis allicitur et haec per instituta, per mysteria, per dona non oppressa, sed expectata, sed libera, sed provocata curatur, apparet, etsi uno spiritu totus mundus vel rugiens vel rabiens refragetur, voluntatem uniuscujusque, non nativitatem tinctam imitatione fuisse peccati.”  Ad Florum 2.215 (CSEL 85/1:325): “Certe ubi oportunius, si quid secundum te saperet apostolus, pronuntiaret omnes ad condemnationem ire nascendo, paucos autem ad vitam credendo quam in hoc loco, ubi summa disputationis complenda erat? Debuit enim dicere: sicut per inoboedientiam unius hominis peccatores constituti sunt omnes, immo non per inoboedientiam, sed sicut per generationem primi hominis peccatores nati sunt omnes, ita et per unius oboedientiam justi constituentur multi.”

11 Scripture in the Debate between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine, 418–430 CE

291

Christ’s holiness.187 In verse 19, as in verse 15, the use of “multi” makes it clear that Adam made many, not all, sinners; in the same way, Christ’s obedience made many, not all, righteous.188 Here too Julian repeats that sin cannot belong to the natural human constitution, which constantly dominates one’s life.189 Julian also considers Rom 5:20–21 an argument against original sin, for these verses only make sense if one acknowledges that sin is to be situated on the level of the will.190 Once again, Julian considers the Law to be positive, to be a gift by God, and as the example of righteousness par excellence. Thus, the Law cannot be the cause of sin, for it is holy and just and good (cf. Rom 7:12).191 Evil is situated in people’s contempt of the Law, not in the nature they received from the Creator,192 who is, after all, good and merciful.

What is Divine Justice? Julian’s View of Justice Both Julian and Augustine had an unshakable belief in God’s justice.193 Julian, however, vehemently disagreed with Augustine’s view. According to Julian, the doctrine of original sin not only calls into question God’s goodness as Creator, it also calls into question the justice of God’s judgement, since it has God condemn Adam’s progeny for a sin they did not choose to commit. For Julian, the existence of a “peccatum naturale” not only excludes the possibility for moral choices on the part of human beings, but it also excludes true justice from the human experience. Julian’s definition of justice is clear: “Justice . . . is the virtue that carefully serves the task of restoring to each person what is due without fraud and favor, that is, without any regard to the person.”194 The definition clearly reminds us of the formula “to give unto each his own” (suum unique tribuere),195 which was to be found in Cicero

 Ad Florum 2.146 (CSEL 85/1:268).  Ad Florum 2.147 (CSEL 85/1:270).  For Julian, lust is not a problem; for Augustine, in this controversy, lust is the problem. See M. Lamberigts, “A Critical Evaluation of Critiques of Augustine’s View of Sexuality,” in Augustine and his Critics. Essays in Honour of G. Bonner, eds. R. Dodaro and G. Lawless (London: Routledge, 2000), 177–97.  Ad Florum 2.219–21 (CSEL 85/1:331–4).  Ad Florum 2.220 (CSEL 85/1:331): Julian’s positive view of the Law has clearly been influenced by Paul; see already Epistula ad Rufum, frg. 20 (CCSL 88:339); and Turb. frg. 323 (CCSL 88:395).  Ad Florum 2.220–221 (CSEL 85/1:331–4).  On this topic, see also Nisula, Augustine and the Functions of Concupiscence, 130–4.  Julian, Ad Florum 1.35 (CSEL 85/1:26): “Justitia est . . . virtus . . . fungens diligenter officio ad restituendum sua unicuique sine fraude sine gratia”; and 1.131 (CSEL 85/1:143): “. . . id est sine cujusquam acceptione personae . . . .”  This formula is used in Ad Florum 3.2 (CSEL 85/1:352). A similar idea is present in Rom 13:7; cf. also Matt 22:21. Augustine is also familiar with this idea; see, e.g., Civ. 19.21 (CCSL 48:688).

292

Mathijs Lamberigts

and was well known during the imperial period.196 In fact, Julian defends a view of justice that Augustine had held up to 396 but rejected thereafter.197 For Julian, justice, the highest of all virtues, has its origin in God.198 As revealed in Scripture, God is faithful, just, loves justice, and judges justly.199 God is omnipotent200 and good, which is the reason why he is both patient and gracious:201 injustice cannot be divine and the divine cannot be unjust. This justice is revealed in the promulgation of laws and in God’s judgements.202 Divine justice does not require anything that human beings cannot accomplish, nor anything that excludes compassion.203 For Julian, human beings respect and venerate a God who is eternal, pious, just, holy, true, and honest.204 True justice does not condemn people unjustly,205 and such justice is experienced as agreeable.206 For Julian, this justice does not exclude mercy.207 Julian links God’s justice to human freedom and responsibility, as well as to the goodness of creation. In his view, there is no room for original sin and guilt in babies, since, if that were so, one would be judging them prior to their having done anything.208 Guilt and punishment only make sense for adults,

 With regard to this idea in Cicero, see T. Mayer-Maly, “Gemeinwohl und Naturrecht bei Cicero,” in Das neue Cicerobild, ed. K. Büchner, Wege der Forschung 27 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971), 384–6.  See A. E. McGrath, “Divine Justice and Divine Equity in the Controversy between Augustine and Julian of Eclanum,” Downside Review 101 (1983): 213.  Ad Florum 1.37 (CSEL 85/1:27).  Including Deut 32:4; Ps 10:8; and Ps 118:172. See Ad Florum 1.27 (CSEL 85/1:23).  Ad Florum 1.122 (CSEL 85/1:137).  Ad Florum 5.64 (CSEL 85/2:286). Here, as in Turb. frg. 168 (CCSL 88:375) and Ad Florum 1.67 (CSEL 85/1:67), Julian has in mind Rom 2:4ff. In Ad Florum 1.67 (cf. 68), he adds: “Non potest autem deus nisi justus et pius esse, quod est deus meus Jesus Christus, cujus patientiam vel Paulus diu persecutor vel alii, sub quorum persona loquitur, experti sunt, quia diu exspectati sunt, licet sero liberati.”  Ad Florum 1.37 (CSEL 85/1:27).  Ad Florum 1.38 (CSEL 85/1:28). This idea is present in both classical and Christian literature; see A. Dihle, “Gerechtigkeit,” RAC 10 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann: 1978), 350–1, where he offers references to Jerome, Ambrose, and Cicero.  Revealing here is Ad Florum 1.50 (CSEL 85/1:43): “Ut igitur prima fidei fundamenta cognoscas: noster deus, ecclesiae catholicae deus, substantia nobis ignotus est et ab aspectu similiter remotus, quem vidit nemo hominum nec videre potest; ut aeternus sine principio, ita sanctus justusque sine vitio; omnipotentissimus aequissimus misericordissimus, innotescens solo splendore virtutum, factor omnium quae non erant, dispensator eorum quae sunt, examinator cunctorum qui et sunt et futuri sunt et fuerunt, in ultimo die terram caelum et cuncta simul elementa moturus, excitator cinerum et corporum restitutor, sed propter solam justitiam haec quae diximus cuncta facturus.” Julian’s deep faith in a good and just God comes up repeatedly: see also, e.g., 3.33 (CSEL 85/1:372); 3.83 (CSEL 85/1:406); and 5.2 (CSEL 85/2:168).  Ad Florum 3.2 (CSEL 85/1:352).  Ad Florum 1.38 (CSEL 85/1:352).  Throughout the controversy with Augustine, Julian repeatedly insists on this point; see Ad Florum 1.37 (CSEL 85/1:27); 1.79 (CSEL 85/1:94); 1.130 (CSEL 85/1:141); 1.138 (CSEL 85/1:153); 3.38 (CSEL 85/1:379); 3.48 (CSEL 85/1:387); and 4.129 (CSEL 85/2:154).  See Ad Florum 2.20 (CSEL 85/1:175).

11 Scripture in the Debate between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine, 418–430 CE

293

and they are judged by a Creator who is judging his own work.209 Furthermore, human beings, who are made in the imago Dei, know what is to be done, since justice dwells in their hearts.210 God’s Law is written on their hearts (cf. Rom 2:14).211 In Julian’s view, the relationship between God and humanity is characterized by the justice of God and by the responsibility of a free human person.212 During an extensive treatment of justice in Book 3 of Ad Florum, Julian explicitly appeals to Scripture: “Parents will not die for their children, and children will not die for parents. Each will die for his or her own sins” (Deut 24:16).213 Julian quotes this statement in a context in which he insists that Scripture reveals who God is and what God’s will is.214 God offers human beings a model of moral behavior and cannot himself act against that model without becoming unjust.215 God’s judgements are reasonable.216 Julian considers God’s own justice to be the reference point for our justice. Therefore, God cannot condemn people on the basis of precepts that are forbidden to them,217 since, according to the rule of dialectics, a divine attitude that differs from what God requires of human beings is unacceptable.218 Any contradiction between God’s orders and divine justice must be excluded:219 God’s precepts are a model for what people should do, and people rightly conclude that what God commands also reveals how God will behave towards them. In order to support his position, Julian quotes Ezek 18:1–30 in full.220 In this passage, Julian sees clear proof both that God wants to be faithful to what is commanded

 Ad Florum 3.107 (CSEL 85/1:427); cf. also 2.187 (CSEL 85/1:304).  Turb. frg. 108 (CCSL 88:365).  Turb. frg. 109 (CCSL 88:365). This is one reason why Julian thinks that non-Christians know what to do, a position he shares with several of his Christian predecessors; see K. H. Schelkle, Paulus, Lehrer der Väter. Die altkirchliche Auslegung von Römer 1–11 (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1959), 81–2.  See, e.g., Ad Florum 1.22 (CSEL 85/1:137); 1.35 (CSEL 85/1:25–6); 3.104 (CSEL 85/1:424); and 4.89 (CSEL 85/2:92).  In Ad Florum 3.12–13 (CSEL 85/1:357–8), Julian quotes Deut 24:14–18, a text that highlights individual responsibility. See also G. Malavasi and A. Dupont, “Imitazione o trasmissione dei peccati dei padri nei figli? Dibattiti teologici sul concetto veterotestamentario di peccatum patrum nella controversia pelagiana,” Gregrorianum 100.3 (2019): 503–5.  Ad Florum 3.2–3 (CSEL 85/1:364).  Ad Florum 3.25 (CSEL 85/1:366).  Ad Florum 3.6 (CSEL 85/1:354). I accept Bruckner’s judgement that, for Julian, justice and reason are equivalent quantities. For this see Bruckner, Julian von Eclanum, 134. It is reason, not justice, that characterizes a human being.  See Ad Florum 2.26 (CSEL 85/1:366).  Ad Florum 2.31–32; and 2.34 (CSEL 85/1:369–71; and 374).  Ad Florum 2.36 (CSEL 85/1:375–6).  Ad Florum 2.38 (CSEL 85/1:378–80). Julian had already cited 18:2b (“the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge”), and 18:4b (“the son will not die because of the sin of the father, or the father because of the sin of the son; the soul that sins will die”) in Turb. frg. 327 (CCSL:396), though it does not offer much information about Julian’s position in its current state of preservation. In C. Jul. 6.25.82 (PL 44:672–3), Augustine offers his own view, but pays no attention to what Julian apparently considered the strongest of the prophetic testimonies. Similarly, contemporary

294

Mathijs Lamberigts

in the Law,221 and that traducianism is unscriptural (cf. esp. Ezek 18:3–4).222 God does not judge in a way that he detests: “As I live, says the Lord God, this proverb will no longer be spoken in Israel” (Ezek 18:3). Indeed, here God makes it clear that no Israelite who accepts the authority of Scripture can hold a person guilty because of the deeds done by another person. God states: “All souls are mine, the soul of the child, just as the soul of the parent. All souls are mine. The soul that sins will die” (Ezek 18:4). Julian, defending a creationist view of the soul, concludes that souls belong to God and that they owe nothing to their progeny, a position already abundantly defended in his commentary on Rom 5. God thus rejects the idea that souls, which, after all, are God’s possession and bear his image, are weighed down by the deeds of others, another position supported by Scripture.223 After attacking the Manichaean delusion of attributing one’s guilt to another, Julian links the African attack on reasonable people to Manichaeism.224 He insists on individual responsibility.225 Ezek 19:19–20 explicitly states that children have not suffered for the iniquity of their parents, because the soul that sins will die: “The child will not suffer for the injustice of its parents, nor will the parents suffer for the injustice of their child. The justice of the just will be upon themselves, and the sinfulness of the sinful will be upon themselves.”226 But the just God is also a God of mercy, as Ezek 18:21–2 makes clear. If one converts, God in his mercy pardons even the personal sins of those who amend their lives. For Julian this is proof that God cannot hold the sins of others against a baby. Julian cannot believe that a God who seeks what has been lost (Ezek 18:21–2.; cf. Luke 15:3–31) considers even newborn babies to be guilty.227 After quoting Ezek 18:29–30, which concludes with, “therefore, I shall judge each one of you, O house of Israel, according to your own ways, says the Lord God,” Julian asks Augustine whether the arguments Julian has presented are weak or obscure. Julian is convinced that he detests what God detests, understands what God explains, and maintains that which God has asserted (cf. Ezek 18:20).228 For Julian, Augustine’s doctrine of original sin attacks both God’s character and his revelation to humanity. Julian also insists that the text of Ezek 18 applies to both adults and babies and, thus, that Augustine cannot claim that it deals only with adults.229 For Julian, what God said to the prophets, who faithfully

scholars tend to pay insufficient attention to Julian’s scriptural invocations: see, e.g., Bruckner, Julian von Aeclanum, 132–5; and A. E. McGrath, “Divine Justine and Divine Equity,” 313–4.  Ad Florum 2.42 (CSEL 85/1:382–3).  Here Julian references Augustine’s view of the tradux peccati, according to which sin is transmitted by Adam to his progeny. For this doctrine’s prehistory, see Beatrice, The Transmission of Sin.  Ad Florum 2.44 (CSEL 85/1:384).  See already Turb. frg. 51 (CCSL 88:352).  Ad Florum 2.46 (CSEL 85/1:386).  Ad Florum 2.47 (CSEL 85/1:387).  Ad Florum 2.48 (CSEL 85/1:387).  See Ad Florum 2.49 (CSEL 85/1:389); and 2.60 (CSEL 85/1:399).  Ad Florum 2.52 (CSEL 85/1:392).

11 Scripture in the Debate between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine, 418–430 CE

295

wrote it down (fide scribentibus prophetis),230 undermines any idea of inherited sin.231 Augustine must either assert that God is wrong or reject the authority of the Old Testament, just as Mani had done.232 Either way, he is excluding himself from the people of Israel.233 Neglecting this clear message, this long list of judgements, the dignity of the judges, is unacceptable.234 Julian thus concludes: “We believe, therefore, that God is just and pious and truthful, and for this reason we hold that his Law commanded nothing that is impossible, that his testimonies endorse nothing that is false, that his judgements utter nothing that is unjust, but that he is the Creator of human beings whom he creates not subject to any sin, but full of natural innocence and capable of the virtues of the will.”235 Julian is convinced that his God is fundamentally different from the God of Augustine.236 Julian is convinced that the peccatum naturale blames God as Creator and as judge, renders moral behavior impossible, and makes human beings guilty against (and, in the case of infants, even apart from) their will.237 If Augustine is correct, then God becomes a barbarously unjust tyrant.238

 Ad Florum 2.55 (CSEL 85/1:394–5). This passage also makes it clear that, for Julian, it is God who speaks through the prophet.  See Ad Florum 2.53 (CSEL 85/1: 393–4). Julian quotes Ezek 18:20 (again) and 30:4 in Ad Florum 2.54 (CSEL 85/1:394).  See Ad Florum 2.54 (CSEL 85/1:374): “. . . ad vocem confugias magistrorum tuorum [the Manichaeans] et dicas legem, quae per Moysen data est, a deo tuo non fuisse madatum.”  In the debate with Augustine, Julian not only appeals to biblical texts that support his own position, but he also refutes texts to which Augustine appeals in order to support his idea that all babies – except those who are reborn by baptism – are condemned because of Adam. Julian thus exerts much energy on refuting Augustine’s use of Rom 9:21, which was quoted in Nupt. 2.3.8 (CSEL 42:259). In his reply (cf. Ad Florum 1.113–40), Julian sets this verse in the broader context of Rom 9, insisting that Paul is speaking to adults, that God judges the actions of adults, and that, consequently, there is no reason to focus on babies. The same approach to contextualizing a passage can be found in Julian’s reply (cf. Ad Florum 4.123–36) to Augustine’s appeal to Wis 12:10–11, which was quoted in Nupt. 2.8.20 (CSEL 42:272).  In Julian’s view, all criteria are fulfilled: the message is clear, the judges are worthy, and the number of judgements is overwhelming.  Ad Florum 2.82 (CSEL 85/1:406): “Ergo deum et justum et pium credimus et veracem ac per hoc nihil impossibile mandasse legem ejus tenemus, nihil falsum confirmare testimonia, nihil iniquum pronuntiare judicia, sed ipsum esse hominum conditorem, quos nullo crimini obnoxios creat, verum plenos quidem innocentia naturali, voluntariarum autem virtutum capaces.”  See Julian’s vehement critique in Ad Florum 2.128–35 (CSEL 85/1:442–3); see also 2.67–79 (CSEL 85/ 1:403–6).  Ad Florum 4.2 (CSEL 85/2:5).  Ad Florum 2.77 (CSEL85/1:405). See also L. Karfíkova, Grace and the Will according to Augustine, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 115 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 327.

296

Mathijs Lamberigts

Augustine’s Reply Augustine’s view of justice bases itself on the idea that, because of the fall of Adam, all human beings have lost the freedom to do theological good, to act propter Deum. Because of Adam’s freely committed sin, all are born with original sin and are condemned if they are not reborn in Christ.239 That all human beings as children of Adam are weighed down with a heavy yoke from the day of their birth (cf. Sir. 40:1) is proof of God’s justice:240 people deserve punishment, and only punishment, precisely because they belong to Adam.241 God is just, and in his justice, he condemns all, including babies, because of original sin. Adam’s sin, committed when freedom of the will was supreme and unimpeded by any defect, was such that it brought down the whole of human nature. Great misery followed and is experienced by all from birth to death.242 Whereas Julian considers the existence of original sin a proof of the injustice of Augustine’s doctrine, Augustine insists that the doctrine of original sin furnishes no basis for doubt about God’s justice.243 On the contrary, it is denying original sin that makes God unjust. For Augustine, all are sick and must be healed by Christ in order to be saved since Christ came to seek and to save those who otherwise would be lost.244 Christ shed his blood for the forgiveness of the sins of all, including babies.245 Because all are born with sin, no one deserves good, only evil.246 In this regard, Augustine quotes scriptural texts that support his view of original sin, texts such as Wis 12:11 and Eph 2:3.247  This is why Augustine repeatedly emphasizes the importance of baptism for children. Cf. C. Jul. op. imp. 3.3 (CSEL 85/1:353): “Et illud libera voluntate commissum est ejus, in quo natura humana damnatam est, ex qua homines damnationi nascuntur obnoxii, nisi renascantur in eo, qui non est natus obnoxius.”  C. Jul. op. imp. 3.5–6 (CSEL 85/1:353–4). On the link between a heavy yoke, original sin, and God’s justice, see, inter alia, 1.49 (CSEL 85/1:42); 1.55 (CSEL 85/1:52); 1.57 (CSEL 85/1:54); 1.120 (CSEL 85/1:136); 2.13 (CSEL 85/1:171); and 2.124 (CSEL 85/1:254).  For support of his position Augustine regularly refers to Ambrose’s In Lucam 7.234: “Fuit Adam et in illo fuimus omnes”; see, e.g., C. Jul. op. imp. 3.25 (CSEL 85/1:366). Cf. also the index at CSEL 85/2:490.  C. Jul. op. imp. 3.57 (CSEL 85/1:397).  C. Jul. op. imp. 3.7 (CSEL 85/1:354): “. . . in ecclesia catholica . . . nihil de ejus [God] aequitate dubitatur, ubi nec infans . . . sine sorde peccati esse docetur . . . [God] justus agnoscitur.” Augustine here alludes to Job 14:4f. On this verse, see, e.g., A.-M. La Bonnardière, Biblia Augustiniana. A.T. Livres historiques (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1960), 109–72; Beatrice, The Transmission of Sin, 97 (for Beatrice, the verse is irrelevant to the theology of original sin); and J.-M. Roessli, “Iob,” AugLex 3:684–6, with further bibliography.  C. Jul. op. imp. 3.4 (CSEL 85/1:353).  C. Jul. op. imp. 3.31 (CSEL 85/1:370).  C. Jul. op. imp. 3.2 (CSEL 85/1:352).  Wis 12:11: “Their seed was cursed from the beginning” and Eph 2:3: “We were also by nature children of wrath like the rest.” See C. Jul. op. imp. 3.11 (CSEL 85/1:355–6). For Wis 12:11, which is only quoted by Augustine during his controversy with Julian, see A.-M. La Bonnardière, Biblia Augustiniana. A.T. Le livre de la Sagesse (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1970), 107–8 and 299. La Bonnardière (108) regrets that Augustine did not appreciate Julian’s efforts to contextualize the verse. With regard to Eph

11 Scripture in the Debate between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine, 418–430 CE

297

Furthermore, people need the saving grace of God through Jesus Christ in order to become truly free. The first initiative comes from God who forgives our sins, both original and personal. God then goes on to prepare our will for faith as well as for both loving and doing the good (cf. Prov 8:35 LXX).248 It goes without saying that Augustine disagrees with Julian’s exegesis of Deut 24:14–16. According to Augustine, God is dealing here with children who were already born. God gave this commandment to human judges, while he himself was not bound by such a commandment. Augustine also refers here to the story of Noah (cf. Gen 7–9): God condemned all, including babies, except for Noah’s family. The same thing happened at Sodom (cf. Gen 19:24ff). And, even although Achan alone was guilty, he and his sons and daughters were all killed (cf. Jos 7:21). Joshua’s conquests of many of the southern Canaanite cities (cf. Jos 10:32–40) are also proof that God judges in one way and commands human beings to judge in another, despite the fact that God is more just than any human being.249 Divine justice is more inscrutable than human justice, but God has the right either to punish or permit what is forbidden to human beings.250 For example, God takes revenge but forbids human beings to do so (cf. Rom 12:19: “Do not take revenge, my beloved, but give room for wrath, for it is written: ‘Vengeance is mine, I will pay back, says the Lord’”).251 Other scriptural texts invoked are Lev 26:39 (“And whoever will be left of you, will perish because of his sins and those of his parents”);252 Exod 20:5 and Deut 5:9 (“I shall pass the sins of the parents on to their children”);253 Num 14:18 (“Punishing the children for the sins of their parents to the third and fourth generation”);254

2:3, J. Mehlmann, Natura filii irae. Historia interpretationis Eph. 2,3 eiusque cum doctrina de peccati originali nexus, Analecta Biblica 6 (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, 1957), remains helpful.  C. Jul. op. imp. 3.1 (CSEL 85/1:352). Although its initial appearance in C. Jul. op. imp. is at the beginning of Book 3, Augustine quotes this verse at least seventeen times in the debate with Julian. In fact, it runs like a thread throughout the whole of Augustine’s anti-Pelagian work. See A. Sage, “Praeparatur voluntas a Domino,” REAug 10 (1964): 1–20.  C. Jul. op. imp. 3.12 (CSEL 85/1:358): “Aliter ergo judicat deus, aliter homini praecipit ut judicet, cum deus homine sine ulla dubitatione sit justior.” Cf. 3.17 (CSEL 85/1:360–1); 3.23 (CSEL 85/1:365); and 3.30 (CSEL 85/1:369).  C. Jul. op. imp. 3.24 (CSEL 85/1:365–6); 3.27 (CSEL 85/1:367); and 3.57 (CSEL 85/1:397). It is notable that this position was taken by Augustine as early as ca. 395/6; cf., e.g., Div. quaest. Simpl. 1.2.16 (CCSL:42:482–6).  C. Jul. op. imp. 3.26 (CSEL 85/1:366).  C. Jul. op. imp. 3.13 (CSEL 85/1:358); and 3.21 (CSEL 85/1:364).  C. Jul. op. imp. 3.15 (CSEL 85/1:359); 3.16 (CSEL 85/1:360); 3.19 (CSEL 85/1:361); 3.20 (CSEL 85/1:363); etc. The list is impressive; see the index in CSEL 85/2:473 and 476. See also Malavasi and Dupont, “Imitazione o trasmissione dei peccati dei padri nei figli?,” 494–500, 503, and 506–8.  C. Jul. op. imp. 3.21 (CSEL 85/1:364).

298

Mathijs Lamberigts

and Jer 32:18 (“Exacting punishment for the sins of their parents upon the heart of their children after them”).255 Augustine viewed the sin of Adam as so devastating that it passed into the nature of every human being in such a way that all are born with it: a sin of this caliber can only be punished by God. In his inscrutable justice,256 God has the right to condemn our sinful nature. But he also sets free from this condemnation those he wants to save by his inscrutable grace.257 Augustine considers both the criteria for God’s judgement and for his gift of grace to be inscrutable. For him, there is a clear discrepancy between the justice of God as related to God himself and what God requires of human beings. Julian, by comparison, tries to develop criteria about God’s justice by comparing it with human justice.258 Augustine, by contrast, does not doubt the correctness of his interpretation precisely because the Bible clearly teaches (cf. supra) that God can and does judge differently from the way in which he orders human beings to judge.259 Augustine, while never questioning the truth of the prophet’s statements,260 obviously offers an exegesis of Ezek 18:1–30 that differs from Julian’s. Augustine considers this text to be a promise that the New Testament fulfils.261 And he clearly asserts that this is a text that deals with adults.262 God distinguishes between those who are reborn and those who are not. Ezekiel does not mention the rebirth since the veil would only be removed in the era of the Gospel and only for those who come to Christ in faith (cf. 2 Cor 3:13–6). The exhortations of the prophet will only be fruitful for those who are reborn, who eat Christ’s flesh and drink his blood (cf. John 6:54).263 The fact that God has invalidated the proverb “Our parents have eaten sour grapes and the teeth of the children have been set on edge” (cf. Ezek 18:2) proves that it once was valid (cf. Exod

 C. Jul. op. imp. 3.21 (CSEL 85/1:364). Because they are so similar it is not always clear which of the texts Augustine has in mind. Cf. A.-M. La Bonnardière, Biblia augustiniana. A.T. Le Deutéronome (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1967), 22–3.  Augustine finds his inspiration in Rom 11:33.  C. Jul. op. imp. 3.33 (CSEL 85/1:372–3).  See C. Jul. op. imp. 1.39 (CSEL 85/1:29); 1.48 (CSEL 85/1:40); 1.127 (CSEL 85/1:139); and 2.200 (CSEL 85/ 1:313).  See C. Jul. op. imp. 3.34 (CSEL 85/1:374).  See, e.g., C. Jul. op. imp. 3.51–52 (CSEL 85/1:391–2).  C. Jul. op. imp. 3.38 (CSEL 85/1:380); 3.40 (CSEL 85/1:382); and 3.41 (CSEL 85/1:383).  In this regard, Augustine in C. Jul. op. imp. 3.38 (CSEL 85/1:380) asserts that Ezek 18:4 (“The soul of the parent is mine, and the soul of the child is mine”) clearly indicates that any child, at the very instant at which it is no longer in the loins of the father, has its own soul and that, prior to that moment, there was just one single soul. Here, as in 3.43 (CSEL 85/1:384), Augustine observes that, prior to the child’s birth, the soul of the father and of the child are one, a claim that implies that the father transmits the soul to the child.  C. Jul. op. imp. 3.38 (CSEL 85/1:380–1).

11 Scripture in the Debate between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine, 418–430 CE

299

20:5).264 Moreover, in the New Testament, the end of that proverb is explicitly related to the promise of rebirth.265 When Julian states that the soul, God’s image, owes nothing to the seed (semina), Augustine asks him to explain Wis 9:15: “For the corruptible body weighs down the soul,” noting that the body is also the work of God.266 One can only explain this verse by acknowledging original sin since, before the fall, the corruptible body did not weigh down the soul.267 One cannot explain why God weighs down babies with a corruptible body unless sin is present in them.268 Augustine a priori excludes the possibility that a just God imposes undeserved punishments on babies.269 When children are saved, it is because of the virtues of the parents who, as believers, offer their children to the church to be born again. Salvation through Christ is the very essence of Augustine’s view.270 Commenting on Exod 20:5, Augustine explicitly states that such texts prove that we are talking about generation, not imitation,271 thus directly rejecting Julian’s view that sin cannot be generated.272 In Augustine’s view, God’s justice is not comparable to ours, and, thanks to Adam’s disobedience, we all are justly condemned by a just God, even though his judgements are inscrutable.

Conclusion The whole debate between Julian and Augustine revolved around acceptance or rejection of the doctrine on original sin. Both antagonists took their own theological positions as their respective points of departure. During their lengthy dispute, neither Julian nor  C. Jul. op. imp. 3.39 (CSEL 85/1:382); and 3.42 (CSEL 85/1:383).  C. Jul. op. imp. 3.42 (CSEL 85/1:383–4).  This verse is consistently present in Augustine’s oeuvre from 388 until his death in 430. See La Bonnardière, Le Livre de la Sagesse, 289–93. On its place in the debate with Julian, see I. Bochet, “Le corps: un poids pour l’âme ? L’exégèse augustinienne de Sagesse 9,15,” Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques 100 (2016): 38–40.  C. Jul. op. imp. 3.45 (CSEL 85/1:386).  In C. Jul. op. imp. 3.48 (CSEL 85/1:388), Augustine offers an extensive list of the difficulties and problems that befall children.  C. Jul. op. imp. 3.49 (CSEL 85/1:389).  C. Jul. op. imp. 3.44 (CSEL 85/1:385). This chapter offers a good example of the tendency of the two parties to talk past each other. E.g., Augustine at one point calls Julian an “antichrist” even though Julian had been discussing neither Christ nor his significance.  C. Jul. op. imp. 3.16 (CSEL 85/1:360); 2.19 (CSEL 85/1:361–2); and 3.28–29 (CSEL 85/1:328–67). La Bonnardière, Le Deutéronome, 24, makes it clear that in the debate with the Manichaeans Augustine himself defended the imitation idea: those who imitate either the sins of their children or their parents will be punished.  Most of the verses quoted in defense of the view that there is a transmission of both sins and punishment from fathers to children are found in C. Jul. op. imp.; cf. Malavasi and Dupont, “Imitazione o trasmissione dei peccati dei padri nei figli,” 500.

300

Mathijs Lamberigts

Augustine made a real effort to understand the other’s point of view. As our survey of the different works makes clear, the whole corpus repeatedly focused on the status of the Creator and creation, the goodness of human nature, marriage, the role of concupiscence (not only in the procreation process, but also in the moral life of human beings), the justice of God, and related ideas. The views of Julian and Augustine on Adam and Christ and their respective exegeses of Rom 5:12–21 is particularly revealing. Augustine repeatedly emphasized that in the phrase “in whom all sinned” (in quo omnes peccaverunt) the “in whom” referred to Adam, thus making it clear that we were all in Adam when he sinned and that, therefore, all (including babies) are born guilty. Original sin is transmitted through procreation. Given the fact that Christ came for all, all must have been born guilty in order to be found by Christ, who forgives all sins (original and personal). Augustine interpreted the famous “all” (verse 18) in light of the “many” (verse 19) in a restrictive way: many, not all, will be saved by Christ. Julian offered an extensive commentary on this passage. In line with his own theological positions, Julian did not accept the existence of “natural sin,” a term he preferred over “original sin.” In Julian’s view, such position could not have been held by Paul; in fact, had he done so, it would signal the end of any moral activity. Julian was convinced that Paul was speaking of personal sins and criticizing our moral depravity; he was in no way offering a “theology of babies.” Paul never spoke of “original sin” or of “transmission of sin.” Julian interpreted the “in quo” as causative (“because”), and concluded that everyone sins personally and individually, an interpretation that for centuries was rejected and condemned, but that today has met with general acceptance. For Julian, the salvation brought about by Christ was necessary, but only for our personal sins, which are numerous (cf. “all sinned”). He regarded the fact that Christ’s death did not put an end to mortality or to carnal concupiscence as proof that both were unrelated to Adam. Otherwise, Christ’s grace would be weaker than Adam’s sin and its consequences. Julian refused to put all the blame on Adam; on the contrary, he repeatedly emphasized human beings’ individual moral responsibility. Julian was convinced that more people would be saved by Christ than would be lost (cf. the dispute on the correct interpretation of “all” and “the many” from Rom 5:18–19, which seems to offer a clear argument against original sin as understood by Augustine). Insisting on the goodness of Creator, of the creation, and on the moral responsibility of every human being, Julian rejected the idea that God condemns the little ones because of the sins of “another” (either Adam or one’s parents). He used a catena of Scriptural texts (including Deut 24:16 and Ezek 18:1–30) to argue that God does not condemn children for the sins of their parents. Moreover, as a convinced creationist, he argued, via Ezek 18:4, that all souls belong to God and that any argument in favor of original sin would render God culpable, a thoroughly unacceptable view for both parties. While Julian developed a view of justice that incorporated (as does Scripture itself) a parallel between human justice and divine justice, Augustine appealed to biblical texts that made it clear that postlapsarian humanity had been changed for the worse.

11 Scripture in the Debate between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine, 418–430 CE

301

Julian also claimed that the texts invoked by Augustine were not dealing with infants, but, rather, with the moral behavior of adults. For Augustine, carnal concupiscence, suffering, and death were punishments for the fall of the first couple and, as such, must be related to our guilt. Otherwise, God would be punishing humanity unjustly. Augustine also made use of Scriptures that argued that God’s own justice is different from the justice he required of human beings: Augustine’s God has the right to do what he forbids to human beings. Thanks to our being in Adam and to our resultant guilt, we cannot blame God for the way he, the only one who is perfectly just, acts.

Further Reading Primary Sources Augustine. Answer to the Pelagians, II and III, translated by Roland Teske. Part I, vol. 24 and vol. 25, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, edited by John E. Rotelle. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1998. Augustine. Contra duas epistulas pelagianorum, edited by Carolus F. Urba and Josephus Zycha. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 60. Vindobonae: Tempsky, 1913, pages 423–570. Augustine. Contra Iulianum. Patrologia Latina 44, edited by J.P. Migne. Paris: Ateliers catholiques, 1865, cols. 641–874. Augustine. Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum (libri 1–3), post Ernst Kalinka, edited by Michaela Zelzer. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 85/1. Vienna: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1974. Augustine. Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum (libri 4–6), edited by Michaela Zelzer. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 85/2. Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2004. Augustine. De nuptiis et concupiscentia, edited by Carolus F. Urba and Josephus Zycha. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 42. Vindobonae: Tempsky, 1902, pages 207–319. Julian of Aeclanum. Exposito libri Iob. Tractatus Prophetarum Osee Iohel et Amos. Accedunt operum deperditorum fragmenta post Albertum Bruckner denuo collecta aucta ordinata, edited Lucas De Coninck. Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina 88. Turnhout: Brepols, 1977. Julian of Aeclanum. Theodori Mopsuesteni Expositionis in Psalmos. Iuliano Aeclanensi interprete in Latinum versae quae supersunt, edited Lucas De Coninck. Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina 88A. Turnhout: Brepols, 1977. Text, Übersetzung, Erläuterungen von Markus Stein. Manichaica Latina. I. Epistula ad Menoch, translated by Markus Stein. Papyrologica Coloniensia 27.1. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1998.

Secondary Sources Bouwman, Gijsbrecht. Des Julian von Aeclanum Kommentar zu den Propheten Osee, Joel und Amos. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Exegese. Analecta Biblica 9. Rome: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1958. Brückner, Albert. Julian von Eclanum: sein Leben und seine Lehre: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Pelagianismus. Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 15/3. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1897.

302

Mathijs Lamberigts

Gaytán Luna, Juan Antonio, ed. Giuliano d’Eclano e l’Hirpinia Christiana. Giuliano il biblista e l’agiografia irpina (secoli V–IX). III Convegno internazionale Mirabella Eclano, 22–24 ottobre 2015). Avellino: Printì, 2019. Lamberigts, Mathijs. “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 Manichaen Studies, edited by Johannes van Oort, Otto Wermelinger, and Gregor Wurst, 113–36. Nag Hammmadi and Manichaean Studies 49. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Lössl, Josef. Julian von Aeclanum. Studien zu seinem Leben, seinem Werk, seiner Lehre und ihrer Überlieferung. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 60. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Lössl, Josef. “Julian of Aeclanum’s Tractatus in Osee, Iohel, Amos.” Augustiniana 51 (2001): 5–31. Lössl, Josef. “Julian of Aeclanum’s ’Rationalist’ Exegesis. Albert Bruckner Revisited.” Augustiniana 53 (2003): 77–106. Refoulé, François. “Julien d’Éclane, théologien et philosophe” Recherches de science religieuse 54 (1964): 42–84; and 233–47.

Brian J. Matz

12 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 425–430 CE Introduction This chapter documents three scriptural ideas that shaped Augustine’s theology of grace in texts associated with the final writings he produced as part of the Pelagian controversy. These ideas are the reality of a human will, the inscrutability of God’s predestined acts, and the necessity of grace for faith. Although the writings examined here cite widely from all across the biblical canon, it is only a few biblical books, and only a few chapters within them, to which Augustine turned for a deep understanding of the aforementioned ideas. Yet, once these ideas were established, hundreds of other biblical citations were invoked to spin out the implications of these ideas into a more fulsome theology of grace. This included the distinction between the beginning of faith from the ongoing life of faith. It included the distinction between sin and its effects. It included the ideas of cooperation, of divine sovereignty, and of election. Finally, it included a theology of pastoral care that took an interest in all persons, since no one knows who is and who is not among the elect. Our interest here is with texts Augustine composed during 425–430, in which he felt obliged to return to arguments from his earlier controversy with Pelagius in order to address debates going on both within a Christian community at Hadrumetum and among several monasteries in southern Gaul. At Hadrumetum, some monks had, after reading Augustine’s Ep. 194, come to believe that he taught that God’s grace diminishes human freedom. In southern Gaul, some monks, mostly from the monastery of St. Honoratus on the island of Lérins, objected to Augustine’s view that salvation depends first on a movement of God’s grace before the will of the person is moved towards God. Their views are encapsulated in letters to Augustine from Prosper of Aquitaine and a certain Hilary. Augustine’s contributions to the debate at Hadrumetum extended from 425 through 427. The extant textual record of this controversy includes three letters of Augustine to the abbot at Hadrumetum, Valentine (Ep. 214, 215, and an unnumbered letter); a letter

✶ Brian J. Matz is the CSJ Endowed Chair and Professor of the History of Christianity at Fontbonne University. His publications examine early Christian social ethics, Cappadocian theology, reception of Augustine in the Carolingian era, and the theological controversies of the early medieval period. Brian holds a Ph.D. in historical theology from Saint Louis University and a Ph.D. in social ethics from KU Leuven.

Brian J. Matz, Fontbonne University https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-013

304

Brian J. Matz

from Valentine to Augustine (Ep. 216 in Augustine’s letter collection); a letter from Valentine to another bishop, Evodius; and two texts by Augustine that explain his views with substantial recourse to Scripture De gratia et libero arbitrio (Grat.) and De correptione et gratia (Corrept.). In addition, one should consider the contents of Ep. 194, which as noted above had triggered the controversy in the first place. Augustine’s contributions to the debate in southern Gaul are confined to 427, or perhaps 428. Its extant textual record includes two letters sent to Augustine from people acquainted with the monastic and ecclesial communities in southern Gaul and a response to these letters composed by Augustine. The two letters are from Prosper and Hilary. The text written by Augustine was composed in two parts, but much later the two parts circulated under different names, and it is under these names that we know the texts today.1 The first part is De praedestinatione sanctorum (Praed.) and the second part is De dono perseverantiae (Persev.) In these two texts, Augustine refers also to his Ep. 102, which he defends at length in Praed., Ep. 186, which the monks in Gaul discredit, and Ep. 194, for reasons similar to those mentioned in regard to Grat. While Augustine makes brief references to Scripture in the several letters he composed for these two controversies, the overwhelming number of his citations of Scripture are located in the four treatises: De Grat.; De corr. et gr.; Praed.; and Persev. Consequently, it is the use of Scripture in these four texts that will be the focus of what follows. Each document will be considered in turn, first, with a summary of its theological argument and, second, with an analysis of its use of Scripture. The chapter concludes with comments of a general nature about the use of Scripture during this last stage of the Pelagian controversy – at least with respect to Augustine’s participation in it.

De gratia et libero arbitrio The story of this text2 began in 418 CE, at which time Augustine composed a letter, Ep. 194, to the priest Sixtus, later bishop of Rome.3 The letter is a summary of Augustine’s theology of grace, with a particular emphasis on the initium fidei, the beginning of a

 This follows V. Drecoll and C. Scheerer, eds., Späte Schriften zur Gnadenlehre: De gratia et libero arbitrio. De praedestinatione sanctorum libri duo, CSEL 105:60–64.  The critical edition is by Drecoll and Scheerer in CSEL 105:129–76; also cf. PL 44:881–912. For a trans. of the PL text by Teske, see WSA I/26:5–45.  Augustine, Ep. 194 (CSEL 57:176–214; WSA II/3:287–308, trans. Teske). A brief survey of these events is in G. Bonner, Freedom and Necessity: St. Augustine’s Teaching on Divine Power and Human Freedom (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 81–96. For a wider, historical context on the subject, see P. Carey, Inner Grace: Augustine in the Traditions of Plato and Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); G. Kraus, Vorherbestimmung. Traditionelle Prädestinationslehre im Licht gegenwärtiger Theologie, Ökumenische Forschungen II (Freiburg: Herder, 1977).

12 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 425–430 CE

305

person’s faith, and how that is determined by God’s elective, albeit hidden, will. This, after all, had been the centerpiece of his debate with the Pelagians.4 This letter was apparently copied and distributed to a few other priests, and one such copy ended up in the library of Evodius, the bishop of Uzalis, near Carthage. Almost a decade later, in 425, during a visit with Evodius, some monks from Hadrumetum found the letter, copied it, and took the copy back home. This set off quite a storm of theological discussion at Hadrumetum, and more than a few of the monks criticized Augustine’s theology of grace by claiming that it diminished human freedom. It was in response to this criticism that Augustine wrote Grat. In the outline below, it is clear that Augustine was keen to defend the gratuity of grace and its necessity to produce the initium fidei. I. God’s grace and free choice can be present simultaneously in a person (1.1–4.6) II. God’s grace is necessary for a person to use their freedom to choose the good (4.7–9) III. God’s grace is gratuitous (5.10–23.45) A. Grace for initium fidei is given for reasons independent of our works (5.10–6.14) B. Grace for entrance into eternal life is given for reasons independent of our works (4.15–9.21) C. What the grace of God is not (10.22–12.27) 1. It is not the Law Code (10.22–12.24) 2. It is not nature (13.25) 3. It is not merely forgiveness of sins (13.26–14.27) D. Manifestations of gratuitous grace (14.28–23.45) 1. Faith (14.28–15.30) 2. Our love for God and for God’s commandments (16.31–19.40) 3. The movement of our will (20.41–21.43) 4. Infant baptism (22.44–23.45) IV. If you remain confused, pray for understanding (24.46) As the outline indicates, according to Augustine the necessity of grace does not diminish human freedom. The monks’ problem was that they had a wrong idea about what human freedom is. They erroneously thought it is the freedom to do good or evil at every point. In contrast, Augustine argued freedom is only freedom to choose the good, and this is made possible only by God’s grace. Once enlivened by grace,

 E. Teselle, “The Background: Augustine and the Pelagian Controversy,” in Grace for Grace, eds. A. Hwang, B. Matz and A. Casiday (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), 1–13; T. Wu, “Augustine on ‘initium fidei’: A Case Study of the Coexistence of Operative Grace and Free Decision of the Will,” Recherches de théologie et philosophe médiévales 79 (2012): 1–38.

306

Brian J. Matz

then, yes, it is possible for a human to choose to do good or evil, but, apart from grace, humans will only choose to do evil.5 As Figures 1 and 2 reveal, Augustine draws from across the scriptural canon; however, he has a clear preference for some books, namely, Psalms, Proverbs, Romans and 1 Corinthians. This preference should not be surprising. Much of this treatise calls upon individuals to use the grace given by God to move their will to act rightly. Psalms and Proverbs praise God for wisdom and invite us to make wise choices with our wills.6 The citations from Romans likewise call us to live in accordance with a will rightly ordered to God. Moreover, the fact that this teaching is situated in the context of a dispute within a Christian (monastic) community, Augustine’s recourse to 1 Corinthians, a text similarly concerned with correcting misbehavior in a Christian community, is commensurate with the occasion. Figure 3 also reveals something interesting about Augustine’s use of Scripture, something that one also sees in Figures 6, 9 and 14. Augustine does not cite Scripture steadily across this or the other texts analyzed in this chapter; rather, one might say he cites texts in waves. Augustine builds up his arguments to a climax, incorporating increasing amounts of scriptural citations as he goes. Then, when he is nearly done with that part of his argument, the citations of Scripture largely stop. Augustine uses the next paragraph or two to restate the points he has just made and to introduce the next part of his argument. His citing little to no Scripture in these paragraphs seemingly provides the textual space to do this. In fact, if you were to overlay the text outline above onto Figure 3, you would discover that, in seven pivot points of his argument (I, II, III.A, III.C, III.D.1, III.D.3 and IV), those arguments end with little or no citations of Scripture. At these junctures, Augustine is restating in his own words the argument that he had just made in the preceding paragraphs, while mostly using words from Scripture to do so. In fact, especially in the climactic paragraphs, Augustine lets Scripture do most of the talking for him. He quite often strings multiple quotations together, a textual feature that is anything but accidental. He tells us it was his plan all along.7 In citing Scripture, Augustine rarely cites less than what, in our present Bibles, would comprise an entire verse, and quite often several verses are cited together. Consider, for example, this

 For a more detailed explanation of Augustine’s understanding of a human being’s “free” will, particularly at this late stage of his life and including a diversity of perspectives, see W. Babcock, “Augustine on Sin and Moral Agency,” Journal of Religious Ethics 16 (1988): 28–55; G. Bonner, Freedom and Necessity, 49–80; E. Jenkins, Free to Say No: Free Will and Augustine’s Evolving Doctrines of Grace and Election (London: James Clarke, 2012), 62–100; M. Lamberigts, “Augustine on Predestination: Some Quaestiones Disputatae Revisited,” Augustiniana 54 (2004): 279–305, esp. 289–95, as well as the metaphysical/psychological distinction discussed on 304–5; W. Mallard, Language and Love: Introducing Augustine’s Thought Through the Confessions Story (Philadelphia: Penn State University Press, 1994), 103–24; K. Wilson, Augustine’s Conversion from Traditional Free Choice to ‘Non-Free Free Will’: A Comprehensive Methodology, Studien und Text zu Antike und Christentum 111 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018).  These themes also explain the significant number of citations from Sirach.  Corrept. 1.1 (CSEL 92:219; WSA I/26:51, trans. Teske). In referring to Grat., he writes: “[D]o not refuse to become very familiar with it by rereading. In that way, you may come to know most thoroughly the

12 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 425–430 CE

307

passage from 2.4, which is instructive on several fronts with regard to how Augustine uses Scripture: What does it mean that God orders in so many passages that all his commandments be observed and carried out? How does he give such orders if there is no free choice? What about those happy persons of whom the psalm says that “their will was in the law of the Lord” (Ps 1:2)? Does he not make it quite clear that a human being abides by the law of God through his will? Moreover, there are so many commandments which address the will by name, as it were, such as, “Do not be conquered by evil” (Rom 12:21), and other similar commandments, “Do not become like the horse and the mule which do not have understanding” (Ps 31:9), “Do not reject the counsels of your mother” (Prov 1:8), “Do not be wise in your own self” (Prov 3:5), “Do not abandon the discipline of the Lord” (Prov 3:11), “Do not neglect the law” (Prov 3:1), “Do not hold back from doing good to the needy” (Prov 3:27), “Do not plot evil against your friend” (Prov 3:29), “Do not pay attention to a deceitful woman” (Prov 5:3), “He was unwilling to understand so that he might act well” (Ps 36:4), “They were unwilling to accept discipline” (Prov 1:29), and countless other such passages in the old books of God’s words. What else do they show but the free choice of the human will?8

Three things in this paragraph are notable. First, Augustine introduces biblical quotes with a word or concept to frame how to read the phrases he then cites. Here he argues that God gives commands, and the fact that God does so implies we must have a free will either to obey or to disobey those commands. Second, Augustine connects his biblical citations together through key words. Here he apparently looked for texts with negative commands. The phrase “Do not be unwilling” (Noli) begins every citation. It also leads the reader into the citations of the next paragraph, most of which are connected to one another through the words “will” and “willing.” Third, Augustine connects biblical citations together also by their place in the Bible. Of the twelve verses he cites, eight come from the same book, Proverbs, and five of those from just one chapter, Prov 3. Surprisingly, he did not cite the Ten Commandments or other commands given in the Mosaic Law Code, as they also assume an ability to obey them freely. Yet, the text of those commands does not use noli or its variants; thus, it seems clear that Augustine is more concerned to highlight our capacity to will than to focus on biblical commands, per se. In sum, 2.4 reveals several general features of Augustine’s use of Scripture: citing from across the canon but also with a clear preference for a few books, grouping together citations from the same

character and nature of the problems which are going to be resolved and healed there, not by human, but by divine authority . . .” (emphasis added).  Grat. 2.4 (CSEL 105:133; cf. PL 44:883; WSA I/26:7, trans. Teske): “Quid illud, quod tam multis locis omnia mandata sua custodiri et fieri jubet deus? Quomodo jubet, si non est liberum arbitrium? Quid beatus ille, de quo psalmus dicit, quod ‘in lege domini fuit voluntas ejus’? Nonne satis indicat voluntate sua hominem in lege dei consistere? Deinde tam multa mandata, quae ipsam quodam modo nominatim conveniunt voluntatem, sicut est: ‘Noli vinci a malo’ et alia similia, sicut sunt: ‘Nolite fieri sicut equus et mulus, quibus non est intellectus,’ et: ‘Noli repellere consilia matris tuae,’ et: ‘Noli esse sapiens apud te ipsum,’ et: ‘Noli deficere a disciplina domini,’ et: ‘Noli negligere legem,’ et, ‘Noli abstinere bene facere egenti,’ et: ‘Noli fabricare in amicum tuum mala,’ et: ‘Noli intendere fallaci mulieri,’ et: ‘Noluit intellegere ut bene ageret,’ et: ‘Noluerunt accipere disciplinam,’ et innumerabilia talia in veteribus libris divinorum eloquiorum quid ostendunt, nisi liberum arbitrium voluntatis humanae?”

308

Brian J. Matz

biblical book, and connecting passages together through key words. These are, as a matter of fact, features that mark each of the four texts that are under scrutiny in this study. This paragraph from 2.4 also points us to the importance of Scripture in this text for its argument with respect to Augustine’s overall theology of grace. This paragraph documents Scripture’s teaching on the human will, which, of course, was the piece of his theology of grace that the monks at Hadrumetum had failed to understand. The use of Scripture in 2.4 reveals that Scripture assumes humans possess a will capable of obeying commands. Otherwise, the commands listed in this paragraph would be pointless. Human freedom is not set aside by a theology of grace. Nevertheless, this by itself would be insufficient to counter the monks’ claims. They acknowledged both human freedom, at least generally, and grace; their problem was that Augustine seemed to contradict himself by saying grace was necessary to produce the will to do particular, good works. His theology seemed to erase the human ability to do good works. It would be Augustine’s use of a biblical phrase later in 2.4 (and elsewhere in Grat.) that more capably counters the monks’ critique. Augustine draws on this biblical phrase to defend his view that Scripture teaches also that God holds humans accountable for what they do with their freedom. This biblical phrase is: “God will repay each person according to his works.” In various formulations, it is found in Ps 62:12; Prov 24:12; Matt 16:27; Rom 2:6; and Rev 22:12. Augustine cited this phrase more frequently than he does any other biblical phrase in the whole of Grat. In fact, it is found four times: at 2.4; 8.19; 8.20; and 23.45. While it is uncertain which Latin manuscripts of the biblical books Augustine would have made reference to, here is how the biblical phrase appears at each place in Grat. when compared (at least) with the text of the Vulgate. Despite the fact the phrase is found in five biblical texts, it is more likely that in Grat. Augustine has relied on the formulation from Rom 2:6.9 Not only does the wording almost entirely agree, the facts that Romans is by far the most frequently cited book in Grat. and that Augustine works his way through nearly every chapter of Romans (citing thirty-seven different verses a total of forty-five times), suggests it is the most likely candidate of the five. Text

Vulgate

Ps :

[:]: tu reddes unicuique secundum opus suum (“and you will repay each one according to his work”) Prov : reddetque homini juxta opera sua (“and he will repay a person equally to his work”) Matt : reddet unicuique secundum opus ejus (“and he will repay each one according to his work”) Rom : reddet unicuique secundum opera ejus (“and he will repay each one according to his work”) Rev : reddere unicuique secundum opera sua (“to repay each one according to his own work”)

 It is possible, of course, that he relied on Matt 16:27 or, less likely, on Rev 22:12. If he were quoting Matt 16, it would be the only citation from that section of that Gospel and, if Rev 22, then this would be the only citation from Revelation in Grat.

12 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 425–430 CE

309

Section Augustine, Grat. . . . .

reddet unicuique secundum opera sua (“and he will repay each one according to his own work”) reddet unicuique secundum opera ejus (“and he will repay each one according to his work”) reddet unicuique deus secundum opera ejus (“and God will repay each one according to his work”) reddet unicuique secundum opera ejus (“and he will repay each one according to his work”)

The contexts for each of these four citations of Rom 2:6 are particularly noteworthy. At section 2.4, after the part of this section quoted earlier, by citing commands from Jas 1:16, 2:1, and 1 John 2:15, Augustine continued to emphasize Scripture’s assumption that everyone possesses a free will. However, if this were all he wrote, it would merely be using Scripture to repeat the argument he had already made in the previous sentences. He would merely have reaffirmed that his theology of grace did not preclude free will. However, after citing these commands, Augustine expanded his teaching on grace to state that not only is lack of obedience to the commands a product of human freedom to do evil, but obedience to the commands is a product of human freedom to do good. He wrote, “Let no one, then, accuse God in his heart, but let each person blame himself when he sins. And when he does something as God wants, let him not take this away from his own will. For, when he does it willingly, he should call it a good act, and he should hope for the reward of a good act from him of whom it is said, ‘He will repay each according to his works.’”10 Combining this with what Augustine says a few sentences later, “For without faith in Christ no one can be set free,”11 one discovers an important feature of Augustine’s theology of grace, that doing good works is the result of a will that is shaped by the grace of faith. Doing good works begins and ends as a gift of God in encouraging the human will to do what is right. Having said this, while it is possible to be given grace to do good works and then not to do them, if one rejects the grace and wills instead to do what is evil, there is an expectation this would not happen on anything like a consistent basis.12 Then, in sections 8.19–20, the two citations of this phrase from Rom 2:6 illuminate still more about this theology of grace. Acting in accordance with God’s grace to do what is good leads to eternal life, and failure to do so leads to the same end as those not given grace at all. Augustine wrote, “if eternal life is given in return for good works, as Scripture says with perfect clarity, ‘God will repay each according to his works,’ how is eternal life a grace since grace is not a repayment for works, but is given gratuitously . . .

 Grat. 2.4 (CSEL 105:134; PL 44:884; WSA I/26:8, trans. Teske): “Nemo ergo deum causetur in corde suo, sed sibi imputet quisque, cum peccat, neque cum aliquid secundum deum operatur, alienet hoc a propria voluntate. Quando enim volens facit, tunc dicendum est opus bonum, tunc speranda est boni operis merces ab eo, de quo dictum est: ‘Qui reddet unicuique secundum opera sua.’”  Grat. 3.5 (CSEL 105:134; PL 44:884; WSA I/26:8, trans. Teske): “Sine fide enim Christi nemo liberare potest.”  Given what is taught in corrept. 10.26–12.36 (cf. infra), this should be understood as consistent with the irresistibility of grace leading, ultimately, to salvation.

310

Brian J. Matz

this question can only be resolved if we understand that our good works . . . also pertain to the grace of God.”13 The ability to do what is good is a gift of grace to us; consequently, our eternal destiny, if it is to be good, must also be a gift of grace to us. It is a “grace for grace” (cf. 8.20). Finally, in case it is still not yet clear, at section 23.45, Augustine incorporates into his conclusion of the text one further citation of Rom 2:6 in order to teach that the reward for a will led by God’s grace to do what is right is received not in this life but in the next. Augustine wrote, “for God who does not now repay in accord with their works those whom he sets free will ‘then repay each according to his works.’”14 Rom 2:6 is about the payment of an eternal reward for a will that is led by grace. However, this is not this verse’s meaning when it is read in the context of Rom 2. There, Paul is quite clear the repayment concerns both damnation for sin and reward for doing good. Augustine has

Figure 1: Number of citations from the Old Testament in Grat.15

 Grat. 8.19–20 (CSEL 105:143; PL 44:892; WSA I/26:19, trans. Teske): “Si enim vita aeterna bonis operibus redditur, sicut apertissime dicit scriptura, quoniam deus ‘reddet unicuique secundum opera ejus,’ quomodo gratia est vita aeterna, cum gratia non operibus reddatur . . . ista ergo quaestio nullo modo mihi videtur posse dissolvi, nisi intellegamus et ipsa bona opera nostra . . . ad dei gratiam pertinere.”  Grat. 23.45 (CSEL 105:165; PL 44:911; WSA I/26:44, trans. Teske): “Deus enim, qui modo illis, quos liberat, non reddit secundum opera eorum, ‘tunc reddet unicuique secundum opera ejus.’”  I would like to thank my research assistant, Summer Baer, for her work in preparing this and the other charts in this chapter. We utilized data provided in the scriptural indices of both the English translation and the Latin editions and then corrected or added to these indices based on our independent analysis of Augustine’s text.

12 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 425–430 CE

311

cited the verse in order to highlight only the second of these two repayments. By having done so, Rom 2:6 provides an important key to understanding Augustine’s theology of grace, i.e., God’s grace does not preclude human freedom, because the repayment of eternal life is dependent on the use of our freedom to do what is right, which is an act of our will, which itself is (being) changed by grace.

Figure 2: Number of citations from the New Testament in Grat.

Figure 3: Distribution of citations, according to section numbers, in Grat.

312

Brian J. Matz

De correptione et gratia Apparently, Grat. did not adequately convince the monks at Hadrumetum that free will is compatible with the sovereignty and grace of God. Having read in Grat. that grace is required to do good works, some became further convinced that all of their works must be dependent upon the whims of God. They cannot be held responsible for “evil,” since God apparently did not give them the grace to not do evil. Their works, then, are not evil at all, because they could not have done otherwise, and, thus, they cannot be rebuked for having done them. They believed they had found a loophole to excuse evil acts in Augustine’s theology of grace. However, according to Augustine, these monks failed both to account for their own free will (to do evil) and to understand the hiddenness of God’s judgment as to whom he will give the grace of perseverance to persist in faith and good works to the end of life. Consequently, the community at Hadrumetum required a more thorough examination of how rebukes (and pastoral care, more generally) fit within the theology of grace, especially the grace of perseverance. It is these two matters that shape the structure of this text,16 as the following outline indicates. I. The occasion for the text (1.1–6.9) A. Pride-filled monks (1.1–4.6) B. The need for rebuke (4.7–6.9) 1. Rebuke is a help to the one being rebuked 2. Rebuke is given because of the offender’s sin II. The grace of perseverance (6.10–13.42) A. To whom it is given is a hidden judgment of God (6.10–9.24) B. Because it is hidden, all may be rebuked as a matter of pastoral care (9.25) C. The case of the First Adam is different (10.26–12.36) 1. He was born posse non peccare, but we are born non posse non peccare. 2. Consequently, we need extra grace that Adam did not need. As a result, we were given the Incarnate God. 3. The grace of perseverance, then, produces in us something better than it did in Adam: in the next age, it makes us non posse peccare and non posse perire and non posse bonum relinquere. D. Removes occasion for pride in our efforts/works (12.37–38) E. It is given to a fixed number of people according to God’s hidden judgment (13.39–42) III. Rebukes are good (14.43–16.49) A. Rebukes are a punishment to those not predestined (14.43) B. Rebukes are a medicine to the predestined (14.43)

 The critical edition is Folliet, ed., CSEL 92:219–80; cf. PL 44:915–46; WSA I/26:51–91, trans.Teske.

12 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 425–430 CE

313

C.

Rebukes are good when administered with love and accompanied by prayer (14.43, 15.46–47) D. Because God wills “all” (= every kind of human) to be saved, and pastors should will this too (14.44) E. Because God uses pastoral rebukes to turn the will of the predestined toward a desire for salvation (14.45, 16.49) As in Grat., the arguments outlined here rely substantially on a thorough review of Scripture. This text cites no fewer than 114 verses a total of 135 times, and they come from a wide spectrum of the biblical canon, as Figures 4 and 5 indicate. Also, like Grat., citations of Scripture come in waves rather than in a steady stream, as Figure 6 indicates. This allowed Augustine to alternate here, as there, between quoting and interpreting Scripture. Unlike in Grat., the concern of the monks at Hadrumetum is now less about Scripture per se; rather it is about a misunderstanding over what Augustine was believed to have taught. Recall that the monks exploited what they believed to be a loophole in Augustine’s theology of grace, so Augustine did not in this text need to counter a bad reading of Scripture with a better reading of it. In this text his task was to make his theology of grace clearer, in particular his understanding of the grace of perseverance, and to do so from an even wider spectrum of biblical texts. Still, like the earlier text, 88% of the verses found here are mentioned only once. Only thirteen verses are repeatedly quoted. Seven of these are used twice (Matt 20:14; Luke 22:32; John 6:39; 8:36; 15:5; Rom 4:20–21; and 2 Cor 13:7). Five are used three times. This latter group, in particular, points us quite well to Augustine’s scriptural way of thinking in regard to a theology of grace. It includes: Matt 20:16 (“the first will be last and the last will be first”); Rom 8:28 (“all things work together for good for those called according to His purpose”); Rom 11:33 (“How inscrutable are His judgments . . .”); 1 Cor 1:31 (“may the one who boasts boast in the Lord”); and 1 Cor 4:7 (“What do you have that you have not received?”). Augustine discovered in the Bible a theology of divine sovereignty. This is no less true in effecting our salvation than in God’s rule over creation. Why God does what God does is inscrutable. Augustine plainly says he “does not know” why God elects only some of the human race.17 Nevertheless, these divine judgments are presumed to be good, and they take away from us any claim to prideful boasting. Prideful people will reject such thinking, but, in God’s sovereignty, they will be brought low and moved to the back of the line. This biblical theology of divine sovereignty is a critical building block for his theology of grace. Still, there is one verse in this text that Augustine cites most frequently of all. Five times Augustine returned to the last few words of Gal 5:6 (“faith working through love”). And unlike the seven verses he cited twice and the five verses he cited three

 Corrept. 8.17 (CSEL 92:237; WSA I/26:63, trans. Teske).

314

Brian J. Matz

times, nearly all of which he repeated within just a few paragraphs of each other, Galatians 5:6 is cited throughout the text. It is found in sections 7.13, 7.16, 9.21, 12.35 and 13.40. On its surface, Gal 5:6 would seem an unlikely candidate for such attention here. The full verse reads, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love” (NRSV). Nowhere in Corrept. does Augustine refer to circumcision, and he mentioned the Mosaic Law Code only briefly in the first few paragraphs. The question thus becomes: Why did Gal 5:6 receive so much attention here? The answer lies, it may be argued, in the wider context of Gal 5 to which the last few words of Gal 5:6 point. Paul argues that Christ has set people free from the burden of feeling that a Law code, and one’s adherence to it, declares one to be righteous (5:1–4). Furthermore, it is the presence of God’s Spirit within a person that enables him or her to hope that he or she will one day experience righteousness (5:5). Therefore, one should continue to run the race of life well and not be distracted from truth (5:7). Gal 5 suggests a theology of justification that is future-oriented.18 A person hopes for righteousness. A person pursues righteousness. Whether or not a person will experience righteousness is known only at the end of life. Consequently, the phrase “faith working through love” is about perseverance. The ones who will be saved are those who have a working faith. Such persons are working that faith with the support of God’s love, which, here, Augustine evidently understood to mean God’s grace.19 Having said these things, Augustine’s opponents had raised at least one scriptural difficulty for his theology of the grace of perseverance (cf. II.C in the outline supra). Augustine acknowledged the difficulty in 10.26, “[W]e are asked with regard to this gift of God, namely, perseverance in the good up to the end, what we think concerning the first man who was certainly created upright.”20 The monks correctly understood that Augustine was claiming that Adam did not possess the grace of perseverance. Yet, to them, if Adam did not have the grace of perseverance, then he could not have avoided breaking God’s command. God had not given him the ability not to break it. The story of Adam proved, therefore, that a person’s evil acts cannot be called sin if the person had not received from God the gift necessary to do good. Augustine noted here two problems with the monks’ position. First, they believed they had found a loophole in his theology of grace such that no one could ever be accused of sin (and, therefore, deserving of rebuke). If a person has received the gift

 A future orientation is precisely the framework through which Augustine interpreted Gal 5 in his Commentary on Galatians. Cf. E. Plumer, Augustine’s Commentary on Galatians: Introduction, Text, Translation and Notes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 201 at Gal 5.  Augustine’s use of Gal 5:6 here is, in fact, lifted from one of his earlier texts. Augustine employed Gal 5:6 towards precisely the same end in f. et op. 14.21 (CSEL 41:61) and 16.27 (CSEL 41:69). In addition to linking this love with grace at 16.27, Augustine also used Rom 5:5 in order to identify this love with the Holy Spirit at 21.39 (CSEL 41:83–84) and 23.43 (CSEL 41:87).  Corrept. 10.26 (CSEL 92:250; WSA I/26:71, trans. Teske).

12 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 425–430 CE

315

of perseverance, the monks’ position was that this person would always necessarily do good and never sin. And, if a person had not received the gift of perseverance, then nothing that person did that was “evil” could actually be called sin since God had not given them the ability to do otherwise. In no case, then, can anyone ever be thought to have sinned! To Augustine, their argument was a reductio ad absurdum. To counter it, Augustine noted a second problem with the monks’ position. They failed to account for Adam’s free will. Augustine countered that Adam did not possess the gift of perseverance, because he did not need it. He was born without defect; his creation was “very good” (cf. Gen 1:31) Adam was born already with an ability not to sin (posse non peccare). The problem was that he did not remain in that condition. Adam sinned not because he did not possess the grace of perseverance; he sinned by the free choice of his uncompromised will. The grace of perseverance is not a guarantee of not sinning. It is a guarantee only of being among the elect. Due to original sin, in this life even the elect are not able not to sin (non posse non peccare). Yet, because they are elect, they will one day be transformed into the condition of being unable to sin (non posse peccare).21

Figure 4: Number of citations from the Old Testament in Corrept.

 M. Knell, Sin, Grace and Free Will: A Historical Survey of Christian Thought, Vol. 1 (London: Lutterworth Press, 2017), 195–238; and J. Rist, Augustine Deformed: Love, Sin and Freedom in the Western Moral Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), cf. esp. chs. 1–2.

316

Brian J. Matz

Figure 5: Number of citations from the New Testament in Corrept.

Figure 6: Distribution of citations, according to section numbers, in Corrept.

12 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 425–430 CE

317

De praedestinatione sanctorum Although Corrept. was intended to address a controversy at Hadrumetum, the fact that it lingered long on the subject of the grace of perseverance in its defense of the practice of pastoral rebuke meant that it would find its way to other monastic and Christian communities. Apparently, a copy found its way to southern Gaul where, in the monasteries and pastoral circles around Marseille, Arles and Lérins, the text fell into the hands of readers who were much less supportive of its arguments.22 Already, the Christians in these communities had been influenced by the work of John Cassian (d. 435), whose earlier travels in Egypt led him to bring back to southern Gaul a different kind of monasticism than that practiced in the western part of North Africa.23 As Cassian taught it, the Christian life was about perseverance, yes, but a kind of perseverance forged in mortification, spiritual warfare, the cultivation of virtue, and the avoidance of vice. To such a way of thinking, Augustine’s theology of the grace of perseverance sounded too cheap.24 It seemed as though humans were merely passive agents in a divine scheme of predestination. To their way of thinking, God’s grace had a role, yes, but so did the human will. Consequently, in Praed. Augustine defended his view that Scripture teaches that God’s grace is a necessary precondition both for the initium fidei and for the persevering in that faith.25 To see this as a denial of human freedom, Augustine argued, is to have misunderstood distinctions he had earlier drawn between predestination and foreknowledge.26 It is these features of the text that reveal its structure, which is outlined below. I. The initium fidei is a gift of grace (1.1–8.16) A. The problem of the monks in Gaul is identified and explained (1.1.–2.6) B. Augustine acknowledges he once agreed with them, but reading Cyprian changed his mind (3.7–4.8) C. What this grace is not (5.9–6.10) 1. Our possession of a human nature (i.e., just being born) 2. Our talents and abilities

 The critical edition is Drecoll and Scheerer, eds., CSEL 105:179–218; cf. also PL 44:959–92; WSA I/ 26:95–137, trans.Teske.  A. Hwang, “Pauci perfectae gratiae intrepidi amatores: The Augustinians in Marseilles,” in A. Hwang, B. Matz and A. Casiday, Grace for Grace, 35–50.  John Cassian wrote two works introducing Christians in southern Gaul to Egyptian monasticism, Conferences and Institutes. Helpful studies of these works include O. Chadwick, John Cassian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968 [2nd ed.]); G. Demacopoulos, Five Models of Spiritual Direction in the Early Church (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 107–26; S. Driver, John Cassian and the Reading of Egyptian Monastic Culture (New York: Routledge, 2002); and R. Krawiec, “Monastic Literacy in John Cassian: Toward a New Sublimity,” Church History 81 (2012): 765–95.  B. Ramsey, “John Cassian and Augustine,” in A. Hwang, B. Matz and A. Casiday, Grace for Grace, 114–30.  On the importance of recognizing the link between foreknowledge and predestination in Augustine’s thought, see Lamberigts, “Augustine on Predestination,” Augustiniana 54 (2004): 283–4.

318

Brian J. Matz

D. What this grace is: preparation of the will (of some, not all) to believe (6.11–8.16) II. Predestination and foreknowledge (9.17–11.21) A. Augustine defends his different use of these terms in Ep. 102 (9.17–18) B. All that is predestined is foreknown; not all that is foreknown is predestined (10.19–11.21) III. Response to other objections (11.22–18.37) A. How to read Rom 10:9 (“if you believe, you will be saved”) (11.22) B. Predestination of infants (12.23–13.25) C. The appropriateness of Wis 4:11 (14.26–29) D. Predestination of the man, Jesus, who was assumed by God the Son (15.30–31) E. How to read Matt 22:14 (“for many are called, few are chosen”) (16.32–18.37) IV. Review of Scripture on predestination and the initium fidei (19.38–21.43) Prior to the arrival of Corrept. in southern Gaul, Augustine’s writings were the subject of much interest to Christians there, with most readers approving of what they read. They had appropriated extensively his Trinitarian theology, even, at least at Lérins, later constructing a revised version of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed on the basis of Augustine’s teaching.27 Also, some of Augustine’s earliest writings, before he became bishop in Hippo, were widely known and read there. This included an early, lengthy letter (also mentioned in Persev.) that Augustine wrote on a variety of theological topics in response to the criticisms of pagans.28 Also, Augustine had his supporters in the region in the late 420s, including Prosper of Aquitaine and a certain Hilary.29 They thought Cassian and his supporters had erred both in their reading of Augustine’s texts and in their appreciation for Scripture’s teaching on grace. In fact, it is Hilary who alerted Augustine to the disputes in southern Gaul regarding his theology of grace. Hilary wrote to Augustine and included with his letter a letter from Prosper.30 Persev. was written in response to these letters. In addition to clarifying further his theology of grace, Persev. also gave Augustine an opportunity to explain how

 The creed, Quicumquevult, was most likely crafted at the monastery at Lérins in the late fifth century. It is first recorded in a sermon by Caesarius of Arles, a former monk of Lérins, who (erroneously) identifies it with Athanasius. This was due to the creed’s affinity with the Nicene Creed, which the western theologians at that time associated with Athanasius. It is famous for its use of the double procession language for the Holy Spirit. However, this language derived not from Athanasius but from Augustine. Cf., e.g., Tract. Ev. Jo. 99 (CCSL 36:581–7); and J. N. D. Kelly, The Athanasian Creed (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1964).  This was Augustine’s Ep. 102 (CSEL 34/2:544–78), which Hilary mentions in Ep. 226 (CSEL 57:468–81), and which Augustine explains further in Persev. 9.17 (PL 45:1002–1003). Cf. also Prosper, Ep. 225.9 (CSEL 57:467), in which Prosper observes that Hilary, the bishop of Arles, admires Augustine in all but this theological matter.  For further information on the life and thought of Prosper, see A. Hwang, Intrepid Lover of Perfect Grace: The Life and Thought of Prosper of Aquitaine (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009).  These letters are numbered 225 and 226 in Augustine’s collection. For Prosper of Aquitaine, Ep. 225 (“To Augustine”), see CSEL 57:454–68; WSA I/26:lx–lxvii, trans. Teske. For Hilary, Ep. 226 (“To

12 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 425–430 CE

319

his thinking had changed over time on this subject. He informed his readers that he had recently completed a second volume of Retractationes, which had taken up this subject, but he acknowledged it is possible his readers in southern Gaul may not yet have received a copy of it. Importantly, Augustine acknowledged that, but for the Pelagian controversy, he might not have given the subject such close scrutiny over so many years. Hilary’s and Prosper’s letters to Augustine also make clear that the monks in southern Gaul felt that Augustine had read Scripture incorrectly. Hilary’s letter identifies three such alleged mis-readings. First, they thought Augustine had wrongly interpreted Rom 9:19; 10:9; 12:3; and 1 Cor 12:6 in light of the story of Adam and his Fall. It seemed to them that a proper exegesis of Paul would necessarily generate a theology more akin to that of Cassian. Second, they thought Augustine had relied too much on a verse from a non-canonical book, Wis 4:11, and that this diminished the authority of his argument.31 Third, they thought Augustine had built his argument on texts unrelated to a theology of grace, including 1 Sam 10:25–27 and 1 Chron 12:18. For his part, Prosper appended a list of additional problems. The monks in Marseille felt that Augustine’s position was contrary to “the opinion of the Fathers and to the mind of the Church.”32 Specifically, the monks “[invoke] tradition and maintain that the passages from the Letter of Paul, the apostle, writing to the Romans which are produced to show that grace comes before the merits of the elect had never been interpreted by anyone in the Church in the sense in which they are now interpreted.”33 Yet, since the monks were unable to produce commentaries from earlier periods of the church’s history to support this view, Prosper concludes their real problem is this: “Ultimately, their whole obstinacy comes down to the point that they declare that our belief is something opposed to the edification of those who hear it, and

Augustine”), see CSEL 57:468–81; WSA I/26:lxvii–lxxv, trans. Teske. Hilary indicates his inclusion of Prosper’s letter alongside his own at Ep. 226.10 (CSEL 57:479).  The opponents Augustine had in view here did not regard Wisdom as canonical; Augustine, however, did think Wisdom canonical. In both Civ. 17.20 (CSEL 48:586–7) and Doctr. chr. 2.8.13 (CCSL 32:39–40), Augustine identified it as canonical even while noting that the identity of its author is unclear. In Civ., he pointed out that its traditional ascription to Solomon is based on its stylistic similarities to Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, but that other, weightier authorities do not consider this to be definitive. In Doctr. chr. 2.8.13 (cf. supra), Augustine wrote that those other, weighty authorities actually ascribe the text to Jesus, son of Sirach. However, in Retract. 2.4 (CCSL 57:91–92), Augustine corrects himself; the other authorities do not, in fact, ascribe the text to Jesus, son of Sirach. His final position seems to be that Wisdom is canonical despite being anonymous. Cf. the chapter “Scripture and the North African Conciliar Canon Lists,” by R. Villegas Marín in this volume.  Prosper, Ep. 225.2 (CSEL 57:455; WSA I/26:lxi, trans. Teske): “Contrarium putant patrum opinioni et ecclesiastico sensui.”  Prosper, Ep. 225.3 (CSEL 57:459; WSA I/26:lxii, trans. Teske): “Obstinationem suam vetustate defendunt et ea, quae de epistula apostoli Pauli Romanis scribentis ad manfestationem divinae gratiae praevenientis electorum merita proferuntur, a nullo umquam ecclesiasticorum ita esse intellecta, ut nunc sentiuntur, adfirmant.”

320

Brian J. Matz

so, even if it is true, it should not be brought into the open.”34 These monks wanted God’s predestinating activity to be a consequence of His foreknowledge of the future acts of individual persons. From this, it seems the debate was as much pastoral as it was scriptural, and, to heighten the importance of the pastoral element, Prosper and Hilary both mention that the arguments of these monks are difficult to criticize, since some among the monks had recently been appointed bishops.35 As a result of these scriptural and pastoral concerns, Prosper pleads for Augustine to do five things: (1) make clear the danger of Pelagianism; (2) explain how free will is not eviscerated when grace is necessary to produce the beginning of faith; (3) define foreknowledge; (4) defend the value of exhortation in preaching; and (5) explain why some Fathers had taught that predestination is based on foreknowledge.36 In sum, Augustine’s task in Praed. is different from that undertaken in Corrept., which is why he ultimately agreed (if somewhat reluctantly) to compose this treatise.37 Turning to Praed. itself, a general sense of its use of Scripture may be gleaned from Figures 7–9. Like Corrept., there is a decided preference for citations of the New Testament in comparison to citations from the Old Testament. Of the latter, Psalms continues to feature most prominently. Of the former, it is perhaps unsurprising that Romans is cited more than the rest. Hilary had told Augustine that the monks were particularly disturbed by his reading of parts of Rom 8–12. John and Ephesians also play outsize roles here, by comparison to the other texts analyzed in this chapter. Augustine is particularly interested here in John 6, in which Jesus is teaching the crowd and then his disciples the meaning of the phrases, “I am the bread of life” and his argument that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood to be a part of him. As the crowd and some disciples revolted against this teaching, Jesus said at least four times in the text something akin to “no one may come to me unless the Father draws him” (John 6:37, 39, 44, 65). This fits well Augustine’s argument in Praed. part I.D. (cf. the outline supra) that the initium fidei is rooted in the work of God drawing people to Jesus. Nearly all of Augustine’s citations of John 6 are found in this one segment. Why Augustine is interested so much in John 6 becomes clear when he pivots to interpreting Rom 11:5–6. The monks in Gaul read Rom 11:5–6 to teach a distinction between faith and works in such a way that “grace does not come from works, but [Paul] does not say that it does not come from faith” (7.12). If the opponents are correct, then

 Prosper, Ep. 225.3 (CSEL 57:459; WSA I/26:lxii, trans. Teske): “Eo postremo pervicacia tota descendit, ut fidem nostram aedificationi audientium contrariam esse definiant ac sic, etiam si vera sit, non promendam, quia et perniciose non recipienda tradantur et nullo periculo, quae intellegi nequeant, conticeantur.”  Prosper, Ep. 225.7 (CSEL 57:465; WSA I/26:lxv and lxxvii, n59, trans. Teske). Hilary, Ep. 226.9 (CSEL 57:478; WSA I/26:lxxiii, trans. Teske).  Prosper, Ep. 225.8 (CSEL 57:466; WSA I/26:lxvi–lxvii, trans. Teske).  Augustine repeatedly expressed his annoyance at having felt compelled to write Praed. in the text itself: cf. 1.1–2; 4.8; 13.25; and 21.43 (PL44:959; 965–6; 978–9; and 991–2).

12 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 425–430 CE

321

this would prove that, at the initium fidei, the expression of faith of the person precedes the coming of God’s grace to nourish that faith. To Augustine, Rom 11:5–6 must be read in conjunction with John 6. There, one discovers Jesus to say, in John 6:29, “This is the work of God that you believe in him whom he sent.” The work of God includes faith, too. Moreover, as noted already, Jesus will go on in John 6 to say that no one may come to God, presumably in faith, without first having been drawn by God. Thus, Rom 11 and John 6 go together. There is no question that grace precedes faith. It does, however, raise two other questions: Why does God give this grace only to some? And, is that faith still a genuine expression of the person’s will? Both of these are treated in the remaining sections of the text. In fact, Augustine’s citations of Ephesians comprise a significant piece of his answer to the first of the two questions. Nearly all of these citations are located in 17.34–18.36, a part of the text in which, beginning two paragraphs earlier, Augustine defended his reading of Matt 22:14 (“many are called, but few are chosen”). In Corrept. 9.21, Augustine had alluded to, but not quoted, Matt 22:14, when he wrote, “These, then, were included in the great number of those who were called, but they were not among the few who were chosen.”38 The “these” to whom Augustine was referring are those one-time followers of Jesus mentioned in 1 John 2:19 (“they went out from us, but they did not belong to us”). The allusion to Matt 22:14, however, was not lost on his readers in southern Gaul, who were critical of the pastoral implications of Augustine’s reading. To them, it would imply that even some who were baptized and regularly attending church services might actually not be among the elect. If so, what was the point of preaching to them? The short answer, of course, which Augustine had already given both in Grat. and Corrept. is that the pastor does not know the identities of the elect, so the pastor should see all persons as potentially among the elect. Yet, Augustine felt obliged to provide further documentation of this argument, and so he turned, inter alia, to Ephesians, in particular to 1:3–12. This is one of Paul’s characteristically long sentences, one drafted with multiple dependent and relative clauses. Augustine first quotes these verses in their entirety; then, he exposits them phrase by phrase. The text is a praise to God for having “blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing,” including the blessing that “he chose us in him before the creation of the world” (Eph 1:4). Augustine writes of this, “[H]ow would he choose those who did not as yet exist except by predestining them?”39 The choice of God, then, preceded anything we have done. However, Augustine writes, “The Pelagian says ‘Therefore, he foreknew who were going to be holy and spotless through the choice of their free will, and for this

 Corrept. 9.21 (CSEL 92:243; WSA I/26:67, trans. Teske).  Praed. 18.35 (CSEL 105:211; PL 44:986; WSA I/26:130, trans. Teske): “Et quomodo eligeret eos qui nondum erant, nisi praedestinando?”

322

Brian J. Matz

reason, before the creation of the world, he chose [them].’”40 The problem for the Pelagians, as Augustine will then point out, is that Eph 1:4 goes on to say, “he chose us in him before the creation of the world that we might be holy and spotless.” Augustine writes: “He chose us, therefore, not because we were going to be, but in order that we might be holy and spotless. . . . we were going to be such precisely because he chose us, predestining us to be such by his grace.”41 Moreover, this act of predestining is, as Augustine notes in Eph 1:5, “in accord with the purpose of his [i.e., God’s] will . . .” Once again, everything about this act of predestination is, as Eph 1:9 puts it, in the “mystery of his will.” Since it is unknown, it has no bearing on how or what one is to preach, because the preacher does not know who among the congregants are and are not among the elect. Why God does what God does is beyond our comprehension and understanding. We merely get to watch it unfold before us as we move through life. It might seem that Augustine’s lengthy expositions of John 6 and Eph 1 were enough to counter the ideas of his opponents in southern Gaul. However, as noted earlier in Hilary’s letter, there remained concern about how Augustine had interpreted Romans. Yet, as Figure 10 demonstrates, unlike his expositions of John and Ephesians, Augustine distributed references to and discussion of passages from Romans throughout this text. It is understandable why he did so. His particular interpretation of Rom 8–11, which Figure 11 indicates are the chapters he cited most in Praed., depends on reading these chapters in dialogue with the whole of Scripture. It is an acknowledgment that his theology of grace is not built on just any one text or just any one part of Scripture. It is built on the whole of Scripture when read through a particular lens, namely the lens of Rom 8–11.42 What, then, does this lens have to say about how to read Scripture? God’s calling of a person is irrevocable. This is the chief point of the concentration of Romans citations found at Praed. 16.32–33, at which place one finds the allusion to Matt 22:14 discussed earlier and after which Augustine exposited Eph 1. In raising the question what it means for some to be called, but not chosen, and what it means that those called are made holy and spotless, Augustine explains these two ideas go together only if we see God’s calling as irrevocable. Rom 11:25–29 provides the necessary proof. The use of the word “mystery” in verse 25 facilitates this text’s connection to Eph 1:9, and the use of the word “call” in verse  Praed. 18.36 (CSEL 105:212; PL 44:987; WSA I/26:130, trans. Teske): “Praesciebat ergo, ait Pelagianus, qui future essent sancti et immaculati per liberare voluntatis arbitrium: et ideo eos ante mundi constitutionem in ipsa sua praescientia.”  Praed. 18.36 (CSEL 105:212; PL 44:987; WSA I/26:130, trans. Teske): “Non ergo quia futuri eramus, sed ut essemus [sancti et immaculati] . . . ideo quippe tales eramus futuri, quia clegit ipse, praedestinans ut tales per gratiam ejus essemus.”  With regard to building one’s theology on the whole of Scripture, Augustine, in Doctr. chr. 2.6.8 (CCSL32:36), explained that such a practice is warranted given the role of the Holy Spirit in inspiring the authors of the sacred books. Moreover, as he argued in both Doctr. chr. 3.16.24–3.19.28 and 3.25–26.37 (CCSL 32:91–94 and 99), difficulties in interpreting one part of Scripture are to be resolved by recourse to other, clearer parts.

12 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 425–430 CE

323

29 points back not only to Matt 22:14, but also to Rom 9:29, which Augustine also cites. Thus, Rom 11:25–29 serves as the primary exegetical connector between the idea of election latent in Matt 22 and the mystery of this election in Eph 1. However, Augustine goes a step further with Rom 11 than he does with Matt 22 and Eph 1. And this fact explains why one should recognize it as the interpretive key to those other two texts. Rom 11:25, 28 says, “blindness has been produced in a part of Israel . . . in regard to the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but in regard to election they are dearly loved” (NRSV). Augustine interprets “enemies” as indicating the rejection of Jesus by the Jewish community, which had the unintended benefit (to their mind) of furthering the spread of the Gospel. Then, Augustine writes, “And he [Paul] showed that this came from God’s plan of salvation for he knew how to make good use even of the evil . . . in order that, in his making good use of them, they might benefit the vessels of mercy.”43 The reference to “vessels of mercy” recalls Rom 9:23. This is quite a bold statement from Augustine, and it goes far beyond what Hilary and Prosper initially asked of him. Augustine here claims that God uses the evil acts of people to cause an effect that God desires. One can imagine here the readers in Gaul thinking that Augustine has now defended a view that predestination is so entirely encompassing that it also includes the evil acts of people. However, Augustine anticipated this reaction and writes next, “It is, then, in the power of the evil to sin, but it is not in their power, but in the power of God who divides the darkness and orders it to his ends that, by sinning in their malice, they generate this or that effect. And in that way only the will of God is accomplished even by that which they do against the will of God.”44 So, people will do evil. That is a consequence of their own free will decisions. However, the effect people intend with their evil is not in their control. God determines whether people get what they want from their evil, and, more likely, the effect of their evil acts is not at all what they intended. This distinction between acts and effects is crucial for Augustine’s theology of grace. It is what facilitates Augustine’s confidence in the seamless coexistence of the freedom of the human will and the sovereignty of God. And it is entirely a mystery. It is a mystery why many are called but only a few chosen. It is a mystery just how God puts together the many human acts, both the good and the evil, to bring about ends that God alone wills to accomplish. It is a mystery how preaching works to prick the conscience of some so that they respond to God’s call while leaving others bereft of true faith.

 Praed. 16.33 (CSEL 105:208; PL 44:984; WSA I/26:126, trans. Teske): “Et hoc ostendit ex dei dispositione venisse, qui bene uti novit etiam malis . . . sed ut ipso illis bene utente, prosint vasis misericordiae.”  Praed. 16.33 (CSEL 105:209; PL 44:984; WSA I/26:126–7, trans. Teske): “Est ergo in malorum potestate peccare: ut autem peccando hoc vel hoc illa malitia faciant, non est in eorum potestate, sed dei dividentis tenebras et ordinantis eas; ut hinc etiam quod faciunt contra voluntatem dei, non impleatur nisi voluntas dei.”

324

Brian J. Matz

Figure 7: Number of citations from the Old Testament in Praed.

Figure 8: Number of citations from the New Testament in Praed.

12 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 425–430 CE

Figure 9: Distribution of all biblical citations, according to section numbers, in Praed.

Figure 10: Distribution of citations of Romans, according to section numbers, in Praed.

325

326

Brian J. Matz

Figure 11: Number of citations from each chapter of Romans in Praed.

De dono perseverantiae In its opening sentence, Augustine identifies this as the second part to the previous work, Praed.45 Together, the two parts constitute his response to the letters from Prosper and Hilary in regard to their dealings with the monks in southern Gaul. Thus, the reader of Persev. should recognize it as a continuation of the arguments already presented in Praed. At the same time, it is not difficult to see why readers centuries later would separate Persev. from Praed. and begin to think of it as a separate text. Whereas Praed. focused its attention on the initium fidei, Persev. is concerned with the ongoing life of faith, the persevering in one’s faith to the end. Not surprisingly, then, the arguments of Persev. are not much different from those found in Corrept. The following outline of the text reveals this focus, as Augustine examines perseverance from the perspectives of Scripture, of God, and of the preacher. I. Gift of perseverance is taught in the Lord’s Prayer (1.1–7.15) II. Gift of perseverance is a predestined judgment of God (8.16–14.35) A. It is inscrutable (8.16–9.21) B. Not based on events that could, but do not, occur (9.22–14.35) III. Gift of perseverance ought to be preached, because . . . (14.36–20.53)

 The critical edition is Drecoll and Scheerer, eds., CSEL 105:219–71; cf. also PL 45:933–1034; WSA I/ 26:143–97, trans.Teske.

12 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 425–430 CE

327

A. No one knows who has received the gift (14.36–16.39) B. It is a help to those who have received it (16.40) C. It is an occasion to celebrate the grace of God (16.41–17.42) D. We preach other virtues even when we know they also are gifts (17.43–46) E. It is taught in Scripture (17.47) F. It has been taught previously in the church (19.48–21.56) G. Yet, be careful not to confuse the people (22.57–62) IV. Gift of perseverance is understood with help from two sources (23.63–24.68) A. Prayer (23.63–24.66) B. The person and work of Jesus (24.67–68) With respect to Augustine’s use of Scripture, two elements of this outline are noteworthy. In segment I, including sections 1.1–7.15, Augustine interpreted the Lord’s Prayer in light of his theology of the grace of perseverance.46 In segment III.E, at section 17.47, Augustine returned again to Rom 11:1–6 to highlight Scripture’s teaching on God’s predestining the perseverance of the elect. Also, if one overlays Figure 14 onto this outline, not only do these prove to be important sections for Augustine’s use of Scripture in se, but another part of the text, namely III.A and specifically 17.37, is also shown to be a place Augustine bathes in scriptural language his argument that the church ought to preach perseverance. Finally, Figure 14 suggests one look also at II.B, including sections 9.22–14.35, in which Augustine exposits Jesus’ reference to Tyre and Sidon in Matt 11:21. Of course, it should be noted, and as Figures 12 and 13 indicate, that Augustine continued in Persev. what was found also in Praed., and that is his preference for citations from Psalms and Romans, which are spread throughout the text rather than concentrated in any one section. Romans, in particular, continues here to provide the foundation for Augustine’s theology of grace. It is this book to which most if not all of the other biblical citations in Persev. are referenced. Turning now to the four sections of the text just noted, first, Augustine opened this text with a lengthy exegesis of the Lord’s Prayer as a prayer for perseverance. He relied on the text of the prayer recorded in Matt 6. In fact, this explains why, after Romans, Matthew is the second most-cited book from the New Testament, as Figure 13 indicates. Augustine divided the prayer into its six petitions: (1) may God’s name be holy; (2) may God’s kingdom come; (3) may God’s will be done; (4) may God provide us our daily bread; (5) may God forgive us; and (6) may God not lead us into temptation. With the exception of number five, Augustine noted that each petition was actually an acknowledgment that we require from God the gift of perseverance. Also, Augustine credited Cyprian’s text, The Lord’s Prayer, as his inspiration for this reading. Yet, whereas Cyprian focused in his text

 For other, substantial discussions of the Lord’s prayer in Augustine’s writings, see, e.g., Ep. 130 (CSEL 44:40–77); Serm. dom. 2.4.15–2.6.22 (CCSL 35:104–112); and Serm. 114.5 (RBén 73 [1963]:26); 135.7 (PL 38:749); 181.6 (PL 38:981); and 348A.11 (RechAug 28 [1995]:60).

328

Brian J. Matz

on the personal aspects of each petition, Augustine has moved one step further in order to turn these personal aspects into an acknowledgment that these are pleas for perseverance in them. In petition (1), for example, a prayer that God’s name be holy is not about making God holy. God already is holy. As Cyprian noted, this petition, then, is asking that God’s holiness be manifest in us. Cyprian made this personal connection by linking Matt 6:9 to Lev 19:2 (“be holy because I am holy”).47 Augustine takes this one step further by asserting that this is a prayer for our perseverance in holiness, a perseverance that God alone can grant. He writes: “What else does it mean to ask for what we have received but that we may also be given the gift of not ceasing to have it?”48 Holy people ask to remain holy, Augustine argues, just as chaste people ask God to help them to remain chaste, and pious people ask God to help them remain pious. This petition, then, not unlike the others, is a prayer that God will bring about both the beginning of our holiness and our persevering in it. Likewise, petition (2) is a plea that God generate for his people what God alone can provide, God’s very own kingdom. Augustine understood the kingdom here eschatologically: “[I]t is certain that the kingdom of God will come, not to others, but to these persons who persevere up to the end.”49 Petition (3) is a bit trickier. Its reference to heaven and earth seems to point away from individual persons. Yet again, however, Augustine relied on Cyprian to establish its personal focus. Augustine writes: “But that teacher and martyr wants us to understand by ‘heaven and earth’ the spirit and the flesh. . . . [T]he faithful who, having put on the heavenly man . . . pray for non-believers who are still earth, bearing only the earthly man from their first birth.”50 To go one step further, to see in this petition a plea for perseverance, Augustine emphasized its reference to the will of God. He wrote: “For, since his will has already been done in them, why do they still ask that it be done, if not that they may persevere in what they have begun to be?”51 More straightforward are petitions (4) and (6). They are pleas for things, bread and deliverance from temptation, that necessarily are ongoing. In terms of bread, Augustine followed Cyprian, who interpreted it to mean the Body of Christ, and then Augustine added that it was a plea for God to allow a person to persevere in his or her connection to

 Cyprian of Carthage, De dominica oratione 12 (CCL 3A:97).  Persev. 2.4 (CSEL 105:221; PL 45:997; WSA I/26:146, trans. Teske): “Quid est enim aliud petere quod accepimus, nisi ut id quoque nobis praestetur, ne habere desinamus?”  Persev. 2.5 (CSEL 105:222; PL 45:997; WSA I/26:147, trans. Teske): “Neque enim aliter eis veniet regnum dei, quod non aliis, sed his qui perseverant usque in finem, certum est esse venturum.”  Persev. 3.6 (CSEL 105:222; PL 45:997; WSA I/26:147, trans. Teske), referring to Cyprian, De dominica oratione 16 (CCL 3A:99–100): “Vult autem ille doctor et martyr, coelum et terram intelligi spiritum et carnem . . . pro infidelibus qui sunt adhuc terra, terrenum tantum hominem prima nativitate portantes, orare intelligantur fideles, qui coelesti homine induti, non immerito coeli nomine nucupantur.”  Persev. 3.6 (CSEL 105:222; PL 45:998; WSA I/26:147, trans. Teske): “Cum enim jam facta sit in eis, cur ut fiat adhuc petunt, nisi ut perseverent in eo quod esse coeperunt?”

12 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 425–430 CE

329

Christ. The plea for deliverance from temptation was, for Augustine, similar to the plea to persevere in holiness, which forms a nice inclusio to the prayer itself. In section 17.47, Augustine turned his attention back to Rom 11, which, as noted earlier, was the subject of lengthy exposition in Praed. Yet, whereas in the earlier text Augustine emphasized later verses in Rom 11, here he focused on 11:1–6. Importantly, 11:2 reads: “God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.” The key term is “foreknew.” Augustine recalled briefly his earlier argument, in Praed. 10.19–11.21, that all that is predestined is foreknown, but not all that is foreknown is predestined. In other words, sometimes the terms are interchangeable, and that is how Augustine interpreted “foreknew” in Rom 11:2. It referred to events God had predestined to be so, a fact confirmed in Rom 11:4, where Paul records that Elijah was told by God that God had “left for myself” 7,000 people who had not turned to idolatry. Augustine wrote, “He [God] did not, after all, say ‘They were left for me,’ or ‘They left themselves for me,’ but ‘I left for myself.’”52 Then, to clinch the point that this foreknowing (= predestining) is about perseverance for the elect, Augustine noted that Paul wrote in the very next verse that these 7,000 people were “a remnant elected by grace.” Something similar is found at section 14.37. Having recalled Jesus’s repeated claims from John 6 that “no one comes to me unless the Father draws him,” which Augustine had done in Praed. 7.12–8.15, and now here connecting this text to Matt 19:11 (“not all accept this word, but those to whom it has been given”) and to Luke 8:8 (“let those who have ears, hear”), Augustine argues in 14.37 that just because only the elect will hear and obey, it does not mean that all should not have an opportunity to hear. In John 6, Jesus preached to a crowd even though he knew only some of them were called. Augustine noted also that chastity is taught to all Christians even though the apostle Paul acknowledged it was not for everyone (cf. 1 Cor 7:7). Thus, within the overall context of Augustine’s plea that the monks in southern Gaul not shy away from preaching that God predestines some to persevere, the exposition of Rom 11:1–6 in section 17.47 and the exposition of these and other verses in 14.37 are proof that the Scriptures teach this very idea. One last segment of the text to consider is sections 9.22–14.35. Here, one discovers how Augustine can take an obscure remark by Jesus and turn it into a guide for interpreting a wide-range of biblical texts, thereby resolving a thorny element within his larger theology of grace. The remark by Jesus is his reference to Tyre and Sidon in Matt 11:21. Augustine recalled it here in an attempt to confront those who were not satisfied with the explanation that God has predestined only some people, and that God has done so for reasons that are hidden from us. Like the Pelagians before them, the monks in Gaul wanted to explain rationally why people die before baptism, i.e.,

 Persev. 18.47 (CSEL 105:255; PL 45:1022; WSA I/26:181, trans. Teske): “Non enim ait, ‘Relicta sunt mihi’; aut, ‘Reliquerunt se mihi’: sed, ‘Reliqui mihi.’”

330

Brian J. Matz

die without salvation. This was especially so in regard to the death of (unbaptized) infants, a difficult pastoral situation in any age and in any context. Apparently, one argument of the monks was that God foreknew both the sins unbaptized people would commit and that, even if presented with an opportunity for faith, such people would not have believed. Thus, their damnation is a just punishment for their future sins and unbelief. This preserves, they thought, both a universal distribution of grace for faith and the freedom of every person to accept that grace. Augustine disagreed that God would punish a person for sins he or she has not yet done, and future sins and future unbelief are, by definition, deeds that have not actually been committed nor positions that have actually been assumed. The problem of the death of unbaptized infants had already been raised in section 9.21. There Augustine acknowledged that such things are a part of “God’s inscrutable judgments.” This answer was unsatisfactory to the monks in Gaul, but the idea that such infants are damned on the basis of their future, uncommitted sins was unsatisfactory to Augustine. Unbaptized infants go to hell, he argued, not because of their future sins but because of their original sin. He wrote, “It remains, then, that they are held guilty by original sin alone, and on account of it alone they enter into condemnation.”53 Everyone who is damned is damned because of original sin, because of their own sins, or both. This is true of all people beyond the age of reason, whether baptized or not, Augustine argued, because, again, it is not baptism that saves but the grace of God that produces both the initium fidei and the persevering in it. Where, then, do Tyre and Sidon fit in to this schema? Augustine introduced Matt 11:21 with these words: Why, after all, should one not say that it is in vain that the gospel was preached or is still preached with such great labor and sufferings of the saints, if human beings could have been judged, even without having heard the gospel . . .? Nor would Tyre and Sidon be condemned, even though less severely than those cities in which the Lord worked miraculous signs for nonbelievers, because, if those signs were produced in them, they would have done penance in ashes and sackcloth.54

In Matt 11:21, we find Jesus criticizing the residents of Chorazin and Bethsaida, two towns a little north of his ministerial home base of Capernaum. The residents of these cities had the benefit of Jesus’s presence and teaching, and yet persisted in their unbelief. The residents of Tyre and Sidon, by contrast, had not had the same benefit. So, Augustine noted what Jesus said in Matt 11:22 (“it will be more bearable for Tyre and  Persev. 9.23 (CSEL 105:233; PL 45:1006; WSA I/26:159, trans. Teske): “Restat igitur ut solo peccato originali teneantur obstricti, et propter hoc solum eant in damnationem.”  Persev. 9.22 (CSEL 105:232; PL 45:1005; WSA I/26:157, trans. Teske): “Cur enim non dicatur, et ipsum evangelium cum tanto labore passionibusque sanctorum frustra esse praedicatum, vel adhuc etiam praedicari: si judicari poterant homines, etiam non audito evangelio . . .? Nec damnarentur Tyrus et Sidon, quamvis remissius quam illae civitates, in quibus non credentibus a domino Christo mirabilia signa sunt facta: quoniam si apud illas facta essent, in cinere et cilicio poenitentiam egissent.”

12 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 425–430 CE

331

Sidon on the day of judgment [than for Chorazin and Bethsaida]”). The residents of all four towns were damned. The punishment will be more severe for some and less severe for others, but the residents of all four are damned. And this is the end result despite the fact that the residents of Tyre and Sidon would have, at least for a time, repented. Moreover, Augustine noted his agreement with the interpretation of another, unnamed exegete who suggested that Jesus did not perform his miracles at Tyre and Sidon in order to be merciful to them. “Christ is said to have helped the people of Tyre and Sidon when he preferred that they not come to the faith rather than that they abandon the faith by a much graver sin, a sin which he foresaw that they were going to commit, if they came to the faith.”55 That is to say, Jesus knew they would not believe anyway, so he chose not to go to those towns. For if he had done so, they would then have been held responsible for this greater knowledge about himself. Consequently, their damnation would have been more severe. This brings the reader back to the original question: Why did God not give the graces both of initium fidei and of perseverance to the people of Tyre and Sidon, and thus visit there? Augustine replied with an expression he used frequently in these four texts, “I do not know” (ignoro).56 Still, the fact that the residents of Tyre and Sidon would have believed even for a time revealed to Augustine another, critically important fact. He writes, “From this we see that some people naturally have in their native ability a divine gift of intelligence by which they may be moved to the faith if they hear words or see signs which are suited to their minds.” It is only by the “more profound judgment of God they are not set apart from the mass of perdition by the predestination of grace.”57 This is a rather telling statement. To Augustine, the reason some people will profess faith for a period of time in their life is due to the fact that the words or signs of faith are “suited to their minds.” Faith fits within their understanding of the world or of their lives at a particular point in time, but, when circumstances change, so does their willingness to continue in faith. This points, once again, to the need for every person to be vigilant in prayer for their perseverance in faith. In sum, for Augustine, Matt 11:21 is a very pregnant verse. Jesus, as God, foreknew not only what will occur in the future but also foreknew what could happen in the future. Jesus foreknew whether people will be given God’s grace. He foreknew what they will do when receiving this grace. He foreknew who will reject it (Chorazin and Bethsaida), who

 Persev. 10.24 (CSEL 105:234; PL 45:1007; WSA I/26:159, trans. Teske): “Sicut Tyriis et Sidoniis, si sententia illa vera est, subvenisse dicitur Christus, quos maluit non accedere ad fidem, quam scelere multo graviore discedere a fide, quod eos, si accessissent, praeviderat fuisse facturos.”  Persev. 10.24 (CSEL 105:234; PL 45:1007; WSA I/26:158, trans. Teske).  Persev. 14.35 (CSEL 105:244; PL 45:1014; WSA I/26:169, trans. Teske): “Ex quo apparet habere quosdam in ipso ingenio divinum naturaliter munus intelligentiae, quo moveantur ad fidem, si congrua suis mentibus, vel audiant verba, vel signa conspiciant: . . . dei altiore judicio, a perditionis massa non sunt gratiae praedestinatione discreti.”

332

Brian J. Matz

will receive it but not persevere in faith (Tyre and Sidon), and who will receive it and persevere in faith (the “little children” of Matt 11:25). To these three groups, the verse also revealed to Augustine the presence of a fourth group of people, those who possess faith only for a short time on the basis of its suitability to their own minds.

Figure 12: Number of citations from the Old Testament in Persev.

Figure 13: Number of citations from the New Testament in Persev.

12 Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 425–430 CE

333

Figure 14: Distribution of citations, according to section numbers, in Persev.

Conclusion This chapter examined the role of Scripture in elucidating Augustine’s theology of grace in his writings on this subject between 425–430 CE. In Grat., Augustine emphasized the phrase, “God will repay each person according to his works,” from Rom 2:2, to articulate the idea that humans possess a free will, and, thus, are responsible for their acts. In Corrept. Augustine brought together Matt 20:16; Rom 8:28; 11:33; 1 Cor 1:31; 4:7; and Gal 5:6 to express both the inscrutability of God’s will and the future orientation of God’s grace (including whether that grace might yield perseverance in faith for a particular person). Moreover, Corrept. drew a contrast between Adam and the rest of humanity; in so doing, it defended our need for grace both at the initium fidei and at every later point in life. The biblical ideas of the reality of the human will, inscrutability of God’s will, and the necessity of grace continued in Praed. and Persev. In them, Augustine drew upon John 6, Eph 1 and Rom 11 to emphasize the mystery and irrevocability of God’s will to save only some. Here, Augustine also identified in the Lord’s Prayer an invitation for God’s people to see their perseverance in faith as experienced in everyday, mundane, ordinary tasks. Perhaps this is the most fitting way to think about Augustine’s use of Scripture in his theology of grace. Neither Augustine, nor one’s abbot, nor one’s pastor can know God’s will for any other person. One can even be deceived in one’s own mind about one’s own relationship with God. Yet, Scripture attests that grace is encountered not in knowing whether one is elect or not, but in those small, ordinary moments where one accepts rebuke, repents of sin, looks to God, and acknowledges that God alone sustains the truly elect in every moment of every day.

334

Brian J. Matz

Further Reading Primary Sources Augustine. Answer to the Pelagians IV, translated by Roland Teske. Part I, vol. 26, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, edited by Boniface Ramsey. Hyde Park: New City Press, 1999. Augustine. S. Aureli Augustini: Epistulae, edited by Alois Goldmacher. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 57. Vienna: Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1911. Augustine. Contra sermonem arrianorum praecedit sermo arrianorum. De correptione et gratia. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 92, edited by Georges Folliet. Vienna: Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2000. Augustine. Späte Schriften zur Gnadenlehre: De gratia et libero arbitrio. De praedestinatione sanctorum libri duo, edited by Volker Drecoll and Christoph Scheerer. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 105. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019. Cyprian. Cyprianus Carthaginiensis. Opera. II, edited by Manlio Simonetti and Claudio Moreschini. Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina 3A. Turnhout: Brepols, 1976. Patrologia Latina 35, edited by J.P. Migne. Paris, 1865, cols. 881–912, 915–946, 959–992, and 993–1034.

Secondary Sources Babcock, William. “Augustine on Sin and Moral Agency.” Journal of Religious Ethics 16 (1988): 28–55. Bonner, Gerald. Freedom and Necessity: St. Augustine’s Teaching on Divine Power and Human Freedom. Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007. Burns, James Patout. The Development of Augustine’s Doctrine of Operative Grace. Collection des Études Augustiniennes, Série Antiquité 82. Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1980. Chadwick, Owen. John Cassian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968 (2nd ed.). Hwang, Alexander. Intrepid Lover of Perfect Grace: The Life and Thought of Prosper of Aquitaine. Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009. Jenkins, Eric. Free to Say No: Free Will and Augustine’s Evolving Doctrines of Grace and Election. London: James Clarke, 2012. Lamberigts, Mathijs. “Augustine on Predestination: Some Quaestiones Disputatae Revisited.” Augustiniana 54 (2004): 279–305. Rist, John. Augustine Deformed: Love, Sin and Freedom in the Western Moral Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Teselle, Eugene. “The Background: Augustine and the Pelagian Controversy.” In Grace for Grace: The Predestination Controversy after Augustine and Pelagius, edited by Alexander Hwang, Brian Matz and Augustine Casiday, 1–13. Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014. Wilson, Kenneth. Augustine’s Conversion from Traditional Free Choice to ‘Non-Free Free Will’: A Comprehensive Methodology. Studien und Text zu Antike und Christentum 111. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018. Wu, Tianyue. “Augustine on ‘initium fidei’: A Case Study of the Coexistence of Operative Grace and Free Decision of the Will.” Recherches de théologie et philosophe médiévales 79 (2012): 1–38.

Thomas Clemmons

13 Quodvultdeus and Victor Vitensis Introduction The two authors discussed in this chapter, Quodvultdeus of Carthage and Victor Vitensis (Victor of Vita), are perhaps the only significant North African Christian writers between Augustine (d. 430) and Fulgentius, Primasius, and Facundus of the sixth century. Quodvultdeus and Victor both produced their writings against the backdrop of the “Arian” Vandals.1 However, Quodvultdeus and Victor differ greatly in their exegesis and use of Scripture. Quodvultdeus, as his writings show, received and greatly expanded Augustine’s figurative approach. Victor, by contrast, integrated into his history scriptural citations in a very distinctive, and at times original, manner. We will first treat Quodvultdeus, then turn to Victor.

The Life of Quodvultdeus Quodvultdeus is first known to us through the letters he sent to Augustine in 428/29.2 In these letters, Quodvultdeus, who appears to have been a senior deacon in Carthage at the time, requests that Augustine compose a compendium on the types of heresies, which eventually became Augustine’s De haeresibus ad Quodvultdeum.3 Following the deaths of Augustine and Aurelius, the long-standing bishop of Carthage, Quodvultdeus was elected bishop of Carthage sometime between 434 and 437.4 This was a tumultuous time

 What follows will not focus on the polemical and apologetical use of the Bible, especially in response to “Arianism.” For this, see the chapter by D. Vopřada in this volume. In addition, the term “Arian” is used in this chapter with reservation; “Homoian” is probably the more accurate term to describe the theological position of the Vandals.  Augustine, Ep. 221–4 (CSEL 57:444–51).  In Haer. 46.9 (CCSL 46:315) Augustine mentions that Quodvultdeus was already a deacon in Carthage when several Manichaean elect were arrested as a result of a scandal and put on trial between 417 to 421 CE. See also Possidius, Vit. Aug. 16.1–2 (LCPM 45:208); and Augustine’s dedication of Haer., praef. 1 (CCSL 46:286).  Dating Quodvultdeus’s elevation to bishop of Carthage depends on the date one assumes for the death of Capriolus, the bishop who succeeded Aurelius. See R. B. Eno, “Christian Reaction to the Barbarian ✶

Thomas Clemmons serves as Assistant Professor of Latin Patristics and Church History at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. His research focuses on Augustine, especially his early writings, the reception of Augustine, Manichaeanism, Jerome, Ambrose, and Christianity in North Africa generally. Thomas Clemmons, The Catholic University of America https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-014

336

Thomas Clemmons

in North Africa. Several provinces were overrun by Vandal forces, though Proconsular Africa and its capital of Carthage initially remained outside their control.5 The situation changed rapidly with the Vandal occupation of Carthage in 439. Within the year, Quodvultdeus was banished from the city; he eventually settled in Campania where he remained until his death around 454 CE.6 Little is known about Quodvultdeus’s early life and education. However, within works attributed to him, a few anecdotal references suggest that Quodvultdeus was either born in or moved to Carthage in his youth.7 His rhetorical style appears less sophisticated than that of Augustine;8 however, this observation belies Quodvultdeus’s aptitude as an exegete.9 Quodvultdeus not only compiled scriptural testimonia beyond those known from Augustine and the previous North African tradition, but also comprehensively recast Augustine’s figural typology.10 Quodvultdeus is one of the most prolific North African biblical exegetes after Augustine. If the works attributed to him are authentic, then he has left behind an extensive

Invasions and the Sermons of Quodvultdeus,” in Preaching in the Patristic Age, Studies in Honour of Walter J. Burghardt, SJ, ed. D. Hunter (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1989), 152–4. Based on a healing in Carthage that took place in 434, recounted in Liber promissionum et praedictorum (LP), Dim. temp.6.9–11 (CCSL 60:196–8), W. Strobl, “Notitiolae quodvultdeanae,” VC 52.2 (1998): 198–202, argues for a date between 432–434 CE.  For the period from the siege of Hippo to the Vandal capture of Carthage, see A. Schwarcz, “The Settlement of the Vandals in North Africa,” in Vandals, Romans, and Berbers: New Perspectives on Late Antique North Africa, ed. A. H. Merrills (Burlington, VT: Aldershot, 2004), 49–57.  For Quodvultdeus’s exile to Naples, see Victor Vitensis, Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae (Hist. pers.) 1.15, in Victor de Vita, Histoire de la Persécution Vandale en Afrique, ed. S. Lancel, (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2002), 103–4. (Throughout this chapter, Histoire de la Persécution Vandale en Afrique will be abbreviated as “HPVA.”) Quodvultdeus’s death is deduced from the ordination of a new bishop of Carthage, Deogratias, in 454. See Victor Vitensis, Hist. pers. 1.24 (HPVA 107–8).  For example, his eyewitness account of the conversion of the temple of the goddess Caelestis into a Christian church, which occurred around 408 CE, is recounted in LP 3.38.44–5 (CCSL 60:185–6). For the conversion of the temple, see R. Braun, Quodvultdeus, Livre des Promesses et des Prédictions de Dieu, SC 101:71–3. See also O. Perler, Les voyages de saint Augustin (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1959), 391–5. For the suggestion that Quodvultdeus may have come from the remote African province of Avaritana, see R. Braun, “Un témoignage littéraire méconnu sur l’Abaritana provincia,” Revue Africaine 103 (1959): 114–6.  For Quodvultdeus’s style and education, see G. Morin, “Pour une future édition des opuscules de saint Quodvultdeus, évêque de Carthage au Vᵉ siècle,” RBén 31 (1914–1919): 161–2. For Quodvultdeus’s limited familiarity with classical Latin literature, see Braun, SC 101:53–60; and P. Courcelle, “Quodvultdeus Redivivus,” Revue des Études Anciennes 67 (1965): 166.  According to R. J. De Simone, “The Baptismal and Christological Catechesis of Quodvultdeus,” Aug 25:1 (1985): 265, Quodvultdeus’s writings show a “faithful reflection of Augustine’s catechesis and exegesis.”  For an earlier text that gathers scriptural testimonia and that influenced later authors, see Cyprian, Ad Quirinum Testimoniorum libri III (CCSL 3:3–179). Quodvultdeus’s biblical citations are eclectic. While he shows some familiarity with Jerome’s translation of the Gospels, he largely draws from earlier African translations of the Bible. Moreover, Quodvultdeus’s writings do not indicate any familiarity with Greek biblical texts. See Braun, SC 101:44–53.

13 Quodvultdeus and Victor Vitensis

337

corpus. These will be examined in two groups. The first section discusses his thirteen extant homilies, given before Quodvultdeus’s exile, while he was still the sitting bishop of Carthage. Several of these were preached before the catechumenate (and likely the entire congregation) in the immediacy of Easter.11 The second section treats Quodvultdeus’s magnum opus, Liber promissionum et praedictorum (LP), and its various components.

Homilies The homilies attributed to Quodvultdeus in Braun’s critical edition have a long history of inclusion among a group of sermons erroneously attributed to Augustine.12 Moreover, the titles, which were applied by later copyists, continue to create some ambiguity about the genre and contents of these writings. For example, Adversus quinque haereses (AQH) and Contra Judaeos, Paganos et Arrianos (CJPA) both appear to be controversial treatises. In fact, both are homilies. CJPA is a pre-baptismal homily given before Easter as part of the instruction to the catechumenate (perhaps with the whole congregation present), whereas AQH is almost exclusively a controversial sermon likely given before a monastic community. These aspects, as well as the difficulty of attribution, have obstructed reading the homilies together and in the proper (often catechetical) context. Quodvultdeus’s catalogue of homilies are dated with some degree of accuracy to ca. 434–439, the period immediately preceding and including the Vandal capture of Carthage. Nine of the thirteen homilies center on the bishop’s catechetical instruction for the rites of initiation and the contents of the creed.13 Two homilies, both entitled De tempore barbarico (Temp. barb.), were delivered within the shadow of the Vandals’ capture of Carthage. AQH and De quattuor virtutibus caritatis (QVC), the two remaining homilies, string together scriptural citations to refute pagan, Jewish, Arian, Manichaean, and Sabellian claims (AQH), and provide a typological reading of 1 Cor 13:4–8 (QVC).14 As noted, the predominant context for Quodvultdeus’s homilies is catechetical instruction. Indeed, Quodvultdeus is an exemplar of the claim that in the early church’s

 T. Finn, “Quodvultdeus: The Preacher and the Audience: The Homilies on the Creed,” in StPatr 31:48–50.  See the review of manuscripts in R. Braun, CCSL 60 (Turnholt: Brepols, 1976), xl–cvi.  Following Braun, D. Vopřada, Quodvultdeus: A Bishop Forming Christians in Vandal Africa: A Contextual Analysis of the Pre-baptismal Sermons attributed to Quodvultdeus of Carthage (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 66–91, offers a compelling case for these homilies’ coherence.  For more on Quodvultdeus’s pervasive and harsh polemics, especially against Arians and Jews, see David Vopřada, “Quodvultdeus’ Sermons on the Creed: A Reassessment of his Polemics against the Jews, Pagans, and Arians,” Vox Patrum 37 (2017): 355–69; R. González-Salinero, “The Anti-Judaism of Quodvultdeus in the Vandal and Catholic Context of the 5th Century in North Africa,” Revue des Études Juives 155.3–4 (1996): 447–59; and Finn, “The Preacher,” 50–8.

338

Thomas Clemmons

catechetical instruction, the “Bible and liturgy were inseparably linked together.”15 To this end, he deploys a whole range of scriptural citations and exegetical strategies to instruct his congregation in how to interpret Scripture. Much like for Augustine, the heart of this instruction is the figurative and spiritual reading of the Bible.16 Quodvultdeus guides his listeners to “cross over from the figure to the image, from the parable to the spiritual meaning.”17 A vivid example of figurative exegesis is found in his homily De cataclysmo (Cat.). He begins by summarizing the first fourteen chapters of Exodus, then provides the figural interpretation.18 According to Quodvultdeus, “Moses has the figure of the Lord Christ, since he was the leader of the people. Understand in the staff, the cross, in the Red Sea, baptism made scarlet with the blood of Christ, in the king of Egypt and his people, the author of sin, the devil along with all his attendants.”19 The depiction of Moses as a figure of Christ is not absent in Quodvultdeus’s North African predecessors.20 Yet Quodvultdeus provides a manifold interpretation of the figure of Moses as Christ. When discussing the first half of Exodus, especially the crossing of the Red Sea (cf. Exod 14), he utilizes the figure of Moses and the surrounding narrative to sketch parallels with those about to be baptized. As at the Red Sea, Christ fights against the devil when the catechumens approach the baptismal font. When the catechumens cry out to their Moses, Christ, the wood of the cross strikes the sea of baptism.21 To this reading, Quodvultdeus adds that Christ is the New Moses striking serpents (heretics) with his staff.22 This staff (virga), however, is not only for striking serpents, it is also the staff of the Shepherd who searches for the lost sheep (cf. Luke 15:4–6).23 In his catechetical instruction Quodvultdeus also uses the framework of the Creed to connect biblical figures dynamically through a range of scriptural references. Just as with the image of the Shepherd, Quodvultdeus applies this approach to the image of the staff: “This staff is holy Mary, it is Christ himself, it is the cross; from this staff how many

 De Simone, “Catechesis,” 281–2.  For an insightful treatment of Augustine’s figurative exegesis, see M. Cameron, Christ Meets Me Everywhere: Augustine’s Early Figurative Exegesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).  De accendentibus ad gratiam (Acced.) 2.6.1 (CCSL 60:462; trans. is my own): “Transeamus jam a figura ad speciem, a parabola ad spiritalem intellectum.”  De cataclysmo (Cat.) 3–4 (CCSL 60:410–4).  Cat. 3.22 (CCSL 60:412; trans. is my own): “Moyses figuram habuit Domini Christi, quoniam dux fuit populi. In virga agnoscite crucem. Mare Rubrum agnoscite baptismum Christi sanguine purpuratum; regem Aegyptiorum populumque ejus, auctorem peccatorum diabolum cum omnibus ministris ejus.”  For a similar interpretation, see Augustine, Serm. 363.4 (PL 39:1635): “Duce domino nostro Jesu Christo, cujus tunc figuram Moyses gerebat, per baptismum liberati, ‘cantemus domino’” (Exod 15:1). See also Tertullian, De fuga 11.1–2 (CCSL 2:1148). Cf. John 3:13–15 and 6:31–32.  Cat. 3.23 (CCSL 60:412): “Exclamate ad Moysen vestrum Dominum Christum et virga crucis percutiat mare baptismi revertatur aqua et operiat Aegyptios.”  Cat. 5 (CCSL 60:414–8).  Cat. 6.1–4 (CCSL 60:418).

13 Quodvultdeus and Victor Vitensis

339

great and wonderful things has this architect made!”24 Quodvultdeus connects figure to figure. The staff connects to the architect who made the wood of the cross, which is then founded on the “Cornerstone” (cf. Eph 2:20; 1 Pet 2:6–7) to build a ladder (scala) to heaven (Gen 28:12). Thus, Quodvultdeus, drawing from the height, width, length, and depth of Eph 3:17–9, concludes that through his staff, the cross, this Moses made four steps that the Christian uses to ascend to heaven.25 Quodvultdeus’s figural approach to interpreting the Bible is found throughout his homilies. He explains how scriptural quotations and figures require spiritual reading in order to illuminate the Christological meaning. Even within his congregation, he calls attention to the difference between “carnal” and “spiritual” listeners (cf. 1 Cor 13:1–2).26 As with Augustine, for Quodvultdeus the “spiritual” reading of the Bible does not mean that one relies exclusively or even largely on allegorical or metaphorical exegesis.27 In fact, the “spiritual” reading emphasizes the literal text and, often, the historical veracity of the figure, such as with the Red Sea, Moses, and Pharaoh. Quodvultdeus states, “Divine Scripture speaks in mystical figures, preserving realities in their own times; when these things are examined, Scripture may make use of visible truth.”28 Drawing from 1 Cor 10:3–4, Quodvultdeus both affirms the historical veracity and the deeper Christological mystery in events and figures, such as Moses standing on the rock at Mount Horeb.29 The spiritual listener or reader of Scripture is one who sees how the biblical figures and events have been made “new” through Christ.30 Christ is the key for Quodvultdeus’s figural interpretation of Scripture. His “newness” is found in figures and images throughout the Bible. In his first homily titled De accedentibus ad gratiam (Acced.), he advances from his discussion of the Trinity and inseparable operations, to how the Father is known through the Son (John 14:6; Matt 11:27) and makes known the Son (John 17:5), to the revelation of the “Verbum caro factum est” (John 1:14).31 From the foundation of the Incarnation, Quodvultdeus lists twenty eight different figures and images of Christ, such as the peace of the earth (pax terrae), the light of heaven (lumen caeli), fecundity of the mother (fecunditas matris), the rock of the foundation (petra fundamenti), the mountain of God (mons dei), and the

 Cat. 6.6–7 (CCSL 60:418; trans. is my own): “Virga Maria sancta, virga ipse Christus, virga crux. Et de ista virga quam magna et mira fecit hic architectus!”  Cat. 6.7–16 (CCSL 60:418–9). See also the parallel with LP 1.7.11 (CCSL 60:19–21).  De cantico novo (CN) 1 (CCSL 60:381).  An example of Augustine’s reading is found in Enarrat. Ps. 33.1.3 (CCSL 38:275–6).  De Symbolo (Symb.) 3.3.12 (CCSL 60:353; trans. is my own): “Mysticis enim figuris loquitur divina Scriptura servans rebus tempora quibus recognitis manifesta exerceat veritate.”  Symb. 3.3 (CCSL 60:353).  Quodvultdeus cites Eph 4:24, Col 3:9–10, and 2 Cor 5:17.  Acced. 1.15–16 (CCSL 60:453–5).

340

Thomas Clemmons

city of the great king (civitas regis magni).32 “These and other such names which we have shared about Christ are only a small portion,” states Quodvultdeus.33 This litany of Christological images reveals how extensively he is able to see Christ throughout Scripture. Quodvultdeus also indicates how such a vision is possible: the “transitus” of the Son of God, who, by his birth from the Virgin Mary, becomes the double-edged sword (cf. Heb 4:12), truly God and truly human, enables the “crossing over” (transire) from the “figure to the image, parable to the spiritual meaning.”34 The “newness” of Christ, grounded in Quodvultdeus’s Nicene understanding of the veracity of the Incarnation, enables the Christian to see Christ pervasively within the biblical text. The “newness” of Christ is also perceived in the many sacramental rites, such as the salt, goatskin, exorcism, traditio symboli, Pater Noster, which lead up to and are consummated in baptism.35 In the sermon De cantico novo (CN), Quodvultdeus tells the catechumens about this newness of which David sang, “I will sing a new song to you, O God” (Ps 143:9).36 By being baptized into Christ, “the old things have passed away, new things have come” (2 Cor 5:17).37 This newness is found in the coming of the “heavenly Adam” (1 Cor 15:47), the new, spiritual life offered through Christ, the newness of being made spiritual children of God, the newness of the body restored through the virgin birth, and the new Jerusalem. To attain to the fullness of this newness, the catechumens have to be baptized in the church.38 Because of the necessity of this ecclesial and sacramental framework, Quodvultdeus’s Christological exegesis is bound with numerous figures for the Totus Christus, the church as the “whole Christ.”39

 Acced. 1.16.1–3 (CCSL 60:454–5): “Verbum patris, artifex mundi, lumen caeli, pax terrae, integritas virginis, fecunditas matris, angelorum laus, hominibus salus, desertorum via, errantibus venia, vulneratorum medicina, bonorum jocunditas, martyrum victoria, infantium palma. Adhuc amplius audi quis est qui sic natus est? Extinctor mortis, oppressor diaboli, petra fundamenti, lapis angularis, mons dei, scala caeli, janua paradisi, civitas regis magni, agnus et pascha, sponsus et sponsa, resurrectio et aeterna vita ‘quoniam ex ipso et per ipsum et in ipso sunt omnia’ (Rom 11:36).”  Acced. 1.16.4 (CCSL 60:455; trans. is my own): “Haec et quaecumque alia dixerimus de eo parva sunt.”  Acced. 1.17.6 (CCSL 60:456): “Per quam est filii dei transitus;” see also Acced. 2.6.1 (CCSL 60:462).  For a discussion of prebaptismal rites in North Africa, esp. as practiced by Quodvultdeus, see T. M. Finn, “It Happened one Saturday Night: Ritual and Conversion in Augustine’s North Africa,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 58.4 (1990): 589–611; see also Vopřada, Quodvultdeus, 92–210.  CN 1.3 (CCSL 60:381; trans. is my own). “Deus canticum novum cantabo tibi (Ps 143:9).” Quodvultdeus also cites Jer 31:31 and Ps 95:1 in this context to highlight the “newness” of Christ, which the neophytes receive in baptism.  CN 1.4 (CCSL 60:381; trans. is my own): “Vetere transierunt, ecce facta sunt nova (2 Cor 5:17)”.  CN 1.22 (CCSL 60:382): “Ad hanc civitatem novam pervenisse cupitis qui nomina vestra conscribenda dedistis.” See also Acced. 1.2.5–7 (CCSL 60:442).  For an example of the Totus Christus principle in Augustine, see Enarrat. Ps. 30.2.1 (CCSL 38:191–4). For an example in Quodvultdeus, see CJPA 22 (CCSL 60:256). For discussion see M. Cameron, “Totus Christus and the Psychagogy of Augustine’s Sermons,” AugStud 36/1 (2005): 59–70; and K. F. Baker, “Transfiguravit in se: the Sacramentality of Augustine’s Doctrine of the Totus Christus,” in StPatr 70:559–67.

13 Quodvultdeus and Victor Vitensis

341

A central ecclesiological type used by Quodvultdeus is the common North African image of the church as mother (mater ecclesia).40 He uses this image several times to emphasize the birth through baptism and nourishment of Christians in the church.41 These “faithful seeds of holy mother Catholic Church” need to flee various heresies such as Manichaeism or Pelagianism, which look back from Christ just as Lot’s wife who looked back and, as a result, was turned into a pillar of salt (Gen 19:26).42 Indeed, much like his North African predecessors who followed Cyprian, Quodvultdeus holds that one must be found in “the number of the children” of mother church.43 He asserts that if one does not wish to have the church as mother, one does not have God as Father.44 Quodvultdeus harvests scriptural maternal references and imagery to stress and illuminate the sacramental and theological importance of the church. The church is also imaged as the sponsa Christi cleansed and “endowed by the precious blood of her spouse.”45 In his third homily De symbolo (symb.), Quodvultdeus reads out Luke 24:46–7 as a marriage contract which shows how the church possesses everything (ecclesia totum possidet) given by her bridegroom as a dowry.46 This “totum” is witnessed in Luke 24:46–47, not only “in the penance and forgiveness of sins,” but also “through all the nations,” as throughout the whole world there is “one holy and true catholic queen.”47 Hence, as with “mother,” Quodvultdeus uses the figure of the bride and spouse to image the church in union with Christ and also as the bride who presents Christ, “who comes forth from his bridal chamber (Ps 18:6)” to the nations.48 While his ecclesiological imagery is relatively more common than his North African predecessors, Quodvultdeus relies on the exegetical tradition which he inherited. Drawing from his North African predecessors, he weaves together the piercing of Christ’s side (John 19:33–4) and Paul’s citation of Gen 2:24 as a magnum sacramentum

 Tertullian, Ad martyras 1.1 (CCSL 1:3); and Cyprian, De lapsis 2 and 9 (CCSL 3.1:221 and 225). For Augustine’s earliest use of this image, see an. quant. 33:76 (CSEL 89:224). See also Serm. 65A (Étaix, RBén 86.1 [1976]: 45); 22 (CCSL 41:299–300); 294.17.17–294.18.7 (PL 38:1345–6); and 359.4–6 (PL 39:1593–5).  Symb. 3.1 (CCSL 60:349).  CN 10.1 (CCSL 60:392; trans. is my own): “Vos autem fidelia germina sanctae matris Ecclesiae Catholicae . . . fugite omnes haereses.” See also CN 4 (CCSL 60:386).  Symb. 3.13.1 (CCSL 60:363; trans. is my own): “Quoniam si quis absque ea inventus fuerit alienus erit a numero filiorum.”  Symb. 3.13 (CCSL 60:363): “Nec habebit Deum Patrem qui Ecclesiam noluit habere matrem.” See also Tertullian, De monogamia 7.9 (CCSL 2:1239).  Symb. 3.13.2 (CCSL 60:363; trans. is my own): “Ecclesia sponsa Christi est gratia ejus dealbata, pretioso sanguine dotata.”  Symb. 3.13.3–4 (CCSL 60:363): “Totum possidet quod a viro suo accepti in dote. Lego tabulas matrimoniales ejus, recitabo. Audite, haeretici, quid scriptum sit: ‘Oportebat Christum pati et resurgere a mortuis et praedicari in nomine ejus poenitentiam et remissionem peccatorum per omnes gentes’ (Luke 24:46–47). Omnes gentes totus mundus est. Ecclesia totum possidet quod a viro suo accepit in dote.”  Symb. 3.13.7 (CCSL 60:363; trans. is my own): “Cognoscatur una sancta et vera regina Catholica, cui regnum Christus tale dedit quod eam per totum mundum diffundens.”  Symb. 1.6.1–5 (CCSL 60:320).

342

Thomas Clemmons

(Eph 5:31–2) with the typology of Adam and Eve.49 He likewise utilizes the imagery of the birth of the church from Christ’s side, “just as Eve was made from the side of sleeping Adam, so also the church was formed from the side of Christ hanging on the Cross.”50 Quodvultdeus further connects the church’s intimacy with Christ to the “twin sacraments,” baptism, by which the church is washed clean (cf. Eph 5:26–27), and the Eucharist, the church’s dowry.51 Quodvultdeus’s figural use of Scripture centers on the church’s profound unity with Christ. Drawing from this scriptural imagery, he highlights both the sacramental and instructional function of the church. It is through the church’s baptism that one is united to Christ and changed like the apostle Peter from reckless denier of Christ to a confessor and lover of Christ (cf. John 21:15–17).52 Similarly, it is as teacher that “holy mother church exhibits for you the venerable and salutary spectacles,” unlike the destructive spectacles such as the games and theater.53 For example, Quodvultdeus contrasts Peter’s healing of a man crippled from birth (Acts 3:2–8) with the joy a spectator has at the crippling of an opponent’s horse. Likewise, he pairs the chariot of Elijah (2 Kings 2:9–12), the spiritual charioteer, with the races in the hippodrome. Christians, Quodvultdeus states, have an abundance of their own biblical spectacula, such as Susanna (Dan 13:8, 45), Peter walking on the sea (Mark 14:29), and Esau and Jacob struggling in the womb (Gen 25:22–26), each of which point to virtues and to God’s grace.54 Quodvultdeus thus sees himself as drawing his pastoral instruction from the deeper mystagogical understanding of the Bible, of Christ and the church, to inform his use of scriptural exempla of all types and in a variety of rhetorical modes.55 Quodvultdeus frequently and even unrelentingly addresses various groups, such as pagans, Manichaeans, Pelagians, and, above all, Arians, through scriptural verses and even long monologues of imagined direct speech (such as his lengthy apostrophes directed to

 Symb. 1.6 (CCSL 60:320–1); Tertullian, De monogamia 5.1–7 (CCSL 2:1234–5); De anima 43.10 (CCSL 2:847); Augustine, Gen. Man. 2.13.19 (CSEL 91:140); 2.24.37 (CSEL 91:160–2); and Enarrat. Ps. 30.2.2.1 (CCSL 38:202). See also Quodvultdeus, LP 1. Prologue. 2 (CCSL 60:12); LP 1.1.3 (CCSL 60:13).  Symb. 1.6.4 (CCSL 60:320; trans. is my own): “Ut quomodo Eva facta est ex latere Adae dormientis ita et Ecclesia formetur ex latere Christi in cruce pendentis.” Cf. Tertullian, De baptismo 9.1–4 (CCSL 1:283–4); and 16.1–2 (CCSL 1:290–1).  Symb. 1.6.5 (CCSL 60:320): “Percussum est enim ejus latus ut Evangelium loquitur et statim manavit sanguis et aqua quae sunt Ecclesiae gemina sacramenta. Aqua in qua est sponsa purificata: sanguis ex quo invenitur esse dotata.” See also the twin sacraments in relation to Ps 68:22 and Exod 12:9–11 in Cat. 4.8–10 (CCSL 60:413).  Cat. 3.6 (CCSL 60:411).  Symb. 1.2.2 (CCSL 60:307; trans. is my own): “Sed si oblectandus est animus et spectare delectat, exhibet vobis sancta mater ecclesia veneranda ac salubria spectacula.” See D. Van Slyke, “The Devil and His Pomps in Fifth-Century Carthage: Renouncing Spectacula with Spectacular Imagery,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 59 (2005): 53–72.  Symb. 1.2.5–28 (CCSL 60:307–10).  For various exemplars, male and female, see Cat. 6.17–25 (CCSL 60:419–20).

13 Quodvultdeus and Victor Vitensis

343

Herod).56 His extensive apologetical and adversarial use of the Bible not only serves to rebuke and refute various religious groups, but also to admonish the catechumens and his congregation to be mindful of and maintain their baptismal vows. Beyond his pre-baptismal catechetical homilies, four homilies are attributed securely to Quodvultdeus. In De quattuor virtutibus caritatis (QVC), Quodvultdeus elaborates on the meaning of 1 Cor 13:7–8, “Love endures all things, trusts in all things, hopes in all things, sustains all things; love never fails.”57 For the four virtues of charity, enduring, trusting, hoping, and sustaining love, Quodvultdeus finds four holy examples (exempla sanctorum).58 The virtue of charity in endurance is found in Noah, with the Ark as a type of the church (cf. 1 Pet 3:18–20). Quodvultdeus encourages his congregation to grow in enduring charity that tolerates wild animals (some good and evil) in the church until the end of the age for the sake of the good animals, who are living sacrifices to God (Gen 8:20).59 Abraham is the paragon of trusting love, whose journey in trust of God (Gen 12:1ff.) is a fulfillment of Matt 19:29, when Christ says, “if anyone departs home, land, or parents on account of my name . . .”60 Quodvultdeus recounts in detail the binding of Isaac from Gen 22, the mystery of this event fulfilled in Christ, and the fidelity of Abraham’s singular love for God, which the bishop encourages his listeners to imitate.61 The image of Abraham yields to the patriarchs leaving Egypt. The patriarchs are an image of love with hope (Ps 21:5): “In you [Christ] our fathers hoped; they hoped and you [Christ] freed them.”62 Quodvultdeus explains how the flight from Egypt is to flee the world, while the Red Sea is the baptism of Christ. The journey in the wilderness is through this world, but on this path the sweetness of the Lord (Ps 33:9) is also found in the Rock who is Christ (1 Cor 10:4).63 The final virtue of love is to sustain all things and not perish (1 Cor 13:7–8). Christ is the exemplar of this final and highest virtue of charity. Christ showed this love through his Incarnation, suffering, and death on the cross, and offered humanity life and liberty over death (John 8:36).64 Yet, Quodvultdeus contends that Christ’s gift of love ought to receive a response. He urges every Christian soul (omnis anima christiana) to wake up and imitate the footsteps of the Lord (Domini tui imitare vestigia),

 Symb. 2.4.9–17 (CCSL 60:339–40); 3.4.10–18 (CCSL 60:354–5); and CJPA 10.4–12 (CCSL 60:239–41).  QVC 2.2 (CCSL 60:368; trans. is my own): “Omnia tolerat, omnia credit, omnia sperat, omnia sustinet; caritas nunquam excidit (1 Cor 13:7–8).”  QVC 2.3 (CCSL 60:368).  QVC 3–4 (CCSL 60:368–70).  QVC 5 (CCSL 60:370–1; trans. is my own): “Si quis dimiserit domum aut agrum aut parentes causa nominis mei (Matt 19:29).”  QVC 5.1–8.5 (CCSL 60:370–3).  QVC 9.1 (CCSL 60:373; trans. is my own): “In te speraverunt patres nostri; speraverunt et liberasti eos (Ps 21:5).”  QVC 9.1–10.7 (CCSL 60:373–4).  QVC 11–12 (CCSL 60:374–6).

344

Thomas Clemmons

just as Peter said, “Christ suffered for you, leaving for you an example so that you may follow his footsteps” (1 Pet 2:21).65 Christ is both an exemplar to follow and “the way, the truth and life” (John 14:6) by which one journeys to God.66 While all Quodvultdeus’s homilies were given under the shadow of the Vandal conquest, 1–2 Temp. barb. were given within the immediacy of the capture of Carthage. He impresses the magnitude of this event on his listeners, even drawing from one of Augustine’s sermons on the sack of Rome (De excidio urbis Romae) to do so.67 Quodvultdeus claims that some find fault with these “Christian times” (christiana tempora), praising instead the former glory days of Rome, saying, “O how good were the times of our fathers!”68 Differing from Augustine in his response, Quodvultdeus points to “our fathers” (patres nostri), the patriarchs, such as Moses, Samson, and Daniel.69 Quodvultdeus also presents the great martyrs Perpetua and Felicity (whose feast, he mentions, was celebrated only a few days prior), who are even braver and more renowned than the male martyrs.70 These “heroes” (including Job and Peter) all are exempla of the discipline (cf. Heb 12:6–7), strength (cf. Eph 3:14 and 16), humility, and repentance (Luke 13:8) that is truly indicative of the christiana tempora.71 For Quodvultdeus, the Vandal threat to Carthage is just another reminder that the divina tuba has repeatedly proclaimed: “Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand” (Matt 3:2 and 4:17).72 Everyone should have been chastened by the call to repent, but, because of the tragedies of Carthage, “all have gone astray” (Ps 13:3).73 Quodvultdeus rebukes those who ask why these sufferings have been brought upon the innocent and the good. Like Augustine, he quotes Prov 20:8–9, “When a just king sits on the throne, who will boast that they have a chaste heart? Or who will boast that they are

 QVC 14.1 (CCSL 60:377; trans. is my own): “Evigila itaque omnis anima christiana et si in te eminet virtus caritatis quae ‘omnia sustinet’ (1 Cor 13:7) Domini tui imitare vestigia: Christus, enim ait apostolus Petrus, ‘pro vobis passus est relinquens vobis exemplum ut sequamini vestigia ejus’ (1 Pet 2:21).”  QVC 14.8–9 (CCSL 60:377).  See R. G. Kalkman, “Two Sermons: De Tempore Barbarico attributed to St. Quodvultdeus, Bishop of Carthage – A Study of Text and Attribution with Translation and Commentary” (PhD diss., The Catholic University of America, 1963), 187–96.  1 Temp. barb. 3.21 (CCSL 60:428; trans. is my own): “Non quiescunt usque nunc murmurare homines, laudare tempora praeterita accusare tempora christiana. Magna erant tempora patrum nostrorum dicunt: O quam bona tempora habuerunt patres nostri.”  1 Temp. barb. 4.1–22 (CCSL 60:429–30). See Augustine, Ver. rel. 3.3 and 10.19 (CCSL 32:188 and 200); as well as Civ. 1.1; 1.7; and 12.21 (CCSL 47:2; 6; and 378).  1 Temp. barb. 5.1–2 (CCSL 60:430). Quodvultdeus seems to have incorporated the language of the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis into his homily. He also appears to be familiar with the text of the Passio of the Scillitan Martyrs. See D. L. Riggs, “Scripture in the Martyr Acta et Passiones,” in BCNA I 51–79.  1 Temp. barb. 2.11–4.17 (CCSL 60:426–30).  1 Temp. barb. 1.2 (CCSL 60:423; trans. is my own): “Quoties, dilectissimi, intonuerunt atque intonant tubae divinae: ‘Agite poenitentiam; appropinquavit ad vos regnum caelorum’ (Matt 3:2 and 4:17).”  1 Temp. barb. 1.4 (CCSL 60:423).

13 Quodvultdeus and Victor Vitensis

345

pure without sin?”74 All should rather look to the “mirror of Scripture” (speculum scripturae divinae) for there they will see “no one is good but the one God (Luke 18:19).”75 In the mirror of Scripture, one will also see that God “scourges every son whom God accepts (Heb 12:7).”76 Hence to show human wickedness, God’s grace, and a model of repentance, Quodvultdeus interprets the prodigal son (Luke 15) as the thief who, crucified beside Christ, acknowledges his own fault (Luke 23:32–45) and was made not only a servant of God, but also a friend (John 15:15).77 Christ’s prayer from the cross for the forgiveness of his persecutors (Luke 23:34) applies to all, Quodvultdeus claims, except the Arians, who, like the antichrists of 1 John, “have gone forth from us, but were not of us (2:19).”78 The Arians kill by rebaptism the one to whom Christ gave life by baptism; they “slay the souls of those for whom Christ came in the flesh to be slain.”79 In 2 Temp. barb., Quodvultdeus takes a stronger stance, rebuking (cf. Jer 2:27 and 32:33; and Ps 7:3) and encouraging his congregation to remember their baptismal vows. Indeed, Quodvultdeus holds that the fulfillment of prophecies is witnessed in the chaos following the Vandal occupation of Carthage. In the example of a noble woman taken as a slave by a barbarian without any payment, Quodvultdeus sees a fulfillment of Ps 43:13, “You have sold your people without a price.”80 Yet, there is no need to fear even the hardships of the occupation of Carthage, since Christ is the Good Shepherd: “The Lord is near, let nothing make you anxious (Phil 4:5–6).”81 Quodvultdeus implores his congregation to cry out, “Flight has failed me. I have cried out to you, O Lord, I have said: You are my hope, my portion in the land of the living (Ps 141:5–6). Deliver me from the hands of my enemies, and those who persecute me (Ps 30:16).”82 His congregation should have no fear, then, for Christ is “our David, Shepherd of the sheep, our king who fights with Goliath” (the Arian) and slays him with the staff (virga) and five stones

 1 Temp. barb. 1.14 (CCSL 60:424; trans. is my own): “Cum enim rex justus sederit in throno, quis gloriabitur castum se habere cor? Aut quis gloriabitur mundum se esse a peccato? (Prov 20:8–9).” Cf. Augustine, Exc. urb. 20 (CSEL 44:607).  1 Temp. barb. 3.1–11 (CCSL 60:426–7).  1 Temp. barb. 6.9 (CCSL 60:432; trans. is my own): “Flagellat enim omnem filium quem recipit (Heb 12:7).”  1 Temp. barb. 7.1–22 (CCSL 60:433–4).  1 Temp. barb. 8.1–10 (CCSL 60:435–6).  1 Temp. barb. 8.7–14 (CCSL 60:436–7; trans. is my own): “Animas enim multorum cupis interfici, pro quibus Christus in carne venit occidi.” Cf. 1 Temp. barb. 8.11 (CCSL 60:436). See also M. Szada, “The Debate over the Repetition of Baptism between Homoians and Nicenes at the End of the Fourth Century,” JECS 27.4 (2019): 635–63.  2 Temp. barb. 5.12 (CCSL 60:477). Quodvultdeus’s interpretation of the fulfillment of a biblical prophecy in an immediate event possibly influenced – and at least portends – Victor of Vita’s approach.  2 Temp. barb. 12.1–6 (CCL 60: 484).  2 Temp. barb. 13.4 (CCSL 60:485; trans. is my own): “Clamavi ad te: ‘Periit fuga a me. Clamavi ad te, domine, dixi: Tu es spes mea, portio mea in terra viventium’ (Ps 141:5–6). ‘Libera me de maninus inimicorum meorum, et eorum qui me persequuntur’ (Ps 30:16).”

346

Thomas Clemmons

(which represent the five books of the Pentateuch).83 In these five stones, Christ is shown to be “God’s power and God’s wisdom” (1 Cor 1:24), who, as the headstone (the Incarnation) set in the sling, defeats the teaching of philosophers (Plato) and rhetoricians (Cicero) and overthrows the Arians, who rebaptize Catholics.84 Thus, Quodvultdeus concludes what may be his final extant homily following the sack of Carthage by the Vandals, who within the year would force exile on the bishop.

Liber promissionum et praedictorum The most extensive and unique work attributed to Quodvultdeus is Liber promissionum et praedictorum (LP). LP was likely composed near the end of Quodvultdeus’s bishopric in exile (ca. 445–454 CE), though the inception of the work may be found in an early sermon mentioned above, CJPA.85 In this homily, Quodvultdeus quotes John 10:24, “How long do you hold our souls in suspense? If you are the Christ tell us plainly.”86 The bishop replies to his hypothetical opponent, the Jews, noting Christ’s answer, “the works which I do, they give testimony concerning me (John 10:25),” and the response of those questioning Christ in the Gospel, “You speak a testimony about yourself, your testimony is not true (John 8:13).”87 It is this verse, John 8:13, that guides Quodvultdeus’s search for Christological testimony throughout the Bible. He even notes his future hope to gather all the testimonies said about Christ from the Law and Prophets.88 Perhaps a decade later, he undertook and expanded this goal in LP. LP is the exhaustive and subtle execution of this intention. Indeed, LP is far from a simple collection of scriptural proofs concerning Christ.89 With over a third of the

 2 Temp. barb. 14.2–10 (CCSL 60:486; trans. is my own), esp. 14.2: “Nonne tu es David noster, pastor ovium, rex noster, qui, ut pugnares cum Golia, hoc exemplum Sauli dedisti, quod et leonem et ursum propter ovem ablatam interemisti?”  2 Temp. barb. 14.10–11 (CCSL 60:486).  The dating of LP is based on references in LP Dim. temp. 6.11–12 (CCSL 60:197–8); and LP 2.34.72 (CCSL 60:138). The terminus ante quem is derived from a reference to Valentinian III, who died in March 455 (LP 3.38.44 [CCSL 60:185]), the author’s presence in Campania during Pope Leo’s papacy, and the reference to Nostrianus, the bishop of Naples who likely died in 449, as still living (LP D.6.12 [CCSL 60:198]).  CJPA 11.1–2 (CCSL 60:241; trans. is my own): “Quousque animas nostras suspendis? Si tu es Christus, dic nobis palam (John 10:24).”  CJPA 11.2–3 (CCSL 60:241; trans. is my own): “Ille autem vos ad considerationem miraculorum mittebat dicens, ‘Opera quae ego facio ipsa testimonium perhibent de me’ (John 10:25) ut Christo testimonium dicerent non verba sed facta.”  CJPA 13.10 (CCSL 60:244): “‘Tu de te ipso testimonium dicis testimonium tuum non est verum’ (John 8:13). Quod si velim ex lege et ex prophetis omnia quae de Christo dicta sunt colligere facilius me tempus quam copia deserit.”  See, e.g., J. Daniélou, “Bulletin d’histoire des origines chrétiennes. I. Judéo-christianisme et Gnosticisme. II. Platonisme et Christianisme. III. Histoire de la christologie. IV. Typologie et Symbolique,”

13 Quodvultdeus and Victor Vitensis

347

text being direct scriptural quotations, the work functions like a handbook of exegesis and perhaps even a catechetical manual.90 LP provides an extensive theological collation of scriptural parallels woven together as prophecies, promises, and fulfillments to outline a broader reflection on “sacred dispensation” and the centrality of the person of Christ and the effects of the Incarnation.91 Quodvultdeus organizes LP into 153 promissiones/praedicta because of the mystical figure of the number of fish caught by the disciples in John 21:11.92 He also takes his broader division for the work from Augustine’s three historical periods: antem legem, sub lege, and sub gratia.93 In each of these sections, Quodvultdeus provides forty promises/predictions (promissiones/praedicta) from the Old Testament and New Testament. These three groups of forty are imaged in the forty days of fasting celebrated by Moses, Elijah, and Christ, respectively.94 Quodvultdeus also adds twenty promissiones/praedicta that he understands to relate to the current crisis of the Vandal occupation and the imminent end of the world. He completes the mystical number 153 by providing thirteen promissiones that describe the future glory of the saints in Christ.95 In Book 1 of LP, Quodvultdeus applies the Augustinian trifold schema of the periods ante legem, sub lege, and sub gratia to the account of Abram’s sacrifice in Gen 15:7–11.96 Quodvultdeus explains that this triple sacrifice was accomplished by Abram to signify future things. The spiritual reader (spiritalis lector) recognizes that the three animals

RSR 54 (1966): 324–5. By contrast, the reception of the work in the medieval period was partly influenced by Cassiodorus’s recommendation of it (cf. Inst. 1.1 [PL 70:1111]).  For the suggestion that LP may be Quodvultdeus’s attempt to fulfill Augustine’s request in Catech. for an entire history of salvation, see Vopřada, Quodvultdeus, 134.  Directly relying on Augustine and Lactantius (LP 3.40.47 [CCSL 60:189]), Quodvultdeus also draws from Rufinus’s Historia ecclesiastica, Orosius’s Historia adversum Paganos (LP 2.34.74 [CCSL 60:144]), Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel (LP 2.35.79 [CCSL 60:144]), and, possibly, on Tyconius (LP D.13.22 [CCSL 60:207]) and Origen (LP 2.611 [CCSL 60:82]). For Rufinus, see Y.-M. Duval, “Un nouveau lecteur probable de ‘l’Histoire ecclésiastique’ de Rufin d’Aquilée: l’auteur du ‘Liber promissionum et praedictorum Dei,’” Latomus 26 (1967): 762–77.  LP Gsanc. 13.15 (CCSL 60:220).  LP 1. Prologue 2 (CCSL 60:12); see also Augustine, Div. quaest. LXXXIII 61.6 and 66.3 (CCSL 44A:129–30 and 154).  LP Gsanc. 13.15 (CCSL 60:219).  LP Prologue (CCSL 60:1). Of the 153, Quodvultdeus categorizes 103 as promises and fifty as prophecies. Of these, he understands eighty-three promises and thirty-eight prophecies as already fulfilled, while he sees twenty promises and twelve prophecies await future fulfillment.  Gen 15:7–11 (NRSV): “Then he said to him, ‘I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.’ But he said, ‘O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?’ He said to him, ‘Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.’ He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.”

348

Thomas Clemmons

sacrificed, the cow, goat, and ram, signify the three ages.97 The three-year old cow points to the people running riot before the yoke of the Law; whereas the three-year old shegoat indicates “what the people, transgressing the Law, ought to sacrifice for their sins.”98 Christ is found in the three-year old ram, which is the perfect sacrifice offered for the forgiveness of the sins of the people (citing Isa 53:5 and 8).99 The carrion birds, descending on the sacrifices which had been divided into parts, are also images of future things; namely, heresies and schisms. Cain is a figure of the rejected sacrifice (Gen 4:5) of heretics before the Law; while under the Law, Korah, Dathan and Abiram, the authors of heresies and schism, are swallowed up by the earth itself (Num 16:32). In the third period, sub gratia, Quodvultdeus emphasizes that the teaching of the many heresies are most like the carrion birds, which seek to rest on the divided bodies of the sacrificed animals. Paul sought to drive off these birds, saying, “For is Christ divided? Surely Paul was not crucified for you nor were you baptized in the name of Paul? (1 Cor 1:13).”100 The indivisibility of Christ is found in the sacrifices of the turtledove and dove, which Abraham did not divide. The turtledove and dove are like those born of the church who offer their intact faith in charity so that in no way are they able to be divided.101 In Book 2 of LP, which is concerned with the period sub lege, Quodvultdeus, as he had in his homilies, describes Moses as a figure of Christ and, adding Heb 9:19–20, explains how Christ fulfills the Law and the blood of the covenant (sanguis testamenti) from Exod 24:8.102 He also puts forward figural readings of less common passages from Numbers, Ruth, 1–3 Esdras, Judith, and even Maccabees.103 For example, Quodvultdeus interprets the inspection and purification of leprosy and the offerings of various livestock and birds in Lev 9–10 as fulfilled in Matt 24:40–1 and Luke 17:34: “Two will be in the field, one will be taken and one will be left behind, and two will be sleeping in bed, one taken, the other left behind, and two will be working in the millhouse, one taken and one left behind.”104 The raven is left behind, while the dove is taken (Gen 8:6–10),

 LP 1.12.18 (CCSL 60:27): “In hac promissione et in hoc sacrificio tripertito quod in praesenti ita actum est ut tamen alia futura signaret tria tempora quae superius dicta sunt in tribus his animalibus, spiritalis lector, agnosce.”  LP 1.12.18 (CCSL 60:27; trans. is my own): “Sub lege quam immolare deberet plebs legem transgrediens pro peccato.”  LP 1.12.18 (CCSL 60:27). Christ is also figured in Abraham’s offering of Isaac. Cf. Gen 22.  LP 1.12.19 (CCSL 60:28; trans. is my own): “Abiguntur a Paulo cum dicit: ‘Divisus est Christus? Numquid Paulus pro vobis crucifixus est aut in nomine Pauli baptizati estis?’ (1 Cor 1:13).”  LP 1.12.19 (CCSL 60:28).  LP 2.1.1 (CCSL 60:68–9).  LP 2.9–12 (CSSL 60:86–94); LP 2.23.48 (CCSL 60:116–7); LP 2.37.83–38.86 (CCSL 60:147–50); LP 2.38.87–88 (CCSL 60:150–1); and LP 2.40.91–92 (CCSL 60:153–5).  LP 2.6.10 (CSSL 60:80; trans. is my own): “‘Duo erunt in agro, unus adsumetur, alius relinquetur’ (Matt 24:40), et ‘in lecto duo, unus adsumetur, alius relinquetur’ (Luke 17:34) et ‘duae in molendino, una adsumetur, alia relinquetur’ (Matt 24:41).”

13 Quodvultdeus and Victor Vitensis

349

the lambs are taken, while the goats are left behind (Matt 25:2). Thus, not surprisingly, those with leprosy who are sent out of the camp (Lev 13:46) are the heretics left behind at the final judgment. Quodvultdeus also infers that the different kinds of leprosies signify different kinds of heresies. Manichaeism and Priscillianism are a leprosy on the head, for they reject the true humanity of Christ.105 Arianism, Nestorianism, and Photinianism are leprosy on the beard. They reject that which signifies Christ’s true divinity, the likeness of the beard of the priest Aaron (Ps 132:1–2).106 Donatism and Luciferianism are leprosy on the body (of the church), whereas Pelagianism is a cloudy leprosy spread throughout the head and body.107 In the third book of LP, which draws from the Gospels, the promises and prophecies are shown to have been fulfilled through the writings of the apostles. Remarkably, Quodvultdeus appends to these scriptural testimonia several “sayings” or “prophecies” from oracles or seers (fata), such as the Sibylline Oracles, the Asclepius attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, and Virgil.108 Quodvultdeus first deploys such an approach with his reading of the fish which made the demon depart from Tobit 6:1–22 and 8:2–3.109 Christ is this fish boiled in his Passion to offer interior assistance daily to the Christian.110 This fish, Quodvultdeus observes, is also found in the Sibylline Oracle as ΙΧΘΥΣ. This Greek acrostic is translated into the Latin phrase, Jesus Christus Filius Dei Salvator, or “Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior.”111 The Oracle, therefore, helps to affirm the figural reading of the fish in Tobit as Christ.

 As proof of their “leprosy,” Quodvultdeus cites 1 Cor 11:3 (NRSV): “But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the husband is the head of his wife, and God is the head of Christ.”  For support Quodvultdeus (LP 2.6.10 [CCSL 60:81]) offers Ps 132:1–2, “Ecce quam bonum et quam jocundum habitare fratres in unum; sicut unguentum in capite quod descendit in barbam, barbam Aaron,” (“Behold what goodness and delight there is when brethren dwell as one; just as the oil on the head which flows down onto the beard, the beard of Aaron”), as proof of this image. For an earlier interpretation of Christ’s beard signifying his divinity, see Augustine, Enarrat. Ps. 33.1.9–11 (CCSL 38:280–1).  Quodvultdeus regards Pelagianism both as leprosy of the head, because it holds that God made humans mortal even before sin, and as leprosy of the body, because it asserts that the grace of Christ is not necessary. LP 2.6.11 (CCSL 60:81).  Not every promise has a citation from a non-scriptural author; in fact, some eleven promises are supported exclusively with biblical testimonia.  In Tobit, Tobias catches a large fish. The angel Raphael instructs him regarding the fish’s healing power, especially its ability to expel the evil spirit from Sarah, his betrothed.  LP 2.39.90 (CCSL 60:153): “Piscis sua in passione decoctus cujus ex interioribus remediis cottidie inluminamur et pascimur.”  LP 2.39.90 (CCSL 60:153; trans. is my own): “Ex Sibyllinis versibus colligentes quod est, ‘Jesus Christus filius dei salvator.’” Cf. Sibylline Oracle [Sibyl Or.] 8.284–330, in J. Geffcken, Die Oracula Sibyllina (Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1902), 160–3.

350

Thomas Clemmons

While the Sibylline Oracles had been used and commented upon by Lactantius and Augustine, Quodvultdeus is distinctive in how the fata gloss the scriptural testimonia.112 For the fulfillment of the promise that Christ will receive vinegar and gall, Quodvultdeus lists Ps 68:22; John 19:28–30; and Ps 50:9 before adding the Sibylline Oracle: “For food they gave him gall and for drink vinegar; they will show this table of inhospitality.”113 He even augments the Sibyl with a verse from Virgil, “The serpent also will die and the treacherous plant of its venom.”114 Quodvultdeus uses the Virgilian citation not only to show how the devil was active in the killing of Christ, but even more to emphasize that, in Christ’s apparent defeat, one may assert with Virgil, “at that time the devil was indeed defeated.”115 Continuing his approach to integrating testimonia, Quodvultdeus returns to a theme from his homily (CN), the new song and the new human being made through Christ. He begins with two long quotations from Jeremiah concerning the novum testamentum (Jer 31:31–3) and two short verses from Isaiah: “Behold I make new things which will now be born” (43:19) and “a new name will be named” (62:2).116 He takes these verses from Isaiah to speak of Christians for it is they who, “sing to the Lord a new song, every land, sing to the Lord” (Ps 95:1). They have put on the image of Christ (1 Cor 15:49) and have been made new creatures; “they have crossed over from old things and behold they are made new” (2 Cor 5:17).117 Yet in LP (and in a way that is different from CN), Quodvultdeus concludes the fulfillment of the newness brought by Christ with the Virgilian line, “through whom the former iron race will cease and the golden race will rise upon the whole earth.”118 Through this line from Virgil, Quodvultdeus is able to suggest the newness of the new human, new song, and new testament found in Christ, as well as the newness that signals the end of the age. In the last two books of LP, Quodvultdeus gathers scriptural testimonia for the conclusion of his schema of salvation history: the current time (Dimidium temporis in signis Antichristi) and the world to come (De gloria regnoque sanctorum capitula). The quotations from the Dimidium temporis (Dim. temp.) are taken extensively from the books of

 Lactantius, Inst. 4.6–8 and 13–20 (CSEL 19:286–300 and 316–67); and Augustine, Civ. 18.13–23 (CCSL 48:604–15).  LP 3.24.25 (CCSL 60:170; trans. is my own): “Fatetur et Sibylla: ‘Ad cibum autem,’ ait, ‘fel et ad sitim acetum dederunt; in hospitalitatis hanc monstrabunt mensam.’” Cf. Sibyl. Or. 8.303–4 (Geffcken, 161).  LP 3.24.25 (CCSL 60:170; trans. is my own): “Ad haec quoque Vergilianum illud respondet: ‘Occidet et serpens et fallax herba veneni occidet.’” Cf. Virgil, Eclogue 4.24–25 (LCL 63:50–1).  LP 3.24.25 (CCSL 60:170; trans. is my own): “Tunc enim diabolus victus est.”  LP 3.33.34 (CCSL 60:177; trans. is my own): “Et per Esaiam: ‘Ecce ego nova facio quae nunc orientur’ (Isa 43:19); Et iterum: Eis vero qui mihi serviunt ‘nomen nominabitur novum’ (Isa 62:2).”  LP 3.33.34 (CCSL 60:178; trans. is my own): “‘Cantate domino canticum novum, cantate domino, omnis terra’ (Ps 95:1) . . . Item: ‘Si qua,’ ait, ‘in Christo nova creatura, vetera transierunt et ecce facta sunt nova’ (2 Cor 5:17).”  Virgil, Eclogue 4.8–9 (LCL 63:48–9; trans. is my own): “Quo ferrea primum desinet ac toto surget gens aurea mundo.”

13 Quodvultdeus and Victor Vitensis

351

Ezekiel, Isaiah, Daniel, and Revelation.119 Some of the prophecies (praedicta) drawn from these biblical testimonia, including the signs of the Antichrist (drawn from Job 40:16; Job 41:25–6; 2 Thess 2:9–10; and Matt 24:24–5), are viewed by Quodvultdeus as already having been fulfilled.120 The first awaiting fulfillment is the woman riding the beast from Rev 17.121 However, Quodvultdeus, unlike Augustine, contends that the fulfillment of this and other prophecies is imminent. Quodvultdeus believes that the end of the world is near in this short time (brevis tempus) and even unfolding in the hardships of the Vandal conquest of Africa.122 Drawing from his immediate context, Quodvultdeus appears to understand the Roman Empire as the “beast” of Rev 17:3. Soon, however, there will be a time “after the beast” (Rev 17:8 and 11–2), when other kings shall rule (Rev 17:9–10). These kings will persecute the church, and above all, Quodvultdeus wants “all the Arian heretics to be understood when one of the seven angels says, ‘They will fight against the lamb and the lamb will overcome them’ (Rev 17:14).”123 Quodvultdeus specifically highlights the Arian practice of rebaptism, quoting Dan 11:31–2 at length, “to show that the Arians are precursors to the Antichrist.”124 Quodvultdeus, as earlier in 1 Temp. barb., holds 1 John 2:19 to foretell that these Arians “went out from us but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they certainly would have remained with us.”125 Indeed, Quodvultdeus claims that some say that Dan 12:11 and Rev 12:6 as well as Gog and Magog (cf. Ezek 39:1 and 6) refer especially to the Arians “through whose ferocity the devil already lays waste to the church, and will even further persecute the church to make cease the ‘everlasting sacrifice’ (Dan 11:31).”126 The arc of LP is completed in the brief final book Gloria Sanctorum (Gsanc.). This treatise, which adds thirteen promises to complete the mystical 153 number, does not possess extensive commentary. Rather, Quodvultdeus simply provides one to three

 Quodvultdeus also includes quotations from the Sibylline Oracles in four chapters.  LP D.6.8 (CCSL 60:195).  LP D.7.13–14 (CCSL 60:198–200).  LP D. Prologue.1 (CCSL 60:190); and LP D.5.7 (CCSL 60:194). For the difference between Augustine and Quodvultdeus, see H. Inglebert, “Un exemple historiographique au Vᵉ siècle: La conception de l’histoire chez Quodvultdeus de Carthage et ses relations avec la Cité de Dieu,” REAug 37 (1991): 307–20. See also D. Van Slyke, Quodvultdeus of Carthage: The Apocalyptic Theology of a Roman African in Exile (Strathfield: St Paul’s, 2003).  LP D.8.16 (CCSL 60:201): “Omnes sane haereticos Arrianos vult intellegi cum dicit: ‘Hi adversus agnum pugnabunt et agnus vincet eos’ (Rev 17:14).”  LP D.10.18 (CCSL 60:203): “. . . et hic Arrianos signat praecursores Antichristi.”  LP D.5.7 (CCSL 60:194): “‘Ex nobis,’ inquit, ‘exierunt sed non erant ex nobis. Si enim fuissent ex nobis, mansissent utique nobiscum’ (1 John 2:19). Haereticos omnes ostendit et maxime Arrianos quos nunc videmus multos seducere aut potentia temporali aut industria mali ingenii aut certe abstinentia parcitatis vel quorumlibet signorum deceptione.”  LP D.13.22 (CCSL 60:207): “Ut aestimatur ab haereticis et maxime Arrianis qui tunc plurimum poterunt; Gog et Magog ut quidam dixerunt . . . per quorum saevitiam ipse jam diabolus ecclesiam vastat et tunc amplius persequetur cessare etiam faciens ‘juge sacrificium’ (Dan 11:31).”

352

Thomas Clemmons

biblical quotations in order to express a particular chapter’s promise that is yet to be fulfilled. For example, he combines several verses (Rev 21:2; Gal 4:26; as well as Rev 22:5 and 21:4) to emphasize the New Jerusalem, whose glory the wicked will not see.127 It is with the promise of this blessed life in the New Jerusalem that Quodvultdeus ends his work. He dedicates the work, which is perhaps the most exhaustive compilation of testimonia and figurative exegesis in the early church, to the spiritual reader (spiritalis lector) who, if they “first have the pleasure of fishing,” will find in this book “all pleasures and delights.”128 In this book, Quodvultdeus promises the spiritual reader will find the delight and depth of Scripture: the spectacular things of God throughout time, the images and figures of the church, the saints, Christ crucified, and the glory of the Trinity, “from whom, through whom, and in whom all things are; who is God blessed until the ages (Rom 11:36).”129

The Life of Victor Vitensis As with Quodvultdeus, there are many uncertainties concerning the biography of Victor Vitensis. There is no certainty concerning Victor’s birth, although he seems to have flourished at least one generation after Quodvultdeus. Support for this claim is found in Victor’s apparent reliance on others for details of the earliest period of the Vandal conquest, whereas his own eyewitness accounts are from the later part of the reign of Geiseric (428–477 CE) and predominantly from the period of Huneric (477–484 CE).130 Details in his account suggest that Victor was a priest in Carthage, not a bishop (or presumably he would have been subject to the same sanction and exile that befell other Catholic bishops). Although not a bishop in the period of Huneric, he may have later become bishop of the town of Vita.131

 LP Gsanc. 3 (CCSL 60:216–7). Quodvultdeus combines Rev 21:2, concerning the descent of the New Jerusalem from God adorned like a bride; Gal 4:26, describing the Jerusalem on high “which is our mother”; as well as Rev 22:5 and 21:4, noting how in that city, “there will not be night nor need for light of the candle (Rev 22:5), nor will there be mourning or death (Rev 21:4).”  LP Gsanc. 13.15 (CCSL 60:220; trans. is my own): “Habes primam piscandi voluptatem si hujus rei amator es, spiritalis lector, praesertim quia in hoc libro, ut aestimo, omnes voluptates omnesque affectiones invenies.”  LP Gsanc. 13.16–18 (CCSL 60:220–2; trans. is my own): “A quo omnia, per quem omnia, in quo omnia, qui est Deus benedictus in saecula. Amen (Rom 11:36).”  Lancel, HPVA, “Introduction,” 3–7 and 18–29. For an example of eye-witness accounts, see Hist. pers. 2.27–28 (HPVA 133–4). Geiseric was the second king of the Vandals and Alans, who led the united group from Iberia into North Africa. Geiseric then conquered the Roman Provinces, including the city of Carthage, and established the Vandal kingdom. When Geiseric died he was succeeded by his son Huneric.  Lancel, “Introduction,” 7–9.

13 Quodvultdeus and Victor Vitensis

353

The only writing attributed with confidence to Victor is Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae (Hist. pers.).132 The work is thought to have been completed around 484 CE, the time at which the narrative stops, though it may have been edited as late as 489 CE.133 Hist. pers. is the only extensive witnesses to the period of the conquest of Roman North Africa by the Vandals and the establishment of the Vandal kingdom. As such it is an incredibly important text for the reconstruction of the tumultuous transition to Vandal dominion.134 Hist. pers. is a history centered not on North Africa as a whole, but on the persecution of the Catholic church by the Vandals. There is no doubt that Hist. pers. is a rhetorically constructed, confessional history. This is clearly born out by Victor’s use of the Bible in Hist. pers.

Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae (Hist. pers.) At first glance, Hist. pers. does not seem to be a text concerned with the Bible. Indeed, the majority of scriptural citations and focused theological exegesis is found in Book 2’s inclusion of the Liber fidei Catholicae (LFC), which itself is thought to be a collection gathered by the African college of bishops.135 LFC and the conference of Arian and Catholic bishops in Carthage around 484 CE are presented in Hist. pers. as the culmination of the theological contest between Arians and Catholics.136 However, Victor’s use of the Bible extends beyond scriptural citations used by Catholics to defend and promote the Nicene confession. The “bookends” of Hist. pers. are focused on the Vandal occupation and persecution of Catholics. Drawing from his North African predecessors, such as Quodvultdeus, Victor  Lancel, “Introduction,” 67–71, shows that the book of the seven martyrs was penned by a later author working under the influence of Victor’s Hist. pers.  C. Courtois, Victor de Vita et son Œuvre: Étude critique (Alger: Imprimerie Officielle du Gouvernement Général de L’Algérie, 1954), 16–7, holds that the work was finished between 487 and 489 CE. A. Schwarcz, “Bedeutung und Textüberlieferung der ‘Historia Persecutionis Africanae Provinciae’ des Victor von Vita,” in Historiographie im frühen Mittelalter, eds. A. Scharer and G. Scheibelreiter (Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1994), 115–40, esp. 117–8, argues that 489 CE is the most likely date.  Since Courtois, the veracity of Victor’s account has been questioned. Recent scholarship has continued this trajectory, even questioning the label of “persecution.” See, e.g., E. Fournier, “The Vandal Conquest of North Africa: The Origins of a Historiographical Persona,” JEH 68.4 (2017): 687–718. For the continuity of the veneration of the saints after the Vandal conquest, see R. Wiśniewski, “Local and Overseas Saints and Religious Identity in Vandal Africa,” SacEr 52 (2013): 103–18.  Lancel, “Introduction,” 27 and 63–7. It is unlikely that the LFC is the product of Eugenius, the bishop of Carthage. Indeed, there is little evidence, including in the prologue to Hist. pers., that Eugenius has any direct influence on Victor’s work. See D. Shanzer, “Intentions and Audiences: History, Hagiography, Martyrdom, and Confession in Victor of Vita’s Historia Persecutionis,” in Vandals, Romans, and Berbers, 271–90.  For the observation of literary resonances between the conference ca. 481–484 CE and the conference held between Catholics and Donatists in 411/412 CE, see R. Whelan, “African Controversy: The Inheritance of the Donatist Schism in Vandal Africa,” JEH 65.3 (2014): 504–21.

354

Thomas Clemmons

incorporates the Bible in a manner that is distinctive to his confessional historical genre. Victor often uses explicit citations from the Latin Old Testament in order to ground his retelling of the Vandal occupation and settlement of North Africa. More than simply describing the actions of the Vandals against the Catholics in scriptural language, Victor interprets certain events as an open fulfillment of the Scriptures. Victor frames actions and specific incidents as truly biblical. For example, when describing raids against churches, basilicas, cemeteries, and monasteries, Victor invokes a psalm to report that the Vandals used axes to break through doors: “It was rightly said then, ‘as if they were in a forest of trees, they cut its doors to pieces with axes, with ax and hatchet they tore it down. They set afire your sanctuary, they degraded on the earth the tabernacle of your name’ (Ps 73:5–7).”137 In his use of this psalm (and others throughout Hist. pers.), Victor appears to be making a distinction similar to the one Augustine sets out in Gen. Man.: the biblical text has both historical and prophetic referents.138 An example of this twofold reading is found in Victor’s elaboration on the “barbaric furor” (barbarus furor) which he credits some Vandals to have perpetrated on clerics and even young children.139 Victor records that clerics and other distinguished individuals (inlustris) – even if they were very old – were used as beasts of burden, forced to continue their labors to their deaths. He also describes the brutal slaughter of young children, snatched from their nursing mothers.140 Victor sees in this a repetition of the historically prior cry of Zion, writing, “In this way perhaps captive Zion then sang: ‘My enemy said that he would burn my land, kill my infants and dash my little children on the ground’ (cf. 2 Kings 8:12 and Jdt 16:6).”141 As Zion cried out in oppression, so too does the Catholic church under the Vandals. Less vivid than his application of Zion’s cry, though perhaps as striking, is Victor’s description of the death of Augustine, “the river of eloquence” (flumen eloquentiae) and “the delightfulness of sweetness” (dulcedo suavitatis).142 Victor avers that Augustine’s  Hist. pers. 1.4 (HPVA 98–9; trans. is my own): “Ut recte tunc diceretur: ‘Quasi in silva lignorum securibus consciderunt januas ejus in id ipsum in securi et ascia dejecerunt eam. Incenderunt igni sanctuarium tuum in terra polluerunt tabernaculum nominis tui’ (Ps 73:5–7).”  Augustine, Gen. Man. 2.2.3; 2.13.19; and 2.24.37 (CSEL 91:120–1; 140; and 160–2).  Hist. pers. 1.7 (HPVA 100). Victor’s use of the phrase “barbarus furor” mixes together the violent and uncultured “barbarian” with religious violence so that the Arians and Vandals are made to be enemies of both Nicene Christians and Romans. See S. Costanza, “‘Barbarus Furor’ in Vittore di Vita,” in Sodalitas: Scritti in onore di A. Guarino, vol. 2, ed. V. Giuffré (Napoli: Jovene 1984): 711–9.  Hist. pers. 1.7 (HPVA 100). For the claim that this passage relies on Rufinus’s Historia ecclesiastica, see P. Wynn, “Rufinus of Aquileia’s Ecclesiastical History and Victor of Vita’s History of the Vandal Persecution,” Classica et Mediaevalia 41 (1990): 187–98. It is also true that both Quodvultdeus and Victor drew from Rufinus. See the explicit reference at Hist. pers. 3.61 (HPVA 207) and the similar description of the sack of Carthage at Quodvultdeus’s TB 2.5.8 (CCSL 60:477).  Hist. pers. 1.7 (HPVA 100; trans. is my own): “Quomodo tunc forte Sion captiva cantabat: ‘Dixit inimicus incendere se fines meos, interficere infantes meos et parvulos meos se elisurum ad terram’ (cf. 2 Kings 8:12 and Jth 16:6).  Hist. pers. 1.11 (HPVA 101; trans. is my own).

13 Quodvultdeus and Victor Vitensis

355

death at the time of the Vandal invasion “accords with the Davidic proclamation: ‘when the sinner stood against me, I became silent and was abased and did not speak about good things’ (Ps 38:2).”143 While Victor does not speak of the historical precedent of this verse, he nonetheless interprets the death of Augustine as a fulfillment of this prophetic pronouncement. The Catholic church in North Africa thus speaks corporately both of the loss of Augustine and of persecution at the hands of the Arian Vandals. If his use of Ps 38:2 is suggestive of a prophetic proclamation tied directly to the death of Augustine, Victor holds that a clear fulfillment of the prophecy of Dan 3:38 is witnessed in the actions of the Vandals. Because of the seizing and closing of churches, as well as the Vandal suspicion of Catholic clerics, Victor claims that “no place of praying or offering sacrifice was permitted for them so that the prediction of the prophet was openly fulfilled: ‘There is not in this time a prince or prophet or leader, nor any place for sacrificing to your name’ (Dan 3:38).”144 Victor also sees in the response of the Catholics to their oppressors a fulfillment of what was stated in Exod 1:12, “The more that they afflicted them, the more they increased and grew exceedingly strong.”145 While Victor’s understanding of particular biblical verses as prophetically fulfilled in the immediate historical events of his time is perhaps his most striking use of the Bible, he also uses the scriptural passages and allusions to punctuate and embellish his narrative. Hence the confessor Armogas, who is venerated like the apostle Paul (ut apostolum venerabatur), foretells his own death with the very words of Paul, “the time of my death draws near (2 Tim 4:6).”146 In a more extended manner, Victor uses this approach when recounting the curious story of the temptation of a certain Saturus by his own wife. Saturus’s wife is just like Eve, but Saturus is no Adam, since he has “been saturated by the riches of the household of God and drunk from the torrent of his delights (Ps 35:9).” Saturus is able to resist his wife, who embraced him and, as Victor reports, spoke with the very voice of a snake. Saturus dismisses his wife (a figure of the devil) and her temptation with derision, “You are speaking just as one of the foolish women (Job 2:10),” and professes Christ’s proclamation from Luke 14:26: “If anyone does not give up his wife, children, fields or house, he cannot be my disciple.”147

 Hist. pers. 1.11 (HPVA 101–2; trans. is my own): “Ut Daviticum praeconium conveniret: ‘Dum consisteret peccator adversum me, obmutui et humiliatus sum et silui a bonis’ (Ps 38:2–3).”  Hist. pers. 1.22 (HPVA 106; trans. is my own): “Neque usquam orandi aut immolandi concederetur gementibus locus ut manifeste tunc prophetiae vaticinium conpleretur: ‘Non est in hoc tempore princeps aut propheta vel dux, neque locus ad sacrificandum nomini tuo’ (Dan 3:38).”  Hist. pers. 1.23 (HPVA 106; trans. is my own): “Ut impleretur illa sententia: ‘quanto eos affligebant tanto magis multiplicabantur et invalescebant nimis’ (Exod 1:12).”  Hist. pers. 1.45 (HPVA 117; trans. is my own): “Ut apostolum venerabatur dicitque illi: ‘Tempus meae resolutionis advenit’ (2 Tim 4:6).”  Hist. pers. 1.48–50 (HPVA 119–20): “Cui ille Job sancti voce respondit: ‘Tamquam una ex insipientibus mulieribus loqueris.’ Formidarem, mulier, si sola esset hujus vitae amara dulcedo. Artificio, conjux, diaboli ministraris. Si diligeres maritum, numquam ad secundam mortem adtraheres proprium virum.

356

Thomas Clemmons

The most pronounced historical figure for whom Victor consistently provides biblical references is Huneric. Victor frames Huneric from the beginning of his reign with biblical allusions to the devil. He recounts that Huneric, after consolidating his power upon Geiseric’s death, “roaring like a lion (Ps 21:14; cf. 1 Peter 5:8),” turned the spears of his rage to persecution of the Catholic church.”148 Even further, Victor imagines that the “enemy” (adversarius), that is, both the devil and Huneric, perhaps spoke the very words of Pharaoh, “I will divide the spoils, I will fill again my soul, I will kill with my sword, my hand will have dominion (Exod 15:9).”149 In other words, the persecution of Huneric is the struggle between God and Pharaoh, between God and the Adversary. Victor complements his apocalyptic imagery for Huneric, whom he almost regards as the devil (cf. 1 Pet 5:8), by narrating two stories about contemporary incidents that indicate the wrath and judgment of God. The first is a story about a laborer witnessing the miraculous separation of the grain and the chaff (cf. Matt 3:12). After the chaff had been blown away by a marvelous whirlwind, a figure with a shining face and bright clothes (cf. Matt 25 and Luke 3) began to separate the grain itself, reducing the large pile of grain to a tiny pile.150 Victor follows this literal occurrence of the separation of the chaff and grain with a second account of an incident that he interprets as providing a literal end to John the Baptist’s prophecy about Christ’s coming and final judgment in Matthew. The story begins with an unknown figure crying out, “Depart, Depart” (migrate, migrate), when suddenly clouds of sulphur appeared, hurling to the earth large stones that upon descent burst into flame. Even as people retreated into their houses, these fiery stones rained down and set both buildings and individuals afire. According to Victor, the person who recounted this story hid himself in a bedroom, where the flames, thanks to God’s mercy were not able to reach him. This all happened, Victor surmises, to fulfill the prophecy: “Close your door and hide yourself for a little while, until the wrath of God passes (Isa 26:20).”151 Both of the stories recounted by Victor point to his interpretation of the immediate historical situation. Yet his apocalyptic imagery, such

Distrahant filios, separent uxorem, auferant substantiam: mei domini ego securus de promissis verba tenebo: ‘Si quis non dimiserit uxorem, filios, agros aut domum, meus non poterit esse discipulus.’”  Hist. pers. 2.17 (HPVA 129; trans. is my own): “Tela furoris in persecutione ecclesiae catholicae ‘rugiens sicut leo’ (Ps 21:14) convertit.”  Hist. pers. 2.31 (HPVA 135; trans. is my own): “Sed ubi adversarius qui jam forte dicebat: ‘Partibo spolia replebo animam meam interficiam gladio meo dominabitur manus mea’ (Exod 15:9).”  Hist. pers. 2.19 (HPVA 130).  Hist. pers. 2.20 (HPVA 131; trans. is my own): “Miseratione divina ad eum flamma non potuit pervenire, reor ut illud propheticum conpleretur: ‘Claude ostium tuum et absconde te pusillum aliquantulum donec transeat ira dei’ (Isa 26:20).”

13 Quodvultdeus and Victor Vitensis

357

as the final separation of the just from the wicked, which also includes the separation of those within the church (grain from grain), is overtly eschatological.152 While Victor deploys apocalyptic imagery to depict the Vandals, especially Huneric, he also uses vivid and literal fulfillment to narrate the suffering of the Catholics.153 Notably, he describes an incident where clerics were gathered so tightly into a small room that they were all forced to stand in their own excrement. This event, Victor avers, fulfilled the saying of the prophet Jeremiah: “Those who were raised in saffron, having embraced their own excrement (Lam 4:5).”154 Victor uses both the fulfillment of Jeremiah and their singing of Ps 149:9, “This is glory for all his saints,” to show how these individuals, who endure such sufferings (talibus passionibus), are true confessors.155 Indeed, he asserts that these very clerics are even martyrs of God (dei martyres) to whom the people cry out for the baptism of their little children, for penance, and for the loosening of the chains of sins in the absolution of reconciliation (cf. Matt 18:18).156 These clerics, Victor holds, are earthly representatives of God so that their removal from the people is like separating children from their fathers.157 By repeatedly combining narration and overt biblical citations, Victor directs the reader’s gaze to what he has been suggesting throughout Hist. pers., namely, the ecclesial focus and consequences of the Vandal occupation. While Victor has given non-clerical examples, the clergy, perhaps because they were the focus of the Vandals’ persecution, are not just exemplars or even confessors; rather, they impart the whole sacramental system. The reign of Geiseric had seen the forced exile of many Catholic bishops – including Quodvultdeus – and the seizure of many churches of Proconsular Africa, especially in the environs of Carthage.158 Victor came to view Huneric as being both as frenzied as a hungry

 J. Conant, Staying Roman: Conquest and Identity in Africa and the Mediterranean, 439–700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012): 171 and 193, argues for a progression from the apocalypticism of Quodvultdeus to exilic imagery of Victor.  E.g., at Hist. pers. 2.37 (HPVA 138–9) Victor describes Christ’s literal protection of clerics from poisonous snakes and scorpions as well as his provision of food for them as manna in the wilderness. Cf. Deut 8:14–16.  Hist. pers. 2.32 (HPVA 136; trans. is my own): “Qui introeuntes veluti in gurgite luti usque ad genua coepimus mergi, illud tunc Hieremiae videntes fuisse conpletum: ‘Qui nutriti sunt in corceis amplexati sunt stercora sua’ (Lam 4:5).”  Hist. pers. 2.33 (HPVA 136–7; trans. is my own): “Hymnum cum exultatione domini decantantes: ‘Haec est gloria omnibus sanctis ejus’ (Ps 149:9).”  This is an important dimension of Victor’s narrative. As is evident in Hist. pers., the Vandals appear to have intentionally sought to avoid makings Catholic martyrs. Victor seeks to show that these confessors are in truth martyrs. Cf. Hist. pers. 2.34 (HPVA 137): “Qui hos baptizaturi sunt parvulos fontis aqua perennis? Qui nobis paenitentiae munus collaturi sunt et reconciliationis indulgentia obstrictos peccatorum vinculis soluturi quia vobis dictum est: ‘Quaecumque solveritis super terram erunt soluta et in caelis’ (Matt 18:18).”  Hist. pers. 2.34 (HPVA 137): “Ut tali modo filios a patribus nulla necessitas separaret.”  See P. Heather, “Christianity and the Vandals in the Reign of Geiseric,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 50, Supplement 91 (2007): 137–46.

358

Thomas Clemmons

lion, and as intentional in his persecution of Catholics as the devil. Thus, Victor dramatically narrates the reception of Huneric’s edict of May 483 convoking an Arian and Catholic council with the following: “as soon as this edict was read, immediately ‘our hearts were broken and our eyes grew dark’ (Lam 5:17) and truly then ‘the days of our feast were turned to sorrow and our songs into lamentation’ (Amos 8:10), for the tenor of the edict indicated the fury of the persecution that was to come.”159 It is through his use of Scripture that Victor accentuates his claim that the targeted darkness of the Vandal persecution was devised by an adversary bent on the eradication of the Catholic church in North Africa. In this regard, it is important to highlight the apparent shift of biblical citations and imagery in Victor’s dramatic conclusion to Hist. pers. The Vandals, Victor exclaims, desire to darken the illustrious name of “Roman” and, in truth, permit no Romans to live, except as slaves.160 Hence, Victor uses Ps 48:2–3 to appeal to all Catholics (and, apparently, to all Romans): “All people hear these things, give ear all who live on earth, everyone born of the earth and sons of men, rich and poor altogether.”161 All those “through the whole world, the whole multitude of the Catholic name carried in the mother’s womb (cf. Isa 46:3),” gather together to mourn the plight of their coreligionists (cf. Rom 12:15).162 This appeal to Catholics throughout the world emphasizes their common baptism and is contrasted through a litany of interwoven Psalms and numerous verses from Lamentations to dramatize the persecution of the Arians and the steadfast suffering of the Catholic church who “follows in the footsteps (1 Pet 2:21)” of her Lord and spouse.163 Victor has perhaps chosen these verses not only for their suitability, but also in order to insinuate the cries of the African Catholics into the minds of other Catholics who, throughout the Roman world, daily chant the Psalms. Victor heightens his appeal to solidarity (which might even be read as a call to arms) by requesting the intercession of the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles – especially Peter – who should not be silent on behalf of the sheep and lambs entrusted to his care (cf. John 21:15–17), and Paul, the great teacher (cf. Rom 15:19), who should recognize what the “Vandal Arians are doing” to the church in Africa.164 Indeed,

 Hist. pers. 2.40 (HPVA 140; trans. is my own): “Cognoscentes igitur qui aderamus simulque legentes, ‘contritum est extemplo cor nostrum et contenebrati sunt oculi nostri’ (Lam 5:17) et vere tunc ‘dies festi nostri conversi sunt in luctum et cantica in lamentationem’ (Amos 8:10) dum edicti tenor indicaret futurae persecutionis furorem.”  Hist. pers. 3.62 (HPVA 207–8).  Hist. pers. 3.61 (HPVA 207; trans. is my own): “Audite haec omnes gentes auribus percipite omnes qui habitatis orbem quique terrigenae et filii hominum simul in unum dives et pauper (Ps 48:2–3).”  Hist. pers. 3.64 (HPVA 208; trans. is my own): “Omnis turba catholici nominis quae ‘gremio materno’ (Isa 46:3) toto orbe gestatur.”  Victor draws from Psalms 16:14; 17:46; 34:26; 37:11; 38:12; 41:4; 41:10–1; 68:21–2; 68:27; and 143:7–8. He also draws from Lam 1:1–2; 1:4; 1:6; 1:10; 1:11; 1:12; 1:17; 1:18; 1:19; 1:20; 2:16; and 4:1. Hist. pers. 3.65–68 (HPVA 209–10; trans. is my own): “Sponsi et domini sui passiones imitando ‘qui idcirco passus est pro ea ut sequatur vestigia ejus’ (1 Pet 2:21).” Cf. Hist. pers. 3.68 (HPVA 210).  Hist. pers. 3.39 (HPVA 211; trans. is my own): “Cognosce quid Wandali faciunt Arriani?”

13 Quodvultdeus and Victor Vitensis

359

Victor has deployed apocalyptic allusions, exilic imagery, and the direct fulfillment of prophecy in order to emphasize dramatically that “the serpentine progeny of the Arians” (Arrianorum serpentina proles) have plagued the African Catholics. He implores the whole church, especially the church of Peter and Paul in Rome, to recognize the onslaught of the Adversary.165

Conclusion Quodvultdeus and Victor Vitensis are important witnesses to the reception of the Bible in North Africa. Quodvultdeus clearly draws from and expands upon the prior North African tradition of exegesis. His homilies show his frequent use of Christological exegesis and figurative interpretation for catechetical instruction. His LP is truly impressive. The work is a comprehensive collection of biblical testimonia interpreted figuratively and organized according to the economy of salvation. The final sections of LP remarkably incorporate fata alongside biblical testimonia to highlight the coming end of the age, the triumph of Christ, and the exaltation of the church. Quodvultdeus as well as Victor were also more overtly apocalyptic in their interpretation and use of the Bible than were their North African predecessors, especially when they are compared with Augustine. Insofar as Victor emphasizes that, in Africa, it is the whole church who suffers, he appears to be indebted to both Tyconius and Augustine. For Victor, Zion is suffering in Africa. Both authors, especially Quodvultdeus, develop and alter the North African exegetical traditions they have inherited. Quodvultdeus exceeds his predecessors with the most comprehensive extant work of figurative exegesis while Victor attempts a remarkably unique integration of the Bible into the first properly North African foray into the genre of history.

Further Reading Primary Sources Kalkman, Richard G. Two Sermons: De Tempore Barbarico attributed to St. Quodvultdeus, Bishop of Carthage – A Study of Text and Attribution with Translation and Commentary. Dissertation, The Catholic University of America, 1963. Quodvultdeus. Livre des Promesses et des Prédictions de Dieu, edited and translated by Renè Braun. 2 vols. Sources chrétiennes 101 and 102. Paris: Cerf, 1964.

 Hist. pers. 3.63 (HPVA 208). For further commentary, see the discussion of Victor’s rhetorical strategies in E. Fournier, “Victor of Vita and the Vandal ‘Persecution’: Interpreting Exile in Late Antiquity” (PhD diss., The University of California, Santa Barbara, 2008):164–211.

360

Thomas Clemmons

Quodvultdeus. Opera Quodvultdeo Carthaginiensi Episcopo Tribuata, edited by Renè Braun. Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina 60. Turnhout: Brepols, 1976. Quodvultdeus. The Credal Homilies, translated by Thomas M. Finn. Ancient Christian Writers 60. Mahwah, NJ: Newman, 2004. Quodvultdeus. “Quodvultdeus of Carthage, The New Song,” translated by Michael W. Heintz. Antiphon 4.2 (1999): 43–48. Victor de Vita. Victor de Vita, Histoire de la Persécution Vandale en Afrique, edited and translated by Serge Lancel. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2002. Victor de Vita. Victor of Vita: History of the Vandal Persecution, translated by John Moorhead. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1992.

Secondary Sources Burns, J. Patout and Robin M. Jensen. Christianity in Roman North Africa: The Development of its Practices and Beliefs, 165–231. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014. Cameron, Michael. “The Christological Substructure of Augustine’s Figurative Exegesis.” In Augustine and the Bible, edited by Pamela Bright, 74–103. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999. Cavadini, John C. “From Letter to Spirit: The Multiple Senses of Scripture.” In The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation, edited by Paul M. Blowers and Peter W. Martens, 126–48. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Courcelle, Pierre. Histoire Littéraire des Grandes Invasions Germaniques. 115–39; 183–99. Troisième édition, Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1964. Dulaey, Martine. Des Forêts de symboles: L’initiation chrétienne et la Bible (Iᵉʳ–VIᵉ siècles). Paris: Librairie générale française, 2001. Heil, Uta. “The Homoians.” In Arianism: Roman Heresy and Barbarian Creed, edited by Guido M. Berndt and Roland Steinacher, 85–115. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014. Pignot, Mattieu. The Catechumenate in Late Antique Africa (4th–6th Centuries): Augustine of Hippo, His Contemporaries and Early Reception. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Van Slyke, Daniel. Quodvultdeus of Carthage: The Apocalyptic Theology of a Roman African in Exile. Strathfield: St Paul’s, 2003. Vopřada, David. Quodvultdeus: A Bishop Forming Christians in Vandal Africa: A Contextual Analysis of the Prebaptismal Sermons attributed to Quodvultdeus of Carthage. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Whelan, Robin. Being Christian in Vandal Africa: The Politics of Orthodoxy in the Post-Imperial West. Oakland: University of California Press, 2018.

Aäron Vanspauwen

14 Scripture among Augustine’s Circle (Alypius, Evodius, Possidius): The Beginnings of Augustinianism? Introduction: Three Bishops, a Group of Friends This chapter will examine the use of Scripture in the writings of Alypius of Thagaste, Evodius of Uzalis, and Possidius of Calama. These three men were all younger contemporaries, friends, and fellow-bishops of Augustine of Hippo.1 Epistula (Ep.) 177 from Augustine’s collection provides an explicit connection between them. This letter was addressed to Innocent of Rome and was co-written by Aurelius of Carthage, Alypius, Augustine, Evodius, and Possidius.2 Aurelius, senior bishop of the group and bishop of Carthage, the most important see in North Africa, is listed first by convention. Conversely, Augustine was the group’s most prolific author. It is generally assumed that he was responsible for most of the letter’s content.3 The co-authors of Ep. 177 were known in Italy both by the emperors of the Roman Empire as well as by the successive bishops of Rome. They represented their local dioceses and, in this letter, lobbied for the interests of the African church at large. Ep. 177 was written during the Pelagian controversy, after the African bishops heard that Pelagius had been acquitted at the Synod of Diospolis in 415. The letter thus illustrates how in certain polemical circumstances, this group of bishops was able and willing to unite in a strategic appeal to Rome. Later in this controversy, Emperor Honorius would also support the cause of the African bishops.4 Previously, the North African

 For the physical location of these places, see the map of North Africa on xiv–xv supra; S. Lancel, Actes de la conférence de Carthage en 411, tome IV: Additamentum criticum, notices sur les sièges et les toponymes, notes complémentaires et index (Paris: CERF, 1991).  Augustine, Ep. 177 (CSEL 44:669–88).  M. Lamberigts, “Was Innocent Familiar with the Content of the Pelagian Controversy? A Study of His Answers to the Letters Sent by the African Episcopacy,” in Scrinium Augustini: The World of Augustine’s Letters, eds. P. Nehring, M. Stróżyński, and R. Toczko (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 203–23.  M. Lamberigts, “Co-Operation of Church and State in the Condemnation of the Pelagians: The Case of Zosimus,” in Religious Polemics in Context, eds. T. L. Hettema and A. van der Kooij (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2004), 363–75. ✶ Aäron Vanspauwen is a postdoctoral researcher (FWO–Research Foundation Flanders) at KU Leuven. His research interests include patristics, Manichaeanism, and the medieval and early modern reception of late antiquity. His first monograph, In Defence of Faith, Against the Manichaeans (Brepols, 2020) offers a historical, literary, and theological analysis as well as a new critical edition of Adversus Manichaeos, an antiManichaean treatise attributed to Evodius of Uzalis.

Aäron Vanspauwen, KU Leuven https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-015

362

Aäron Vanspauwen

bishops had co-operated in a similar fashion when they made a collective appeal to the emperor for support in their anti-Donatist campaigns.5 Two methodological issues need to be addressed in this introduction. Although we are interested in how Alypius, Evodius, and Possidius read and used biblical material as well as how the three relate to the question of historical Augustinianism, they nevertheless remain distinct individuals, with separate careers and with different literary and ecclesiastical legacies. The fact that the three bishops were friends does not imply they were, at any moment, an exclusive group. On the contrary, even in the one event in which the three are known to have participated, they were part of a group of five bishops, including Aurelius and Augustine. Instead of forming a distinct group, the three belonged to a broader circle of North African bishops, which had Augustine and Aurelius at the center.6 A second methodological issue concerns the writings of Alypius, Evodius, and Possidius. All three feature among Augustine’s letters. These letters testify not only to the direct relationship between Augustine and each of his contacts, but also to how Augustine and his correspondents used letters for pragmatic purposes and for engaging in theological discussions. In addition, two of our three bishops are also known – perhaps even primarily – for producing one particular work: Possidius is all but identified with his biography of Augustine, the Vita Augustini (Vit. Aug.), and Evodius is mostly known for his anti-Manichaean treatise, Adversus Manichaeos (Adv. Man.), also known as De fide contra Manichaeos). The literary legacy of Alypius by contrast is all but non-existent as no writings have been preserved under his name. He is co-author or addressee of several letters in the Augustinian corpus, but he is never the main author. The absence of secure literary evidence for Alypius complicates any attempt to understand how he read and used Scripture. Another factor which needs to be addressed is that all writings under consideration here have been transmitted in an Augustinian context. The letters of Evodius, Possidius, and Alypius have been preserved among Augustine’s letters; Evodius’s Adv. Man. was

 For Possidius see E. T. Hermanowicz, Possidius of Calama: A Study of the North African Episcopate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); for Evodius, see chapter I in A. Vanspauwen, In Defence of Faith, Against the Manichaeans: Critical Edition and Historical, Literary and Theological Study of the Treatise Aduersus Manichaeos, Attributed to Evodius of Uzalis (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020).  The circle of African bishops was not a monolithic group; there were varied interactions and relations between different contemporaries with a more-or-less common goal. That goal can be broadly defined as advancing the interests of the Catholic communities of North Africa. Within this broader circle, any bishop could have stronger ties with one colleague than with another. E.g., Evodius likely had a closer relationship with Alypius than with Possidius. Conversely, Alypius and Possidius participated in several ecclesiastical gatherings from which Evodius was absent. Examples are the council of Catholic and Donatist bishops at Carthage in 411, or the Council of Carthage in 419. For more details, see CCSL 149, CCSL 149A, and, most recently, CSEL 104.

14 Scripture among Augustine’s Circle (Alypius, Evodius, Possidius)

363

transmitted along with other Augustinian writings;7 and, of course, Augustine takes center stage in Possidius’s Vita. In light of these issues, the present contribution will proceed as follows: first, the evidence of Alypius will be analyzed as a case study in the use and interpretation of the Bible among Augustine’s circle of friends. Although the relevant letters in which Alypius is either co-author or addressee do not provide us with independent evidence of his thought, they do at least give us a sense of the breadth of his familiarity with Scripture. Second, Evodius’s use of Scripture will be discussed in two subsections, the first will examine the bishop of Uzalis’s letters, the second his Adv. Man. The discussion in these two subsections will allow us to generate a synthetic overview of Scripture in Evodius’s life and thought. Third, the discussion of Possidius’s use of Scripture will limit itself to biblical evidence that may be gleaned from Vit. Aug. Via comparison and contrast, this overview will determine whether the extant evidence from these three friends allows us to conclude that they belonged to anything approximating an Augustinian circle, and, if so, what the characteristics of this circle may have been.8

Alypius of Thagaste Like Augustine and Evodius, Alypius was born in Thagaste, though, unlike Augustine’s, Alypius’s family was wealthy and influential.9 Born ca. 360, Alypius may have been similar in age to Evodius, whose precise birth year fell somewhere between 354–365. It is possible that the two were acquainted from their youth in Thagaste. What is certain, however, is that Alypius studied rhetoric under Augustine around 376.10 He received further legal training and was professionally active as a jurist in Rome in 383. There he would meet Augustine again, join the latter’s group of friends, and travel to Milan with that group in 384. Together with Augustine he was baptized by Ambrose during the Easter vigil of 387. Afterwards, Augustine’s circle of friends (which now included Evodius) returned to Thagaste by way of Rome and Ostia. Prior to being ordained bishop of Thagaste in 395, Alypius travelled to Palestine, where he met and befriended Jerome.

 See also A. Vanspauwen, In Defence of Faith, 49–50.  This contribution is indebted to previous studies on the authors under consideration. For Evodius and Possidius’s Vit. Aug., more specialized studies are available, including J.-H. Féliers, “L’utilisation de la Bible dans l’œuvre d’Evodius,” REA 12 (1966): 41–64; and S. Dagemark, “Possidius’ Use of the Bible: An Examination of Intertextuality in Vita Augustini,” in L’esegesi dei padri latini: Dalle origine a Gregorio Magno (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 2000), 175–218. Both repay careful reading.  Conf. 6.7.11 (CCSL 27:80).  For an overview of the life of Alypius, see A. Mandouze et al., Prosopographie de l’Afrique chrétienne (303–533) (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1982), 53–65; and E. Feldmann, A. Schindler, and O. Wermelinger, “Alypius,” in AugLex 1:245–67. On the date of Alypius’s birth, see A. Sizoo, “The Year of Alypius’ Birth,” VC 2 (1948): 106–8. Sizoo suggests that Alypius was born in 363, but other scholars are less definitive.

364

Aäron Vanspauwen

As bishop of Thagaste, Alypius was a leader of the North African church. Except for Aurelius of Carthage, Alypius was probably the most influential bishop among Augustine’s friends. On May 25, 419, during the Council of Carthage, Alypius was the first bishop to address the question of how the North Africans should react to an admonition issued by Zosimus of Rome the year before, at the outset of the second phase of the Pelagian Controversy. Alypius’s advice was followed by the other bishops present.11 At this same council, Alypius demonstrated his knowledge of Greek, his familiarity with the acts of the Council of Nicaea, and his experience in ecclesiastical politics. Early in their respective ecclesiastical careers, Alypius facilitated contacts between Augustine and other influential contemporaries, such as Jerome, Paulinus of Nola, and Aurelius of Carthage. In about fifteen instances in Augustine’s epistolary corpus, Alypius is mentioned as Augustine’s co-author. Although Alypius probably did not contribute much to the final contents of these letters (cf. infra), his status as co-author is by no means irrelevant to our investigation. For even if Alypius did not have a major role in the writing of these letters, it is likely that Augustine asked for his support because he considered it beneficial to add the weight of Alypius’s authority to his letter.

Literary Legacy Alypius has left no writings of his own. His aforementioned co-authorship may have simply consisted of adding his name to letters written by Augustine.12 That would mean, of course, that Alypius supported their contents and aims. Within Augustine’s corpus of letters, Alypius is also often the addressee; in some cases, he is the sole addressee. However, these letters do not indicate how Alypius himself employed biblical material. Nevertheless they do contain many citations and allusions to the Bible as well as snippets from non-Christian authors.13 Such allusions presuppose that the readers of these letters could appreciate literary embellishments. The letters thus demonstrate the

 Cf. CCSL 149:91.  Cf. Ep. 83.5 (CCSL 31A:125): “Proinde obsecro te ut epistolam quam eis communi nomine scripsi, subscriptam non differas mittere”; and Ep. 248 (CCSL 57:591): “Ego Alypius impensissime saluto Sinceritatem tuam, omnesque tibi in Domino conjunctos; atque ut hanc tamquam meam epistolam deputes, peto: etsi enim aliam propriam mittere potuissem, tamen malui huic subscribere, ut unanimitatem nostram una etiam pagina testaretur.”  Ep. 24 [by Paulinus] (CCSL 31:70): “Ut qui genus unde sis domo”; cf. Vergil, Aen. VIII.114: “Qui genus? Unde domo? Pacemne huc fertis an arma?” For a modern edition of the Aeneid, see G. B. Conte, Publius Vergilius Maro, Aeneis (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009). Ep. 202 [by Jerome] (CSEL 57:300): “In eodem enim luto haesitat”; cf. Terence, Phormio 780: “Quid fiet? In eodem luto haesitas; vorsuram solve.” For Terence’s Phormio, see Terence, Phormio, The Mother-in-Law, The Brothers, ed. and trans. by J. Barsby (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).

14 Scripture among Augustine’s Circle (Alypius, Evodius, Possidius)

365

range of biblical texts with which Alypius and his correspondents were familiar and, by extension, illustrate tendencies in Augustine’s epistolary corpus.14

Scriptural Evidence in the Letters The following letters have been considered for this study: Letters written to Alypius: Ep. 24 [from Paulinus and Therasia]; Ep. 29 [from Augustine]; Ep. 83 [from Augustine]; Ep. 125 [from Augustine]; and Ep. 227 [from Augustine]. Letters co-authored by Alypius: Ep. 41 [Alypius and Augustine; to Aurelius]; Ep. 53 [Fortunatus, Alypius, and Augustine; to Generosus]; Ep. 62 [Alypius, Augustine, and Samsucius; to Severus]; Ep. 69 [Alypius and Augustine; to Castorius]; Ep. 170 [Alypius and Augustine, to Maximus]; Ep. 176 [multiple African bishops, including Alypius and Augustine; to Innocent I]; Ep. 177 [Aurelius, Alypius, Augustine, Evodius, and Possidius; to Innocent I]; Ep. 186 [Alypius and Augustine; to Paulinus]; Ep. 188 [Alypius and Augustine; to Juliana]; and Ep. 248 [Augustine, with a signature by Alypius; to Sebastianus].15 As a whole, this corpus reveals a predilection for the epistles of Paul: they contain some 375 biblical references and Paul is clearly the most often cited, alluded to, or paraphrased.16 After Paul, the Psalms and the Synoptics are cited with the most frequency.

 Several additional details on Alypius’s authorship require consideration. Luc Verheijen has reasoned that Alypius may have written one version of Augustine’s Regula, namely the Ordo monasterii (also known as Regula secunda). If Verheijen is correct, then Alypius’s rule would be the oldest example of its genre in the Latin world. See L. Verheijen, La règle de saint Augustin (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1967), vol. 2, 154–74. See also M. Schrama and A. E. J. Grote, “Regula (Augustini),” AugLex 4:1121–2. Although Verheijen’s hypothesis has not been openly rejected, most scholars agree that the attribution of the Ordo monasterii to Alypius is, at best, only plausible. If Alypius’s authorship is accepted, then the following example from Ordo monasterii can illustrate Alypius’s use of biblical material: Verheijen argues Alypius betrays his juristic background in his adaptation of Acts 4:32 in Ordo monasterii 4 (ed. L. Verheijen, La règle de saint Augustin, vol. 1, 150). There, Alypius employs the juridical term vindicet instead of the verb dicatis, which is the verb Augustine uses in his citation of the same verse in Praeceptum 3 (ed. L. Verheijen, La règle de saint Augustin, vol. 1, 418). Alypius thus employs legal jargon in place of the biblical phrasing in order to formulate his point more precisely.  Because they contain no clear biblical allusions, the following letters have not been considered in this chapter: Ep. 45 [Alypius and Augustine; to Paulinus and Therasia]; Ep. 70 [Alypius and Augustine; to Naucellionus]; Ep. 171 [Alypius and Augustine; to Peregrinus]; Ep. 183 [Innocent I; to Aurelius, Alypius, Augustine, Evodius, and Possidius]; and Ep. 202 [Jerome; to Alypius and Augustine]. Editions of these letters can be consulted in PL 33; in CSEL 34/1 (Ep. 1–30); CSEL 34/2 (Ep. 31–123); CSEL 44 (Ep. 124–84A); and CSEL 57 (Ep. 185–270); and in CCSL 31 (Ep. 1–55); CCSL 31A (Ep. 56–100); and CCSL 31B (Ep. 101–39).  For this study, I have distinguished between the following biblical corpora: the Pentateuch; the historical books of the Old Testament; Old Testament wisdom literature (excluding Psalms); Psalms; Prophets; the Synoptic Gospels (when a passage occurs in multiple Synoptic Gospels, editors often give only the Matthean reference); the Johannine corpus (Gospel and three epistles); Acts; the letters of

366

Aäron Vanspauwen

The next most referenced are John, the Pentateuch, the Prophets, the wisdom books, and the Catholic Epistles in that order. Least frequently cited or alluded to are Acts, Revelation, and the historical books of Joshua through 2 Maccabees. This corpus of letters is diverse in nature. They were written by different authors, at different times, in different circumstances. The length of the letters also varies significantly from 300 words (cf. Ep. 227) to almost 7000 (cf. Ep. 186). As a whole, the letters reveal patterns which are not necessarily represented in each individual letter. For example, Ep. 24 by Paulinus and Therasia is quite exceptional in that it references the Psalms more frequently than the Epistles of Paul (which feature only once). Similarly, the scale of the anti-Pelagian letters should also be accounted for. Since these four letters, namely 176, 177, 186, and 188, eclipse the length of the other letters (these four contain more than 13,000 words while the remainder combined run to just 4,500), their evidence deserves a separate discussion. The following sections address the polemical contexts of the Alypius letters.

The Anti-Pelagian Letters: The Case of Ep. 186 The Bible is referenced ca. 270 times in the anti-Pelagian letters 176, 177, 186, and 188. They invoke the Bible more frequently than any of the other co-authored letters do. In fact, while the anti-Pelagian letters contain approximately three times the number of words as the others, they contain five times the number of biblical references. The dominant position of Paul should not come as a surprise given that the theological debates of the Pelagian controversy were often grounded in Pauline exegesis.17 The Psalms and the Synoptics follow. Although the order of the three most-cited biblical authorities (Paul, Psalms, and the Synoptics) coincides with the letters as a whole, the frequency of Pauline allusions is markedly greater, both in absolute and in relative terms.18

Paul; the Catholic Epistles; and Revelation. A basic review of the data regarding the presence of biblical corpora in Alypius’s letters yields the following (in order of frequency): Paul (more than 200 times); Psalms (fifty-five); Synoptic Gospels (fifty); John (eighteen; of which thirteen are to the Gospel); Pentateuch (fifteen); Prophets (ten); Old Testament wisdom literature (eight); Catholic Epistles (seven); Acts (four); Revelation (two); and the Historical books of the Old Testament (one; [Judith]).  Biblical corpora in the anti-Pelagian letters (in order of frequency): Paul (172 instances); Psalms (twentynine); Synoptics (twenty-seven); John (thirteen; of which eight are to the Gospel); Pentateuch (eight); Wisdom literature and Catholic Epistles (five each); Prophets (four); Acts (two); and Revelation (one).  By contrast (cf. n17 supra), the non-Pelagian co-authored letters contain about fifty references: fifteen to Paul; thirteen to the synoptics; and twelve to the Psalms. While Paul is the most frequently cited author throughout the Alypius letters (with the exception of Ep. 24 by Paulinus and Therasia), Paul’s writings receive much greater emphasis in the Pelagian controversy. Also more frequently cited in the Pelagian controversy are the non-Pauline New Testament letters (both the Johannine and Catholic Epistles five each). And this is out of a total of twelve that are locatable in all the letters addressed to or co-written by Alypius.

14 Scripture among Augustine’s Circle (Alypius, Evodius, Possidius)

367

Not only is Paul omnipresent in the anti-Pelagian epistles in terms of quantity, he also occupies key positions in the overall argument and structure of the epistles. For example, in Ep. 186, which was authored by Alypius and Augustine and sent to Paulinus of Nola in 417, the opening paragraph (1.1) contains a clear allusion to 1 Tim 2:5 (“there is one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus”). This is intertwined with a more subtle reworking of Rom 7:25 (“the grace of God, by Jesus Christ our Lord”).19 Alypius and Augustine also introduce the first major theological argument in the letter (1.2) via a citation of Gal 2:21 (“for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose”). The letter’s opening section alludes to Rom 7:25 again in 1.3 and closes with a citation of 1 Cor 15:47. In this section, Paul is thus not only cited as a source of theological truth, but the apostle also shapes the language that Alypius and Augustine employ in subtle ways. The next section of Ep. 186’s argumentation begins with a citation of Luke 19:10 (“who came to seek and to save what was lost”). In order to properly interpret this verse, Alypius and Augustine take immediate recourse to Paul: in short succession they cite from 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Romans, and Galatians.20 The citation from Luke 19:10 is rather subtly incorporated into the argument via a relative clause, in which they do not indicate their biblical source, even though this form of biblical embellishment would surely have not gone unnoticed. The citations from Paul, on the other hand, are explicitly introduced. In their first citation (of 1 Cor 4:7), they indicate Pauline authorship (unde apostolus interrogat dicens: “hence the apostle asks, saying”). A potential Pelagian objection to the doctrine of original sin (“My faith, my good will, my good work”) is then countered by 1 Cor 4:7: “What do you have that you did not receive?” Alypius and Augustine overtly ground their claims on Paul in order to give the impression that Paul directly refutes Pelagius’s teachings. Ep. 186 is not a systematic exegetical work. Instead, its authors Alypius and Augustine have a clear goal. They want to convince Paulinus that Pelagius’s views are dangerous. Their argument is founded on multiple Pauline assertions (such as Gal 2:21). On the basis of the concord between these Pauline statements and other biblical passages (after Paul, the Synoptic Gospels, and the Psalms are most frequently referenced), the authors construct a theology of original sin and grace. While the strong Pauline foundation of the theology of grace is undeniable, the African bishops are selective both in their material and in their presentation of biblical testimony. In the letter, Alypius and Augustine most frequently cite Rom 9:11 on Jacob and Esau (“For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil”), and its usages offers an excellent example of their interpretive selectivity. They cite this verse to demonstrate the concept of predestination. Augustine’s authorship of this passage is  Ep. 186.1 (CSEL 57:45–6): “gratiam dei per” [cf. Rom 7:25] “unum mediatorem dei et hominum hominem Christum Jesum” [cf. 1 Tim 2:5].  Ep. 186.2 (CSEL 57:48). The letter cites Luke 19:10; 1 Cor 4:7; 1 Cor 1:31; 2 Cor 10:17; Eph 2:9; Rom 2:6.10; Gal 5:6; Rom 5:5; and Rom 12:3.

368

Aäron Vanspauwen

clear, as he employed the same anti-Pelagian argument and exegesis in De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo parvulorum (Pecc. Merit.) in 411/412 and in his sermon (Serm.) 165 (dated to 417, the same year as Ep. 186).21 In these works, Augustine ascribes to Pelagius (or to anonymous Pelagians) the views that each human is born in a state of conditional immortality, that death can only result from personal sin, and that children can sin in the womb. In these writings Augustine also frequently refers to Rom 9:11 to show that Paul preemptively rejected the Pelagian doctrine of prenatal personal sin. This doctrine is not attested in any Pelagian source and very likely constitutes a deliberate misrepresentation of Pelagius’s views.22 It seems that the African bishops’ letter was not entirely convincing since, as far as is known, Paulinus never openly sided with either Augustine or Pelagius and since there is no extant response from Paulinus to Augustine and Alypius. On the basis of this silence some scholars argue that Paulinus may have sympathized more with Pelagius, or, at least, that whatever qualms Paulinus may have had with Pelagius’s views, he did not regard them as sufficient for breaking off personal contact with him.23

The Anti-Arian Ep. 170 A particular polemical context often influences not only the selection of biblical material, but also that material’s interpretation and application. Ep. 170, written by Alypius and Augustine and addressed to Maximus, is anti-Arian. In this letter, the biblical strategy is somewhat different from that of the anti-Pelagian letters. Instead of frequently citing biblical passages, the authors offer a more elaborate and extended exegesis of fewer biblical passages.24 And, while Pauline exegesis is crucial to the argumentation, they are less prominent than in the anti-Pelagian letters. Other biblical books – and especially John – also play a significant role.

 G. Partoens, “Augustine on Predestination, Immortal Babies, and Sinning Foetuses: A Rhetorical Analysis of Sermon 165,” AugStud 45 (2014): 37.  G. Partoens, “Augustine on Predestination,” 40–42.  S. Squires, The Pelagian Controversy: An Introduction to the Enemies of Grace and the Conspiracy of Lost Souls (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2019), 46–47; and M. Lamberigts, “Reception of Augustine during His Lifetime,” in Augustine in Context, ed. T. Toom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 234. The lack of a response from Paulinus is ambiguous. On the one hand, it was the social norm to frequently engage in epistolary exchange. See C. Conybeare, Paulinus Noster: Self and Symbols in the Letters of Paulinus of Nola (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 26. However, that there is no extant response from Paulinus may be accidental. P. Courcelle, “Les lacunes de la correspondance entre saint Augustin et Paulin de Nole,” REA 53 (1951): 288–99, notes that Paulinus and Augustine remained friends after Ep. 186 was produced.  This letter, which runs to just over 1,600 words, contains only fourteen references to Scripture. By comparison, the anti-Pelagian corpus runs to ca. 13,300 words but includes approximately 270 references.

14 Scripture among Augustine’s Circle (Alypius, Evodius, Possidius)

369

The first biblical citation to feature in Ep. 170 is Deut 6:13 (“the Lord your God you shall worship, and him alone you shall serve”; cf. Matt 4:10),25 a verse used to support the claim of unity within the Godhead. Alypius and Augustine argue that devotion to God cannot extend to the Father alone, but that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit together are the one God and, thus, are deserving of devotion collectively. This Deuteronomic thesis is cited three times in short succession in chapters 2 and 3 and provide important structural and argumentative components for the letter’s first section. These statements are corroborated by two Pauline passages: 1 Cor 6:19–20 (esp. “Or do you not know your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit”) and Rom 11:36, particularly its “Trinitarian” formula of “from him and through him and in him.” After a lengthy Trinitarian argument in Ep. 170 (chapters 2–8), a citation of Phil 2:6–7 serves as a transition to a discussion of key Johannine passages on the relation of the Father to the Son: For this reason it was not robbery but natural to him to be equal to God in the form of God (cf. Phil 2:6), for he received equality by being born and he did not falsely claim it out of pride. Hence he says that “the Father is greater” (cf. Jn 14:28) because “he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” (Phil 2:7) without losing the form of God. . . . On account of this servant’s form, which he received when the fulness of time came (cf. Gal 4:4), after emptying himself, he said, “The Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). But on account of the form of God that he did not lose, even when he emptied himself, he said, “The Father and I are one” (Jn 10:30). That is, he both became man and remained God.26

In this anti-Arian context, John 14:28 constitutes the crux of the matter for Alypius and Augustine. In more or less contemporary sources, Latin Arian authors cite John 14:28 (“The Father is greater than I”) in order to subordinate the Son to the Father.27 By contrast, Alypius and Augustine first expound their views of God as Triune (cf. their exegesis of Deut 6:13/Mt 4:10) and of Jesus as both God and man, substantiating both with Pauline testimony. Only after establishing these core notions do they tackle the more contested Johannine verse. Alypius and Augustine interpret the verse via their prior exegesis of Paul. The immediate biblical context of John 14:28 itself is mostly neglected. Rather than being the starting point of the argumentation, the exegesis of John 14:28 follows a lengthy pro-Nicene discussion. The actual content of John 14:28 (i.e., Jesus’s discussions with his disciples) is secondary to the theological argument founded on Paul, and whatever Arian potential John 14:28 may have had is immediately refuted by a citation of John 10:30 (“The Father and I are one”).

 Ep. 170 (CSEL 44:623).  Ep. 170 (CSEL 44:629; WSA II/3:117–8, trans. Teske).  See, e.g., Sermo arrianorum 24 (CCSL 87A:168); and Conlatio cum Maximino 13 (CCSL 87A:406). The first is an anonymous Arian sermon. The second writing contains the minutes of a debate between Augustine and the Arian bishop Maximinus. Both Arian authors cite or allude to John 14:28.

370

Aäron Vanspauwen

Two main differences can be observed if one compares Ep. 170 and the antiPelagian letters 176, 177, 186, and 188. First, in terms of theological emphasis, Paul is the most frequently cited biblical authority in the Pelagian controversies, whereas John seems to be at least as important, if not more fundamental, in the anti-Arian polemic. Second, in terms of frequency of citation, the barrage of biblical references in the anti-Pelagian letters contrasts with the lower frequency of references in Ep. 170. This difference may be explained by the letters’ respective contexts. The anti-Pelagian letters are all addressed to third parties (Innocent I, Paulinus, Juliana), and were intended to deter their addressees from favorably supporting the North Africans’ opponents (Pelagius and Caelestius). In Ep. 170, Alypius and Augustine address a former Arian who had since joined the Nicene Christian community, thus, Ep. 170 has to be seen as an encouraging and amicable effort at admonishment. During the Pelagian Controversy, by contrast, the African bishops felt pressed to convince outsiders that they – and not Pelagius and his associates – had biblical authority on their side. At the same time, it must be noted that none of these letters offer a systematic exegesis of lengthy biblical passages. Typically, selective citations and allusions are invoked to corroborate the theological arguments they wish to make. When the authors disagree with a certain interpretation of a passage (e.g., with the Arian interpretation of John 14:28) they reply with a similar yet more elaborate exegetical argument. In sum, Paul, the Psalms, and the Synoptic Gospels are the most frequently cited biblical authorities in the Alypius letters. Next in import are John and passages from the Pentateuch. We have seen that individual letters or specific polemical circumstances may lead to shifts in biblical or exegetical emphases. In the next section, the range and use of biblical material by Evodius and Possidius will be compared to the presence of the Bible in Alypius’s letters.

Evodius of Uzalis Biography and Extant Works Like Alypius, Evodius was born in Thagaste.28 He was also a younger contemporary of Augustine. He seems to have received a good education, one which allowed him to pursue a secular career as agens in rebus before being baptized – likely by Ambrose – in 386. In 387 he joined Augustine’s group of friends in Milan and followed Augustine to Rome, Ostia, Thagaste, and Hippo. Near the end of the fourth century, he was ordained bishop of Uzalis. As bishop of Uzalis, Evodius supported the African bishops in

 Biographies of Evodius can be found in: A. Mandouze et al., Prosopographie, 366–73; W. Hübner, “Euodius,” in AugLex 2:1158–61; and A. Vanspauwen, In Defence of Faith, esp. chapter 1.

14 Scripture among Augustine’s Circle (Alypius, Evodius, Possidius)

371

their campaigns against the Donatists, the Pelagians, and the Manichaeans. He also promoted devotion to the martyr Stephen in North Africa. Evodius’s extant writings include letters, most of which are part of his correspondence with Augustine, and Adv. Man. In this section we will discuss the correspondence and the anti-Manichaean treatise as separate corpora. Both their genres (several letters as opposed to a treatise dedicated to one topic) and their circumstances (correspondence with a friend as opposed to anti-Manichaean polemics) clearly had a significant impact on the role played by the Bible in these writings. Evodius’s extant correspondence with Augustine took place ca. 415. In these letters, Evodius asks for clarification on various theological and exegetical topics, explicitly entering into a dialogue with the bishop of Hippo. A decade later, in 425, Evodius wrote a letter to Valentinus, abbot of a monastery in Hadrumetum. A monk from Hadrumetum had discovered Augustine’s anti-Pelagian Ep. 194 in Evodius’s library at Uzalis. Fearing that this letter’s emphasis on an all-encompassing grace undermined their commitments to asceticism and to a monastic lifestyle, the community contacted the bishop of Uzalis for an elaboration of his views on topics such as free will, God’s justice, and grace.29 The community’s letter has not been preserved, but Evodius’s response, the Epistula ad Valentinum, is extant.30 In it, Evodius encourages the community to persevere in prayer and asks the brothers to have faith in the writings of the fathers and in the decisions of ecclesiastical councils, without mentioning Augustine by name. Adv. Man. represents a different genre. It is a polemical treatise addressed to the Manichaeans. Although Augustine’s influence on it is very clear, Evodius explicitly mentions neither Augustine nor any other ecclesiastical writer in the text. Thus, while Evodius explicitly engages with Augustine and his teaching in their epistolary correspondence, the engagement with the bishop of Hippo in Adv. Man. is only implicit. In both cases, the relationship between Evodius and Augustine resembles the relationship between pupil and teacher. Nevertheless, Evodius also demonstrates creativity and originality in his writings.

 See A. Dupont, Gratia in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum during the Pelagian Controversy: Do Different Contexts Furnish Different Insights? (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 59–61; Y.-M. Duval, “Note sur la lettre d’Evodius à l’abbé Valentin d’Hadrumète (CPL 389),” REA 49 (2003): 123–30; and the chapter entitled “Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 425–430 CE,” by B. Matz in this volume.  Ed. G. Morin, “Lettres inédites de S. Augustin et du prêtre Januarien dans l’affaire des moines d’Adrumète,” RBén 18 (1901): 241–56, esp. 254–6. On this edition, see also Y.-M. Duval, “Note sur la lettre d’Evodius.”

372

Aäron Vanspauwen

Letters Evodius’s correspondence with Augustine encompasses Ep. 158, 160, 161, and 163 (written by Evodius); and Ep. 159, 162, 164 and 169 (written by Augustine). Two additional letters, both by Evodius, have been lost. One was written before Ep. 158, and the other is the letter to which Augustine responds in Ep. 169.31 Generally speaking, Evodius’s extant letters contain requests for clarification of miscellaneous theological, philosophical, and exegetical questions. In Ep. 158, for example, Evodius relates that he has heard about apparitions of the dead in his diocese and that he himself has also witnessed apparitions of his deceased friends. These apparitions prompted Evodius to ask Augustine about the nature of the soul, and about the condition of the soul after death.32 Evodius likens these apparitions to biblical examples, such as the appearance of Samuel to Saul, that of Moses to Jesus at the Transfiguration, and the appearances of angels to Abraham and Tobit.33 The very brief Ep. 163 focuses on 1 Pet 3:18–19.34 In it, Evodius asks Augustine to explain the identity of the spirits whom Christ visited between his death and resurrection. Augustine responded with his Ep. 164.35 From the correspondence it seems that Evodius is mostly interested in the literal meaning of the biblical passages he introduces.36 Evodius thinks that the passages in

 For the first letter, see Ep. 158.8 [by Evodius] (CSEL 44:494); Ep. 162.9 (CSEL 44:520); and Ep. 164.22 (CSEL 44:541).  D. Shanzer. “Evodius’ Strange Encounters with the Dead: Questions and Answers in Augustine, Ep. 158–9,” in Scrinium Augustini: The World of Augustine’s Letters, eds. P. Nehring, M. Stróżyński, and R. Toczko (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 273–304.  Ep. 158.6 [by Evodius] (CSEL 44:492–3).  Ep. 163 [by Evodius] (CSEL 44:521): “Qui sunt illi spiritus, de quibus in epistula sua ponit Petrus testimonium de domino dicens: Mortificatus carne, vivificatus spiritu, in quo et eis, qui in carcere erant, praedicavit spiritibus et cetera.”  Edition in CSEL 44:521–41. On the exegetical exchange of Evodius and Augustine, see also A.-M. La Bonnardière, “Evodius et Augustin: lettres 163 et 164,” in Saint Augustin et la Bible, ed. A.-M. La Bonnardière (Paris: Beauchesne, 1986), 213–27.  In her study on the use of the Bible in Evodius’s writings, Féliers discerned thirty-three biblical references in the letters: twelve in his letter to Valentinus and twenty-one in his correspondence with Augustine. See J.-H. Féliers, “L’utilisation de la Bible dans l’œuvre d’Evodius.” Overall, the pattern in these letters is similar to the pattern in the Alypius letters, with Paul (nine), the Psalms (six), and the Synoptic Gospels (five) being cited the most frequently. The Pentateuch, Old Testament wisdom literature, and the Gospel of John follow (three references each). While the sample size of his letters is limited, his letter to the community of Hadrumetum (twelve references) puts most emphasis on Paul (four) and the Psalms (three). From the Synoptic Gospels, there is only one citation in this letter, and perhaps the choice of biblical material reflects the letter’s content. The Pelagian controversies mostly focused on the exegesis of Paul, and Evodius’s admonishment to prayer and repentance reflects the attitude of the Psalmist he cites. In his letters to Augustine (twenty-one references total), the Psalms are somewhat less prominent (three references to the Psalms, five to Paul, and four to the Synoptic Gospels) than in the letter to Valentinus. Even though the letters of Evodius constitute a limited corpus, it appears that they, as a whole, confirm the general tendencies of the Alypius letters. That is,

14 Scripture among Augustine’s Circle (Alypius, Evodius, Possidius)

373

the Bible that mention the body and the soul can shed light on the apparition of souls that he and his parishioners are experiencing and help him better understand what happens to souls after death. He thus understands biblical events as analogous to the common experiences of his day and age. Samuel’s appearance to Saul (1 Sam 28:14), for example, can be compared to the visitations that Evodius and his community have witnessed. When Evodius mentions the visits of angels to Abraham or Tobit, he does not interpret these passages figuratively or allegorically, that is, as attempts to express in human language the mystery of God interacting with humans. Rather, he reads them literally precisely because they describe encounters between living humans and incorporeal beings. In other words, Evodius accepts continuity between biblical history and contemporary events: the apparitions of incorporeal beings (either angels or the dead) in the Bible mirror the visits of deceased members of the community in Uzalis. Therefore, Evodius asks Augustine to explain how the biblical events should be understood in light of contemporary philosophical and scientific views. Evodius expects that Augustine’s clarification on these biblical exempla will help him better understand the apparitions that Evodius himself witnessed.

Adversus Manichaeos Adv. Man. is a polemical treatise that aims to refute Manichaean teachings and to convert the Manichaeans to Catholic Christianity.37 In Roman North Africa, both the Manichaeans and the Catholics claimed to represent the true and correct form of Christianity. Biblical argument plays a central role in the polemical debates between protagonists of the two groups because both parties relied on the Bible to demonstrate their orthodoxy. In general, North African Manichaeans had a predilection for Paul and the Gospels and dismissed both Acts and virtually the entire Old Testament.38 Evodius’s use of the Bible in Adv. Man. shows awareness of how the Manichaeans in North Africa read and applied Scripture. At the same time, Adv. Man. is indebted to Augustine’s anti-Manichaean compositions, a fact made clear in Evodius’s use of biblical material.39 For instance, in the fifth chapter the author connects Matt 12:33 with a fragment from unspecified Acta of

they further support the conclusion that the authors under discussion mostly incorporated material from Paul, the Psalms, and the Synoptic Gospels in their writings.  For an overview of the biblical material in Adv. Man., see J.-H. Féliers, “L’utilisation de la Bible dans l’œuvre d’Evodius”; and A. Vanspauwen, “The anti-Manichaean Treatise.”  See also J. A. van den Berg, Biblical Argument in Manichaean Missionary Practice: The Case of Adimantus and Augustine (Leiden: Brill, 2010).  See also F. Decret, “Le traité d’Evodius contre les Manichéens: Un compendium à l’usage du parfait controversiste,” Aug 31 (1991): 387–409.

374

Aäron Vanspauwen

Leucius as well as with a passage from Mani’s Thesaurus.40 This same combination of biblical, apocryphal, and Manichaean source material appears in Augustine’s earlier work Contra Felicem (Fel.).41 Similarly, in chapter 22 Evodius connects the exegesis of Gal 4:4 to Gen 2:22 in a biblical argument that mirrors that of Augustine’s Contra Faustum (Faust.; cf. infra). In Adv. Man., Evodius refers most frequently to Paul, the Synoptics, and John. Conversely, Psalms plays a minimal role in the treatise.42 Most citations of the Pentateuch appear in close proximity in chapter 37, which succinctly addresses the concord between the Old and the New Testament. Beyond chapter 37, the Old Testament is cited on only three occasions. This preponderance of New Testament material is motivated by the polemical context. A younger African contemporary would later explain that anti-Manichaean argumentation may naturally include such a demarcation: Someone says: “You have set out to dispute with a Manichaean, not with a Jew. Against the Manichaean, new weapons [i.e., texts from the New Testament] are necessary, not old ones.” Why? “Because he accepts the New Testament, but not the Old.”43

The almost exclusive focus on the New Testament in Adv. Man. constitutes one point in which Evodius differs from Augustine. In several of his anti-Manichaean writings, Augustine sets out to demonstrate convincing exegeses of the Old Testament to the Manichaeans.44 Evodius’s defense of the Old Testament, by contrast, is kept to the absolute minimum: it consists in a series of similarities in phrasing between Old and New Testament passages in chapter 37, and a request that they read the Old Testament figuratively and typologically in chapters 38 and 39.45 Because the Old Testament is of secondary importance as a source of biblical arguments, each reference to the Old Testament is paired with a reference to the New Testament. In fact, the only stand-alone citation of an Old Testament passage is a citation of Ps 33:9 in chapter 49

 Evodius, Adv. Man. 5 (A. Vanspauwen, “The anti-Manichaean Treatise,” 46–48 [= id., In Defence of Faith, 344–46]).  Fel. 2.4–6 (CSEL 25/2:831–3).  Of its seventy-eight biblical references, Adv. Man. refers most often to Paul (twenty-seven times), the Synoptics (twenty-six times), the Gospel of John (fifteen times), the Pentateuch (seven times), the Psalms (twice), and 1 Peter (once).  Quodvultdeus, Quinq. haer. (CCSL 60:227; trans. is my own): “Dicit aliquis: Cum Manichaeo certare disposueras, non cum Judaeo. Contra Manichaeum nova tela, non antiqua, sunt necessaria. Quare? Quia novum, non vetus accipit testamentum.”  See, e.g., the contribution of J. D. BeDuhn, “Scripture in Augustine’s Early Anti-Manichaean Treatises,” in BCNA I, 270–8.  Adv. Man. 37 (A. Vanspauwen, “The anti-Manichaean Treatise,” 82–84 [= id., In Defence of Faith, 380–2]); Adv. Man. 38 (A. Vanspauwen, “The anti-Manichaean Treatise,” 86 [In Defence of Faith, 384]): “Veteri autem Testamenti sanctas litteras figurate posse accipi negatis, cum et ipse dominus figurate inde quaedam dixerit et apostolus Paulus omnia illi populo in figura contigisse scribat”; and Adv. Man. 39 (A. Vanspauwen, “The anti-Manichaean Treatise,” 88–90 [In Defence of Faith, 386–8]).

14 Scripture among Augustine’s Circle (Alypius, Evodius, Possidius)

375

(“He spoke, and it came to be, he commanded, and it stood firm”). Here, however, Evodius is actually repeating an earlier citation of the same verse.46 In that earlier citation, Ps 33:9 is immediately followed by a citation of Rom 4:17. Thus, there seems to be a pattern in Evodius’s treatise: an Old Testament citation always requires confirmation by a New Testament parallel. Once the Old Testament reference has been established in this way, it could be used independently of its parallel, though this option is exercised only once (Ps 33:9 in chapter 49). Evodius’s treatment of the Old Testament in Adv. Man. reveals how Evodius expected the Manichaeans to react to any and all biblical evidence drawn from the Old Testament. Evodius was aware of the Manichaeans’ appreciation for biblical material.47 In his preparation of Adv. Man., Evodius consulted many of Augustine’s anti-Manichaean writings. Some of these writings, in particular Contra Fortunatum (Fort.), Fel., and Faust., also contain testimonies from Augustine’s Manichaean adversaries citing biblical material in defense of their views. Evodius frequently echoes – and even seems to respond to – these Manichaean biblical arguments. Evodius’s first biblical citation is 1 Tim 6:16 (“He alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light”). The citation is central to the opening chapter of Adv. Man., which is a confession of faith. This confession aptly corresponds to the confessions of faith formulated by the Manichaeans Fortunatus and Faustus. Not only does Evodius here emphasize attributes of God about which Manichaeans and Catholics agree (e.g., incorruptible, good, truthful, Trinitarian), he also makes strategic use of 1 Tim 6:16, a verse attested in Manichaean confessions of faith.48 His recourse to the same divine attributes and to a common biblical authority strengthens his argumentation. It is implied that Evodius’s Catholic views regarding God are correct and that, if the Manichaean claim to Christianity is sincere, they should agree with Evodius’s confession of faith. Overall, the prominence of Paul in Adv. Man. resonates with the Manichaeans’ preference for Paul relative to other biblical authorities. Evodius could also expand on the biblical argumentation of Augustine. As noted above, Adv. Man. was inspired by Augustine’s Faust.; what follows is a comparison of Evodius’s anti-Manichaean argument in chapter 22 with his Augustinian source. Here are the relevant passages in full: (Augustine) This Faustus, however, who, when asked whether he accepts the apostle Paul, replies, “Certainly,” denies all these points and refuses to accept that Jesus is a descendant of David and that he was “born of a woman” [cf. Gal 4:4]. Paul calls her a woman not because she was corrupted either by intercourse or by giving birth. Rather, he is speaking in the manner of scriptures, which

 Adv. Man. 41 (A. Vanspauwen, “The anti-Manichaean Treatise,” 94 [In Defence of Faith 392]).  See also A. Vanspauwen, “Selection and Adaptation: The Polemical Treatise De fide contra Manichaeos in Dialogue with Augustine’s Manichaean Adversaries,” Humanitas hodie 1/2 (2018): 37–54, esp. 44–50.  Adv. Man. 1 (A. Vanspauwen, “The anti-Manichaean Treatise,” 44 [In Defence of Faith, 342]). Cf. Fort. 3 (CSEL 25/1:85); and Faust. 20.2 (CSEL 25/1:536). See also A. Vanspauwen, In Defence of Faith, 138–41.

376

Aäron Vanspauwen

were accustomed to referring to her sex in that way, as it was said of Eve in Genesis, “He formed it into a woman” [Gen 2:22], though she had not yet been united to her husband.49 (Evodius): Although the Son was in himself invisible, he appeared visibly, as a man, whom he deigned to take up from a woman, as we read in the Gospel [cf. Luke 2]. The Apostle confirms, “Born of a woman” [Gal 4:4]. In contrast, the Manichaeans declare, “Why does he not say ‘of a virgin?’,” I presume because they do not understand that in the particularity of scriptural language such speech is common, as it was said of Eve, “He formed it into a woman” [Gen 2:22], before she was even shown to her husband. Although Mary was not unjustly called woman, on account of her childbirth, she certainly remained a virgin, because she never had intercourse with a man, and neither was her virginity corrupted in giving birth. With regard to what the angel and Elisabeth said to Mary, “Blessed are you among women” [Luke 1:26], there can be no question that she is truly blessed as a virgin among women.50

Both Augustine and Evodius defend the virginal conception and virgin birth of Jesus. By contrast, the Manichaeans deny that Christ was born from the Virgin Mary. According to Augustine and Evodius, the Manichaean argument appeals to Gal 4:4: “Born of a woman” (muliere). The underlying assumption appears to be that, since Paul did not call Mary a virgin, she must have not been a virgin and, thus, must have conceived via sexual intercourse. If so, then all additional biblical assertions that Mary was a virgin are false precisely because they contradict Paul. The exegesis in the Catholic argument thus focuses on Paul’s use of mulier. Evodius, following Augustine’s example, connects the term “woman” (mulier) in Gal 4:4 to Gen 2:22 where the same word is used. Although the arguments of Augustine and Evodius are very similar, the differences between them reveal Evodius’s own polemical approach. First, Evodius does not refer to David. This shifts the argument’s focus away from Jesus’s human genealogy, details which the Manichaeans rejected out of hand,51 and placed it on other New Testament evidence. Evodius complements the citations of Galatians and Genesis with two allusions to Luke. In the first instance, he establishes that the Gospel and Paul are in agreement. When he afterwards connects the terminology of Genesis (mulierem) to  Faust. 11.3 (CSEL 25/1:317; WSA I/20:116–7, trans. Teske): “Iste autem, qui interrogatus, utrum accipiat apostolum Paulum, respondet: et maxime, haec omnia negat. Nec Jesum ex semine David vult accipere nec factum ex muliere, quam, non quod fuerit vel concumbendo vel pariendo corrupta, mulierem Paulus appellat sed more scripturarum loquitur, quae ipsum sexum sic appellare consueverunt; sicut in genesi de Eva scriptum est: formavit eam in mulierem, cum commixta viro non fuisset.”  Adv. Man. 22 (A. Vanspauwen, “The anti-Manichaean Treatise,” 66 [In Defence of Faith, 364]): “Cum ergo esset per se ipsum invisibilis, visibilis in homine apparuit, quem de femina suscipere dignatus est, ut in Evangelio legimus. Dicit et apostolus: factum de muliere. Et isti dicunt: “Quare non ait ex virgine?”, non intelligentes quod consuete dictum sit secundum proprietatem linguae Scripturarum, sicut de Eva dictum est: formavit eam in mulierem, antequam vel ostenderetur viro. Quamvis Maria non incongrue propter partum dicitur mulier, virgo vero, quod virilem nescierit conventionem neque pariendo virginitas ejus corrupta sit. Quod autem angelus et Elisabeth dixerunt Mariae: benedicta tu inter mulieres, nulla quaestio est quia revera benedicta est virgo inter mulieres.”  See, e.g., Faust. 2.1 (CSEL 25/1:253–4); Faust. 3.1 (CSEL 25/1:261–2); and Faust. 7.1 (CSEL 25/1:302–3).

14 Scripture among Augustine’s Circle (Alypius, Evodius, Possidius)

377

Luke’s use of the term (mulieres), he builds upon the previously established agreement of the Gospel and Paul. Both Augustine and Evodius compare Gen 2:22 and Gal 4:4 based on the shared use of the term mulier. The implicit assumption is that the occurrence of this term in Genesis provides the context for the proper interpretation of the term in Galatians. For his part, Evodius attempts to strengthen this argument by offering additional biblical evidence (e.g., Luke 1:26) that supports a concordant reading of the Old Testament and the New Testament. Second, Evodius ridicules the Manichaean objection that mulier cannot mean virgin. Whereas Augustine explains that Eve was created as a woman, “though she had not yet been united to her husband” (cum commixta viro non fuisset), Evodius goes further. He states that she had not even been shown to her husband yet (antequam vel ostenderetur viro). The absence of any term that could allude to intercourse emphasizes that Eve could not possibly be considered anything other than a virgin, even though the term mulier was used to describe her.52

Summary: The Adversus Manichaeos and Evodius’s Letters Evodius’s anti-Manichaean treatise and his letters both attest to the different ways in which Evodius used the Bible, as well as to the different ways in which Evodius relied on Augustine as he interpreted Scripture. A general view of Evodius’s use of Scripture is provided by Adv. Man. because it offers more biblical references. Its emphasis on Paul, the Synoptics, and John, not to mention its neglect of the Psalms, distinguishes it from both his own letters and those of his North African episcopal colleagues. Paul, the Psalms, and the Synoptics are typically the most frequently referenced biblical texts. The lack of variety that one finds in Adv. Man. does not reflect a deficit in the biblical knowledge of its author; rather, it reveals the argumentative strategy of an anti-Manichaean polemicist. Because the Manichaeans were receptive to the Gospels and to Pauline testimony, these texts were at the center of the discussion. The different circumstances of Evodius’s writings resulted in a different way of using the Bible. In his exhortation to the community at Hadrumetum (during the socalled semi-Pelagian controversy), Evodius cites Paul and the Psalms in support of his position. However, he does not offer much by way of exegesis. Instead, the citations simply serve as prooftexts for Evodius’s statements. In the address to Valentinus and his monks, Evodius describes himself as a brother, that is, as an equal; that selfdescription does not mean, however, that Evodius would be irresolute in his exhortations to the community. Similarly, Evodius plays the role of a theological authority in Adv. Man. There Evodius conveys the message that his interpretation of Paul, the

 On the Latin text of this verse (both Vulgate and VL), see B. Fischer, Vetus Latina: Genesis, Vetus Latina Beuron 2 (Freiburg: Herder, 1951–1954), 52. Both Vulgate and VL versions of Genesis read mulier in this passage.

378

Aäron Vanspauwen

Synoptics, and John are in line with true Christian doctrine and stand over against the false beliefs of the Manichaeans. In his letters to Augustine, Evodius takes an entirely different approach. They reveal a cordial relationship between the two friends who had known each other for years. While living together in Italy and in North Africa, they frequently engaged in philosophical and theological discussion.53 Augustine’s dialogues De libero arbitrio and De quantitate animae reflect the contents and style of these discussions. In these two dialogues, situated in Rome in 388 but written down and published later, Augustine and Evodius discuss philosophical matters such as the origin of evil, human willing, and the materiality of the soul. The letters of Evodius and Augustine continued this tradition of intellectually stimulating debate and perpetuated the relationship between Evodius, the critical and enthusiastic pupil, and Augustine, the friend and teacher.

Possidius of Calama Introduction Possidius of Calama was most likely the youngest of the three friends treated in this chapter. Not much is known of his life before he joined Augustine’s community in Hippo in 390/391.54 This means that he met Augustine at a later point in time than did either Alypius or Evodius. Around 397, he was ordained bishop of Calama. As a fellow bishop and friend of Augustine, he was involved in the same ecclesiastical endeavors as were the other African bishops, including both the Donatist and the Pelagian controversies. What sets Possidius apart from his contemporaries, however, is that he outlived the bishop of Hippo. In his biography of Augustine, the achievement for which he is best known, Possidius presented a stylized overview of Augustine’s life, habits, activities, and death. He supplemented this biography with a list of Augustine’s works, the Indiculum. Since the Vita gives a full account of the siege of Hippo by Vandal troops, Possidius must have written or, at least, finished it after that event.55 Throughout Vit. Aug., Possidius frequently engages with Augustine’s writings. In its preface, for example, Possidius clarifies the work’s purpose by comparing it to Augustine’s famous Confessiones (Conf.).56 For several episodes in his discussion

 Ep. 162.2 (CSEL 44:513).  For an overview of the life of Possidius, see A. Mandouze et al., Prosopographie, 890–6; E. T. Hermanowicz, Possidius of Calama; and F. Dolbeau, “Possidius,” in AugLex 4:805–12.  On the date of composition of the Vita, see F. Dolbeau, “Possidius,” 807–8.  Possidius, Vita, praef. (A. A. R. Bastiaensen, “Possidii, Vita Augustini,” in Vite dei santi a cura di Christine Mohrmann: Vita di Cipriano, vita di Ambrogio, vita di Agostino, testo critico e commento a cura di A. A. R. Bastiaensen [Milan: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 1975], 127–241, here 132).

14 Scripture among Augustine’s Circle (Alypius, Evodius, Possidius)

379

of Augustine’s life, Possidius clearly (and, in some cases, exclusively57) relies on works by Augustine.58 On occasion, Possidius cites extensively from Augustine’s oeuvre.59 These will be discussed separately from Possidius’s use of biblical material in the Vita.

Biblical Language in the Vita Augustini It should not be surprising that Possidius’s selection of biblical material reflects both the author’s intentions and the circumstances under which he wrote.60 Dagemark pointed out that Possidius employs biblical references in order to portray Augustine as a new model for the church, the ideal monk-bishop.61 Possidius is also concerned to foster Christian ascetism. Thus, his work also has a parenetic aim, namely, to convince

 This clearly seems to be the case for Possidius’s description of the debate between Augustine and the Manichaean Felix. The minutes of this debate were preserved as Fel. Possidius expresses uncertainty about whether the debate took place over two or three days. See Vita 16 (A. A. R. Bastiaensen, “Possidii, Vita Augustini,” 170): “et post secundam vel tertiam conlationem.” Although Fel. is divided into two books (one for each day of the public debate), and, although Augustine’s Retract. claims that the debate lasted for two days (cf. Retract. 2.8 [CCSL 57:97]: “biduo disputavi”), evidence from Fel. indicates that Augustine and Felix had held a discussion prior to day one of the debate (Fel. 1.12 [CSEL 25/2:815]). Possidius’s remark that Felix was a member of the Manichaean Elect (“e numero eorum quos electos dicunt Manichaei”) may go back to Augustine’s statement in Retract. 2.8 that Felix was a Manichaean doctor (“unus enim erat ex doctoribus eorum”). Augustine’s Fel. does not indicate Felix’s rank. In these two matters (i.e., the debate’s length, and Felix’s rank), it could be that Possidius failed to corroborate his information with Augustine.  E.g., in chapter 6 of the Vita, Possidius describes the debate between the Manichaean Fortunatus and Augustine. In his conclusion to this episode, Possidius simply paraphrases the end of Augustine’s Fort. See Vita 6 (A. A. R. Bastiaensen, “Possidii, Vita Augustini,” 144–6). Cf. Fort. 37 (CSEL 25/1:112).  E.g., in chapter 22 he cites from Book 10 of Conf. See Vita 22 (A. A. R. Bastiaensen, “Possidii, Vita Augustini,” 186); cf. Conf. 10.46 (CCSL 27:180). Chapter 33 contains Augustine’s Ep. 228 in its entirety. See Vita 30 (A. A. R. Bastiaensen, “Possidii, Vita Augustini,” 212–34); cf. Ep. 228 (CSEL 57:484–96).  The most extensive study on Possidius’s use of the Bible is S. Dagemark’s “Possidius’ Use of the Bible.” It offered significant improvements over the biblical apparatus of Bastiaensen’s edition of the Vita (cf. n56 supra). For a complete overview of biblical references in the Vita, see S. Dagemark, “Possidius’ Use of the Bible,” 215. Dagemark discerned 179 biblical references in the Vita (excluding its Augustinian citations). The Vita of Possidius most often references the epistles of Paul (thirty-nine times), followed by the Synoptic Gospels (thirty-four times), and Acts (twenty-nine times). The other biblical corpora referred to are the Psalms (eighteen times), the Catholic Epistles (fifteen times), the Pentateuch (thirteen times), Old Testament wisdom literature (ten times), historical books of the Old Testament (nine times), the Prophets (six times), the Johannine corpus (five times), and Revelation (twice). For the Augustinian citations in the Vita, a different distribution is apparent (out of forty-eight total references). For these passages Paul (thirteen times) and the Synoptics (eleven times) are most prevalent. After these two corpora, the Johannine works (six times), the Pentateuch, and the historical books of the Old Testament follow (five times each). Somewhat striking is the dearth of references to Psalms (three), which is the same number of references to Acts.  S. Dagemark, “Possidius’ Use of the Bible,” 176–8.

380

Aäron Vanspauwen

readers to follow after Augustine and pursue a righteous life. A careful comparison of Possidius’s Vita on the one hand with the writings of Alypius and Evodius on the other makes Possidius’s biblical preferences clear. Possidius emphasizes Acts and the Catholic Epistles more than his African contemporaries do. At the same time, references to both the Johannine corpus and the Psalms are less prominent. The distribution of biblical material in the Vita suggests that the work was not intended to be an abstract theological treatise. The work’s practical purpose could explain why John, easily the most Christological, Trinitarian, and speculative of the Gospels, is less prominent than are the Synoptics. Instead, Possidius’s biblical references emphasize Christian community. The relatively high number of references to Acts and the Catholic Epistles are suggestive of this. These New Testament writings described the lives of the first apostles and the organization of the earliest Christian communities. Likewise, the Synoptic Gospels focus on the earthly Jesus, his day-to-day teaching, and his engagement with his disciples rather than on the divine Logos. From his citations of and allusions to the epistles of Paul, Possidius selects passages relevant to conduct within the community instead of more overtly theological ones.62 The biblical evidence of the Vita also confirms that Possidius wanted to portray Augustine as a model of Christian leadership. Augustine’s life mirrors that of select biblical examples. The biography puts less emphasis on Augustine’s theology and more on the significance of his endeavors to secure unity within the North African church. Augustine built and strengthened the community not only because he dissuaded his theological opponents (Possidius discusses Augustine’s polemics against the Manichaeans, Donatists, Arians, and Pelagians), but also because he led a virtuous life.63 Possidius describes Augustine’s conduct, spirituality, and demeanor, while also paying attention to the way in which Augustine organized day-to-day communal life in Hippo. In comparison to the writings of Alypius and Evodius, Possidius’s Vita places greater emphasis on biblical passages which highlight harmony among Christians than on those which inculcate correct doctrine. Possidius prefers literal and typological exegesis to any form of symbolic interpretation. The biblical narratives are read at face value, and biblical protagonists represent real examples of right conduct, faithful

 E.g., Possidius paraphrases Tit 1:9 (“so that he will be able to give instruction in healthy doctrine and to refute those who contradict it”) in Vita 6.3 (A. A. R. Bastiaensen, “Possidii, Vita Augustini,” 144); or 1 Cor 12:26 (“when one member suffers, all members suffer with it, so too when one member is glorified, all members rejoice with it”) in Vita 7.4 (A. A. R. Bastiaensen, “Possidii, Vita Augustini,” 146). See also S. Dagemark, “Possidius’ Use of the Bible,” 186–7.  In fact, when Possidius presents these polemical debates, he scarcely describes the tenets of Augustine’s opponents. Augustine repeatedly accepted the challenge posed by the presence of heterodox movements, and he always emerged victorious from his engagement with them. See R. Toczko and P. Nehring, “The Pelagian Controversies in Gallic Monastic Hagiographies Composed within a Century of the Condemnation of Pelagius,” in Nos sumus tempora: Studies on Augustine and His Reception Offered to Mathijs Lamberigts, eds. A. Dupont, W. François, and J. Leemans (Leuven: Peeters, 2020), 272.

14 Scripture among Augustine’s Circle (Alypius, Evodius, Possidius)

381

prayer, and virtue. This literal approach to the Bible facilitates the comparison between Augustine and biblical models. And these explicit comparisons, in turn, allow him to describe Augustine’s virtues in biblical language. For example, though he makes only a few references to the Psalms, when Possidius does invoke them he does so in order to portray Augustine as an idealized believer much like those who, as in Ps 1:2, meditate on God’s word day and night.64 Possidius even likens Augustine to the Psalmist with references to Ps 120:7 and Ps 112:10.65

Conclusion: The Beginnings of Augustinianism? A predilection for certain biblical corpora seems to have existed among these three friends of Augustine. At the same time, this study has shown that the circumstances of each composition ultimately determined its author’s selection of biblical material. Overall, Paul is the most referenced biblical authority. His importance in specific circumstances (for example, in the anti-Pelagian letters or in Adv. Man.) is indisputable, even as Paul is omnipresent in virtually every text discussed here.66 This study has also highlighted diverse trends in the reception of John. Evodius’s Adversus Manichaeos refers to this Gospel almost as often as he does to the Synoptics. The prominence of John in Adv. Man. points both to Evodius’s polemical intentions and to the perspectives of his Manichaean opponents. The attention that Evodius pays to John implies that the Manichaeans also favored this Gospel, perhaps because of its emphasis on Christ’s divine nature. After all, the Manichaeans fully acknowledged the divinity of Christ even though they typically rejected the Incarnation, especially the claim that, as a man, Christ could suffer in his body.67 Throughout Adv. Man., Evodius cites from or alludes to biblical evidence that the Manichaeans would have been inclined to accept. By citing passages that both the Manichaeans and the Catholics

 Possidius, Vita 3.2: “meditans die ac nocte” (A. A. R. Bastiaensen, “Possidii, Vita Augustini,” 138). See S. Dagemark, “Possidius’ Use of the Bible,” 184.  Possidius, Vita 10.3: “Cum his qui oderant pacem pacis ratio haberetur” (A. A. R. Bastiaensen, “Possidii, Vita Augustini,” 152); cf. Ps 120:7: “I am for peace; but when I speak, they are for war.” Possidius, Vita 11,6: “Peccator videns irascebatur, dentibus suis frendebat et tabescebat” (A. A. R. Bastiaensen, “Possidii, Vita Augustini,” 156); cf. Ps 112:10: “The wicked see it and are angry; they gnash their teeth and melt away.” See S. Dagemark, “Possidius’ Use of the Bible,” 188.  Ep. 24, the letter written by Paulinus and Therasia to Alypius in 394, is a significant exception to this rule. After Paul, it is the Psalms and the Synoptic Gospels that feature most prominently in the writings of the African bishops. In most of these writings, those two biblical corpora are represented more or less equally. Exceptions are Evodius’s Adversus Manichaeos and Possidius’s Vita, where references to the Psalms are comparatively rare. In both cases the scarcity of Psalms citations is due to the rhetorical strategy or intentions of the authors.  See, for example, Adv. Man. 22 (A. Vanspauwen, “The anti-Manichaean Treatise,” 76 [In Defence of Faith, 374]).

382

Aäron Vanspauwen

viewed as authoritative, Evodius aimed to convince the Manichaeans that Catholic Christianity correctly interprets these passages, and that Catholic teaching aligns favorably with the biblical material that the Manichaeans accepted as authoritative.68 Johannine allusions similarly support Evodius’s own theology. In the anti-Arian Ep. 170, co-authored by Alypius and Augustine, the polemical context also necessitates recourse to John. This letter’s exegesis centers on John 14:28, a verse that the Arians cited as evidence against the Nicenes. Conversely, Possidius did not incorporate much Johannine material into Vit. Aug. In fact, most of its references to John occur when Possidius cites Augustine (six out of ten references in total). This chapter also addressed another issue: the rise of Augustinianism. Does the evidence of Alypius, Evodius, and Possidius indicate that there was such a thing as an Augustinian circle, i.e. a group of Augustine’s acquaintances, who, with Augustine as their leader and spiritual authority, consciously furthered Augustine’s objectives? The answer is twofold. First, one must bear in mind that Augustine encountered opposition throughout his life.69 His anti-Pelagian concerns were not always shared by Christians outside North Africa. And he occasionally disagreed with other leaders of good repute regarding Scripture such as Jerome. In Africa, Augustine encountered opposition from Manichaeans, Donatists, and Arians. Given this wide variety of disagreements, it is true that Alypius, Evodius, and Possidius all counted themselves among Augustine’s friends and allies. Furthermore, it is clear that Augustine’s interpretation of the Bible was accepted and endorsed by them and by other African bishops. In the case of Alypius’s letters, the fact that Alypius co-authored them, even if he did not add much by way of content, proves that Alypius agreed with the biblical language or, at least, trusted Augustine’s arguments. Evodius’s dependence on Augustine is even more tangible. He corresponded with the bishop of Hippo in order to exchange notes and ideas on how best to interpret certain biblical passages, and, in Adv. Man., followed Augustine’s anti-Manichaean argumentation. Evodius even framed his biblical argumentation in much the same way as Augustine had done.70 The case is somewhat different in Possidius’s Vita. Nevertheless, it is more than obvious that the Vita treats Augustine as an exemplar. Possidius’s use of biblical material served to demonstrate that Augustine, his activities, and his community in Hippo approached the ideal of what the Christian church should be. Second, it is worth reiterating that all of the writings discussed in this chapter have been preserved in an exclusively Augustinian context. This clearly illustrates that

 See A. Vanspauwen, “‘Contra Domini uel Apostoli auctoritatem’: La autoridad de Pablo en el tratado polémico ‘De fide contra Manichæos’ de Evodio de Uzala,” Augustinus 61 (2016): 395–411.  On this topic, see M. Lamberigts, “Reception of Augustine during His Lifetime.”  Adv. Man. 37 (A. Vanspauwen, “The anti-Manichaean Treatise,” 82 [In Defence of Faith, 380]): “Rabide enim ferimini in id quod scriptum est.” Cf. Aug., Mor. eccl. et mor. Manich. 1.1 (CSEL 90:3): “In legem quod vetus testamentum vocatur, imperite atque impie feruntur”; and Mor. eccl. et mor. Manich. 23.42: “In quod illi rabide saeviunt” (CSEL 90:47).

14 Scripture among Augustine’s Circle (Alypius, Evodius, Possidius)

383

“Augustinianism” is, in a sense, unavoidable: most of what we know about these three bishops and their writings is directly due to Augustine and his legacy. It would be wrong to conclude, however, that Augustine was always the leading agent in North Africa. In terms of ecclesiastical authority, the undisputed leader in North Africa was Aurelius of Carthage. Although Aurelius and Augustine had an amicable relationship, it would be a stretch to consider Aurelius, who was both senior to Augustine in rank and the North African primate, to be a protégé of Augustine. Likewise, it should not be forgotten that other African bishops were (equally) involved in the same polemical campaigns that occupied Augustine. All Catholic bishops in North Africa encountered difficulties with the Donatist church. And, during the Pelagian controversy, the first open attack of the African church against Caelestius was led by Aurelius, not by Augustine.71 While we are best informed regarding Augustine’s views and activities in these controversies, it should not be overlooked that all the North African Catholic bishops shared the same concern for the church’s unity. The predominance of Augustinian source material forces us to look at the North African episcopate of the early fifth century through an Augustinian lens. Yet there were certainly other protagonists. One must also recall that Alypius held a more senior position within the North African episcopate than Augustine. In several instances, it was Alypius who introduced Augustine to his influential friends, not the other way around. In other words, when Alypius added his signature to letters that were written largely by Augustine, the question of who was helping whom remained open. In all probability, the favor was reciprocal: Augustine provided the theological acumen while Alypius provided the political and ecclesiastical clout. It is undeniable that all three authors under discussion in this chapter were Augustine’s friends and consistently supported the bishop of Hippo in numerous endeavors. However, to view Alypius, Evodius, and Possidius as constituting an early instance of “Augustinianism” would be unjust to them and to their unique profiles. In sum, this chapter has dealt with three friends of Augustine, each of whom shared his views and concerns even as they also developed and maintained unique profiles. Each of the three read and interpreted the Bible in his own way. Their use of biblical material always reflected their particular authorial intentions and the particular contexts in which they wrote. Each of them also had a different relationship to Augustine. First, Alypius and Augustine could perhaps be seen as more or less equals in terms of their ecclesiastical offices. Alypius’s relationship to the Bible is also the most difficult to reconstruct. While he clearly did accept and clearly did support Augustine’s approach to biblical exegesis, it is difficult to establish much beyond that, even when the biblical material familiar to his correspondents is included. Second, the relationship between Augustine and Evodius resembles that of teacher and pupil. This resemblance is clearly evident in how Evodius models his theological and biblical argumentation in Adv. Man.

 See Aug., Grat. Chr 2.2–4 (CSEL 42:167–9).

384

Aäron Vanspauwen

on Augustine’s anti-Manichaean works. If anything, Evodius’s anti-Manichaean writings display a greater sensitivity to the Manichaeans’ narrow scriptural canon and the role this could play in mounting an argument they would respect. Third, Possidius, in Vit. Aug., portrays Augustine as the ideal Christian leader, even going as far as to compare the deceased bishop to biblical examples. Possidius’s biography (along with his authorized Indiculum) facilitated the canonization of the bishop of Hippo. Indeed, no other initiative of Augustine’s friends did more to cement the legacy of Augustine than did Possidius’s Vita Augustini.

Further Reading Primary Sources Augustine. Sancti Aurelii Augustini epistulae I–LV; epistulae LVI–C; epistulae CI–CXXXIX, edited by Klaus D. Daur. Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina 31; 31A; 31B. Turnhout: Brepols, 2004–2009. Augustine. Sancti Augustini confessionum libri XIII, edited by Luc Verheijen. Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina 27. Turnhout: Brepols, 1981. Augustine. S. Aureli Augustini operum sectio II: S. Augustini epistulae, pars I: Ep. I–XXX; pars II: Ep. XXXI–CXXIII; pars III: Ep. CXXIV–CLXXXIV; pars IV: Ep. CLXXXV–CCLXX, edited by Alois Goldbacher. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 34/1, 34/2, 44, 57. Prague: Tempsky; Leipzig: Freytag, 1895, 1898, 1904, 1911. Collatio Carthaginensis anni 411. Gesta Collationis Carthaginensis. Augustinus, Breviculus collationis. Augustinus, Ad Donatistas post collationem, edited by Clemens Weidmann. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 104. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018. Concilia Africae a. 345 – a. 525, edited by Charles Munier. Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina 149. Turnhout: Brepols, 1974. Gesta conlationis Carthaginiensis, anno 411: Accedit sancti Augustini breviculis conlationis cum Donatistis, edited by Serge Lancel. Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina 149A. Turnhout: Brepols, 1974. Possidius. “Possidii, Vita Augustini.” In Vite dei santi a cura di Christine Mohrmann: Vita di Cipriano, vita di Ambrogio, vita di Agostino, testo critico e commento a cura di A.A.R. Bastiaensen, translated by Antonius A. R. Bastiaensen and Carlo Carena, 127–241. Milan: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 1975. Vanspauwen, Aäron. “The anti–Manichaean Treatise De fide contra Manichaeos, Attributed to Evodius of Uzalis: Critical Edition and Translation.” Sacris Erudiri 57 (2018): 7–116.

Secondary Sources Dagemark, Siver. “Possidius’ Use of the Bible: An Examination of Intertextuality in Vita Augustini.” In L’esegesi dei padri latini: Dalle origine a Gregorio Magno, 175–218. Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 2000. Féliers, Jeanne-Huberte. “L’utilisation de la Bible dans l’œuvre d’Evodius.” Revue d’Études Augustiniennes et Patristiques 12 (1966): 41–64. Hermanowicz, Erika T. Possidius of Calama: A Study of the North African Episcopate. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

14 Scripture among Augustine’s Circle (Alypius, Evodius, Possidius)

385

Mandouze, André et al. Prosopographie de l’Afrique chrétienne (303–533). Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1982. Nehring, Przemysław, Mateusz Stróżyński, and Rafał Toczko, eds. Scrinium Augustini: The World of Augustine’s Letters. Instrumenta Patristica et Mediaevalia 76. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017. Pollmann, Karla, and Willemien Otten. The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Toom, Tarmo. Augustine in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Vanspauwen, Aäron. In Defence of Faith, Against the Manichaeans: Critical Edition and Historical, Literary and Theological Study of the Treatise Aduersus Manichaeos, Attributed to Evodius of Uzalis. Instrumenta Patristica et Mediaevalia 79. Turnhout: Brepols, 2020. Verheijen, Luc. La règle de saint Augustin. 2 vols. Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1967.

Francis X. Gumerlock

15 Scripture in Fulgentius of Ruspe Introduction: The Life and Works of Fulgentius The Life of Fulgentius Fulgentius of Ruspe, whose full name was Claudius Gordianus Fulgentius, was born in 468 CE to a noble Roman family and raised in Thelept (now Madinet-el-Kedima) in the North African province of Byzacena. After being educated in Greek and Latin literature, as a young man Fulgentius became fiscal procurator of the province with duties which included the collection of taxes. About 493, Fulgentius resigned from his government position and joined a monastery in a desert region near his home. Soon afterward, persecution by Arians forced him to flee to a second monastery, where he undertook teaching duties and served as co-abbot with his friend Felix. Shortly thereafter Numidians attacked this monastery, and Fulgentius and Felix fled to Sicca Veneria. After being accused of political rebellion there by an Arian priest, and suffering a whipping and other humiliations, Fulgentius moved to Ididi in Maurentania. There he read John Cassian’s Institutes and Conferences and planned to travel to Egypt to become a monk of the desert. In 499, he set sail, but when he stopped in Sicily, the bishop of Syracuse dissuaded him from his plan, noting that many of the monks in Egypt had separated from the Catholic church and embraced miaphysitism (or monophysiticism), the teaching that Christ has only one nature, not two. Having abandoned his plan to go to Egypt, Fulgentius visited Rome in the year 500 before returning to North Africa and to a deserted island near Junca. In 507 Fulgentius was consecrated bishop of the coastal seaport of Ruspe (modern Kudiat Rosfa in Tunisia). Soon after his ordination, the Arian Vandal king, Thrasamund, banished about sixty Catholic bishops, including Fulgentius, to the island of Sardinia, because of their Trinitarianism and refusal to accept the Arianism of the Vandal government. In Cagliari, on the southern tip of Sardinia, Fulgentius founded two monasteries. About seven years into his first exile, Thrasamund issued ten objections to the doctrine of the Trinity as a challenge for the Catholic bishops to accept the Arian faith. The king recalled Fulgentius to Carthage for a period of two years, 515–517, to debate on the Trinity with Arians. Unsuccessful in converting Fulgentius to their viewpoint,

✶ Francis X. Gumerlock (Ph.D. Historical Theology, Saint Louis University, 2004) teaches Latin in the Archdiocese of Denver, and is the author of Fulgentius of Ruspe on the Saving Will of God (2009) and Tyconius. Exposition of the Apocalypse (2017). His research interests include the theology of grace and commentaries on the Apocalypse in late antiquity.

Francis X. Gumerlock, Archdiocese of Denver https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-016

388

Francis X. Gumerlock

Arian clerics persuaded the king to send him back to Sardinia in a second exile. There Fulgentius remained another six years until Thrasamund died in 523. Thrasamund’s son, Hilderic, was more tolerant toward Catholics, and allowed the bishops exiled on Sardinia to return to North Africa. For the next decade Fulgentius served his see in Ruspe and established a monastery there. In 532, he retired to the island of Circinia, not far from the coast of Ruspe, but shortly thereafter became ill. He returned to Ruspe and died on 1 January 533 in the twenty-fifth year of his episcopate and sixtyfifth year of life.1 Many of the details of Fulgentius’s life mentioned above are related in The Life of Fulgentius (Vita Fulgentii), a biography written for the first anniversary of his death by a monk who lived with Fulgentius in a monastery either in Sardinia or North Africa.2 Lynda Leigh Coon’s 1986 master’s thesis “Fulgentius of Ruspe: Monk-Aristocrat” is the most thorough work on Fulgentius’s life since Gabriel Lapeyre’s 1929 Saint Fulgence de Ruspe.3 It incorporated much of the scholarship on Fulgentius’s life from the half century between Lapeyre’s book and her thesis.4

 Cf. F. Gumerlock, Fulgentius of Ruspe on the Saving Will of God: The Development of a Sixth-Century African Bishop’s Interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:4 During the Semi-Pelagian Controversy (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 2009), 16–22.  A. Isola, ed., Vita S. Fulgentii episcopi (CCSL 91F). English: R. B. Eno, trans., Fulgentius. Selected Works. FC 95:2–56; Italian: A. Isola, trans., Pseudo-Ferrano di Cartagine. Vita di San Fulgenzio (Rome: Città Nuova, 1987). German: L. Kozelka, trans., Das Leben de Hl. Fulgentius, von Diakon Ferrandus von Kathago (Munich: Kösel & Fustet, 1934); French: G. G. Lapeyre, trans., Vie de saint Fulgence de Ruspe par Ferrand (Paris: Lethielleux, 1929). Traditionally its author was considered to be Ferrandus of Carthage, but this attribution is rejected by Isola. See his “Sulla paternità della Vita Fulgentii,” Vetera Christianorum 23 (1986): 63–71, and the introductions to his Latin edition and Italian translation. Recent studies on the Life of Fulgentius include M. De Marre, “Augustine and Fulgentius: Parallel or Vying African Lives?,” Journal of Early Christian History 6:1 (2016): 1–28; C. Leyser, “‘A wall protecting a city’: Conflict and Authority in the Life of Fulgentius of Ruspe,” in Foundations of Power and Conflicts of Authority in Late-Antique Monasticism, eds. A. Camplani and G. Filoramo (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), 175–94; and B. Näf, “Fugentius von Ruspe, Caesarius von Arles und die Versammlungen der römishen Senatoren,” Klio 74 (1992): 431–46.  L.L. Coon, “Fulgentius of Ruspe: Monk-Aristocrat,” Master’s thesis (Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1986); and G. G. Lapeyre, Saint Fulgence de Rupse: Un évêque catholique africain sous la domination vandal (Paris: Lethielleux, 1929).  These include J. J. Gavigan, De vita monastica in Africa Septentrionali inde a temporibus S. Augustini usque ad invasiones Arabum (Turin: Marietti, 1962), 145–81; S. T. Stevens, “The Circle of Bishop Fulgentius,” Traditio 38 (1982): 327–41; and Coon, “Fulgentius of Ruspe. Monk-Aristocrat,” 119n6. For an updated chronology of Fulgentius’s life, Y. Modéran, “La chronologie de la vie de saint Fulgence de Ruspe et ses incidences sur l’histoire de l’Afrique vandale,” MEFR 105 (1993): 135–88. On Fulgentius’s exile and monastic life in Sardinia, see U. Heil, “From Hippolytus to Fulgentius: Sardinia as a Place of Exile in the First Six Centuries,” in Clerical Exile in Late Antiquity, eds. J. Hillner, J. Ulrich, and J. Engberg (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2016), 165–92; R. Turtas, “Note sul monachesimo in Sardegna tra Fulgenzio e Gregorio Magno,” Revista di storia della Chiesa in Italia 41 (1987): 92–110; E. Cau, “Fulgenzio e la cultura scritta in Sardegna agli inizi del VI secolo,” Sandalion 2 (1979): 221–9.

15 Scripture in Fulgentius of Ruspe

389

Two different North African Catholic writers, both of whom thrived in the early sixth century, shared the name Fulgentius: Claudius Gordianus Fulgentius (Fulgentius the bishop of Ruspe) and Fabius Planciades Fulgentius (Fulgentius the Mythographer). For centuries they have been conflated into one person. Debate over whether the ecclesiastical and mythological writings circulating in the name of Fulgentius were the work of one man or two men ensued in the 19th century and was considered largely settled at that time in favor of two Fulgentii.5 If both sets of writings were regarded as the work of one author, it would not only incorrectly attribute to the mythographer the bishop’s theological writings, which are of a vastly different literary genre, it would also make the monk-bishop a married man, since the mythographer mentioned having a wife in his Mythologies.6 In a 2013 essay, I showed precisely how the fusion of two Fulgentii into one mythographer-bishop arose in the ninth century.7

The Works of Fulgentius: Carthage, the Second Exile, and Ruspe The entire corpus of Fulgentius’s extant literary works were edited in two volumes by Jean Fraipont in 1968.8 It is helpful to organize these writings, as Fraipont and Coon have done, chronologically according to three major time periods: the writings from Carthage between his first and second exile, the treatises from Fulgentius’s second exile in Sardinia, and the works from Ruspe between when he returned from his second exile and his death.9 No writings from Fulgentius’s early years as a monk, abbot, and bishop in North Africa or from his first exile have survived.10

 However, as late as the twentieth century a few scholars still considered them the writings of only one person. For example, P. Langlois, “Les oeuvres de Fulgence le Mythographe et le problème des deux Fulgence,” JAC 7 (1964): 94–105; and Stevens, “The Circle of Bishop Fulgentius,” 328 and 332. The issue was then thoroughly revisited in favor of two different writers, the bishop and the mythographer, in G. B. Hays, “The Date and Identity of the Mythographer Fulgentius,” Journal of Medieval Latin 13 (2003): 162–253.  Hays, “Fulgentius the Mythographer,” Ph.D. diss. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1996), 273–4.  Gumerlock, “The Transformation of Fulgentius of Ruspe in the Carolingian Age,” in The Use of Textual Criticism for the Interpretation of Patristic Texts: Seventeen Case Studies, eds. K. B. Steinhauser and S. Dermer, (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 2013), 77–93.  CCSL 91 and 91A.  CCSL 91:vi–vii; and Coon, “Fulgentius of Ruspe,” 122–3. Fraipont and Coon organized them chronologically, while Lapeyere (Saint Fulgence de Ruspe, 207–56) organized them topically: dogmatic works, correspondence, and sermons.  Ferguson argued that a collection of psalter collects, short prayers read after the chanting of each psalm, were the work of Fulgentius. See his Visita nos: Reception, Rhetoric, and Prayer in a North African Monastery (New York: Peter Lang, 1999), 11–24. Ferguson’s attribution of them to Fulgentius has not been discussed, and hence neither accepted nor rejected, by recent scholars of Fulgentius. If they are from Fulgentius, the collection is the earliest of his extant writings. The collects were edited in L. Brou, ed., The Psalter Collects from V–VIth Century Sources (London: Harrison and Sons, 1949), 72–111.

390

Francis X. Gumerlock

Works from Carthage Generally following Fraipont and Coon, Fulgentius’s four extant works11 from Carthage (ca. 515–517) are: 1. Book of Responses against Statements of King Thrasamund (Dicta regis Trasamundi et contra ea responsionum liber unus) 2. To Thrasamund (Ad Trasamundum libri tres) 3. Acrostic Poem (Psalmus abecedarius) 4. On the Trinity (De Trinitate ad Felicem) All of these are anti-Arian, pro-Trinitarian treatises. Scholarship on them was conducted mainly in Europe in the late 20th century. In 1976 Bertrand de Margerie wrote a structural analysis of a portion of To Thrasamund, and in 1988 Bashuth Mapwar wrote a book on Fulgentius’s anti-Arian polemics.12 In the 1980s a few Italian studies on the Psalmus abecedarius, sometimes referred to as simply Abecedarium, were published.13 Recently, however, very little scholarly attention has been given to these writings. At this time no English translations of these works have been published, and almost no secondary literature in English has appeared.

Works from the Second Exile Treatises from the period of the second exile (ca. 517–523) are: 1. On the Remission of Sins (Ad Euthymium de remissione peccatorum libri duo) 2. To Monimus (Ad Monimum libri tres) Fulgentius’s Epistulae (Ep.) 1–7 certainly date from this period,14 as does Ep. 17 to Scythian monks on theopaschite Christology and grace,15 and a little untitled work,

 For Fulgentius’s lost works and the pseudo-Fulgentian corpus, see Lapeyre, Fulgence de Ruspe, 243–59; Fraipont’s introduction; and Gumerlock, Fulgentius of Ruspe, 21n57.  B. de Margerie, “Analyse structural d’un texte de saint Fulgence de Ruspe sur l’incarnation, extrait de Ad Trasamundum I, xx, 1–2,” REA 22 (1976): 90–4; B. Mapwar, La polemique anti-Arienne de St. Fulgence de Ruspe en Afrique du Nord (Vè-VIè siècles) (Rome: N. Domenici-Pécheux, 1988); and M. Schmaus, “Die Trinitätslehre des Fulgentius von Ruspe,” in Charisteria Alois Rzach zum 80. Geburtstag dargebracht (Reichenberg: Gebrüder Stiepel, 1930), 166–75.  M. G. Bianco, “Abecedarium Fulgentii episcopi ecclesiae Ruspensis,” Orpheus 1 (1980):152–71; and A. Isola, trans., Fulgenzio di Ruspe. Salmo contro i vandali ariani (Turin: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1983).  F. Di Sciascio, Fulgenzio di Ruspe. Un grande discepolo di Agostino contro le ‘Reliquiae Pelagianae pravitatis’ nei suoi epigoni (Rome: Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana, 1941), 18–9.  On the circumstances which led to the writing of Ep. 17, see Gumerlock, Fulgentius of Ruspe, 83–105.

15 Scripture in Fulgentius of Ruspe

391

of which four fragments survive, directed to Eugippius against a sermon of a certain “Pelagian.”16 As for recent scholarship on the writings from the second exile, I discussed the recipient, date, and occasion for Fulgentius’s three books To Monimus in the second chapter of my book on Fulgentius. Monimus was a Carthaginian scholar who had asked Fulgentius about predestination, the Trinity, and the Eucharist.17 Finbarr Clancy recently wrote an article examining the invocation of the Holy Spirit in the Eucharistic consecration, that appears in Fulgentius’s To Monimus. Clancy argued that the mission of the Spirit in this consecration, according to Fulgentius, is not temporal or spatial, but rather reflects the unity and equality of the Trinity.18 During his second exile, Scythian monks were advocating theopaschite teaching in Constantinople and Rome, i.e., that “God the Word suffered in the flesh” and an Augustinian theology of grace in opposition of a writing of Faustus of Riez, who had died several decades earlier. These monks corresponded with Fulgentius looking for his support, which he gave in the form of the lengthy Ep. 17. The literature on the theopaschite controversy, the Scythian monks, and their leader John Maxentius, is extensive. In this literature Fulgentius is often discussed only tangentially and therefore, a full survey of it is beyond the scope of the present chapter. However, Fulgentius is featured more prominently in two recent works about the theopaschite controversy and the Scythian monks. Authored by David Maxwell and by Donald Fairbairn respectively, they explored the relationship between Fulgentius’s Christology and his theology of grace, the central foci of Ep. 17. Maxwell showed that, for Fulgentius, there is a correspondence between the divine and human natures of Christ, and divine grace and human freedom. Said in another way by Fairbairn, both the incarnation and salvation have their origin in divine action.19 In addition, Matthew Pereira’s recent

 The dogmatic treatises from the second exile and the letters to Optatus and Proba are translated into English in Eno, Fulgentius. An Italian translation of On the Remission of Sins is in M. G. Bianco, trans., Le condizioni della Penitenza. Testi Patristici 57 (Rome: Città nuova, 1986). For an English version of Ep. 17 see R. R. McGregor and D. Fairbairn, trans., Fulgentius and the Scythian Monks. Correspondence on Christology and Grace. FC 126:43–107. The fragments of the treatise to Eugippius are translated in Gumerlock, Fulgentius of Ruspe, 149–52.  Gumerlock, Fulgentius of Ruspe, 26–33.  F. G. Clancy, “The Holy Spirit, the Trinity and the Eucharist in St. Fulgentius of Ruspe’s Ad Monimum, Book 2,” in The Holy Spirit in the Fathers of the Church, eds. D. V. Twomey and J. E. Rutherford (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010), 96–126.  Fairbairn, “Introduction” in FC 126:14–21; and D. R. Maxwell, “Christology and Grace in the SixthCentury Latin West: The Theopaschite Controversy,” Ph.D. Dissertation (University of Notre Dame, 2003). Earlier works on the Christology of Fulgentius include C. Micaelli, “Osservazioni sulla Cristologia di Fulgenzio di Ruspe,” Aug 25 (1985): 343–60; E. Cal Pardo, “Dimensión sacrificial de la muerte de Cristo en los escritos de San Fulgencio de Ruspe,” EstEcl 47 (1972): 459–85; E. Cal Pardo, “El motive de la Encarnación, según San Fulgencio de Ruspe,” RET 30 (1970): 265–306; E. Cal Pardo, “Cristo y el demonio en la obra de la Redencion a la luz de los escritos de San Fulgencio de Ruspe,” Comp 15 (1970): 355–85; and B. Nisters, Die Christologie des hl. Fulgentius von Ruspe (Münster: Aschendorff, 1930).

392

Francis X. Gumerlock

dissertation on the Scythian monks mentioned the theological influence of Fulgentius upon John Maxentius, and, in turn, the influence of Maxentius on Fulgentius.20

Works from Ruspe Writings from Fulgentius between his second exile and his death (ca. 523–532)21 include: 1. Against Fabian (Contra Fabianum libri decem, fragmenta)22 2. Against the Sermon of Fastidiosus the Arian (Contra sermonem Fastidiosi Ariani ad Victorem liber unus), also known as Ep. 9 3. On the Incarnation of the Son of God and Author of Vile Animals to Scarila (De incarnatione Filii Dei et vilium animalium auctore ad Scarilam liber unus), also known as Ep. 10 4. To Peter On the Faith (De fide ad Petrum)23 5. On the Truth of Predestination and Grace (Ad Johannem et Venerium de veritate praedestinationis et gratiae) and its cover letter, Ep. 1524 In addition, Fulgentius’s Ep. 8 to Donatus, Ep. 12 and Ep. 14 to Ferrandus, and Ep. 18 to Reginus are from this period.25 Thomas Humphries recently studied Fulgentius’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit in his book on pneumatology in late antiquity. Using writings which Fulgentius wrote mainly in this last period, such as Against Fabian, Against the Sermon of Fastidiosus, To Peter On the Faith, On the Truth of Predestination and Grace, and Ep. 14, Humphries showed that, according to Fulgentius, the Holy Spirit was operative in creating the

 M. J. Pereira, “Reception, Interpretation and Doctrine in the Sixth Century: John Maxentius and the Scythian Monks,” Ph.D. Dissertation (Columbia University, 2015), 352–5.  Fulgentius died on 1 January 533, so obviously there are not writings from that year.  No English translation of the many lengthy fragments from Against Fabian, which are proTrinitarian, has been published.  Against the Sermon of Fastidiosus, On the Incarnation, and To Peter On the Faith are in English in Eno, Fulgentius. Italian, German, and Polish translations have also been published. See Eno, Fulgentius, xi.  On the Truth of Predestination and Grace and its cover letter were translated into English in McGregor and Fairbairn, Fulgentius, 108–231.  The first fourteen of Fulgentius’s letters are in English in Eno, Fulgentius. Of the nineteen extant letters, some of which are letters by others to Fulgentius, only Ep. 18 and Ep. 19 remain without English translation. All nineteen letters were translated into Italian in A. Isola, trans., Fulgenzio di Rupse. Le Lettere (Rome: Città Nuova, 1999). A selection of Fulgentius’s ascetic and moral letters are translated into French in SC 487.

15 Scripture in Fulgentius of Ruspe

393

human Christ, was given to the human Christ in his fulness, and wherever the Son is operative, so also are the Father and Spirit.26 In addition to Fulgentius’s dogmatic treatises and letters, eight sermons from among the many which have circulated in his name have been judged as authentic. These too were edited by Fraipont, but very little scholarly attention has been given to these sermons since Fraipont’s edition appeared.27 Preached mainly on various feast days at Ruspe in the last period of his life,28 Fulgentius’s sermons are not available in full in English translation, although portions of some of them in English can be found on various websites related to liturgical feast days. Two very short fragments from a work of Fulgentius On the Holy Spirit (De Spiritu Sancto) were also edited in Fraipont.

Fulgentius’s Canon, Bible Version, and the Relationship between the Two Testaments Canon Unlike Augustine in Book 2 of his Doctr. chr.,29 Fulgentius left us no list of canonical books of the Bible. But from my observation, he probably held to the canonical lists set down in the Synod of Hippo (393) and the Council of Carthage (397), which include many deuterocanonical books in the Old Testament.30 From among these, Fulgentius quoted Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, and a longer version of the prophet Daniel as Scripture. However, he did not quote from Tobit or 1 & 2 Maccabees.31 He also did not quote or allude to Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Joel, Obadiah, Micah, Nahum, Haggai; nor did he reference Philemon and 2 & 3 John from the New Testament. These facts do not, however, mean that he did not regard some or all of the above books as Scripture: it could well be that he simply did not find them pertinent to the subject matter about which he was writing.

 T. L. Humphries, Jr., Ascetic Pneumatology from John Cassian to Gregory the Great (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 144–55.  For studies that pre-date Fraipont’s 1968 edition, see J. Leclercq, “Deux semons inédits de S. Fulgence,” RBén 56 (1945–1946): 93–107; and G. Morin, “Deux sermons africains du V/VI siècle avec un texte inédit du symbole,” RBén 35 (1923): 233–45. In 2005 C. Moreschini and E. Norelli (Early Christian Greek and Latin Literature: A Literary History, 2 vols., trans. M. J. O’Connell [Peabody, MA: Hedrickson, 2005], 2:475) devoted a few paragraphs to discussion of Fulgentius’s homilies.  Di Sciascio, Fulgenzio, 20–21.  Doctr. chr. 2.13 (Simonetti [1994]: 88–92).  See also the chapter dedicated to the development of the scriptural canon, “Scripture and the North African Conciliar Canon Lists,” by R. Villegas Marín in this volume.  See the many quotations from Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus in his C. Fast. (cf., e.g., CCSL 91:285; 287–8; 292; 300; and 303).

394

Francis X. Gumerlock

Bible Version Fulgentius generally used a North African version of the Vetus Latina. For example, he cites Rev 1:7 “those who pierced him” according to the North African type of the VL, as qui eum confixerunt. The Vulgate reads qui eum pepugerunt. Similarly, on Rev 1:16 “out of his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword,” Fulgentius’s version follows the North African VL version: de ore ejus gladius utrimque acutus procedebat. On this, the Vulgate reads de ore ejus gladius anceps acutus exibat.32 There is no evidence that Fulgentius knew Hebrew, and, although he knew some Greek, only once in his writings did he cite from a Greek version of Scripture. This was a “Greek codex of the Gospel” (Graecus codex evangelii) of Matthew, from which he quoted in Greek a portion of Matt 12:31 about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.33 Fulgentius at times showed familiarity with other Latin translations of the Scriptures besides the one he used. For example, in Ep. 3 to Proba, when referring to Gen 2:21–23, he wrote that “the translation done by St. Jerome specifically from the Hebrew text of the book of Genesis teaches it this way,” and showed where Jerome’s translation had virago for “woman” because she was taken from the man (vir).34 Paul Capelle, in his study of the Latin Psalter in North Africa, showed that Fulgentius was also familiar with another Latin version of the Psalms, namely “le texte gallican des Psaumes.”35 Evidence of this is shown when Fulgentius was quoting his version of Ps 139:9: “And if I take my wings with uprightness” (Et si assumsero pennas meas in directione), and then immediately added from the Gallican version: “or as another translation has: ‘before light’ (ante lucem),” meaning “And if I take my wings early in the morning.”36 While these examples show that Fulgentius was familiar with other Latin versions of Scripture, he does not appear to have used them very often.

The Two Testaments’ Relationship At the end of Ep. 14 to Ferrandus, Fulgentius expends some four chapters (chs. 44–47) on the relationship between the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. He does  Fid. ad Pet. 54 and 63 (CCSL 91A:747 and 751). On the North African VL versions of these two passages from Revelation, see R. Gryson, ed., Vetus Latina: Die Reste der altlateinischen Bibel, 26/2: Apocalypsis Johannis, Apc 1,1–2,7 (Freiburg: Herder, 2000), 119 and 141–2.  C. Fab. 15 (CCSL 91A:786).  Ep. 3.7 (CCSL 91:215; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 314): “Hoc autem a sancto Hieronimo secundum Hebraicam proprietatem libri Geneseos docet expressa translatio, in qua sic habetur . . . haec vocabitur Virago, quoniam de viro sumpta est.”  P. Capelle, Le texte du Psautier latin en Afrique (Rome: Pustet, 1913), cited in Lapeyre, Fulgence de Ruspe, 262.  Tras. 2.15 (CCSL 91:140; trans. is my own): “Et si assumpsero pennas meas in directione (sive sicut alia translation habet ante lucem).”

15 Scripture in Fulgentius of Ruspe

395

this by distinguishing between figure and reality, promise and fulfillment. He asserts as foundational the tenet that the “faith of the New and Old Testaments is one,”37 and reminds Ferrandus that just because many of the rituals of the Old Testament have ceased, that Testament is not to be cast away. “The New Testament,” he wrote, “must be held with veneration in such a way that the Old Testament is not abandoned in any way.”38 Furthermore, the New Testament lies concealed in the Old; and the promises of the New Testament “appear in the reading of the Old Testament.”39 For example, after citing Col 2:16–17, Fulgentius teaches that the feast of the new moon and circumcision in the Hebrew Scriptures were shadows and figures of truth fulfilled in the New Testament. The reason that the church does not celebrate the former “in the same way as they used to be celebrated,” is because the church divides “the time of promise from the time of the truth fulfilled.”40 For his view of the relationship between the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, the latter as fulfillment of figures in the former, Fulgentius drew from Augustine’s commentary on Ps 74, where he wrote: For therein [the Old Testament] the New Testament lieth concealed, as though in the dreg of corporeal Sacraments. The circumcision of the flesh is a thing of great mystery, and there is understood from thence the circumcision of the heart. The Temple of Jerusalem is a thing of great mystery, and there is understood from it the Body of the Lord. The land of promise is understood to be the Kingdom of Heaven. The sacrifice of victims and of beasts hath a great mystery: but in all those kinds of sacrifices is understood that one Sacrifice and only victim of the Cross, the Lord, instead of all which sacrifices we have one; because even those figured these, that is, with those these were figured.41

 Ep. 14.47 (CCSL 91:444; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 565): “Quippe una est fides novi et veteris testamenti.”  Ep. 14.46 (CCSL 91:443; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 563–4): “Sic enim debet cum veneratione teneri testamentum novum, ut non sit testamentum vetus aliquatenus relinquendum.”  Ep. 14.46–7 (CCSL 91:443–4; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 563 and 565): “Nam ibi novum testamentum absconditum latet . . . promissiones novi testamenti indubitanter ostendit in lectione testamenti veteris apparere.”  Ep. 14.46 (CCSL 91:441–2; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 562): “Quae tamen non eodem quo celebrabantur ordine celebramus; quia dividentes tempus promissionis a tempore reditae veritatis.”  Enarrat. Ps. 74.12 (CCSL 39:1033–4; trans. NPNF 8:354): “Nam ibi novum testamentum absconditum latet, tamquam in faece corporalium sacramentorum. Circumcisio carnis magni sacramenti res est, et intellegitur inde circumcisio cordis. Templum illud Jerusalem magni sacramenti est res, et intelligentur ex eo corporis domini. Terra promissionis intellegitur regnum caelorum. Sacrificium victimarum et pecorum magnum habet sacramentum; sed in omnibus illis generibus sacrificiorum intellegitur unum illud sacrificiis et unica victima in cruce dominus; pro quibus omnibus sacrificium unum nos habemus, quia et illa figurabant haec, id est, illis haec figurabantur.”

396

Francis X. Gumerlock

Fulgentius’s Use of Scripture The Theological Use of Scripture Fulgentius left no exegetical works. However, he wrote many theological and moral treatises in which Scripture played an important role. In these writings his main use of Scripture was to verify Catholic theology and teach against various heresies. He was writing in difficult times for North African Catholics, who were enduring various persecutions from the Vandal governing authorities. In this situation, in which the government was promoting what he believed to be heretical teachings, Fulgentius’s writings reveal a vigorous polemicist trying to give the faithful clarity about dogmatic and moral truths.42 He does not appear to have consciously used the exegetical principles laid out in Augustine’s Doctr. chr., Tyconius’s Book of Rules (Liber regularum), or Cassian’s Conferences 14.8. However, he was clearly influenced by Augustine, and followed in the footsteps of other North African writers who preceded him. Examples of this will be indicated through this section.

Using Scripture to Verify the Truth For Fulgentius, “the standard of true faith” has been “fixed by the authority of the Holy Scriptures.”43 These Scriptures have been heaven sent and “can in no way lie.”44 Because of this, Fulgentius deemed it proper to “verify” the truths he set forth in his writings “by using heavenly words,” that is, Scripture.45 When verifying that there is in the triune God both singularity and plurality, Fulgentius most often cited from the Gospel of John.46 This was also the case when he taught the distinction of persons of the Trinity, seeing this truth in John 3:14–16; 5:32–37; 9:35–38; 10:34–36; 14:15–17; 15:26; 17:1; and 20:17.47 To show that Jesus Christ is both God and man, Fulgentius often cited Phil 2:6–7 that “he existed in the form of God . . . but emptied himself, taking the form of a bond-

 Lapeyre, Fulgence de Ruspe, 266–7.  Praed. grat. 3.1 (CCSL 91A:522; trans. McGregor and Fairbairn, Fulgentius, 198): “verae fidei regulam sanctarum scripturarum auctoritate firmatam.”  Praed. grat. 3.23 (CCSL 91A:537; trans. McGregor and Fairbairn, Fulgentius, 217): “Sancta enim scriptura mentiri nullatenus potest.”  Praed. grat. 2.6 (CCSL 91A:493; trans. McGregor and Fairbairn, Fulgentius, 163): “Haec omnia quae superius posuimus, dignum est ut caelestibus eloquiis asseramus.”  Tras. 3.35.1 (CCSL 91:182); and Against the Sermon of Fastidiosus 2.4 (CCSL 91:286; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 395).  Inc. ad Scar. 16–20 (CCSL 91:325–30; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 439–43).

15 Scripture in Fulgentius of Ruspe

397

servant” and Col 2:9 that “in him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form.”48 To teach that Christ is omnipresent, Fulgentius cited Matt 28:20: I am with you always, even to the end of the age;49 and to show that Christ possessed a true human soul, he quoted Matt 26:38; John 12:27; 15:13; and 1 John 3:16.50 To “prove” that Christ is one person, fully divine and fully human with body and rational soul, Fulgentius used 2 Cor 2:10.51 On the grace of Christ in the process of salvation, Fulgentius’s favorite verse to explain was Phil 2:13: For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.52 In this passage Fulgentius found prevenient grace to help a person choose correctly, and subsequent grace for aid in living and finishing the Christian life well.53 In his ascetic letters, Fulgentius’s preference was to recite passages from Psalms for his correspondents. For example, when encouraging a consecrated virgin named Proba to mourn over her own spiritual weakness, he quoted from Ps 17:8–9; 18:30; 25:15; 30:6–8; 37:5; 38:6–9; 119:73, 133; 124:7; 126:6; and 127:1.54

Using Scripture as Testimonia Sometimes Fulgentius, in making a theological assertion, would cite a string of three or four biblical texts with very little comment. These passages would function as testimonia for that particular doctrine. Fulgentius explicitly stated that Scripture passages act as “witnesses,” when he wrote that “whoever is willing to examine the divine Scriptures with the simple eyes of the heart will be able to find witnesses (testimonia) in the divine words.”55 According to Daniel Van Slyke, after the Vandal conquest of North Africa, the testimonia genre flourished among North African Catholics in an effort to support Trinitarian theology. He writes: “Those who fared best in the debates with Arians were those who had the most thorough grasp of scripture, and so equipping the faithful with a suitable armory of scripture testimonia became a major task

 Tras. 3.5–6 (CCSL 91:151); as well as Ep. 8.4 and 13 (CCSL 91:259 and 265; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 368 and 374).  Tras. 2.17.3 (CCSL 91:142).  Tras. 3.21.2–5 and 3.24.1–3 (CCSL 91:165 and 168).  Tras. 3.17.3 (CCSL 91:161): “Donavi, propter vos in persona Christi.”  Ep. 4.6 and Ep. 6.10 (CCSL 91:231 and 243; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 336 and 352); and Ep. 15.13 (CCSL 91A:453; trans. McGregor and Fairbairn, Fulgentius, 116).  Ep. 4.2 (CCSL 91:230; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 334); Ep. 17.37 as well as Praed. grat. 1.35; 2.21–2; and 25 (CCSL 91A:481 and 503–5; trans. McGregor and Fairbairn, Fulgentius, 78 as well as 148; 176; and 179).  Ep. 3.32–4 and Ep. 4.4–11 (CCSL 91:226–7 and 230–4; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 329–31 and 335–9).  Praed. grat. 3.23 (CCSL 91A:537; trans. McGregor and Fairbairn, Fulgentius, 217): “In divinis eloquiis, testimonia poterit invenire quisquis voluerit scripturas divinas recto cordis oculo recensere.”

398

Francis X. Gumerlock

of catholic African authors.”56 Fulgentius was no exception in this matter. One example of Fulgentius putting Scripture passages in a running collection of testimonia is when he was asserting in Ep. 17 that Jesus Christ was born truly human or “made from” Mary. Here Fulgentius created a chain of four different biblical passages from Romans, Galatians, 2 Timothy, and Luke. It reads: It is also shown by heaven-sent words that he [the one born in her] was made from her, for the Apostle says: “But when the fulness of time came, God sent his own Son, made from a woman, made under the law.” Likewise, as he was writing to the Romans, he established this excellent beginning of his letter in order to show that he set a true and stable foundation of faith: “Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the Gospel of God, which he had promised through his prophets in the holy Scriptures concerning his Son, who was made from the seed of David according to the flesh. Also when writing to Timothy, his beloved son in the faith, he chiefly urges him with anxious affection to remember this faith, saying, “Remember that Christ Jesus (who was from the seed of David) arose from the dead according to my Gospel.” Also the angel Gabriel is found to have used this consolation when speaking to the blessed Virgin herself, namely the future bearer of her Creator, indeed of the Creator of all things: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore that holy thing that will be born from you will be called the Son of God.”57

The gathering of testimonia on the topic of grace and human conversion was a common feature of Fulgentius’s use of Scripture. In that same Ep. 17, Fulgentius taught that God does not find faith in humans but grants it as a divine gift, and he immediately quotes, in support, three passages which function as biblical witnesses: 2 Cor 3:5, about not considering anything as coming from ourselves; as well as both 2 Tim 2:25–26 and Acts 11:18, which assert that God “grants” repentance.58 In another work, Fulgentius first states a theological assertion, namely, that we should not “attribute our conversion, or our renewal, to human choice” but to God who converts and opens the heart. He then confirms this with a chain of four biblical passages: Lam 5:21:

 D. Van Slyke, Quodvultdeus of Carthage: The Apocalyptic Theology of a Roman African in Exile (Strathfield: St Paul’s Publications, 2003), 76.  Ep. 17.5 (CCSL 91A:567; trans. McGregor and Fairbairn, Fulgentius, 49): “Ex ipsa quoque factus caelestibus demonstrator eloquiis; dicit enim apostolus: ‘Postquam autem venit plenitude temporis, misit deus filium suum, factum ex muliere, factum sub lege.’ Romanis etiam scribens, ut verum firmumque ponere se demonstraret fidei fundamentum, epistulae suae tale collocavit exordium: ‘Paulus servus Jesu Christi, vocatus apostolus, segregatus in evangelium dei, quod ante promiserat per prophetas suos, in scripturis sanctis de filio suo, qui factus est ei ex semine David secundum carnem.’ Timotheo quoque dilecto filio in fide, principaliter hujus fidei sollicita commendat affectione memoriam, dicens: ‘Memo resto Christum Jesum resurrexisse a mortuis ex semine David secundum evangelium meum.’ Ad ipsum quoque beatam virginem, futuram scilicet creatoris sui immo rerum omnium genitricem, Gabriel angelus hoc usus invenitur alloquio: ‘Spiritus sanctus superveniet in te, et virtus altissimi obumbrabit tibi; ideo quod nascetur ex te sanctum vocabitur filius dei.’”  Ep. 17.34 (CCSL 91A:589): “Liberavit autem non in quolibet homine fidem inveniendo, sed dando . . . quia non sumus idonei cogitare aliquid ex nobis quasi ex nobis, sed sufficientia nostra ex deo est . . . deus quibus voluerit dat paenitentiam . . . . ergo et gentibus deus paenitentiam ad vitam dedit.”

15 Scripture in Fulgentius of Ruspe

399

“Convert us to yourself, and we will be converted”; Ps 81:10: “Open your mouth, and I will fill it”; Acts 16:14: “Whose heart the Lord opened to be attentive to the things Paul was saying”; Wis 10:21: “Wisdom opened the mouth of the dumb and gave speech to the tongues of babes.”59 According to Jared Wielfaert, the collecting of testimonia was deeply rooted in the literary culture of Roman antiquity, and, like other North African theologians, “Fulgentius . . . had made extensive use of the practice.”60

Using Scripture to Defend against Heresies For Fulgentius, the Catholic faith is to be distinguished from the errors of the various heresies of his time.61 Fulgentius often used Scripture to make such distinctions between Catholic and heretical teachings on the Trinity, Christology, grace, and human nature. The heresies that are cited by name and refuted with Scripture include those related to the Trinity: Arians, and Sabellians; those related to Christology: Photinians, Manichaeans, Apollinarians, and Nestorians; and those related to grace and human nature: Pelagians and Origenists. To demonstrate the Catholic teaching that the Son is of the same substance as the Father, against Arians who denied this, Fulgentius’s favorite verse to explain was John 1:1: “and the Word was God.” To show the distinction between the person of the Son and the person of the Father against the Sabellians, who truncated the Trinity into one person, Fulgentius quoted a part of that same verse: “and the Word was with God.” Thus, he writes in Ep. 8.27: Indeed Christ is the one who “in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” And also: “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” Hence, the Sabellian is conquered because, insofar as “the Word was with God,” it is shown that there is one person of the Father and another of the Son. Hence also the Arian is overcome because, insofar as “the Word was with God,” it is shown that there is one nature of the Father and the Son.62

Against Sabellians Fulgentius also cited many other passages from the Gospel of John which teach a distinction between the person of the Son and the person of the Father.

 Praed. grat. 2.9 (CCSL 91A:495; trans. McGregor and Fairbairn, Fulgentius, 166): “Verumtamen ne conversio vel renovatio nostra humano assignetur arbitrio.”  J. G. Wielfaert, “Prudentius of Troyes (d. 861) and the Reception of the Patristic Tradition in the Carolingian Era,” Ph.D. Dissertation (University of Toronto, 2015), 153.  Ep. 14.38 (CCSL 91:431; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 550).  CCSL 91:271; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 381: “Unus quippe Christus est, ‘qui in principio erat verbum et verbum erat apud deum et deus erat verbum.’ Qui etiam ‘verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis.’ Hinc Sabellianus vincitur, quia in eo quod ‘verbum erat apud deum,’ ostenditur altera patris, altera filii esse persona. Hinc etiam Arianus superatur, quia in eo quod ‘deus erat verbum,’ ostenditur una esse patris filiique natura.”

400

Francis X. Gumerlock

On Christology against Photinians, “who speak of Christ as a human being in such a way as to deny that he is God,” Fulgentius alluded to Phil 2:6 which says that Christ “existed in the form of God,” and quoted John 1:14: “The Word became flesh.”63 Against Manichaeans, who “deny his true flesh” and hence his true death, Fulgentius offered in refutation Luke 24:49: “Touch me and see because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see that I have,” along with Heb 5:1: “every high priest is taken from among men . . . to offer gifts and sacrifices for sin,” and Eph 5:1–2 which teaches that Christ “has offered himself as a true sacrifice for us.” This “true faith,” that Jesus is our high priest to whom we offer prayers, “repulses every error, which does not confess the truth of the human body in Christ.”64 The “sacrilege of the Apollinarians,” according to Fulgentius, was a denial of the true humanity of Christ. One teaching of theirs was that Christ did not receive his flesh from Mary, but that the Word brought “heavenly flesh” with him in the incarnation. This teaching Fulgentius rebutted with Heb 2:16: “every high priest is taken from among men.” From this it follows that Christ, our high priest, took his flesh from the virgin Mary.65 Nestorius was accused of dividing the natures of Christ into two persons.66 Against this concept of two persons in Christ, Fulgentius concluded that if such were the case, the Trinity mentioned in Matt 28:19: “Go, teach all peoples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” would become a “quaternity.” The Nestorians would be worshiping sons, not the Son, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit.67 Against Nestorians, Fulgentius also cited Rom 9:5 from which he said that the apostle shows “both the one person of Christ and his double nature.”68 On human nature, Origen allegedly taught that souls, pre-existent in the spiritual realm, fell into sin, and, as a punishment for that sin, were sent into human bodies. Fulgentius found this thought to be “completely contrary to the faith,” because the apostle Paul taught in Rom 9:11 that before children are born, they commit no good or evil. And Fulgentius gleaned the reason that humans became children of wrath (cf. Eph 2:3) and

 Ep. 8.25–7 (CCSL 91:270–2; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 380–2): “Qui sic dicit Christum hominem, ut deum neget.”  Ep. 8.24 (CCSL 91:270; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 380): “Ut ejus veram carnem negare contendat”; and Ep. 14.38 (CCSL 91:432; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 551): “Hoc itaque sermone quo per Jesum Christum nos ostendimus nostras orationes offerre, vera fides omni errori renititur, qui in Christo veritatem humani corporis non fatetur.”  C. Fast. 7; Inc. ad Scar. 14; and Ep. 14. 38 (CCSL 91:292; 324; and 431; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 403; 437; and 551). Fulgentius attributed Hebrews to the apostle Paul. See Tras. 3.7.2 (CCSL 91:153).  Ep. 8.26 (CCSL 91:271; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 381).  Ep. 17.21–2 (CCSL 91A:579–80; trans. McGregor and Fairbairn, Fulgentius, 63–5).  Ep. 8.28 (CCSL 91:272; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 382): “Sic in uno Christi nominee unam personam divinitatis atque humanitatis edocuit.”

15 Scripture in Fulgentius of Ruspe

401

slaves to sin from Rom 5:12,69 which clearly taught that Adam, the first man, had sinned, not that there had been some pre-Adamic “fall” into sin.70 The Pelagians also unfaithfully contradict the Catholic faith, Fulgentius wrote, when they “assert that children are born without sin.”71 Against this denial of original sin, Fulgentius uses Rom 5:12 and Ps 51:7 to assert that children “were conceived in iniquity” and “are born bound by the ancient sin of the first man.”72

Using Scripture Figuratively and Typologically Related to his understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures as containing figures of New Testament truths, Fulgentius often cites characters in the Hebrew Scriptures as illustrations of new covenant realities. For example, when Abraham ordered the steward of his household to place his hand under his loins and swear by God, this was a figure showing “that the God of heaven was going to be born as a man” from among the descendants of Abraham.73 In On the Incarnation, Hagar and Sarah portrayed two types of sinners. While Hagar served as an illustration of those who commit transgressions proudly, boldly, and rebelliously, Sarah depicted saints who fall into some sin through human weakness and are corrected “by the calm leniency of the divine voice.”74 In a discussion in Ep. 15 about different views of what Jacob and Esau represent in Rom 9, Fulgentius claimed that Jacob represented “the free beneficence” of divine mercy, since God “did not choose him because of the merits of any future

 Fulgentius read this verse as: “For through one man, sin entered into this world, and death through sin, and so death passed to all men, because in him all have sinned” (trans. McGregor and Fairbairn, Fulgentius, 228). For detailed discussions of the role that this verse played in the Pelagian Controversy, see the chapters “Scripture in the Pelagian Controversy, 411–418 CE” by Malavasi and “Scripture in the Debate between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine, 418–430 CE” by Lamberigts in this volume.  Praed. grat. 35 (CCSL 91A:545; trans. McGregor and Fairbairn, Fulgentius, 227–28): “illud quoque fidei est omnino contrarium.”  Ep. 17.30 (CCSL 91A:586; trans. McGregor and Fairbairn, Fulgentius, 72): “Atque ita laqueum Pelagiani erroris incurrunt, dum fidei catholicae infideliter contradicunt. Si enim sine peccato infantes nasci asserunt, quid restat, nisi ut dicant nihil eis inesse quod debeat spiritali regeneratione mundari?”  Praed. grat. 35 (CCSL 91A:545; trans. McGregor and Fairbairn, Fulgentius, 228): “Antique primi hominis peccato nascantur obstricti . . . in inquitatibus concepti sunt.” The most thorough examination of Fulgentius’s doctrine of original sin is in Di Sciascio, Fulgenzio di Ruspe, 34–56. On Augustine’s use of these biblical passages to show original sin, see, e.g., Pecc. Merit. 1.8–9 (CSEL 60:9–12) and gr. et pec. or., 2.34 (CSEL 42:194).  Ep. 17.6 (CCSL 91A:568; trans. McGregor and Fairbairn, Fulgentius, 49–50): “Ut ostenderet deum caeli ex ea carne nasciturum hominem, quae de semine ipsius Abrahae propaginis duceret veritatem.”  Inc. ad Scar. 39 (CCSL 91:343–5; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 460): “Sara vero divinae vocis meruit placida lenitate culpari.”

402

Francis X. Gumerlock

work.” Esau, on the other hand, represented for Fulgentius those who are “rightly prepared by just wrath for punishment.”75 Susanna and Judith were cited as examples for Christians of people who practice chastity in marriage and continence in widowhood; and the people of Nineveh, who thwarted God’s wrath through fasting, illustrate the need for sacred virgins to ward off the pleasures of the body through fasting.76 Azariah and the three youths in Daniel 3, whose prayer showed that whatever God made, he made well, demonstrated for one of Fulgentius’s correspondents that fleas and scorpions were not the creation of evil beings, but creations of God. He writes: That a flea bothers a person and a scorpion kills, this is the result, not of the creation of evil beings, but of the dysfunction of good natures, which followed from the justice of the judge, following upon the wickedness of a recalcitrant person. God, whose true works and right paths the holy Azariah very rightly confesses in his prayer, because he is supremely good, all things whatever that he makes, he makes well.77

The fact that after King Hezekiah received an additional fifteen years of life (cf. 2 Kings 20:6) he continued to eat, drink, and attend to the necessities of life, displayed that those given grace are to persevere in vigilance, prayer, and good works.78 And for Fulgentius both the prophet Isaiah (in Isa 1:19) and King David (in Ps 7:12 and 85:6) stand as witnesses who believed in both “the will of human choice and the power of divine grace.”79 The use of biblical characters as illustrations of divine truths was not limited to those persons who appear in the Hebrew Scriptures. For Fulgentius, the apostle Paul was an example of someone who did not ascribe his faith to his own will, because, as a blasphemer and persecutor (cf. 1 Tim 1:13), he was unable “to muster up from within himself any will to believe.” Therefore, his conversion shows that all believers are illumined by prevenient mercy, which enables them to choose to believe.80 Similarly Cornelius the centurion, who was converted under the ministry of the apostle Peter in

 Ep. 15.7 and 9 (CCSL 91A:450–1; trans. McGregor and Fairbairn, Fulgentius, 112–3): “In eo quippe gratuitum in Jacob deus ostendit beneficium misericordiae suae . . . nec eum pro meritis futurae cujusquam bonae operationis eligit . . . Esau vero per iram justam juste est praeparatus ad poenam.”  Ep. 2.19 and Ep. 3.20 (CCSL 91:203 and 221; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 299–300 and 322).  Inc. ad Scar. 29 (CCSL 91:337; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 452): “Quod ergo pulex hominem cruciat, et scorpius necat, non creatio malorum, sed bonarum facit inconvenientia naturarum, quae subsecuta est ex aequitate judicis, quando praecessit iniquitas hominis contumacis. Deus enim, cujus vera opera et rectas vias sanctus Azarias in sua oration rectissime confitetur, quia summe bonus est, omnia quaecumque facit, bene facit.” Cf. K. Pollmann, “Human Sin and Natural Environment: Augustine’s Two Positions on Genesis 3:18,” AugStud 41/1 (2010): 69–85.  Praed. grat. 3.10 (CCSL 91A:528; trans. McGregor and Fairbairn, Fulgentius, 206).  Praed. grat. 2.6–7 (CCSL 91A:493–4; trans. McGregor and Fairbairn, Fulgentius, 163–5): “Beatus itaque David, et humani arbitrii voluntatem et virtutem divinae gratiae recognoscens.”  Ep. 17.36–7 (CCSL 91A:590–1; trans. McGregor and Fairbairn, Fulgentius, 77–8): “Quomodo ergo aliquam credenda voluntatem ex seipso Paulus habere poterat?”

15 Scripture in Fulgentius of Ruspe

403

Acts 10, illustrates that God imparts to people the grace of pleasing him, enabling them to do his will.81 For Fulgentius, human freedom exists. Moreover, as Marianne Djuth aptly summarizes, for Fulgentius, “whatever good the will does, it does by means of free choice of the will.” At the same time, according to Djuth, Fulgentius believed that “the fallen moral agent no longer possesses the natural capability of goodness that would enable him to choose good in a properly moral or salvific manner.”82 For that, the will must be moved and activated by God.

Using Scripture to Resolve Biblical Difficulties In his theological writings, Fulgentius sometimes attempted to solve biblical difficulties. In the process of solving them Fulgentius often employed what biblical hermeneuticians call the “analogy of faith” principle. This principle assumes that Scripture has one divine author, the Holy Spirit, and teaches that Scripture is the best interpreter of Scripture. Therefore, a biblical difficulty can be solved by interpreting an obscure passage through the lens of and with the help of one or more (presumably) clearer biblical passages.83 This principle of interpretation was fairly standard in North African Christianity. Regarding it Tertullian wrote that: “And, indeed, (since some passages are more obscure than others), it cannot but be right . . . that uncertain statements should be determined by certain ones, and obscure ones by such as are clear and plain.”84 Augustine basically agreed writing: “Now from the places where the sense in which they are used is more manifest we must gather the sense in which they are to be understood in obscure passages.”85 One example of this is Fulgentius’s explanation about John 20:17 where Jesus said: “Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.” Various heresies, according to Fulgentius, had used this passage to deny “the mystery of true flesh in the Son of God.” Fulgentius countered this interpretation with Matt 28:9, where, albeit

 Praed. grat. 1.20 (CCSL 91A:471; trans. McGregor and Fairbairn, Fulgentius, 136–7).  M. Djuth, “Fulgentius of Ruspe: The ‘Initium Bonae Voluntatis,” AugStud 20 (1989): 47–8.  H. A. Virkler and K. G. Avavo, Hermeneutics: Principles and Processes of Biblical Interpretation, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 122; and J. D. Hernando, Dictionary of Hermeneutics (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 2005), 14. This principle is sometimes called scriptural synergy, the totality principle, or the rule of unity.  On the Resurrection of the Flesh 21 (ANF 3:560; trans. Evans 1960, 56): “Et utique aequum sit, quod et supra demandavimus, incerta de certis et obscura de manifestis praejudicari, vel ne inter discordiam certorum et incertorum, manifestorum et obscurorum fides dissipetur, veritas periclitetur, ipsa divinitas ut inconstans denotetur.”  Doctr. chr. 3.37 (trans. Simonetti [1994]:216): “Sic et aliae res non singulae, sed unaquaeque earum non solum duo aliqua diversa, sed etiam nonnumquam multa significat pro loco sententiae, sicut posita reperitur. Ubi autem apertius ponuntur, ibi discendum est quomodo in locis intellegantur obscuris.”

404

Francis X. Gumerlock

after his resurrection, Jesus did allow Mary Magdalen to grab his feet. Fulgentius then concluded that the passage in John refers not to touching Jesus bodily, but to a touch of faith.86 In Against the Sermon of Fastidiosus the Arian, Fulgentius admitted that Wis 1:3–5 teaches that people can be separated from God, when it reads: “For perverse thoughts separate people from God.” But this seems to contradict the truth that God is everywhere, and no one can be separated from him: “Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth?” (cf. Jer 23:24) Fulgentius’s solution is that God is “totally everywhere” and cannot be absent from anything in his creation. He also noted that the separation spoken of in the book of Wisdom is a moral separation from God “by wicked thoughts and evil acts,” not a spatial separation. He confirms this by citing and explaining other passages of Scripture, such as Matt 15:8 and Ps 73:27, which say that people’s hearts can be far from God.87 In Ep. 17 Fulgentius discussed at length 1 Tim 2:4, which teaches that God “wants all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Since in the end all humanity will not be saved, does this mean that God’s will has been defeated? Fulgentius upheld the invincibility of God’s will and said that Paul was using a literary trope called synecdoche, in which a whole is used for a part, or a part used for a whole. The apostle, Fulgentius wrote, was using “all” to represent a part. Although the passage seems to say that God wants all, or the entirety of humanity, to be saved, it really meant only a portion of humanity. Using “analogy of faith” Fulgentius supported this with other examples from Scripture which used “all” to mean part of humanity rather than absolutely everyone. These included Ps 86:9 about “all the nations” worshiping the Lord; Joel 2:28 about God’s Spirit being poured out on “all flesh”; John 12:32 about Jesus drawing “all” to himself; Rom 11:32 about God shutting up “all” in unbelief; and Col 1:20 about “all things” being reconciled to God.88 Relatedly, in On the Truth of Predestination and Grace, Fulgentius saw an apparent contradiction between the passage which says that God “wants all to be saved,” and another passage in the Gospels which states that God denies saving knowledge to some and, therefore, “did not will to save those to whom he denied the knowledge of the saving mystery” (cf. Matt 13:11; Mark 4:11–12; and Luke 8:10). After stating his assumption that “both passages of Scripture are true, both are holy, both are divinely

 Tras. 2.13, 1–2 (CCSL 91:135–6): “Hic tactus, de quo dominus loquitur, credulitatis probatur esse, non corporis.”  C. Fast. 4.1–5.2 (CCSL 91:287–90; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 396–9): esp. 290: “Nam manifestum est deum ubique totum esse”; and 287: “In libro quoque Sapientiae ostenditur homines a deo, non locis, sed pravis cogitationibus et iniquis actibus separari.”  Ep. 17.61–63 (CCSL 91A:610–2). Cf. Gumerlock, “Fulgentius on the Saving Will of God,” in Grace for Grace: The Debates After Augustine and Pelagius, eds. A. Y. Hwang, B. J. Matz, and A. Casiday (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2014), 155–79.

15 Scripture in Fulgentius of Ruspe

405

inspired,” Fulgentius solves the problem by explaining that the word “all” means “all those whom God deigned to call.”89 Interpreting universalist sounding passages in Scripture as synecdochic figures of speech was well established in North African exegesis before Fulgentius. In the late fourth century, Tyconius taught that sometimes numbers in Scripture should be understood “through the rhetorical figure of synechdoche [sic]” where “either a part represents the whole or a whole represents the part.” Tyconius provided the example of Christ being in the grave for three days and three nights. Between his death on Good Friday and his resurrection on Sunday morning, Saturday was really the only full day and night Christ spent in the grave. “The first day and the last, therefore, are parts representing the whole.”90 When commenting on the Gospel of John, Augustine observed that Jesus used the word “world” to designate only a part of the world: sometimes the “believing world” and sometimes the “condemned world.”91 Quodvultdeus, a bishop of Carthage who many decades before Fulgentius also suffered exile from the Vandals, when writing on Ps 2:8, “I shall give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession,” interpreted the terms “nations” and “ends of the earth,” both of which convey universality, as “all of the predestined.”92 On Rom 11:25–6, which says that “blindness in part happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, and thus all Israel will be saved,” the same bishop interpreted “all Israel” as only “everyone who was written in the Lamb’s book of life from the foundation of the world,” evidently using Rev 13:8 to inform his interpretation of the Romans passage.93 Another fifth-century North African cleric named Januarius, in a letter to Valentinus, the abbot of a community at Hadrumetum, interpreted the “all” in 1 Tim 2:4 as a part: The Apostle tells us how to understand “who wants all men to be saved.” For, how “all” was used here, was told by that same Apostle in another passage: “Through a man came death, and through a man came the resurrection of the dead. For, just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Cor 15:21–22). For, because it was said, “in Adam all die,” it is clear that it is

 Praed. grat. 3.18–19 (CCSL 91A:534; trans. McGregor and Fairbairn, Fulgentius, 213–4): “Illos autem salvos fieri noluit quibus salutaris mysterii notitiam denagavit; quoniam ergo utraque scriptura vera est, utraque sancta, utraque divinitus inspirata; ut illos omnes diceret, quos deus vocare dignatur.”  Liber regularum, 5.1 (SC 488:274): “Temporis quantitas in scripturas frequenter mystica est tropo synecdoche . . . intelligendi; synecdoche vero est aut a parte totum, aut a toto pars”; and 5.3.4 (SC 488:282): “Dies ergo primus et novissimus a toto pars est.” See W. S. Babcock, trans., Tyconius: The Book of Rules (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 88–93.  Tract. Ev. Jo. 110.2 and 111.5 (CCSL 36:622–3 and 632; trans. NPNF1 7:409 and 415).  Liber de promissionibus et praedictionibus dei 2.55 (CCSL 60:123): “Dabo tibi gentes hereditatem tuam et possessionem tuam terminus terrae. Et licet jam paene omnes occupaverit gentes, superset tamen ut plenitudo gentium cum intraverit, totus praedestinatus Israhel salvus fiat ut per eum omnis mundus reconcilietur deo.”  Liber de promissionibus et praedictionibus dei 3.35 (CCSL 60:180; trans. is my own): “Et iterum: Caecitas, ait, ‘ex parte Israhel facta est donec plenitudo gentium intraret, et sic omnis Israhel salvus fiet.’ ‘Omnis’ dixit: ‘qui scriptus est in libro vitae agni qui est ab origine mundi.’”

406

Francis X. Gumerlock

necessary that all men die through him. But because it was said, “so also in Christ all will be made alive,” this no longer pertains to all men but to those “all” who will be saved through his grace.94

Using Scripture to Provide the “Spiritual” Meaning For Fulgentius, Scripture contains meanings which go beyond the literal sense; and the monk-bishop wrote about understanding a passage “spiritually” (spiritualiter). For example, he said that the church “is spiritually called a virgin” in Isa 62:4–5 because, like a virgin, the church uncorruptedly and virtuously perseveres in Christ.95 In a sermon on the Feast of Epiphany, Fulgentius preached that the angel who announced the birth of Christ to the shepherds, and the star which appeared to the Magi, “advise us to understand something spiritually,” that is, that salvation was to come to the Jews represented by the shepherds and Gentiles represented by the Magi.96 Also, just as the Magi offered Christ gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, so also “the holy Church even now does not cease to offer” these gifts “spiritually to the Lord Jesus Christ.” He continues: Gold is the wisdom of faith by which she believes correctly. Moreover, incense is the work of mercy, which God himself showed beforehand in his sacrifice. And myrrh is the virtue of mortification, by which for love of Christ she not only despises all things which are in the world, but also despises the very pleasantness of the present life . . . . Therefore, let us celebrate his Manifestation today spiritually, not with carnal feasting but with holy morals, so that when God will come manifesting himself, we might be able to reign with him forever.97

 Ep. ad Valentinum (G. Morin, “Letters inédites de s. Augustin et du prétre Januarien dan l’affaire des moines d’Adruméte,” RBén 18 (1901): 249–50; trans. is my own): “Intellegere quomodo hoc apostolus dicat, ‘qui vult omnes homines salvos fieri.’ Sic enim hic dictum est, ‘omnes,’ quomodo et alibi ab ipso apostolo dictum est ‘Per hominem mors, et per hominem resurrectio mortuorum: sicut enim in Adam omnes moriuntur, sic et in Christo omnes vivificabuntur.’ In Adam enim, quod dictum est, ‘omnes moriuntur,’ manifestum quia omnes homines necesse est ut per illum moriantur. Quod vero dictum est, ‘Sic et in Christo omnes vivificabuntur,’ hoc jam non ad omnes homines pertinent, sed ad illos ‘omnes’ qui per ejus gratiam salvabuntur.”  Ep. 3.10 (CCSL 91:216; trans. Eno, Fulgentius, 316): “Ita spiritualiter virgo dicitur.”  Sermo VI de Epiphania Domini 2 (CCSL 91A:926; trans. is my own): “Nam et ipsa nuntiantis angeli et apparentis stellae locorum diversitas, admonet nos aliquid spiritualiter intelligere, ut cognoscamus quid gentilibus et quid Judaeis adventus ostenderit domini salvatoris.”  Sermo 6.6–7 (CCSL 91A:928; trans. is my own): “Ipsi domino Jesu Christo sancta ecclesia etiam nunc aurum, tus, et myrrham spiritualiter offerre non cessat: aurum scilicet sapientiam fidei, qua recte credit; tus autem opus misericordiae, quam sacrificio deus ipse praeposuit; myrrham quoque virtutem mortificationis, qua non solum omnia quae in mundo sunt sed etiam ipsam praesentis vitae dulcedinem pro Christi amore contemnit . . . . ipsius igitur hodie manifestationem spiritualiter non epulis carnalibus sed sanctis moribus celebremus, ut cum ipse deus manifestus venerit, cum eo semper regnare possimus.”

15 Scripture in Fulgentius of Ruspe

407

Sometimes, for Fulgentius, the spiritual meaning of a biblical passage is simply the general truth behind a particular figure in Scripture, such as a virgin representing the church and the appearance of the star to the Magi pointing to the salvation of the Gentiles. Often, however, the spiritual meaning is a tropological one, or something relating to Christian morality in the biblical figure. For example, as shown in the aforementioned paragraph, the Magi’s gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh encourage the faithful to offer God pure faith, works of mercy, and mortification of worldly pleasures. Similarly, the Magi’s return to their own country by “another way” (Matt 2:12) tells Christians not to hold on to their old way of life, but to change their “way” of wickedness and error and walk in the “way” of the Lord’s commands and truth. Fulgentius ended the sermon on the Feast of the Epiphany using the Magi’s way for moral exhortation: Let us not hold on to the way of our old life, but humbly obeying the divine commandments, let us change our way. And let us walk in the way in which the Lord commands, so that we may be able to come to the country where we shall rejoice with the Lord himself forever. For, the way of a man is his life. One who lives wickedly treads the way of error. One who lives well, walks on the way of truth. For this reason, the one who walked the way of fornication, let him tread the way of chastity. One who treaded the way of avarice, let him tread the way of mercy. One who walked the way of immorality, let him now tread the way of purity. Let us walk well through faith, so that we may arrive at that sight where our joy will be full, because our desire will be fulfilled with good things.98

Augustine’s Influence on Fulgentius As shown above, Fulgentius was significantly influenced by the writings of Augustine, but the extent of this influence remains understudied. Although understandable, it is unfortunate that the critical edition and two volumes of English translations of Fulgentius only indicate the correspondence between the two writers where Fulgentius had directly quoted Augustine. A 1941 study by Francesco Di Sciascio provided many cross-references to Augustine’s thought, but his study was limited to Fulgentius’s theology of grace.99

 Sermo 4 on Epiphany 11 (CCSL 91A:916–7; trans. is my own): “Nec teneamus viam veteris vitae, sed divinis mandatis humiliter obsequentes, viam mutemus, et qua praecepit dominus ambulemus, ut ad patriam venire valeamus, ubi sine fine cum ipso domino gaudeamus. Via enim hominis est vita ejus. Qui male vivit, viam tenet erroris; qui bene vivit, per viam graditur veritatis. Quapropter qui ambulabat viam fornicationis, viam teneat castitatis; qui viam tenebat auaritiae, teneat viam misericordiae; qui ambulabat per viam finctionis, viam teneat nunc puritatis. Ambulemus bene per fidem, ut perveniamus ad speciem, ubi plenum erit gaudium nostrum, quia implebitur in bonis desiderium nostrum.”  Di Sciascio, Fulgenzio.

408

Francis X. Gumerlock

Examination of how “Augustinian” Fulgentius was, what writings of Augustine Fulgentius possessed, the selection and editing process of these by Fulgentius, and where Fulgentius differed from Augustine, would be very useful. The tendency of recent scholars has been to treat Fulgentius as a theologian and exegete in his own right, rather than as a bishop who simply reiterated Augustine. In 1985 Claudio Micaelli showed that Fulgentius did use Augustine for his Christology but was not limited by his predecessor’s theology. Fulgentius, he noted, was fighting different Christological battles in the century after Augustine’s death, supporting the Council of Chalcedon and opposing onenature Christology. Consequently, Fulgentius introduced new Christological elements, including “una nuova prospettiva esegetica per Jo 1,14.”100 In 1996, Rebecca Harden Weaver showed four areas related to human freedom, grace, and predestination, where Fulgentius “effected several shifts in the Augustinian position.”101 In addition to distinguishing where Fulgentius expanded upon or shifted from Augustine, another tendency in scholarship has been to show that there were exegetical developments throughout Fulgentius’s own writing career. In 2003, in a dissertation on Christology and grace in the sixth-century theopaschite controversy, David Maxwell uncovered certain “exegetical developments” in Fulgentius’s understanding of Ps 45:6–7; Heb 2:9; and 1 Pet 4:1.102 In his earlier writing To Thrasamund, says Maxwell, Fulgentius explained the “anointing” of Christ in Ps 45 to mean that the man was anointed, but in later works such as Against Fabian he taught from Ps 45 that the Word was anointed. Thus, he moved from “seeing the one person of Christ as the sum of the two natures to identifying the one person of Christ as the Word.”103 In Fulgentius’s early understanding of Heb 2:9, about Christ “tasting death,” the bishop sought to preserve divine impassibility by writing that the “man tasted death;” but later he stressed that “God the Word . . . tasted death.”104 Maxwell elucidated a similar progression in Fulgentius’s interpretation of 1 Pet 4:1 about Christ suffering “in the flesh.” In his later writings he identified “the one person of Christ as the Word” and eliminated the language in his earlier writings “which may suggest that the flesh is an independent subject.”105 Maxwell attributed these developments within Fulgentius to his encounter with the Scythian monks. My 2009 book Fulgentius of Ruspe on the Saving Will of God explored Fulgentius’s exegesis of 1 Tim 2:4, which says that God wants all to be saved. It showed that Fulgentius’s views on this passage developed over time, shifting from asserting a truly universal saving will of God in his earlier writings to limiting the saving will of God to the elect in his later writings. The catalysts for this change were his interactions with others, the most

 Micaelli, “Osservazioni sulla Cristologia di Fulgenzio di Ruspe,” 355.  R. Harden Weaver, Divine Grace and Human Agency: A Study of the Semi-Pelagian Controversy (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996), 192–3.  Maxwell, “Christology and Grace,” 180.  Maxwell, “Christology and Grace,” 186.  Maxwell, “Christology and Grace,” 187–8.  Maxwell, “Christology and Grace,” 195.

15 Scripture in Fulgentius of Ruspe

409

prominent of whom were the Scythian monks who were debating about the role of grace, free will, and divine predestination in salvation, and who wanted Fulgentius to weigh in on these issues.

Conclusion and Suggestions for Further Research Since little scholarship has been conducted on the role of Scripture played in Fulgentius, this is a very fertile field for further study. For example, a detailed study of his sermons will undoubtedly provide insight into how the bishop preached on the relevant lectionary readings. Comparative research conducted between anonymous Psalter Collects from the fifth and sixth centuries and the writings of Fulgentius, would also be helpful in either affirming or rejecting Thomas Ferguson’s suggestion that Fulgentius authored the North African collects.106 If these prayers related to the Psalms were indeed found to have been written by Fulgentius in his early years as an abbot, then it would provide an interesting glimpse into his early exegesis of the Psalms. Fulgentius’s career included offices of fiscal procurator, monk, abbot, and Catholic bishop. At times he suffered persecution for his Trinitarian faith both from his coreligionists and from secular authorities who held non-Trinitarian views associated with Arianism. After being ordained as bishop of Ruspe, he was exiled twice to Sardinia, where he spent over a decade building monasteries, writing theological treatises, and corresponding with distinguished clergy and laypersons. His biblical canon, like those of North African canonical lists, included many of the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament. His version of Scripture was a Vetus Latina of the North African type, but he showed familiarity with other Latin translations of Scripture as well as a Greek codex of the Gospel of Matthew. Fulgentius explained the relationship of the Hebrew Scriptures to the New Testament in terms of figure and reality or promise and fulfillment. Since Fulgentius’s literary works consist mainly of polemical theological treatises, it is not surprising that he used Scripture mainly to teach, confirm, and verify Catholic dogma on important issues of his time, such as the Trinity, Christology, and grace. Fulgentius often quoted various Scripture passages one after another, using them as testimonia, or witnesses, for a particular doctrine or theological point he was making. Fulgentius not only employed Scripture for positively verifying Catholic doctrine, but also for refuting heretical beliefs including various anti-Trinitarian heresies, Christological heresies taught by Nestorius and Apollinaris, Pelagian errors related to grace, and Origen’s teaching on the pre-existence of the human soul. He often used the lives and deeds of biblical characters from both the Old and New Testaments as illustrations of correct doctrine. When it came to biblical difficulties, he often employed the principle of “analogy of faith,” that clearer Scripture passages are the best interpreters of difficult ones and the best way to  Cf. n10 supra.

410

Francis X. Gumerlock

bring about harmonious solutions. Sometimes Fulgentius explained the “spiritual” sense of a biblical passage, which for him meant that passage’s deeper theological meaning or underlying moral teaching. In his theology and exegesis, Fulgentius was influenced significantly by Augustine. His interpretations of certain biblical passages related to Christology and grace also show development throughout his literary career. According to Claudio Moreschini and Enrico Norelli, Fulgentius was “perhaps the most authoritative and important figure of African Christianity in the late fifth and early sixth centuries.”107 The respect he was shown in the centuries following his death by Spanish bishops, early medieval popes, and Carolingian scholars contributed to the preservation of many of his works along with the approaches to and the interpretations of Scripture that they contained.

Further Reading Primary Sources Fulgentius. Sancti Fulgentii episcopi Ruspensis opera, edited by Jean Fraipont. Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina 91 and 91A. Turnhout: Brepols, 1968. Fulgentius. Fulgenzio di Ruspe. Le Lettere, translated by Antonio Isola. Rome: Città Nuova, 1999. Fulgentius. Fulgenzio di Ruspe. Salmo contro I vandali ariani, translated by Antonio Isola. Turin: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1983. Fulgentius. Fulgentius of Ruspe and the Sythian Monks. Correspondence on Christology and Grace, translated by Rob Roy McGregor and Donald Fairbairn. Fathers of the Church 126. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013. Fulgentius. Fulgentius. Selected Works, translated by Robert B. Eno. Fathers of the Church 95. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997.

Secondary Sources Coon, Lynda Leigh. “Fulgentius of Ruspe. Monk-Aristocrat.” M.A. thesis. University of Virginia, 1986. Di Sciascio, Francesco. Fulgenzio di Ruspe. Un grande discepolo di Agostino contro le ‘Reliquiae Pelagianae praviatis’ nei suoi epigoni. Rome: Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana, 1941. Ferguson, Thomas S. Visita Nos: Reception, Rhetoric, and Prayer in a North African Monastery. New York: Peter Lang, 1999. Gumerlock, Francis X. Fulgentius of Ruspe on the Saving Will of God: The Development of a Sixth-Century African Bishop’s Interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:4 During the Semi-Pelagian Controversy. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2009. Humphries, Thomas L., Jr. Ascetic Pneumatology from John Cassian to Gregory the Great. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

 Moreschini and Norelli, Early Christian Greek and Latin Literature, 2:472.

15 Scripture in Fulgentius of Ruspe

411

Lapeyre, Gabriel G. Saint Fulgence de Ruspe. Un évêque catholique africain sous la domination vandale. Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1929. Mapwar, Bashuth. Le polemique anti-Arienne de St. Fulgence de Ruspe en Afrique du Nord (Vè-VIè siècles). Rome: N. Domenici-Pécheux, 1988. Maxwell, David Russell. “Christology and Grace in the Sixth-Century Latin West: The Theopaschite Controversy.” Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Notre Dame, 2003. Nisters, Bernhard. Die Christologie des hl. Fulgentius von Ruspe. Münster: Aschendorff, 1930.

Éric Fournier

16 Exegesis, Exempla, and Invective: The Use of Scripture in Facundus of Hermiane’s In Defense of the Three Chapters Introduction In Book 3 of In Defense of the Three Chapters,1 in a section where he defends Theodore of Mopsuestia (one of the accused theologians during the Three Chapters conflict against Justinian), Facundus inserts a quote: “how did the creator of angels need consolation from an angel? As the apostle said: ‘in him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.’”2 Quotations such as this one, typically from theologians who themselves quote Scripture, abound in Facundus’s text.3 What is surprising, in this instance, is that the author of this quoted text was Emperor Justinian (reigned 527–565 CE).4 Indeed, this example highlights a novelty of Justinian’s reign,

 Throughout I cite Facundus, Pro Defensione Trium Capitulorum using the following edition: A. FraïsseBétoulières, Facundus d’Hermiane. Défense des Trois Chapitres (À Justinien), SC 471, 478–9, 484, 499 (Paris: Cerf, 2002–2006). Translations are my own unless otherwise noted. My most sincere thanks to Ben Popp and Celine Butler for helping to compile and study the biblical passages found in Facundus. The Drayer Fund of the History Department and a Research and Creative Activities Grant from the College of Arts and Humanities at West Chester University of Pennsylvania generously supported their work. I also thank Michael Maas, Hal Drake, Leslie Dossey, Jonathan Conant, Robin Whelan and Richard Flower for reading earlier versions, providing useful suggestions and saving me from numerous errors. Mark Tizzoni particularly deserves my gratitude for reviewing my translations and suggesting numerous improvements. None of these generous scholars are responsible for the results and remaining errors.  Def. Tri. Cap. 3.3.13 (SC 478:64): “Quomodo opus habebat angeli solatio angelorum operator? Sicut apostolus dicit: ‘Quia in ipso creata sunt omnia, quae in caelis et quae in terra, visibilia et invisibilia.’” Cf. Col 1:16.  What A. Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire. The Development of Christian Discourse (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 217, has called “The Closed Tradition”: “The correct signs have been established by a chain of authorities who constitute the tradition. It is a closed tradition, formed of the Scriptures, the Apostles, the ‘ancient teachers’ (the Fathers), baptism, and the sacraments of the church.”  Citation from Justinian, In damnationem Trium Capitulorum (ed. E. Schwartz, “Zur Kirchenpolitik Justinians,” in Gesammelte Schriften IV [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1960], 323); on which see A. Grillmeier, ✶ Éric Fournier is Professor of ancient and medieval history at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on late antique North Africa, particularly clerical exile, the work of Victor of Vita and the Vandal period, as well as how the concept of persecution evolved after Christians were no longer officially persecuted from the 4th century CE onward.

Éric Fournier, West Chester University https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-017

414

Éric Fournier

the fact that the emperor considered himself a theologian (almost) on the same level as the Christian bishops, and, as such, frequently cited scriptural passages in order to support the theological points he made in his writings.5 Of course, it is doubtful that Justinian composed these texts entirely by himself.6 But this nuance most likely did not matter to Facundus and other Western opponents of Justinian’s ecclesiastical policies. What mattered, and probably constituted a central factor in the Three Chapters conflict (see Background and Context), was that Justinian issued these words under his name as emperor, and therefore presented himself as a rival exegete to Christian bishops. Rightly, therefore, Leslie Dossey has recently argued that North African theologians’ reaction to the Three Chapters’s condemnation constituted “a broader defense of the right of doctores – clerical experts in the divine law – to interpret texts for themselves. [Because h]istorians have perhaps not sufficiently recognized the degree to which the Three Chapters controversy was a debate by and about exegetes.”7 Older scholarship, such as Robert Markus, insisted that Facundus represented the traditional North African independence that was often hostile to imperial involvement in church affairs.8 Dossey does not reject such interpretation, and it is very much to her credit to have underlined the importance of exegesis in this conflict, but her argument seems to have neglected the importance of Justinian’s role as a rival exegete (at least as far as Facundus’s text was concerned). Building on her important argument, the present chapter argues that Facundus’s response to the Three Chapters controversy was in reaction to both aspects, imperial appropriation of ecclesiastical privilege, which took the form of interpretation of Scripture (exegesis), as well as issuing statements about the faith, and therefore inappropriately intervening in church affairs. In order to support this argument, this

Christ in Christian Tradition 2: From the Council of Chalcedon (451) to Gregory the Great (590–604), 2: The Church of Constantinople in the Sixth Century, trans. P. Allen and J. Cawte (London: Mowbray, 1995 [1989]), 421–2.  See, e.g., the numerous references found in Justinian’s edict On the Orthodox Faith of July 551, in R. Price, The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553 with related texts on the Three Chapters Controversy, Translated Texts for Historians 51 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009), 1:132n38–9; 133n42–4; 134n46; 138n55; 139n63; 140n66; 141n68–9; 146n93–4 and 96; 151n115; 152n117 and 119–20; 154n126–33; 156n139–40; and 159n157–9. See further the emperor’s letter read during the first session of the council, at 197n60; and 198n64–5. Cf. M. Maas, Exegesis and Empire in the Early Byzantine Mediterranean. Junillus Africanus and the Instituta Regularia Divinae Legis (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 49–57 and 64.  Cf. V. L. Menze, Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 252.  L. Dossey, “Exegesis and Dissent in Byzantine North Africa,” in North Africa under Byzantium and Early Islam, eds. S. T. Stevens and J. Conant (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2016), 251–67, here 252.  R. Markus, “Reflections on Religious Dissent in North Africa in the Byzantine Period,” Studies in Church History 3 (1966): 140–9; followed by D. Wilhite, Ancient African Christianity. An Introduction to a Unique Context and Tradition (New York: Routledge, 2017), 295–301.

16 The Use of Scripture in Facundus’s In Defense of the Three Chapters

415

chapter analyzes Facundus’s abundant and multifarious uses of Scripture in his In Defense of the Three Chapters.9 Whereas Fraïsse-Bétoulières already analyzed several functions to these scriptural borrowings, the present chapter focuses exclusively on Facundus’s use of Scripture in support of his theological interpretation and in what I have labeled invective against Justinian, particularly in his use of Old Testament exempla in Book 12.10 By paying close attention to Facundus’s use of Scripture to criticize Justinian’s involvement in what the former sees as the prerogative of bishops, and particularly the prerogative of biblical exegesis, this chapter underlines a previouslyneglected aspect of Facundus’s text, especially invective, in the last section, while also highlighting an important characteristic of the controversy as a whole, opposition to the emperor’s intervention within ecclesiastical affairs.11 What follows demonstrates the use of biblical texts in a doctrinal controversy that was, perhaps truly for the first time, largely unequal due to the emperor’s direct involvement, and for this reason seriously dangerous for those who, like Facundus, opposed the imperial position. Thus Facundus, despite his strong opposition to Justinian in this conflict, had to tread lightly.12 It also illustrates that, in what Frances Young has shown to be a key element of “the formation of Christian culture,” transformed mainly by its omnipresent use of the biblical text, such delicate opposition (religious, theological, and Christological in nature, but with strong political resonances)

 In total, using the apparatus provided by the SC volumes, we have noted some 470 uses of Scripture, in three distinct categories: 1) direct quotation (263); 2) paraphrase or allusion (seventy-six); 3) quotation or paraphrase included in a citation of another author (131). Of these numbers, Paul is the most cited, with a total of 133 (sixty-nine direct quotations; thirty-one allusions; and thirty-one embedded citations) for all Pauline epistles combined. Paul is followed by the Johannine corpus with eighty-nine (forty-nine; three; and twenty-seven respectively), and Matthew with fifty-three (twenty-eight; eight; and seventeen). By contrast, among the Synoptic evangelists, Mark is only invoked three times, whereas Luke appears at twenty-three occasions (twenty quotations, two allusions, and one embedded quotation), following Patristic tendencies. Acts, also composed by the author(s) of Luke, adds another seventeen instances (eight; three; and six). Facundus uses New Testament texts far more often than Old Testament ones, his thirty-nine uses of Psalms being the leader in this category (twenty-four; three; and twelve respectively). Interestingly, however, we will see that his numerically lower use of 1 and 2 Kings (nine direct quotes and five allusions) and 1 and 2 Chronicles (six quotations and five allusions) are the most significant within Facundus’s text and are made so by their concentration at crucial junctures and in order to make pointed criticism of Justinian’s behavior. See the Appendix for details. Cf. SC 471:79 for (strangely) different tallies.  SC 471:78–9: justification of a term, theological analysis, refutation of heresies, and justification of historical, moral, and symbolic interpretations.  Cf. R. Flower, Imperial Invectives against Constantius II, Translated Texts for Historians 67 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017), esp. 177, for strong similarities with Lucifer of Cagliari’s attacks on Constantius.  C. Sotinel, “Le concile, l’empereur, l’évêque: status d’autorité dans la querelle des Trois Chapitres,” in Orthodoxie, christianisme, histoire – Orthodoxy, Christianity, History, ed. S. Elm, É. Rebillard, and A. Romano (Rome: École française de Rome, 2000), 292: “lui reprocher sa politique répressive serait courir le plus grand danger.”

416

Éric Fournier

could be expressed through biblical exegesis and intertextuality.13 The current analysis is not, however, a full treatment of Facundus’s exegesis or of his interpretation of specific passages; rather, it is about how he used them as rhetorical ammunition in his fight in opposition to Justinian’s condemnation of the Three Chapters, in order to make his points and convince the emperor of the righteousness of his position and the need to revoke this misguided condemnation. Similar to Edwina Murphy’s approach to Cyprian’s letters in the first volume of this series, the current chapter focuses more on “reading strategies and rhetorical techniques” than pure exegesis.14 And akin to Alden Bass’s take on Optatus’s approach to Scripture, that contemporary politics influenced his exegesis (in the latter case, Optatus supported the imperial, centrist approach in opposition to “Donatists”), this chapter emphasizes how Facundus deployed his own exegesis in reaction to the politics of his time.15 Except that the roles were reversed from Optatus’s era, in that Facundus now represented the African resistance to Justinian’s attempts at a centrist and imperialist ecclesiastical policy. But before looking at the evidence in detail, it is necessary to provide a brief overview of the context that led to the Three Chapters controversy.

Background and Context The Three Chapters controversy is essentially the conflict that resulted from Justinian’s attempt to solve the theological and ecclesiastical disagreements that had plagued (mainly) the Eastern Empire since the fourth century CE.16 The “Three Chapters” originally designate the writings of three theologians (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and Ibas’s letter to Mari the Persian), which had all been declared anathema, but which eventually came to mean their persons as well. Justinian,

 F. M. Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 97–116.  E. Murphy, “Scripture in the Letters of and Councils under Cyprian of Carthage,” in BCNA I, 119.  A. Bass, “Scripture in Optatus of Milevis,” in BCNA I, 206.  The best, most recent overview is Price, Acts of the Council, 1–28. Cf. J. Herrin, The Formation of Christendom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 90–127; P. Maraval, “La politique religieuse de Justinien,” 389–426; C. Sotinel, “L’échec en Occident: l’affaire des Trois Chapitres,” 427–55; Y. Modéran, “Les Églises et la reconquista byzantine. A. L’Afrique,” in Histoire du christianisme: des origines à nos jours, 3: Les églises d’Orient et d’Occident (432–610), ed. L. Pietri (Paris: Desclée, 1998), 699–717; P. T. R. Gray, “The Legacy of Chalcedon: Christological Problems and their Significance,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, ed. M. Maas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 215–38; The Crisis of the Oikoumene: The Three Chapters and the Failed Quest for Unity in the Sixth-Century Mediterranean, ed. C. Chazelle and C. Cubitt (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), esp. R. M. Price, “The Three Chapters Controversy and the Council of Chalcedon,” 17–37; Y. Modéran, “L’Afrique reconquise et les Trois Chapitres,” 39–82; and J. Conant, Staying Roman: Conquest and Identity in African and the Mediterranean, 439–700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 316–30.

16 The Use of Scripture in Facundus’s In Defense of the Three Chapters

417

in order to cajole one faction (the Miaphysites, on which see below), ordered the condemnation of the Three Chapters. This caused significant backlash and opposition, particularly in North Africa, mainly because, for its opponents, this implied condemning the Council of Chalcedon (451), which had exonerated Theodoret and Ibas (while Theodore had already died in 428 and, therefore, had not been condemned). As an ecumenical council, Chalcedon was considered holy, and changing anything it had decreed was deemed an offense to the fathers and Christian orthodoxy. Incidentally, there is perhaps no better example than the Three Chapters conflict to illustrate Peter Brown’s point that, in this period, we should speak of “Micro-Christendoms” rather than a monolithic Christianity.17 Indeed, the sources pertaining to the controversy describe several theological factions pitted against each other: the two major groupings of Chalcedonians (those who accepted the teachings of the Council of Chalcedon – that the divine and human natures of God were perfectly merged into one person – as true doctrine, known as the “Orthodox”) and Miaphysites (better known as Monophysites, who believed that Jesus was both fully divine and fully human in a single “substance” or nature), but also the subdivisions of the latter, Eutychians, Nestorians, Severans and Acephali (or Akephaloi).18

The Council of Ephesus (431) and Consequences In order to understand who these groups were and how their conflicts are the roots of the Three Chapters, it is necessary to go back to the Council of Ephesus of 431, over a century earlier. Nestorius, a student of Theodore of Mopsuestia (one of the Three Chapters, famous for his literal interpretation of Scripture) and priest in Antioch, became bishop of Constantinople (428–431) amidst already existing competing theological factions. One of the key contemporary debates focused on Mary and whether it was appropriate to call her “Mother of God” (Theotokos, in Greek). Nestorius suggested “Mother of Christ” as an attempt at conciliation, which only led to further divisions, and ultimately his own demise. The opposition to Nestorius came mainly from

 P. Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 355–79; cf. A. Cameron, “The Violence of Orthodoxy,” in Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity, ed. E. Iricinschi and H. M. Zellentin (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 102–14, esp. 103 for “Christianities.”  1.5.6 (SC 471:224): “Acephali vocantur a Graecis, quos significantius nos Semieutychianos possumus appellare.” Facundus explicitly accuses the Acephali to be the source of the conflict at praef. 1 (SC 471:140). On these factions, see now A. Louth, “Chalcedon, Council of,”; S. Wessel, “Ephesus, councils of,” “Eutyches and Eutycianism” and “Nestorius and Nestorianism”; J. W. Childers, “Miaphysites”; in The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity, ed. O. Nicholson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), respectively 314, 541–2, 570–1, 1068–9, and 1016–7, for brief overviews and bibliographies. See further P. Wood, “We have no king but Christ.” Christian Political Thought in Greater Syria on the Eve of the Arab Conquest (c. 400–585) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 163–256.

418

Éric Fournier

Cyril, the formidable bishop of Alexandria (412–444).19 Alexandria was already in the midst of a “cold war” with the see of Constantinople over the condemnation of John Chrysostom (exiled bishop of Constantinople) at the beginning of the fifth century, and Cyril saw an opportunity to take advantage of the situation by arguing against Nestorius’s theological position. Having obtained the support of Rome and Eastern bishops, Cyril managed to have Emperor Theodosius II (reigned 402–450) convoke a large council at Ephesus, in 431, to examine the issues raised by Nestorius’s theology, which ultimately deposed and exiled the bishop of Constantinople. At the same time, however, Cyril penned theological tracts that strongly defended the single nature (total union of the divine and human natures) of Christ, against Nestorius’s dual nature theology, tracts which became the root of Miaphysite theology (“mia physis,” one nature). In 433, Ibas (a second member of the Three Chapters), a priest of Edessa, wrote to Mari “the Persian” to inform him about the conflict between Cyril and Nestorius, as well as to tell him that Rabbula, the bishop of Edessa, had taken Cyril’s side, anathemized Theodore of Mopsuestia and attacked Theodoret, bishop of the Syrian city of Cyrrhus since 423.20 This letter caused some backlash from Rabbula’s supporters but did not prevent Ibas from succeeding Rabbula as bishop of Edessa in 436. Ibas was also deposed by the “Robber” Council of Ephesus, in 449, which Theodosius II gathered in support of Eutyches (hence Eutychians), who had been deposed by a local council for arguing that Christ had two natures, which were brought into a single nature by the union of both substances.

The Council of Chalcedon (451) and Consequences The ecumenical Council of Chalcedon, convened in 451, mainly aimed at reversing and correcting the situation caused by the 449 “Robber” Council of Ephesus. Leo, the bishop of Rome (440–461), had in 449 penned a Tome to Flavian, bishop of Constantinople (446–449), in support of the union of the two natures, which became the doctrine agreed upon at the Council of Chalcedon. The Miaphysites, however, rejected both Leo’s Tome and Chalcedon, because they privileged a theology that supported a single nature. In an attempt to heal the division, Emperor Zeno (reigned 474–91)

 See S. Wessel, Cyril of Alexandria and the Nestorian Controversy. The Making of a Saint and of a Heretic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); and H. van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology of Cyril of Alexandria (Leiden: Brill, 2009). On Theodore, see further H. G. Reventlow, History of Biblical Interpretation, 2: From Late Antiquity to the End of the Middle Ages, trans. J. O. Duke (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 3–21.  On Theodoret and his theology, see P. B. Clayton, The Christology of Theodoret of Cyrus. Antiochene Christology from the Council of Ephesus (431) to the Council of Chalcedon (451) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); for his exegesis and clash with Cyril, see J.-N. Guinot, Théodoret de Cyr exégète et théologien, 1: Le dernier grand exégète de l’école d’Antioche au Ve siècle (Paris: Cerf, 2012).

16 The Use of Scripture in Facundus’s In Defense of the Three Chapters

419

wrote in July 483 a letter to Egyptian and Libyan bishops called the Henotikon, which ignored Chalcedon, went back to the Creeds of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381) as the true faith (which were vaguer on the relationship between God’s “substances”), condemned both Nestorius and Eutyches, and presented a Miaphysite doctrine. This only caused further division, however, as Felix of Rome (483–492) excommunicated Acacius of Constantinople (472?–489) and Peter Mongus of Alexandria (477–489) for helping to write the Henotikon, while Acacius reciprocated, resulting in a schism that lasted until 519. The Acephali originate from this context, since they separated from the communion of Peter Mongus, in 482/3, after they became aware that the bishop of Alexandria had contributed to drafting the Henotikon, and they joined Severus of Antioch and his partisans (the “Severans”).21

Emperor Justinian and the Three Chapters In 519, Justin I (reigned 518–527) canceled the Henotikon, and his successor Justinian claimed to follow Chalcedon, while aggressively pursuing a conciliation policy between the different factions in order to obtain the chimerical theological union desired by all Christian emperors since Constantine (reigned 306–337). He conducted a doctrinal dialogue, in 532, with the Miaphysites, rumored to be favored and supported by the Empress Theodora.22 This meeting laid the groundwork for the eventual condemnation of the Three Chapters, as well as of Nestorius and Eutyches. In 536, however, Justinian moved against Miaphysites and condemned Severus of Antioch (already in exile in Egypt since 518).23 But in 543, Theodore Askidas, bishop of Caesarea (Cappadocia), suggested to the emperor that reconciliation of the Acephali with the church could be accomplished by condemning the Three Chapters (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and Ibas’s letter to Mari the Persian), since they mainly objected to Chalcedon’s acceptance of these three as orthodox. For some, Theodore Askidas’s real agenda against Theodore Mopsuestia was the latter’s condemnation of Origen’s allegorical method of exegesis.24 It also seems that the same Theodore Askidas convinced Justinian at that time of his argument that Ibas’s letter was not authentic, which would allow the emperor to condemn it more easily. In 543/4, Justinian decided to adopt this strategy, and issued an edict condemning the Three Chapters (anathema against their writings, which eventually came to

 On Peter Mongus, see E. J. Watts, Riot in Alexandria. Tradition and Group Dynamics in Late Antique Pagan and Christian Communities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 216–53.  S. Brock, “The Conversations with the Syrian Orthodox under Justinian (532),” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 47 (1981): 87–121.  On the importance of Severus, see B. Neil and P. Allen, Conflict and Negotiation in the Early Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2020), 92–4.  H. Chadwick, The Church in Ancient Society: From Galilee to Gregory the Great (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 617, based on Liberatus, Breviarium 24 (SC 607:342–8).

420

Éric Fournier

mean their persons as well), but at the same time affirming his fidelity to Chalcedon.25 Like the proverb, Justinian tried to “have his cake and eat it too.”26 The main issue with this plan was that it implied that the Council of Chalcedon, which, as an ecumenical council, was considered holy and invested with the highest authority, was imperfect and incomplete. In other words, Justinian expressed his desire to change what the Fathers had decreed, under guidance of the Holy Spirit, at Chalcedon. The emperor pressured the bishops of the main Eastern sees (Menas of Constantinople, Ephrem of Antioch, Peter of Jerusalem, and Zoilus of Alexandria) to give their assent, and Menas eventually agreed on condition that he could withdraw his signature if Vigilius, the bishop of Rome, did not sign. But immediately upon hearing of this, the representative of Rome in Constantinople (the apocrisiarius Stephen) and Dacius of Milan broke communion with Menas and left the Eastern capital. Meanwhile, in Italy, the Ostrogothic leader Totila (ruled 541–552) was besieging Rome in the midst of the Gothic War against Justinian, who took advantage of the situation to move Vigilius (the bishop of Rome) to Sicily, in summer 546, and eventually to Constantinople in January 547.27 This was the beginning of complicated and protracted negotiations between both parties over the bishop of Rome’s assent to the emperor’s edict of condemnation of the Three Chapters, which led Vigilius to resist, before he agreed to give a secret condemnation. Pressed by Justinian, he gathered seventy Western bishops to discuss the situation and get their input, including Facundus of Hermiane. When Vigilius realized that most bishops were against the emperor’s desire, however, he aborted the discussion and instead requested the bishops to submit their opinion to him in writing.28

Reaction in Africa In Africa, resistance to the emperor’s policy against the Three Chapters started as early as 544.29 Justinian presumably sent his edict to all the provinces to obtain metropolitan bishops’ signatures, which led the Roman church to consult Ferrandus, the

 Neil and Allen, Conflict and Negotiation, 20–1, argue for different, Eastern and Western perspectives, and that Byzantine leaders such as Justinian were much more concerned with their eastern territories, such as Syria, than with the West.  Cf. Brown, Rise of Western Christendom, 184: “Driven too fast for too long, the complex mechanisms of imperial persuasion no longer worked.”  On Vigilius, see best C. Sotinel, “Autorité pontificale et pouvoir impérial sous le règne de Justinien: le pape Vigile,” MEFR 104 (1992): 439–63; cf. Brown, Rise, 184.  Praef. 2 (SC 471:140–2): “Quo necdum finito (scripsi) ac perpetracto, adductus est Romanus episcopus; in cujus examine cum gestis super hac causa disceptaremus, mediante conflictu interrumpi acta praecepit, et ab universis episcopis qui aderamus expetivit, ut scripto quisque responderet quid ei de his capitulis videretur.”  In addition to the works cited in n16 supra, C. Diehl, L’Afrique byzantine. Histoire de la domination byzantine en Afrique (533–709) (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1896), 431–49, remains useful.

16 The Use of Scripture in Facundus’s In Defense of the Three Chapters

421

most celebrated African theologian of his time.30 Ferrandus wrote a letter in response, anticipating many of the arguments that Facundus presents in his work, particularly that the Three Chapters constituted an attack against Chalcedon, which represents the true faith, that it troubled the peace by attacking the dead, and that the laity (including the emperor) should learn from the bishops and not try to teach in their place.31 A letter from Pontianus of Byzacena to Justinian also belongs to this context, in which the bishop warns Justinian in no uncertain terms: I am afraid, most pious emperor, that under the pretext of condemning them the Eutychian heresy is being revived . . . [The dead] are now in the hands of the true judge, from whom there is no appeal. Through him . . . we beseech your clemency that peace may endure in your times, lest while you seek to condemn persons already dead you cause the deaths of many disobedient people who are alive, and lest you be compelled in consequence to render account to the one who will come to judge the living and the dead.32

For Modéran, the consequences of the Vandal period are visible in this hostile response, as the generally coercive policy of Vandal rulers toward Nicene bishops in North Africa had rendered the verdicts of councils holier there than anywhere else.33 Coupled with an increasing dissatisfaction and disillusion with the Byzantine government during the 540s, particularly in its tepid response to military threats from the Mauri in the South, this attachment to the councils led to substantial pushback against what they perceived as Justinian’s innovations against Chalcedon. African bishops, including Facundus, first met Vigilius about the conflict in Sicily during winter or spring 546, when they begged the bishop of Rome not to assent to the condemnation of the Three Chapters. Disillusionment followed, however, when they learned that Vigilius supported the condemnation in his Iudicatum issued in 548, leading to resistance against it. Monks from North Africa, along with the deacons Rusticus and Sebastianus, traveled to Constantinople to confront Vigilius on the matter.34 In 550, a local council of the North African church defended the Three Chapters,

 Modéran, “L’Afrique reconquise,” 43–6.  Fulgentius Ferrandus, Ep. 6 (PL 67:921–8; trans. Price, Acts of the Council, 112–21).  Pontianus, Ep. to the Emperor Justinian (PL 67:997–8; trans. Price, Acts of the Council, 111–2): “Sed timeo, piissime imperator, ne sub obtentu damnationis istorum Eutychiana haeresis erigitur . . . apud judicem verum jam tenentur, a quo (mortuis) nullus appellat. Per ipsum . . . supplicamus clementiam tuam, ut pax permaneat temporibus tuis, ne dum quaeris damnare jam mortuos, multos inobedientes interficias vivos, et exinde compellaris reddere rationem ei qui venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos.”  Modéran, “Les Églises,” 707; and “L’Afrique reconquise,” 61–3.  SC 471:45, based on Victor of Tunnona, Chron. 147 (CCSL 173A:49). Cf. Sotinel, “Le concile,” 283; “L’affaire des Trois Chapitres,” 429–30; and Modéran, “L’Afrique reconquise,” 47–8, for a more prudent assessment. We do know from Facundus (praef. 1) that African clerics accompanied him, and that Vigilius later excommunicated Rusticus and Sebastianus (Vigilius, Ep. Ad Rusticum et Sebastianum; trans. Price, Acts of the Council, 81–90), but the rest is hypothetical.

422

Éric Fournier

excommunicated Vigilius, and addressed a formal protestation to Justinian.35 This is the immediate context in which Facundus wrote his work.

Facundus and the Date of the In Defense of the Three Chapters All we know from Facundus comes from his own works and a brief entry in Victor of Tunnona’s Chronicle regarding the publication of In Defense of the Three Chapters. It does not amount to much.36 We do know that he was bishop of Hermiane (in the south of the African province of Byzacena) and a respected theologian who knew Greek, and that he contributed through his works to make the theological ideas of the Three Chapters available to Western theologians and Africans in particular. He seems to have taken the lead of the opposition against Justinian’s effort to condemn the Three Chapters, continued to write into the 550s–560s, suffered monastery confinement in Constantinople in 564, and had to live parts of his life in hiding for fear of imperial reprisals and coercion against the African resistance to Justinian’s policy. He would have died in the early 570s without reconciling with the imperial court. The two termini traditionally used to date In Defense of the Three Chapters are, on the one hand, the Iudicatum (11 April 548), and, on the other, Victor of Tunnona’s explicit mention that it was published around the same time that the council of 550 met.37 From Facundus’s stance toward Vigilius in the text, scholars assume that he must have not been aware of the Iudicatum when he composed it, likely placing at least a partial first draft of the work during his sojourn in Constantinople, and which would have formed the basis of his response to Vigilius’s request for a written opinion. He would have revised it, and perhaps added Book 12, after returning to Africa, between 548 and 550.38 Let us now look at Facundus’s use of Scripture in his In Defense of the Three Chapters, starting with his theological argumentation, particularly in defense of Chalcedon.

 Victor of Tunnona, Chron. 141 (CCSL 173A:46).  See n38 infra and SC 471:11–13, with additional references to Isidore of Seville and Cassiodorus.  Victor of Tunnona, Chron. 142, s.a. 550 (CCSL 173A:46): “Eo tempore duodecim libri Facundi Hermianensis ecclesie episcopi refulsere.”  See E. Chrysos, “Zur Datierung und Tendenz der Werke des Facundus von Hermiane,” Kleronomia 1 (1969): 311–24, followed by R. Eno, “Doctrinal Authority in the African Ecclesiology of the Sixth Century: Ferrandus and Facundus,” REAug 22 (1976): 100; and Conant, Staying Roman, 320, who argues for a date of ca. 550 and the production of a second edition. Sotinel, “Le concile,” 282n18, follows the latest editors of Facundus (CCSL 90A:xii): June 547 and April 548; whereas Modéran, “L’Afrique reconquise,” 48, dates it during the period 548–550. Cf. infra. My own inclination is to suppose a first redaction close to the sojourn in Constantinople in 548, followed by revisions that would have led Facundus to expand the work, particularly the last book.

16 The Use of Scripture in Facundus’s In Defense of the Three Chapters

423

Exegesis in Defense of Chalcedon The first obvious use of Scripture in Facundus is in support of his theological views, which in this case amounted to a strong defense of the Council of Chalcedon precisely because he perceived the condemnation of the Three Chapters as an attack against that ecumenical council. Thus in the very first chapter of Book 1, Facundus addresses Justinian’s 533 CE profession of faith in order to argue that the emperor truly follows Chalcedon, which had specifically condemned the two heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches, teachings that were still circulating.39 Facundus cites Justinian’s formula, “one of the Trinity was crucified for us” as especially clear against both of these heresies.40 In this context, Facundus cites Paul (Titus 2:11–13), announcing “the glorious arrival of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.”41 “This is why,” Facundus argued, “you also said that the blessed Virgin Mary was truly and properly mother of God. For you know God is not different from the Word, nor different from Jesus Christ, you who have proclaimed that he was one and the same in two natures, consubstantial with the Father according to his divinity and the very same one consubstantial with us according to his humanity.”42 The key part of the Titus passage, here, was “the grace of God . . . teaches us that we should live chastely, fairly, and faithfully, rejecting unfaithfulness and worldly desires.”43 Clearly, by “impietatem” and “pie,” Facundus meant heresy and orthodoxy, which he specifies and reinforces later by quoting Paul (Rom 14:23) again: “because everything that does not come from faith is sin.”44 In many ways, therefore, this opening chapter foreshadows numerous characteristics of the author’s use of Scripture to support his theological views throughout the

 Epistula ad Johannem archiepiscopum Urbis Romae et patriarchae (PL 66:14–17) = Codex Justinianus 1.1.8 (ed. Krüger, 8–10); Def. Tri. Cap. 1.1.1 (SC 471:144): “swarming” (ferveant). See further Def. Tri. Cap. 1.1.4 (SC 471:146): “Quae omnia certum est te juxta Chalcedonensis concilii sententiam protulisse.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 1.1.1 (SC 471:144): “unum de trinitate pro nobis crucifixum.” See further SC 471: 51–3 on the theological background to this argument; and esp. 51 for the notion that Facundus was pretending that the emperor’s formula was clear.  Def. Tri. Cap. 1.1.2 (SC 471:146): “adventum gloriae magni dei salvatoris nostri Jesu Christi.” Cf. Titus 2:13. Wherever Facundus’s text seems to differ from the Vulgate, this will be noted. To access the Vulgate online, see https://www.biblegateway.com/versions/Biblia-Sacra-Vulgata-VULGATE. See further H. A. G. Houghton, “Scripture and Latin Christian Manuscripts from North Africa,” in BCNA I, 15–50.  Def. Tri. Cap. 1.1.3 (SC 471:146): “Propter quod etiam beatam virginem Mariam vere et proprie matrem dei esse dixisti. Non enim alium scis deum verbum, et alium Jesum Christum quem in duabus naturis unum eundemque pronuntiasti consubstantialem esse patri secundum deitatem, et consubstantialem nobis eundem secundum humanitatem.” I have here followed the formulation of “consubstantial with the Father according to his divinity and the very same one consubstantial with us according to his humanity” from P. R. Coleman-Norton, Roman State and Christian Church. A Collection of Legal Documents to A.D. 535 (London: SPCK, 1966), 3.1151.  Def. Tri. Cap. 1.1.2 (SC 471:144–6): “Gratia dei . . . erudiens nos ut abnegantes impietatem et saecularia desideria, caste et juste et pie vivamus in hoc saeculo.” Emphasis added. Cf. Titus 2:11–12.  Def. Tri. Cap. 1.1.19 (SC 471:158): “Omne enim [Vulg.: autem] quod non ex fide, peccatum est.”

424

Éric Fournier

rest of the work, and particularly his deferential treatment of Justinian early in the work by claiming that he was in fact a supporter of Chalcedon. It also shows his strong awareness of the historical aspects of the controversy at hand, which ultimately harkened back to the council of Ephesus (431) and the condemnation of Nestorius by Cyril of Alexandria. To the modern observer, however, it also highlights the profound ambiguity of scriptural verses on the nature of the Trinity, which led the fathers of the early Christian church to deploy a form of circular reasoning in their exegesis through their use of such ambiguous and vague texts in order to support much more specific Christological interpretations and arguments. In the preceding case, for instance, Facundus used the Titus verse about “impietatem” and “pie” to discuss the consubstantiality of Christ with the Father and with his human nature. The issue, throughout such controversies and arguments, was caused by the fact that Scripture was not specific enough regarding the three persons of God and their relationship to each other, and yet such theological debates were bound by the discursive framework of Scripture because of their beliefs in these texts as the Word of God and, therefore, as the highest authority that could possibly sanction any profession of faith. Christian theologians thus aimed to specify and clarify the relations of the three persons of the Trinity by invoking texts (Scripture) that had caused the problem they were attempting to solve in the first place, texts that were profoundly imprecise regarding the very nature of the subject which they aimed to be more precise about.

Christological Exegesis Another good example of this kind of reasoning occurs toward the end of the first chapter of Book 1, where Facundus argues that the different vocabulary that John and Paul used to describe Jesus, which is similar to the terms used by Justinian and the Council of Chalcedon respectively to describe Mary, therefore shows that Justinian supports Chalcedon. Indeed, whereas John (1 John 5:20) wrote “his true (verum) Son Jesus Christ,” Paul (Rom 8:31–32) wrote “his own (proprium) Son.”45 Because both texts, despite the different vocabulary they use, describe the same reality (God), Facundus believes that they must be in harmony.46 Logically, therefore, there should also not be any difference between the words that the Council of Chalcedon used to describe Mary (“the blessed Mary is truly [vere] mother of God”) and what Justinian  Def. Tri. Cap. 1.1.15–6 (SC 471:156): “Nam quod Johannes apostolus dicit verum dei filium, ipsum Paulus proprium dicit. Sic enim scribit: ‘Scimus quoniam filius dei venit, et dedit nobis intellectum, ut sciamus quod est verum et simus in vero filio ejus Jesu Christo.’ Hic autem scribens Romanis ait: ‘Si deus pro nobis, quis contra nos? Qui etiam filio suo proprio non pepercit, sed pro nobis omnibus tradidit illum.’” Emphasis added.  Def. Tri. Cap. 1.1.17 (SC 471:156): “Non igitur est aliud quod dominum Jesum Christum Johannes verum dei filium vocat, quam quod eum proprium dei filium Paulus appellat.” Emphasis added.

16 The Use of Scripture in Facundus’s In Defense of the Three Chapters

425

wrote (“she is truly and properly [vere et proprie] mother of God”).47 Adding a similar example about the two natures of Christ (1.1.18), Facundus concludes that Justinian’s “profession of faith is in harmony with the definitions of the great synod of Chalcedon.”48 In some instances, however, Facundus can more precisely support his Trinitarian argument, as when he adduces Matt 28:19 (“go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”).49 But he reverts to an argument that is similar to the previous one just analyzed, as he claims that several Pauline passages proclaiming to baptize in the sole name of Jesus Christ must implicitly include the three members of the Trinity, because all Scripture must be true and in agreement.50 And he similarly adduces three passages in support of the “unity of persons” (unitatem personae) from John and Paul.51 Numerous scriptural quotations included in Facundus’s text come from quotations of previous patristic texts, which at times lead to a discussion of the passage in question. In continuing his discussion of the appropriate way to designate Jesus (“one of the Trinity” vs “one person of the Trinity” was crucified) in chapter 3 of Book 1, for example, Facundus quotes 1 John 5:7–8 to the effect that when he wrote “there are three that testify: the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement,” John really meant the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.52 He adduces several other passages from John’s Gospel (4:21–4, 7:37–9) in support of this interpretation (1.3.9–13), before adding that “the blessed Cyprian of Carthage, bishop and martyr, in his letter or book that he wrote on unity also understands this aforementioned evidence of the apostle John to mean the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. For he says, ‘the Lord said: “I and the Father are one”’ and again ‘about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is written: “And the three are one.”’”53

 Def. Tri. Cap. 1.1.17 (SC 471:156–8): “Et ideo non aliud putandum est etiam quod sancta Chalcedonensis synodus beatam Mariam vere dei matrem confessa est, quam quod eam ipse confessus es vere et proprie matrem dei.” Emphasis added.  Def. Tri. Cap. 1.1.19 (SC 471:158): “His igitur omnibus probatur confessio fidei tuae magni concilii Chalcedonensis definitionibus consonare.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 1.3.32 (SC 471:188): “Item cum ipse dominus Jesus Christus, hanc trinitatem nobis insinuans, in evangelio discipulis suis dixerit: ‘Euntes docete omnes gentes, baptizantes eos in nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti.’”  Def. Tri. Cap. 1.3.32 (Acts 2:38); 33 (Acts 19); 35 (Acts 2:38); and 36 (Rom 6:4).  Def. Tri. Cap. 1.4.15 (1 Tim 2:5) and 16 (1 John 5:20 & Rom 8:31–2).  Def. Tri. Cap. 1.3.1 (SC 471:168): “Superflue contra de verbo contendant [nescientes], quia videtur eis quod dici non debeat unus de trinitate pro nobis crucifixus, sed potius una de trinitate persona”; and 1.3.9 (SC 471:172): “Nam et Johannes apostolus in epistula sua de patre et filio et spiritu sancto sic dicit: [Vulg.: quoniam] ‘Tres sunt qui testimonium dicunt in terra, spiritus, aqua, et sanguis, et hi tres unum sunt.’” Emphasis added.  Def. Tri. Cap. 1.3.13 (SC 471:174): “Quod tam Johannis apostoli testimonium beatus Cyprianus Carthaginensis antistes et martyr in epistula sive libro quem de unitate scripsit, de patre et filio et spiritu sancto dictum intellegit. Ait enim: ‘Dicit dominus: “Ego et pater unum sumus”’ et iterum: ‘de patre et

426

Éric Fournier

Going back to the argument regarding Mary, “mother of God” (theotokos, in Greek), which had erupted between Cyril and Nestorius, Facundus frequently evokes the key verse from John 1:14, “the Word became flesh.”54 This same line is also found in Book 2, in a quotation lifted from Leo’s Tome.55 In Book 3, he also cites the fuller verse, “the Word became flesh and he lived among us,” while defending Theodore of Mopsuestia from accusations that he had been Nestorius’s teacher.56 While the same full verse also serves to defend Ibas (6.4.1–2), by asserting that “‘the Word became flesh’ subdues the Nestorians, but the Eutychians or the Apollinarians their fathers are subdued by ‘and he lived among us,’ because ‘the Word became flesh’ signifies a single person, but ‘he lived among us’ signifies that two natures remained.”57 This is an argument that Facundus repeats against the Apollinarians in Book 9 (9.5.19–23). Whereas in Book 12, during an extended discussion of the woman who touched Christ’s garment (on which see more below), Facundus contrasts John 1:1 with John 1:14 to explain that, “perhaps she touched Christ from behind to designate by this very act, not that she touched his previous state by which he existed before all things according to the words: ‘In the beginning was the Word,’ but his humanity, about which it was afterwards said: ‘the Word became flesh.’”58 Facundus also invoked scriptural passages in defense of Theodore, to show that he was not the first to argue that Christ had felt human weakness (related to the debate about his human nature). In this context, Facundus deploys one of his favorite arguments: accusing Theodore (or Ibas or those who oppose condemning the Three Chapters) amounts to accusing the evangelists (and any other authority who made a similar argument).59 In this specific example, he goes on to quote John 12:27 reporting Christ’s words (“Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour”) and Luke 22:43–44 (“An angel from heaven appeared to Him and strengthened Him. And

filio et spiritu sancto scriptum est: “Et tres unum sunt.”’” Cf. John 10:30, 1 John 5:8, and Cyprian, Unit. Eccl. 6 (CCL 3:254).  Def. Tri. Cap. 1.4.43 (SC 471:218): “Verbum caro factum est”; a quotation repeated throughout 1.4.44–47.  Def. Tri. Cap. 2.6.19, citing Leo, Tomus ad Flavianum (ed. Silva-Tarouca, Textus et documenta 9, 32).  Def. Tri. Cap. 3.2.16 (SC 478:50): “Et neque sic amputare potuit occasionem quaerentibus occasionem. Item accusant eum illi, quod beatam Mariam deum geniuses negaverit. Ipse autem dicit quod ab ipsa in utero matris plasmatione deus verbum adunatum sibi hominem inhabitaverit, secundum quod evangelista dicit: ‘Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis.’”  Def. Tri. Cap. 6.4.2 (SC 479:354): “‘Verbum caro factum est,’ Nestorianos expugnat; Eutychianos autem vel Apollinaristas eorum progenitores ‘et habitavit in nobis,’ quia ‘verbum caro factum est,’ unam significat esse personam; ‘habitavit,’ autem ‘in nobis,’ duas manisse naturas.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.1.16 (SC 499: 136):“Et fortassis ideo retro contingit Christum, ut ipso quoque actu signaret, quod non ejus anterius, quo praecedit omnia secundum quod dictum est: ‘In principio erat verbum,’ sed humanitatem, qua postea: ‘Verbum caro factum est,’ fide contigerit.” Cf. John 1:1 and 1:14.  See, here, Def. Tri. Cap. 3.3.1–35, esp. 14 (SC 478:66): “Quae omnia non contra Theodorum, nec contra epistulam venerabilis Ibae quae Theodorum laudavit, nec contra beatum Leonem qui similia docuit, sed potius contra Johannem et Lucam evangelistas ibi dixerunt.”

16 The Use of Scripture in Facundus’s In Defense of the Three Chapters

427

being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and His sweat was like a drop (gutta) of blood falling to the ground”).60 Facundus further cites numerous passages in support of this argument, in addition to a long passage from John Chrysostom in which he quotes John 12:27–28 several times.61

Against Judging the Dead One of Facundus’s key points throughout In Defense of the Three Chapters is against judging the dead. Since the theologians referred to as the “Three Chapters” (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Ibas, and Theodoret) were all long dead, this was one of the crucial points of disagreement that prevented Western theologians, and North Africans in particular, to assent to their condemnation. Facundus thus invokes several scriptural passages in favor of this viewpoint. Arguing that specific errors should not lead to a condemnation of any theologian’s entire work or doctrine (6.5), Facundus adds that: “we should fear that those we judge now, when all things are allowed but are not profitable to us (cf. 1 Cor 6:12), when the Son of man will have come in His majesty to judge, with all the angels, and that all the nations will be gathered before him (cf. Matt 25:31–32), that they would be our judges.”62 Similarly, he quotes Matt 18:18 in Book 10 to claim that “indeed, the Lord assigned to his church no power of binding or loosing as regards the dead when he was saying to his disciples: ‘whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’”63 Discussing Cyril in Book 11, Facundus goes one step further by invoking Matt 7:1–2 to argue that one should avoid judging in order not to be judged. He thus accuses the Eutychians of double standards, since they spare Cyril of their criticism, but not the Council of Chalcedon.64  Def. Tri. Cap. 3.3.14 (SC 478:66): “Nam et Johannes refert dicentem dominum: ‘Nunc anima mea turbata est; et quid dicam? Pater, salvifica me ex hora hac.’ Et Lucas: ‘Apparvit autem illi angelus de caelo confortans eum; et factus est in agonia, prolixius orabat; et factus est sudor ejus sicut gutta sanguinis decurrentis in terram.’” See further John 21:18–19, at 3.3.19. The Luke passage is also cited by John Chrysostom, In Matth. Hom. 83.1, quoted by Facundus at 3.3.25 (but it is not identified in SC 478:72).  Def. Tri. Cap. 3.3.21 (2 Cor 5:1–4); 22 (Matt 10:23); 23 (Luke 22:42); 23–24 and 33 (Matt 10:28); and 33 (John 10:18).  Def. Tri. Cap. 6.5.35 (SC 479:388): “Unde metuere debemus ne quos hic modo, ubi nobis omnia licent, sed non omnia expediunt, judicamus, cum judicare venerit filius hominis in majestate sua et omnes angeli cum eo et congregabuntur ante eum omnes gentes, ipsi sint judices nostri.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 10.4.32 (SC 484:266): “Nam ecclesiae suae nullam dominus in mortuis ligandi et solvendi tribuit potestatem, cum discipulis suis diceret: ‘Quaecumque alligaveritis super terram, erunt ligata in caeolo; et quaecumque solveritis super terram, erunt soluta et in caelo.’” Cf. Matt 18:18.  Def. Tri. Cap. 11.7.33 (SC 499:116–8): “Veritas enim dicit: ‘Nolite judicare, ut non judicemini; in quo autem judicaveritis, judicabimini; et in qua mensura mensi fueritis, metietur vobis’ (cf. Matt 7:1–2). Si ergo vel ipsi beato Cyrillo parcunt, si eum volunt in talibus excusari, non ulterius contra Chalcedonense

428

Éric Fournier

Keeping the Good Despite the Bad Another of Facundus’s main arguments, namely that one should focus on a theologian’s key points despite potential criticism, appears in defense of Ibas in Book 6.65 Here we also see an interesting change in his use of Scripture with a string of Old Testament texts, from which he presents three main examples (Asa, Jehoshaphat, and Hezekiah) whereas, thus far, we had mainly observed his use of New Testament passages, with a clear preference for the four evangelists. These examples are relevant because, for Facundus, just as Scripture praised King Asa of Judah despite the numerous serious accusations he faced, so too the Council of Chalcedon followed the same method regarding Ibas’s letter because it included an orthodox profession of faith despite unfair attacks against Cyril. The council therefore rightly judged Ibas’s letter to be orthodox.66 Facundus goes further, quoting and alluding to multiple passages from Kings and Chronicles (1 Kings 15:11, 12–13, 14, 18; 2 Chr 16:7, 10, 12) in a few paragraphs (6.1.11–14), to conclude, “how could anyone religious dare to reprove the synod of Chalcedon, because, keeping safe the usage and form of divine Scripture, it proclaimed as orthodox the letter of the venerable Ibas acknowledging that there is in Christ two natures and one person, which relates in the highest degree to the worship of God?”67 In the same fashion, Facundus tells the story of King Jehoshaphat, Asa’s son, who was also reproached for several serious offenses that included despising the prophets, but who in the end was praised by Scripture for honoring God.68 He hammers the point home by providing yet a third example, that of Hezekiah, “in the same manner, as we have said, divine Scripture, presenting the greater and better position, is accustomed to carry sentence concerning many things. The synod follows its form,

concilium dicant quod, non parcens mortuis, accusaverit insignis testimonii viros et plenos dierum in maxima ecclesiae dignitate defunctos.” Emphasis added.  Def. Tri. Cap. 6.1.10 (SC 479:310): “Et ideo jam, religiose imperator, attende quam fortiter calumnias haereticorum et sine ulla difficultate dissolvam, exempla proferens divinae scripturae, quomodo a majore et meliore parte de multis soleat ferre sententiam.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 6.1.10 (SC 479:310): “Cujus formam sicut in omnibus sancta synodus Chalcedonensis secuta est, ut epistulam venerabilis Ibae, quamvis de beato Cyrillo aliter quam res habuit suspicantis, tamen pro vera fidei confessione quam de Christo continent, orthodoxam judicaret. Sic regem Juda Asa, quem scimus non in parvis nec in paucis fuisse culpatum, eadem scriptura laudavit, cujus quae fuerint culpae prius memorare debemus, ac deinde quomodo ab ea fuerit praedicatus.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 6.1.15 (SC 479:314): “Quomodo religiosus quisquam reprehendere audeat synodum Chalcedonensem, quod consuetudinem scripturae divinae formamque custodiens, venerabilis Ibae epistulam, confitentem duas naturas et unam Christi esse personam, quod maxime ad culturam dei pertinet, pronuntiavit orthodoxam?”  Def. Tri. Cap. 6.1.21–24, alluding to 2 Chr 20:33 and 18:1–24; as well as quoting 2 Chr 19:2; 20:37; and 20:32.

16 The Use of Scripture in Facundus’s In Defense of the Three Chapters

429

with the result that it endorsed the letter of venerable Ibas.”69 In order to do so, Facundus quotes no less than eight passages in support of his point that, despite Hezekiah’s flaws, in the final analysis, Scripture praised him.70

Heresy is Obstinacy in Error, Not the Error Itself Building on this “positive selection” argument, Facundus also summons a wide variety of scriptural passages in order to defend his view that heresy is obstinacy in error, rather than the error itself. In a section defending Theodore, in which Facundus argues that he publicly corrected his erroneous views (10.2.1–9), he adds, “the apostle James said: ‘Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For we all offend in many ways’ (Jas 3:1–2). Therefore, since we all offend in many ways, why are we not all heretics, if not because it is not the offense but an obstinate defense of the offense that makes one a heretic?”71 To the same effect, Facundus uses the example of Paul, “the least of the apostles,” who reprimanded Peter, “the first of the apostles,” (see more below on this contrast) who was not following the truth of the gospel (Gal 2:14), in order to contrast the apostolic modesty that Theodore followed but that his “obstinate” accusers did not.72 This exegesis serves to praise Peter’s modesty, who accepts Paul’s rebuke, and to use him as a model to follow, which also allows Facundus to criticize Theodore’s accusers for not following it.

 Def. Tri. Cap. 6.1.25 (SC 479:320): “Quomodo, sicut diximus, a majore et meliore parte scriptura divina de multis soleat ferre sententiam, cujus formam sancta synodus secuta est, ut venerabilis Ibae epistulam approbaret.” See also Def. Tri. Cap. 6.2.1 for the same argument.  2 Chr 32:24–5 (6.1.26); 2 Kings 20:17–8 and Isa 39:6–7 (6.1.27); 2 Kings 18:3 and 5–7 (6.1.28); 2 Kings 18:3 and 5 (6.1.29); and 2 Kings 18:4 (6.1.31). As noted by SC 479:320n1, Facundus’s citation of Isa 39:6–7 varies from the Vulgate: 6.1.27 (SC 479:320): “Ecce dies veniunt [Vulg: venient], dicit dominus, et auferentur omnia quae sunt in domo tua [Vulg: in domo tua sunt], et quaecumque recondiderunt [Vulg: thesaurizaverunt] patres tui usque in hunc diem et [Vulg: ad diem hanc,] in Babylonem introibunt et non derelinquetur sermo quem dixit dominus [Vulg: in Babylonem; non relinquetur quidquam, dicit dominus]. Ecce ex filiis tuis [Vulg: Et de filiis tuis,] qui precedent ex te, [Vulg: qui exibunt de te,] quos generabis, adducentur [Vulg: quos genueris, tollent,] et erunt eunuchi in domo regis Babylonis.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 10.2.10 (SC 484:232): “Jacobus apostolus dicit: ‘Nolite plures magistri fieri, fratres mei, scientes quoniam majus judicium sumitis. In multis enim offendimus omnes’ (cf. Jas 3:1–2). Cum igitur omnes offendamus in multis, cur non omnes sumus haeretici, nisi quia non offensio, sed pertinax offensionis defensio, facit haereticum?”  Def. Tri. Cap. 10.2.14 (SC 484:234): “Proinde in Theodoro discere obstinate dignentur, etiam de facili lapsu sermonis admoniti, apostolicam modestiam pietatemque servare. Nam sic aliquando Petrus apostolorum primus, sicut jam diximus, cum non recte ambularet ad veritatem evangelii, reprehensus a Paulo minimo apostolorum, non indigne tulit, nec pro sui primatus gloria resistentem sibi despexit, quoniam caritas quae Paulum ad arguendam prioris culpam fidenter erexerat, eadem Petrum ad suscipiendam minimi correptionem dociliter inclinabat.”

430

Éric Fournier

“Test Everything; Hold Fast to What Is Good” The most frequent of this type of argument in Facundus’s In Defense of the Three Chapters is the command to “test everything; hold fast to what is good (1 Thess 5:21).” For instance, in order to argue that the Council of Chalcedon could not examine everyone’s words, and thus could ignore the dubious opinions of Theodore, he adds, “thus, since the synod could not examine everything from everyone, it did not think proper to condemn Theodore’s words because the judgement of the Apostle in this matter is sufficient for us, which said: ‘test everything; hold fast to what is good.’”73 Using the same verse in Book 11, Facundus continues his defense of Theodore to argue that he did not impose the authority of his words on anyone, an attribute which stands in contrast to Scripture itself, which all Christians are bound to follow.74 He supports this argument further by quoting Augustine’s De Trinitate to the effect that the bishop of Hippo hoped for independent and critical readers who would not believe his writings as authoritative, contrary to canonical writings, which they should believe no matter what.75 Applying the previously mentioned notion of heresy as obstinacy rather than ignorance, and adding the Christian principle of charity, Facundus invokes the same verse again in Book 12 to conclude that “But since it is sufficient, as we have read, that we disapprove the sins of others and also, if we find it, the ignorance of others, as the apostle said: ‘test everything; hold fast to what is good’; and since we do not judge the life of others as impious from a few culpable acts, but righteous from many more upright ones, following the evidence of divine Scripture, therefore we do not judge the doctrine of others as heretic from a few culpable words, but as Catholic from many more upright ones, following the evidence of the church of God.”76

 Def. Tri. Cap. 10.3.12 (SC 484:246): “Cum igitur omnium omnia synodus examinare non posset, non oportuit ut Theodori dicta damnaret, quoniam sufficit nobis in hoc apostoli sententia qua dictum est: ‘Omnia probate; quod bonum est tenete.’”  Def. Tri. Cap. 11.6.17 (SC 499:90): “Neque enim cuiquam auctoritatem dictorum ejus imposuit, ut sine ullo examine legerentur et quidquid scripsit inconcussum atque indiscussum teneretur ab omnibus. In his igitur habeatur de quibus apostolus ait: ‘Omnia probate; quod bonum est tenete’ (cf. 1 Thess 5:21). Aliter itaque scripturas divinas legimus quae canonicae vocantur, aliter autem eorum qui legend atque scribendi studio proficientes, per acquisitam quotidiano labore facultatem, sicut potuerunt, de his locuti sunt.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 11.6.17–18 (SC 499:90): “Ex quibus erat et ille vir sapientissimus ac modestissimus Augustinus, qui tertio quoque de trinitate libro (cf. Augustine, Trin. 3, prooem. [CCSL 50:128]) sic ait: ‘ . . . noli meis litteris, quam scripturis canonicis inservire, sed in illis et quod non credebas cum inveneris, incunctanter crede.’”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.1.52 (SC 499:158): “Sed quemadmodum illorum peccata, ita et horum si qua invenitur ignorantia, sufficit ut cum legimus improbemus, apostolo dicente: ‘Omnia probate, quod bonum est tenete’ (cf. 1 Thess 5:21). Atque ut illorum vitam, non ex quibusquam culpabilibus factis impiam sed ex aliis multo pluribus rectis justam, secundum scripturae dei testimonium judicamus, ita et horum doctrinam, non ex quibusdam culpabilibus dictis haereticam, sed ex aliis multo pluribus rectis catholicam secundum ecclesiae dei testimonium judicemus.”

16 The Use of Scripture in Facundus’s In Defense of the Three Chapters

431

Just like we apply this principle of charity to scriptural examples, it should also extend to those whom we consider heretics, according to Facundus. In support of this argument, which is yet another example of adapting and applying models found in Scripture, he cites the cases of King David and Aaron. Both had gravely sinned, but both were still praised in Scripture (cf. 2 Sam 11–12 and Exod 32:1–8). More specifically, for Facundus, it was because of David’s repentance of his crimes, despite their gravity, that Scripture praised him.77 The most interesting part of his argument, here, is the way that he applies this logic to the passage describing Aaron. For Facundus, there is an apparent contradiction between Scripture praising Aaron and the fact that he built the golden calf for the people to worship, but without any explicit mention that he repented of this sacrilege.78 Yet for Facundus, “the respect that we owe to holy Scriptures demands that we refuse to believe, despite this silence, that it could praise him unless he repented of such a sacrilege.”79 Thus for Facundus we should apply the same principle to “those,” like Theodore, “whose doctrine had been admitted in the church of God so that if one is offended by their words, one should first figure out whether they perhaps were closer to the truth than us who could not understand their intentions.”80 According to Facundus, the Luke passage that describes Jesus forgiving the criminal on the cross (Luke 23:40–43) shows a similar point when applied to Theodore’s theology. Because we simply do not know whether Theodore was ignorant of some aspect of the Trinity until his death, since he remained in communion with the church, or whether God allowed him also to repent of his ignorance, and to follow the criminal into paradise, we cannot judge him.81 As such, this is also another argument supporting Facundus’s view that one should not judge the dead. In both cases, once again, Facundus’s exegesis uses models to follow in order to defend the Three Chapters.

 Def. Tri. Cap. 12.1.48 (SC 499:156): “Item cum ab eadem scriptura videamus laudari David, qui perpetrato adulterio homicidium quoque conjunxit, quoniam in ea simul legimus, quod horum scelerum paenitentiam egerit, idcirco ab ea credimus esse laudatum.” Cf. 2 Sam 11–12.  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.1.49 (SC 499:156): “Cum vero laudat etiam pontificem Aaron qui vitulum fecit in Choreb, ut adoraretur a populo, nec refert ubi eum tanti sacrilegii paenituerit.” Cf. Exod 32:1–8.  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.1.49 (SC 499:156): “Exigit a nobis reverentia quam eidem sanctae scripturae debemus, ut quamquam hoc tacuerit, non tamen credamus quod eum laudare possit, nisi de tanto sacrilegio paenitentem.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.1.49 (SC 499:156): “Hanc igitur observantiam tenere nos oportet et in his quorum doctrina in ecclesia dei recepta est, ut si quid nos in eorum verbis, offenderit, prius quaeremus, ne forte non ipse veritatem, sed nos eorum intentionem minus potuimus invenire.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 10.4.25 (SC 484:262): “Nam vel ipsi probaretur quod usque in die mortis suae aliquid de incarnatione Christi nescierit, tamen cum non esset ab ejus ecclesia separatus, unde, sicut dixi, certum synodus haberet quod in ipsa hora qua efflaturus erat extremum, magna et investigabilis misericordia dei, quae latroni non ignorata scelera dimisit in cruce, nonetiam ipsi dedit pro tantis ejus in ecclesia laboribus et certaminibus adversus haereticos, ut ab ignorantia sua resipisceret et errore damnato latronem sequeretur, in paradisum statim et ipse cum Christo futurus.” Cf. Luke 23:40–3.

432

Éric Fournier

The Sick Woman Who Touched Jesus’s Cloak The story of the sick woman who touched Jesus’s cloak is one of the New Testament’s episodes from which Facundus develops the longest discussion in support of his point that heresy is about obstinacy rather than error (12.1.13–26). The scriptural passages he adduces in support of this point, in this context, are also part of a wider strategy that consists in presenting characters from holy texts who doubted aspects of Jesus’s divinity to ask whether we should consider them heretics.82 This rhetorical strategy, because the question is purely rhetorical, obviously intends to defend Theodore and Ibas from similar accusations. Facundus deploys no less than eleven scriptural quotations in this section.83 His point in insisting on this story seems clear from his conclusion: “Is it therefore acceptable to also condemn this woman among the heretics for the faith that permitted her healing and to whom the Lord said: ‘Daughter, your faith has healed you, go in peace’ (Luke 8:48)? In fact, if the faith of the very small should be condemned by those who seem to possess a great and perfect faith, why would this woman not be condemned?”84 Facundus was a powerful and educated man who lived according to the paternalistic late Roman social norms of his time, which considered women as inferior to men and among individuals of lower status. Hence in this example of direct application of Scripture, he assimilates his depiction of the woman of this story to “the very small” (parvulorum), which he contrasts with “those who seem to possess a great and perfect faith,” namely his theological enemies who supported condemning the Three Chapters. This also alludes, through his words denoting levels of faith, to his contrast between Peter and Paul (on which see more below).

Exegesis as Invective Beyond his use of Scripture in order to support his theological views, his defense of Chalcedon and of the Three Chapters more generally, Facundus also invokes biblical passages to attack his enemies. This is particularly the case in Book 12 which targets

 E.g., 12.1.12, quoting Col 2:5, before asking (SC 499:134): “Numquid ergo debemus istos haereticos dicere, quoniam videbat apostolus quod illis ad utilitatem fidei deerat? Absit. Nam quodomo spiritu cum talibus idem esset apostolus et eorum ordini congauderet?”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.1.13 (Luke 8:45); 14 (Luke 8:46–7); 15 (Mark 5:33); 16 (John 1:1 and 14); 19 (Acts 19:12 and 5:14–5); 20 (Acts 5:16; Luke 8:48; as well as John 11:21 and 32); and 21 (John 11:39).  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.1.20 (SC 499:138): “Placet igitur, ut istam quoque mulierem condemnemus inter haereticos pro ea fide qua sanari meruit et de qua ei dominus dixit: ‘Filia, fides tua te salvam fecit, vade in pace’? (cf. Luke 8:48.) Si enim damnanda est parvulorum fides ab eis qui magnae et perfectae fidei sibi videntur, cur non et ista damnetur?” Emphasis added.

16 The Use of Scripture in Facundus’s In Defense of the Three Chapters

433

Emperor Justinian.85 This use of Scripture is best categorized as a form of invective.86 Facundus starts by attacking his theological enemies at large, as in Book 1 where he discusses the view that Mary is “truly and properly the mother of God” (1.4). There he invokes Ps 87[86]:5 (“Mother Zion said: ‘a man and a man were made in her and the Most High himself established her’”); John 1:1 (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”); and 1:14 (“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us”), while also citing 1 John 1:1–2 extensively to attack his enemies: “Why then do the Nestorians, as if they were more subtle and conscientious than the apostle John himself and nay, even than the Word of God who spoke about himself through the apostle John, refuse to assign to God what belongs to humanity and to say that the blessed Mary was truly and properly the mother of God?”87 In Book 4, while discussing the historical context of the accusations leveled against Theodore, Facundus raises the point that many of the bishops who signed Justinian’s edict were pressured to do so.88 Thus Menas of Constantinople (4.4.2), Zoilus of Alexandria (4.4.8), Ephrem of Antioch (4.4.8), and Peter of Jerusalem (4.4.9), despite initially refusing, ended up acquiescing to the request to sign. Regarding Ephrem, Facundus writes: “after he was told that he would be banished if he did not do this, he came to prefer his office to the truth.”89 The interesting part, in the present context, is Facundus’s interpretation of these events: “we know that this behavior was caused, as if by inheritance, by the transgression of that (illius) first woman.”90 Without naming her, the “illius” makes it obvious that this is meant in a negative way (in similar fashion to his use of the story of the sick woman already encountered) as Facundus then alludes to Gen 2:17 by writing: “first she responded that it was forbidden to her to eat the fruit from the tree that was in the middle of paradise, then she touched what she had herself declared forbidden and convinced her husband to eat it. What to say,

 Already noted by SC 471:17n2; Eno, “Ferrandus,” 101–2; Maas, Junilius, 62–3; A. Solignac, “Un auteur trop peu connu: Facundus d’Hermiane,” REAug 51 (2005): 357–74 (esp. 371); and S. Adamiak, Carthage, Constantinople and Rome. Imperial and Papal Interventions in the Life of the Church in Byzantine Africa (533–698) (Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press, 2016), 83–4.  See further R. Flower, Emperors and Bishops in Late Roman Invective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); R. Flower, Imperial Invectives; and most recently B. Waldron, “Diocles the Timid: Invective History and Divine Justice in Lactantius’s De mortibus persecutorum 17–19,” JLA 14.1 (2021): 29–49.  Def. Tri. Cap. 1.4.49 (SC 471:220): “Quid ergo Nestoriani, quasi cautiores et diligentiores ipso Johanne apostolo, immo ipso deo verbo, qui sic de se in Johanne loquebatur apostolo, refugiunt quae sunt humanitatis deo tribuere, et beatam Mariam dicere vere et proprie matrem dei?” Emphasis added.  Justinian’s In damnationem Trium Capitulorum (CPG 6881), from 544/5, on which see Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition 2, 2:421–2.  Def. Tri. Cap. 4.4.9 (SC 478:196): “Postquam ei denuntiatum est quod excludendus esset, nisi faceret, sui potius honoris quam veritatis dilector inventus est.” Emphasis added.  Def. Tri. Cap. 4.4.10 (SC 478:196): “Hoc autem, velut haereditarium, de praevaricatione illius primae mulieris cognoscimus esse contractum.” Emphasis added.

434

Éric Fournier

other than what the Lord himself had already said: ‘But yet, as the Son of Man comes, do you think he will find faith on the earth?’ (Luke 18:8).”91 In addition to insulting his enemies by claiming that the origin of their faults came from Eve, not only a woman but also the original temptress who led her husband astray, Facundus attacks his fellow bishops who support the Three Chapters’s condemnation in numerous ways.92 We have already seen how he presented Ephrem of Antioch as preferring the dignity of his office to the truth (4.4.9). In Book 5, a long passage (5.4.10–19) continues this aggressive approach by invoking Philippians, in which the apostle explains that he will send Timothy to them soon in order to get news from them (Phil 2:19), in order to defend Leo’s involvement with the Council of Chalcedon. For Facundus argues against his enemies’ point that Leo had approved Chalcedon based only on the definition of faith established at the council, rather than the full acts, and, therefore, that Ibas’s letter should be condemned because Leo had not examined it.93 Facundus then quotes Paul’s subsequent words, directed against his own enemies: “I have no one else like [Timothy], who will show genuine concern for your welfare. For everyone looks out for their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ (Phil 2:20–21).”94 Going further still, he specifies that Paul did not write this against his fellow believers (Phil 4:2–3), “but rather against those about whom he wrote: ‘look out for those dogs, look out for those evildoers, look out for the mutilation’ (Phil 3:2).”95 Facundus goes on to quote extensively from Phil 2:20–30 in the next several paragraphs (5.4.12–18), to ultimately compare Leo to Paul, and to parallel both sets of enemies: “Thus likewise the blessed Leo, writing, did not attend to judgement regarding the mentioned letter of Ibas, nor the bishopric restored to the same Ibas, nor the other things which were settled upon regarding these persons in the Synod of Chalcedon, nor the canons of ecclesiastical discipline healthfully established there by the holy

 Def. Tri. Cap. 4.4.10 (SC 478:196): “Quae prius interdictum sibi fuisse respondit, ne ligno quod erat in medio paradisi comederet et postea quod ipsa illicitum pronuntiaverat usurpavit, ac viro ut comederet persuasit (cf. Gen 2:17). Et quid dicamus ad haec, nisi quod ipse dominus dixit: ‘Verumtamen veniens filius hominis, putas inveniet fidem in terra?’” Cf. Luke 18:8.  Cf. L. Neville, Byzantine Gender (Leeds: ARC Humanities Press, 2019), 13–7 and passim. Thanks to Mark Tizzoni for this reference.  Def. Tri. Cap. 5.4.1 (SC 479:264): “Quod dicentes ad Romanam ecclesiam definitionem tantum fidei, non etiam gesta concilii Chalcedonensis fuisse perlata, ex hoc volunt efficere ut credamus quod in ipsa tantum fidei definitione beatus Leo synodi Chalcedonensis decreta firmaverit, et nos quoque memoratam epistulam venerabilis Ibae damnemus.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 5.4.10 (SC 479:270): “‘Neminem enim habeo unanimem qui sincera affectione pro vobis sollicitus sit. Omnes enim sua quaerunt, non quae sunt Christi Jesu’ (Phil 2:20–21).”  Def. Tri. Cap. 5.4.11 (SC 479:272): “Sed illos potius de quibus ibi ait: ‘Videte canes, videte malos operarios, videte concisionem.’” Cf. Phil 3:2. On this page (i.e., SC 479:272, at b.), Phil 4:2–3 is mistakenly identified as Phil 4:23.

16 The Use of Scripture in Facundus’s In Defense of the Three Chapters

435

fathers.”96 Rather, writes Facundus, he aimed at “the arrogant extolling of the bishop of Constantinople.”97 Interestingly, in the present context, Facundus adds, “thus the writings of the apostolic see must be defended by examples from apostolic writers,” in order to protect the synod of Chalcedon.98 Along the same lines, Facundus also compares Leo’s enemies to the hypocrite scribes and Pharisees, thereby alluding to verses from Matthew: “to be sure this is what the Lord denounced among scribes and hypocrite Pharisees: that they pay the tithe on mint, dill, and cumin, and they forsake the faith and that which is important in the law. Certainly this is also what he similarly reproved in those blind leaders themselves: to strain out a gnat and to swallow a camel.”99 In both cases here, Scripture provides Facundus with a framework in which to understand his situation, by casting Leo as Paul and Leo’s enemies as Paul’s enemies, the hypocrite scribes and Pharisees. In Book 6, while arguing that specific errors should not invalidate the entire faith of any of the Fathers, Facundus claims that the synod of Chalcedon understood this well, which explains why it accepted Ibas’s letter, and Cyril, Theophilus, and John Chrysostom as orthodox.100 “But we,” Facundus writes, “judging ourselves wiser than the holy synod, are eager to acquire that hollow glory, through contention and here and there from disgraceful stubbornness; we drag out the most trifling mistrust concerning character into a rule of faith and not as though he has exalted a straw into a timber, which, if not of the same size, it is nevertheless of the same nature, but we alter a worthless stalk into an unnaturally vast battering ram, which could shake and strike the whole world of the Roman empire, for nothing.”101 The last line is particularly fascinating insofar as it is indicative of Facundus’s awareness of the potential implications that the theological conflict pitting the bishops (the “we” of the whole

 Def. Tri. Cap. 5.4.18 (SC 479:274–6): “Ita etiam beatissimus Leo scribens, non sententiam super epistulam Ibae prolatam, neque episcopatum praedicto Ibae redditum, et cetera quae in synodo Chalcedonensi de quibus personis decreta sunt, neque canones ecclesiasticae disciplinae salubriter illic a sanctis patribus constitutos attendit.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 5.4.19 (SC 479:276): “Sed superbam potius elationem Constantinopolitani episcopi.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 5.4.19 (SC 479:276): “Sic apostolicorum scriptorium exemplis asserenda sunt sedis apostolicae scripta.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 5.4.36 (SC 479:286): “Nempe hoc est quod in scribis et pharisaeis hypocritis dominus arguit mentham et anethum et cyminum decimare, et quae sunt graviora legis et fidem relinquere. Nempe hoc est quod id ipsis ducibus caecis similiter objurgat, culicem colare et camelum glutire.” Cf. Matt 23:23–24.  Def. Tri. Cap. 6.5.38 (SC 479:390): “Quod etiam sancta synodus intellexit, ut et illius epistulam [Ibas] pronuntiaret orthodoxam et illos [Cyrillus, Theophilus, et Johannes] acceptaret ut patres.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 6.5.38 (SC 479:390): “Nos autem, per contentionem et inanem gloriam quam passim etiam de ignominiosa praesumptione gestimus acquirere, sapientiores nos tanta synodo judicantes, levissimam de persona suspicionem traximus ad regulam fidei et non quasi festucam auximus in trabem (cf. Matt 7:3–5), quae si non ejusdem quantitates, ejusdem tamen est generis, sed contemptibilem stipulam in ingentem vertimus arietem, qui totum Romani orbem imperii frustra quateret atque vexaret.” Emphasis added.

436

Éric Fournier

passage, regardless of which side they are on) against each other could have on the whole Roman world (totum Romani orbem imperii). At the same time, the context makes it obvious who the bad bishops ultimately responsible for this disaster are.

Book 12: Historical and Scriptural Exempla Aimed at Justinian With Book 12, however, Facundus ratchets up the invective, particularly by a pointed combination of historical and scriptural exempla that are clearly aimed at Justinian, whom he has addressed directly throughout the work. To complement the historical examples from recent emperors such as Marcian (reigned 450–457) and Leo (reigned 457–474), Facundus deploys a panoply of Old Testament passages, mostly from Numbers, 2 Chronicles and 2 Samuel. Thus he praises Emperor Marcian because he followed and respected the bishops’ opinion and forbade any public discussion on what had been decided at Chalcedon.102 He insists particularly on the importance of listening and following episcopal judgment: “this emperor Marcian, true father of the state and true son of the church, not going before the bishops, but following their decrees, proclaims by his edict that anyone seeks falsehood who, after having learned the truth about a matter, continues to discuss the matter further.”103 Similarly Facundus underlines Marcian’s ability to distinguish when he should be using his imperial power from when he should be an obedient Christian.104 And here, using a rhetorical strategy that will dominate the rest of Book 12, imagining that all historical models that are good enough to emulate acted in this manner because they remembered biblical exempla, Facundus argues that Marcian also remembered what happened to King Uzziah. Indeed, the Lord had punished Uzziah with leprosy for abrogating the privilege to burn incense to the Lord, which was restricted to the priests, the descendants of Aaron (2 Chr 26:18–19).105 It is easy to imagine that Justinian is then the object of the subsequent lines:

 Def. Tri. Cap. 12.2.20 (SC 499:170): “Marcianus quoque imperator post sacerdotum sententiam . . . nec cuiquam semel judicata recteque disposita revolvere et de his publice disputare permisit, qui suo edicto omnibus discussionem eorum quae Chalcedone judicata sunt negans.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.2.23 (SC 499:172): “Ecce Marcianus princeps verus reipublicae pater et verus ecclesiae filius, sacerdotalium non praevius, sed pedisequus decretorum, edicto suo pronuntiat quod quisquis post veritatem repertam aliquid ulterius discutit, mendacium quaerit.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.1 (SC 499:174): “Cognovit ille quibus in causis uteretur principis potestate et in quibus exhiberet oboedientiam Christiani.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.1 (SC 499:174): “Sicut qui meminerat exitus regis Oziae, qui postquam praevaluit multis gentibus et factus est gloriosus, exaltum est cor ejus, ut incensum poneret super altare, quod non licebat nisi solis sacerdotibus filiis Aaron, propter quod ejus obstinatissimam frontem quam reverential deserverat, lepra confudit.” Cf. 2 Chr 26:18–9.

16 The Use of Scripture in Facundus’s In Defense of the Three Chapters

437

Therefore Marcian, this most modest prince, knowing King Uzziah to have gone not unpunished because he had presumed to sacrifice to God, which is permitted as yet for every single one of the priests of the second order, acknowledged it to be impossible without much greater punishment to concede to him, either to strike down that which had already been resolved according to the Christian rule of faith, which is by no means allowed, or to establish new canons, which is not allowed unless many priests of the first order have been gathered into one.106

Pursuing this same vein, Facundus cites the further examples of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram (Num 16:24–26): “since all of them then usurped the priests’ office, in that they dared to offer sacrifice to God, which is a lot less than to decree about the Christian faith; they were swallowed up by the devouring of a gaping earth, they left behind, through their novel and singular destruction, an example to stun all of the presumptuous.”107 If there was any doubt remaining about the real subject of these lines and this entire chapter, Facundus adds about this episode, “How, therefore, could a religious and wise emperor, but a layman, have believed that he could with impunity allow either to retract what had already been decreed by holy Fathers about the Christian faith or to himself decree new points, when Levi’s sons, that is Korah and those of his tribe who followed him . . . did not remain unpunished for an action that we have declared to be incomparably less serious?”108 Evidently, the mention of “to retract what had already been decreed by holy Fathers about the Christian faith” was a direct jab at Justinian for his attempt to overturn Chalcedon. But perhaps the most striking of these Old Testament exempla that Facundus invokes against Justinian is the story of Uzzah and God’s stark command that none of the Kohathites, who carry the holy objects, “can touch the holy things or they will die (Num 4:15)” (at 12.4.10). Facundus’s genius in these passages is that he does not directly address Justinian, but imagines that Marcian considered all of these biblical examples as a justification for his own admirable behavior, behavior that other Christian rulers, like Justinian, should seek to emulate. In this case, Facundus’s invective proceeds from the inverted model of Marcian, whose own (imagined) exegesis operates as the model that Justinian should follow.

 Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.2 (SC 499:174): “Sciens igitur ille modestissimus princeps, Oziae regi non impune cessisse, quia sacrificare deo praesumpsit, quod licitum est singulo cuique etiam secundi oridinis sacerdoti, multo magis impune sibi cedere non posse cognovit, vel quae jam de fide christiana rite fuerant constituta discutere, quod nullatenus licet, vel novos constituere canones, quod non nisi multis et in unum congregatis primi ordinis sacerdotibus licet.” Emphasis added.  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.4 (SC 499:176): “Tamen quoniam simul omnes (Chore, Dathan et Abiron) usurpaverunt officium sacerdotum, ut immolare deo auderent, quod multo minus est quam de fide Christiana decernare, terrae dehiscentis absorpti voratu novo et singulari suo exitio stupendum cunctis exemplum praesumptoribus reliquerunt.” Emphasis added; cf. Num 16:24–6 and 16:30–2.  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.5 (SC 499:176): “Quomodo ergo sibi laico religiosus et sapiens imperator crederet impune cessurum, vel sanctorum patrum quae de fide jam decreta fuerant retractare vel nova ipse decernere, cum filiis Levi, id est Chore et his qui eum de sua tribu secuti sunt . . . id quod incomparabiliter minus esse probavimus, impune non cessit?” Emphasis added.

438

Éric Fournier

Indeed Facundus summarizes Uzzah’s story: while the ark of God laid on a chariot and the oxen got excited, Uzzah held the ark with his hand to prevent it from falling down, which irritated the Lord who, as Scripture said, “And he struck him down for his temerity, and he died there close to the ark of God (2 Sam 6:7).”109 Still using Marcian as a surrogate for Justinian, Facundus concludes about Uzzah’s story: “In fact, as regards those who preach the truth . . . the church, of which they are the drivers and the doctors, seem to waver like this ark; but it is not Uzzah’s duty to hold it.”110 The message seems straightforward: “those who preach the truth,” the bishops, are causing the church, like the ark of the story, to vacillate, yet like Uzzah, it is not the duty of any layman to handle holy objects or of any emperor to dictate professions of faith. The function of these exegetical passages is clearly, therefore, to serve as a warning to Justinian that, should he continue on this path, he may find himself on the receiving end of God’s punishment for imitating those who committed similar deeds in the past. Facundus is quite explicit on this separation of duties between priests and laymen: “only Christ can simultaneously possess royal and priestly authority.”111 “But distributing its (i.e., Christ’s manifest light) gifts to different people, in the same way that it has forbidden to priests things that are proper to kings, it has forbidden to kings things that are proper to priests. Therefore, what manner of a wise man would not judge sacrilegious wanting to appear to be what only Christ is?”112 This lays the groundwork for Facundus to praise Marcian, during whose reign the church was at peace, and especially Leo, during whose reign the heretics rose again. But following the model presented by Facundus, “[Leo] also did what behooved a Christian emperor: he sent general letters to metropolitan bishops in order to consult them about Timothy of Alexandria the parricide bishop and about the Council of Chalcedon.”113 By praising Marcian and Leo, Facundus implicitly attacks Justinian for not following the ecclesiastical procedures and usurping the episcopal role in determining the

 Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.12 (SC 499:180–2): “Qui cum de domo patris ejus adduceretur arca super plaustrum novum imposita, quoniam cum calcitrarent boves extendit manum, et tenuit eam ne caderet, iratus est indignation dominus contra eum, sicut scriptura dicit: ‘Et percussit eum super temeritate, qui mortuus est ibi juxta arcam dei.’” Cf. 2 Sam 6:7.  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.14 (SC 499:182): “Sed enim praedicatoribus veritatis, . . . videtur ecclesia, cujus vectores doctoresque sunt, velut arca illa nutare; sed non est Ozae officii continere.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.16 (SC 499:184): “Christi solius esse regnum cum sacerdotio simul habere.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.17 (SC 499:184): “Sed in diversos dona sua distribuens [12.3.16: manifesta lux Christi], sicut quae propria sunt regni sacerdotibus, ita quae propria sunt sacerdotii regibus interdixit. Quocirca quemadmodum vir sapiens non profanum judicaret hoc velle videri, quod solus est Christus?”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.17 (SC 499:184): “Hoc et ipse fecit [Leo] quod imperatorem decuit Christianum, ut per metropolitanos episcopos litteras generales mitteret, consulens de Timotheo Alexandrino episcopo parricida, vel de Chalcedonensi concilio.”

16 The Use of Scripture in Facundus’s In Defense of the Three Chapters

439

faith.114 Yet throughout the whole passage, Marcian’s imagined exegesis is what prevents Facundus from crossing the line into full-fledged invective by attacking the emperor only through historical examples. The biblical exempla are key, here, because they provide the additional validation of the holy text, which simple historical examples could not. Using an expression that he applied to Justinian earlier in the work, “pious emperor” (cf. 1.1.13 and 12.5.19: religiose imperator), Facundus praises Leo by using the superlative form of the same expression to write “Leo, the most pious emperor (religiosissimus imperator), had accepted that it was not within the remit of temporal power to frighten the priests of God, but rather to instill in them the fear of God almighty against the fear of men.”115 Judging under the pressure of another can lead to accusations of not judging correctly, which happened in the past according to Facundus: “It is thus that the church has already been disturbed when the secular power usurped in the person of Emperor Constantius II what had not been given to him.”116 Quoting Hilary to the effect that this was caused by the “irreligious impious,” who went as far as “exiling bishops, demoting the priests, terrorizing the people, endangering the faith,” Facundus contrasts Leo, who did not trouble the peace of the church because he did not have the audacity to take over what belonged to the priests regarding the doctrine of the Lord.117 So, in addition to heretics like Constantius II, Facundus also claims, “knowing that after Christ’s Incarnation (post adventum domini) only pagan princes have simultaneously held the empire and the priesthood, [Leo] judged what had at one time been the practice of the pagans not to be fitting for a Christian

 For the argument that Constantine established the model to follow by using exile in the carrying out of counciliar decisions and sentences and, thus, delegating some power to the bishops, see É. Fournier, “Constantine and Episcopal Banishment: Continuity and Change in the Settlement of Christian Disputes,” in Clerical Exile in Late Antiquity, ed. J. Hillner, J. Enberg, and J. Ulrich (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2016), 47–65.  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.21 (SC 499:188): “Leo religiosissimus imperator, non de temporali potestate quam acceperat sacerdotes dei terreret, sed potius contra timorem humanum timorem eis dei omnipotentis incuteret.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.23 (SC 499:188–90): “Convincitur enim non recte quisque judicasse, quod compellente alio judicavit. Hinc aliquando jam conturbata fuit ecclesia, cum in ea sibi saecularis potestas per imperatorem Constantium quod ei non datum est usurparet.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.24–5 (SC 499:190): “‘Ob eas res quae irreligiose ab impiis . . . ut exsulent episcopi, demutentur sacerdotes, plebes terreantur, fides periclitetur . . . ’ (Hil. De synodis [PL 10:483 AB]). Idcirco igitur piae memoriae Leo quietem non contrubavit ecclesiae, quia non suo arbitrio ac potestate praesumpsit doctrinae dominicae decreta statuere, nec quidquam solis creditum sacerdotibus usurpavit.” Cf. Fulgentius, Ep. 6 (PL 67:922; trans. Price, Acts of the Council, 113), who refers to Hil. Ad Const. II (Price, 113n20). Cf. R. Flower, “Witnesses for the Persecution: Textual Communities of Exile under Constantius II,” SLA 3.3 (2019): 337–68; and É. Fournier, “Episcopal Banishment under Constantine’s Immediate Successors: Solidifying the Pattern,” in Mobility and Exile and the End of Antiquity, ed. D. Rohmann, J. Ulrich, and M. Vallejo (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2018), 51–67, for complementary approaches to this topic.

440

Éric Fournier

prince.”118 Because if Leo had wanted to dictate the Christian faith “what even the Apostle did not strive for, who says: ‘We do not govern your faith, but we contribute to your joy (2 Cor 1:24),’ by decreeing first what seemed to be his liking, he would afterwards have needlessly led the bishops of Christ to assent to it, and would have forced them to sign with an accepting hand what he himself had devised.”119 The invective is accumulating here, presenting the danger that Justinian is incurring if he pursues his current course of action: he would be no better than the heretical Constantius II, the pagan rulers who followed Christ’s incarnation (most likely Julian, here, in the context of Constantius II), and would go against apostolic principle. Once again, the scriptural exempla validate the historical ones. Similarly invoking the examples of the councils of Rimini (359) and Ephesus (449), Facundus claims that Leo remembered that “a council gathered by constraint only ever subscribed to falsities,” and, therefore, “left the confirmation of the faith to the bishops’ examination, to whom this power was given,” which was “done according to the truth, inasmuch as it was not the decision of the secular power that was approved.”120 Because, if Leo would have himself decided first what was just, and then had it approved by the bishops, even if it were just and pious, it would have been suspicious because of his presumption.121 Once again this seems to be targeting Justinian squarely, as does the following: “Did Marcian and Leo gather councils to confirm their hasty decision? Then, having changed their mind, according to the agitation of their spirits, did they force the bishops of God to change the previous decrees with the result that seriousness (gravitas) became a mockery and that the synodal authority which requires respect became loathsome? These two never took away from the preachers of the church the charge of the divine sacraments.”122 This is because, once again, these two model rulers knew what the Lord had said:

 Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.26 (SC 499:190): “Quoniam sciens quod post adventum domini gentiles tantum principes imperium simul sacerdotiumque tenuerunt, judicavit non decere principem Christianum quod fuit aliquando gentilium.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.26 (SC 499:190): “Quod si dominari appeteret fidei christianae, quod nec apostolus appetivit, qui dixit: ‘Non enim dominamur fidei vestrae, sed adjutores sumus gaudii vestri’ (cf. 2 Cor 1:24), et prius ipse quod ei videbatur pro libito suo decernens, postea supervacue ad subscribendum Christi sacerdotes adduceret, et cogeret his quae ipse adinvenerat manus assentorias dare.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.27 (SC 499:192): “Memor etiam praedictus Augustus, quod nusquam coactum Concilium nisi falsitati subscripserit, sicut in Arimino factum est Constantio compellente, et apud Ephesum opprimente Dioscoro, confirmationem fidei sacerdotum dimisit examini, quorum et commissa est potestati, quae tunc vere facta creditor, si non saecularis potestatis sententiae subscribatur.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.30 (SC 499:192): “Quod si prior hoc quod aequum erat constituere vellet et postea quaerere episcoporum sententia quod constituerat roborari, quamvis justum religiosumque decretum, multis tamen faceret tali praesumptione suspectum.” Emphasis added.  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.32 (SC 499:194): “Numquid enim Marcianus ac Leo ad confirmandam praecipitem sententiam suam concilia congregabant, rursumque mutati, pro sui animi discursatione, cogebant dei sacerdotes pristina mutare decreta, ut in ludibrium gravitas, et in satietatem venire exspectanda

16 The Use of Scripture in Facundus’s In Defense of the Three Chapters

441

through Solomon, reminding kings: “They made you master of the feast? Do not exalt yourself; be among them as one of them; take good care of them and then be seated (Sir 32:1–2).” The Lord said the same again in the Gospel precisely about the preacher of the divine word: “Who do you think is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants of his household to give them their measure of wheat at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find at work when he arrives (Matt 24:45–46; Luke 12:42–43).”123

Following these, Facundus seems to have removed any restraint: “these words of the Gospel, how could they have not moved religious and wise princes so that they did not involve themselves insolently into the dangers of such an affair?”124 To be clear on the meaning of giving the measure of wheat at the proper time (in tempore), Facundus adds, “If, therefore, someone who is ignorant of these dangers, because he wishes to appear wise, rudely and with no benefit to persuade, disturbs the church with questions of his own free will, he is not the steward, but the waster of the Lord’s family and the disperser of God’s mystery.”125

All Laymen Should Submit to Bishops There should be a good balance between ruler and bishops, according to Facundus. For on the one hand, Peter (1 Pet 2:17) said: “Fear God, honor the king,” but on the other hand, Paul (Heb 13:17) said to all Christians: “Obey your leaders and submit to them, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account of your souls, so that they do it with joy, and not with groans, which would not be profitable to you.”126 For Facundus, this implies that Paul did not only mean the populace in general, “but that he asked to kings themselves also to obey and to submit to the leaders

reverenter synodalis auctoritas? Illi numquam dispensationem divinorum sacramentorum ecclesiae praedicatoribus abstulerunt.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.33 (SC 499:194): “Sicut in admonitio regum per Salomonem dominus dixit: ‘Rectorem te instituerunt? Ne extollaris: esto in illis, quasi unus ex ipsis curam illorum adhibe, et sic conside’ (cf. Sir 32:1–2). Sic proprie de praedicatore divini verbi rursus idem dominus in evangelio dixit: ‘Quis putas est fidelis dispensator et prudens, quem constituit dominus super familiam suam, ut det illis in tempore tritici mensuram? Beatus ille servum quem cum venerit dominus, invenerit ita facientem.’” Cf. Matt 24:45–6 and Luke 12:42–3.  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.34 (SC 499:196): “Quae verba evangelii quomodo religiosos et sapientes principes non moverent, ne se tanti negotii periculis insolenter ingererent?” Emphasis added.  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.35 (SC 499:196): “Si quis igitur horum periculorum nescius, cum videri doctus appetit, importune ac nulla utilitate suadente, spontaneis quaestionibus ecclesiam turbat, hic non dispensator familiae dominicae, sed dissipator est et mysteriorum dei dispersor.” Emphasis added.  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.36 (SC 499:196): “Petrus apostolum dicens: ‘Deum timete, regem honorificate’”; 12.3.37 (SC 499:198): “Sic etiam cum Paulus ejus coapostulus Christianis omnibus legitur dicens: ‘Oboedite praepositis vestris, et subjacete eis. Ipsi enim pervigilant quasi rationem reddituri pro animabus vestris, ut cum gaudio hoc faciant, non gementes; hoc enim non expedit vobis.’”

442

Éric Fournier

of the church of Christ, and to understand that their souls were entrusted to the care of the bishops, if they do not perform uselessly [their task] in the name of Christ.”127 By contrast to the positive examples of Marcian and Leo, Facundus uses the negative example of Zeno, who forced the Henotikon upon the church of Christ, and hereby providing another direct attack against Justinian’s intended plan about the Three Chapters. Indeed, for Facundus, Zeno used his power to decree whatever he wanted, thereby “trampling underfoot the reverence owed to God’s order,” an example of “thoughtless power,” and of one “who did not understand that confusion does not produce unity.”128 Once again, this appears to be aimed directly at Justinian’s attempt to solve the split within the Eastern Christian Church that, from Facundus’s perspective, only caused more division and chaos. This is especially true when, compared to other kinds of work, which have their own workshops and workers, “divine letters” (divinae litterae) have no school or masters, “and about which one who has never acquired knowledge thinks himself most expert in debating.”129 This last point, as mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, was a pointed attack against Justinian who considered himself a theologian, used Scripture in his own texts, and dictated statements regarding the faith to bishops. In the context of the larger argument that Facundus makes forcefully and repeatedly in Book 12, that royal and episcopal powers have their respective spheres of competence and authority, the veiled jab at the emperor does not seem so veiled after all.130

Episcopal Parrhesia In the concluding chapter of the work, Facundus raises the stakes even more, deploying an exegetical strategy that interprets scriptural passages alluding to leaders and other figures of authority, particularly in the Old Testament, as designating bishops in his own time. Thus, for example, he quotes Ezekiel to warn the emperor, “Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the people of Israel; so pay attention to the words

 Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.37 (SC 499:198): “Non tantum plebejae multitudini, neque solis proceribus, sed ipsis quoque regibus demandetur ut oboediant et subjaceant praepositis ecclesiae Christi, suasque animas sacerdotum rationi commissas intellegant, si non inaniter funguntur nomine Christiano.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.4.1 (SC 499:198): “Zeno imperator, calcata reverentia ordinis dei . . . potestas inconsiderata . . . nec intellexit quod non confusio faciat unitatem.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.4.11–12 (SC 499:204): “Nam et suas habent officinas vel artifices omnia quae ex proposito docere videmus. . . . quoniam illi hoc integre scire possunt, qui ab ipsius artis sunt praeceptoribus instituti. Solae in contemptu sunt divinae litterae, quae nec suam scholam nec magistros habeant et de quibus peritissime disputare se credat qui numquam didicit.”  Cf. also Def. Tri. Cap. 12.4.15 (SC 499:206): “Quibus ille credulus, existimavit per singularem sapientiam, quam ei praeter assentatores nemo tribuerat, invenire se posse rationem faciendae unitatis, quam nullus ante per tot tempora potuerit invenire.” While written about Zeno, this passage could apply equally to Justinian.

16 The Use of Scripture in Facundus’s In Defense of the Three Chapters

443

from my mouth. When I say to a sinner, ‘you will surely die,’ and you do not warn the impious to avoid his way, he will die because of his iniquity, but I will hold you accountable for their blood. If, however, you do warn the wicked person to divert from their wicked way and they do not turn from their wickedness, they will die for their sin, but you will have saved your soul.”131 Facundus continues that bishops are thus mandated to exercise this Christian form of parrhesia, or boldness of speech, even toward Christian rulers, for “it is certain that even the rulers of the people belong to this house of Israel.”132 Further, a quote from Exod 28:29: “And Aaron will bear the judgments of the sons of Israel” shows, for Facundus, that “these words make us understand that bishops will be judged for the people’s sins.”133 Facundus goes on to evoke the example of Theodosius I as a model: because the emperor “humbled himself and made public penitence of his own sin,” since “he understood wisely that . . . it was because of his submission to the bishops of God that he would come to life.”134 And, of course, the message to Justinian would be to step up and follow this model of Christian piety to become a second Theodosius: “We must therefore believe that if God were now to raise some Ambrose, a Theodosius would not be wanting either.”135 Interestingly, this implies that, in this scenario, Facundus incarnated Ambrose. Truth should prevail over the status of the messenger, writes Facundus, continuing on the theme of parrhesia. Indeed, the mouth through which truth is spoken should not matter, since truth was once spoken by a female donkey.136 “And if it seems that we need to get a prophet Nathan every time a prince has sinned, where would you find a Nathan now so that the prince, who has assuredly sinned like David,

 Def. Tri. Cap. 12.5.4 (SC 499:212): “Ad Ezechielem dominus dicit: ‘Fili hominis, speculatorem te dedi domui Israel, et audies ex ore meo sermonem. In eo cum dixero peccatori: morieris, et non fueris locutus ut caveat impius a via sua; ille quidem iniquitate sua morietur, sanguinem autem ejus de manu tua exquiram. Tu autem si praedixeris impio viam suam iniquam ut avertatur ab ea, et non aversus fuerit ab ea; ille quidem in iniquitate sua morietur et tu animam tuam liberabis.’” Cf. Ezek 3:17–9.  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.5.5 (SC 499:212): “Ad hanc autem domum Israel certum est etiam principes populi pertinere.” On parrhesia, see, e.g., P. Brown, Power and Persuasion. Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 65–8.  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.5.6 (SC 499:212–4): “Scriptum est enim: ‘Et portabit Aaron judicia filiorum Israel’ (cf. Exod 28:29). In quo intellegimus quia pro peccatis populi sacerdotes judicabuntur.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.5.9 (SC 499:214): “[major Theodosius imperator] de supplici et publica peccati sui paenitentia”; and 10 (SC 499:216): “Pie admodum credens et sapienter intellegens, quod non ex temporali potestate qua fuerat etiam sacerdotibus dei praepositus, sed ex eo pervenire posset ad vitam, quod illis erat ipse subjectus.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.5.10 (SC 499:216): “Unde credendum est quia si nunc deus aliquem Ambrosium suscitaret, etiam Theodosius non deesset.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.5.12 (SC 499:216): “Nam si vera sunt quae dicuntur, non ideo debent abici, quod ea vobis abjectus insinuate. Quid enim tua interest per cujus os tibi loquatur veritas, quae aliquando etiam per os asinae loqui dignata est?” Cf. Num 22:22–35.

444

Éric Fournier

could be denounced?”137 After alluding to himself as a new Ambrose, Facundus now insinuates himself as a prophet, a new Nathan! In the end, Facundus drops some of the pretenses to be addressing rulers of an earlier age: “What has been accomplished now (nunc), even if it were just, has not been done correctly because it has not been given to any king to act in this sphere, but only to bishops.”138 With the last two paragraphs he addresses Justinian directly to remind him that he will have to answer for his actions and decisions to God himself, but even more pointedly to warn him that, through the “regeneration of the just” (regeneratione justorum) who will sit along with the Son of Man to judge the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt 19:28), he will be judged by those [the Three Chapters] whom he might condemn at present: “do not doubt it, you will have to be judged by those,” whereas bishops are only submitted to your authority for a time.139 With these very last lines he implicitly threatens Justinian with divine judgment: unless he withdraws his condemnation, the Fathers in the “celestial curia” (caelesti curia) who have thus far withheld their own condemnation of the emperor, will yield to “the judgement of the One Whose sentence will be without appeal, and a sentence without end, because held in the everlasting thereafter.”140

Conclusion In Book 3, Facundus quotes Theodore Mopsuestia, who himself quotes Paul’s assertion from 2 Tim 3:16 that “all Scripture inspired by God is useful.”141 This illustrates key aspects of Facundus’s text, and particularly his abundant quotations of both Scripture and patristic authors. More pointedly, Facundus specifies in Book 12 that one of his goals was “to instruct the smallest of our own so that they would not be made to

 Def. Tri. Cap. 12.5.12 (SC 499:216–8): “Quod si Nathan propheta quaerendus videatur quoties princeps delinquerit, ubi nunc inveniemus Nathan, ut princeps argui possit, quem peccasse certum est ut David?” Cf. 2 Sam 12:1–15.  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.5.14 (SC 499:218): “Quod autem nunc factum est, vel si rectum fuisset, recte non fieret, quia nulli regum hinc aliquid agere, sed solis est sacerdotibus datum.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.5.19 (SC 499:222): “Quis dabit, ut tu quoque considerans quod ex illis sint isti condemnati qui ‘in regeneratione justorum, cum sederit filius hominis in sede majestatis suae, sedebunt et ipsi super sedes duodecim judicantes duodecim tribus Israel’ (cf. Matt 19:28), illis oculis in eos intendas quibus te ab eis non dubitas judicandum, non quibus nunc Christi sacerdotes aspicis ad tempus tibi subjectos?”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.5.20 (SC 499:222): “[beatissimos patres] qui stamen eorum condemnationis conscius, vel tacitum ferre possit aspectum, cum fideliter intellegem magis terreant ipso silentio? Videntur enim per hoc condemnationem suam, nisi quantocius auferatur, future judicio reservasse, cujus et irretractabilis erit sententia, et sine fine perpetuum quod sententiam fuerit consecutum.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 3.6.7 (SC 478:100): “Omnis scriptura divinitus inspirata utilis est.” Cf. 2 Tim 3:16.

16 The Use of Scripture in Facundus’s In Defense of the Three Chapters

445

stumble by the fabrications made against this [holy council].”142 That is, he did not want them to stumble because of the vagueness and ambiguity of Scripture.143 Yet in the end, “through these difficulties Christ wants to exercise the faith and piety of His church.”144 As the first half of this chapter has shown, Facundus deployed various scriptural passages to defend the Council of Chalcedon, which he considers holy, and to counter accusations against the Three Chapters by showing that they are just so many attacks against the holy council. It was also shown that another argument of Facundus’s text is that condemning the dead is improper, following Ferrandus and Pontianus’s earlier texts to the same effect. Facundus, however, via a host of scriptural passages, demonstrates that condemning the dead or individuals who erred on specific points would be the equivalent of condemning biblical characters, something which even his opponents do not dare to do. Such an approach also explains his use of “hold fast to what is good (1 Thess 5:21),” an admonition that is heeded by being charitable and not condemning the whole because of a flaw in one part. More significant, however, is his use of scriptural exempla to attack Justinian’s involvement in this controversy and, as Leslie Dossey has argued, for defending exegesis as the exclusive dominion of clerics. Whereas scholars in the past have correctly interpreted Facundus’s hostile take against Justinian as the resistance of clerics against imperial interventions – whether this constitutes a typically African tradition or not – what they seem to have missed is the connection between what we have labeled as Facundus’s invective against the emperor and the latter’s presumption to practice exegesis himself. Indeed, following in the footsteps of Athanasius of Alexandria, Hilary of Poitiers, Lucifer of Cagliari, and of Gelasius, among others, one key category of scriptural use in Facundus’s text is biblical exempla in order to highlight those who deferred to biblical figures (interpreted as priests) as positive models worth of emulation.145 In making this argument, however, Facundus exhibited extreme care, by disguising his invective under heavy rhetorical layers that presented a complicated mix of historical and biblical exempla. As we have seen, one of his strategies to that effect consisted in using the two historical exempla of Marcian and Leo, who were positive models to follow precisely because they knew what lessons to draw from Scripture. That is why, according to Facundus, they behaved as they did and respected the proper ecclesiastical procedures that required them to delegate church affairs to bishops, to sponsor councils  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.2.1 (SC 499:160): “Igitur instructioni parvulorum nostrorum, ne scandalizentur in his quae [sancti concilii] de illa conficta sunt.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.2.3 (SC 499:160): “Ipsis quoque prophetis atque apostolis succenseatur necesse est, cum multa sint in eorum litteris quorum cum ipsi possent sine ulla difficultate pandere rationem.”  Def. Tri. Cap. 12.2.3 (SC 499:160): “His difficultatibus fidem ac pietatam ecclesiae suae Christus exerceat.”  For Hilary and Lucifer, see Flower, Imperial Invectives; for Gelasius, see A. Cottrell, “Auctoritas and Potestas: a Reevaluation of the Correspondence of Gelasius I on Papal-Imperial Relations,” MS 55 (1993): 95–109; and G. E. Demacopoulos, The Invention of Peter: Apostolic Discourse and Papal Authority in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 89–95.

446

Éric Fournier

for the bishops to debate, to decide matters of the faith, and, ultimately, to enforce such decisions made by the bishops who gathered in councils. Facundus’s repeated use of “presumptuous,” however, betrays his real view of Justinian, while also paralleling an increasingly overt hostility toward Justinian that becomes ever more clear by the end of Book 12.146 In the final analysis, if Facundus’s form of invective is more tame and less aggressive than that of Athanasius or Lucifer, it is because he does not seem to have given up on convincing Justinian of the justice of his cause, most likely hoping that the emperor could still change his mind. Thus, rather than condemning him through violent language, as, for example, a heretic or a persecutor, Facundus limits himself to giving warnings of what Justinian should expect if he does not change course. The warnings increase in intensity and seriousness, reaching the apex at the very end of the work when he informs Justinian that he will be judged one day, and that this judgment will be eternal. Yet he never crosses the line into abusive or insulting language, which would most likely defeat his purpose of convincing the emperor to change his mind. This is where Facundus’s overall goal, “to teach the smallest of our own,” takes on significant meaning. For Facundus this role was the exclusive privilege of clerics and theologians such as himself. This also explains why he alludes to himself as both another Ambrose and another Nathan (which also indicate, respectively, that both Theodosius and King David are models for Justinian to imitate). As Mayke de Jong rightly put it within the context of later Frankish exegesis, which also made good use of the Ambrose/Theodosius model, “this Christian imperial past functioned much like biblical history: as an imagined community that constantly impinged on the present.”147 Such was already the case with Facundus, whose exegesis (at least in Book 12) already intertwines the Christian imperial past with biblical history by imagining that good historical models, such as Marcian and Leo, interpreted Scripture correctly, a vision which included necessary deference to contemporary ecclesiastical authorities, especially in matters of exegesis.

 E.g., Def. Tri. Cap. 12.3.4 and 12.3.30. See also 6.5.38. (All three passages are quoted at notes 107, 121, and 100–101 respectively.)  “The Empire that was always Decaying: The Carolingians (800–888),” Medieval Worlds 2 (2015): 6–25, here 16.

16 The Use of Scripture in Facundus’s In Defense of the Three Chapters

447

Appendix: Biblical Quotations and Paraphrases in Facundus Table A: Biblical quotations in Facundus. Biblical Book

Quotation

Paraphrase

Old Testament Gen Exod Num Deut Josh Judg – Sam – Kings  Chr Job Ps Prov Song Isa Jer Ezek

: :, ; :,  :, –; : – :; : :  Sam :–  Kings :, ;  Kings :–; :– :; :; :, ; :– :; : (LXX) :; :; :; :; :; :, –; :–; :; :; :; :–; :; :–; : :–; :– : :; :–; : :–; : :–

:; :,  :– :–; :–; :– :–,  :–  Sam –; :–  Kings :–;  Kings : :, ; :–; :; :– :; :; : :

New Testament Matt

Mark Luke John

Acts Rom – Cor Gal Eph Phil Col – Thess  Tim Titus

:; :, –; :–, , ; :–, , ; :–, ; :; :–, , ; :–, ; :; :, –; :; :; :– :; :–; :– :; :–; :; :; :–; :,  :, , ; :; :–; :–; :–, –, , –; :–, ; :, , ; :; :, , ; :; :, –; :–; :–; :; :– :–, , ; :; :–; : :–; :–, –, –; :–, –  Cor :, ; :–; :–; :, ; :;  Cor :; :–; :, ; :–; :; :; :; :, ,  :–; :; :; : :; :, – :–, –, –, –; :, –, ; : :; :  Thess :;  Thess : : :–

:–; :–; :; :–; :–; :, –; :

:–; :– :, ; :–

:; :;  :; :; :–  Cor :; :;  Cor :; :; :–; : :; :; : : :–, – : :; :– :

448

Éric Fournier

Table A (continued) Biblical Book

Quotation

Paraphrase

Heb Jas – Pet  John Jude

:–; : :–,   Pet :; :;  Pet :– :–; :; :; :,  

:; :–  Pet :

Apocrypha Sir Tob Wis

:–; :; :; :– : :, ; :

:

Further Reading Primary Sources The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553 with Related Texts on the Three Chapters Controversy, translated Richard Price. Translated Texts for Historians 51. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009. Facundus. Facundus Hermianensis: Opera omnia, edited by Jean-Marie Clément and Roel vander Plaetse. Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina 90A. Turnhout: Brepols, 1974. Facundus. Facundus d’Hermiane: Défense des Trois Chapitres (À Justinien), translated by Anne FraïsseBétoulières. Sources Chrétiennes 471, 478–9, 484, 499. Paris: Cerf, 2002–2006. Imperial Invectives against Constantius II, translated by Richard Flower. Translated Texts for Historians 67. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017.

Secondary Sources Chazelle, Celia, and Catherine Cubitt, eds. The Crisis of the Oikoumene: The Three Chapters and the Failed Quest for Unity in the Sixth-Century Mediterranean. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007. Conant, Jonathan. Staying Roman: Conquest and Identity in African and the Mediterranean, 439–700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Dossey, Leslie. “Exegesis and Dissent in Byzantine North Africa.” In North Africa under Byzantium and Early Islam, edited by Susan Stevens and Jonathan Conant, 251–67. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2016. Gray, Patrick. “The Legacy of Chalcedon: Christological Problems and their Significance.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, edited by Michael Maas, 215–38. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

16 The Use of Scripture in Facundus’s In Defense of the Three Chapters

449

Maas, Michael. Exegesis and Empire in the Early Byzantine Mediterranean. Junillus Africanus and the Instituta Regularia Divinae Legis. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003. Pietri, Luce, ed. Histoire du christianisme: des origines à nos jours. Volume 3: Les églises d’Orient et d’Occident (432–610). Paris: Desclée, 1998. Sotinel, Claire. “Le concile, l’empereur, l’évêque: status d’autorité dans la querelle des Trois Chapitres.” In Orthodoxie, christianisme, histoire – Orthodoxy, Christianity, History, edited by Susanna Elm, Éric Rebillard, and Antonella Romano, 277–99. Rome: École française de Rome, 2000.

Paul M. Blowers

17 Scripture and Its Interpretation in the Works of Maximus the Confessor from His North African Monastic Exile Introduction: Maximus’s North African Connection The early career of Maximus the Confessor (580‒662 CE), considered in terms both of his geographical provenance and his most formative influences and experiences, is presently the subject of substantial scholarly debate. The long-trusted Greek Life of Maximus, transmitted in three recensions, has him growing up in an illustrious family in Constantinople, receiving a private education, assuming a prestigious position in the imperial court, transitioning to monastic life in Asia Minor and Africa, and eventually distinguishing himself as a champion of Christological orthodoxy.1 But this narrative is now seriously doubted, not only because it dates from centuries after Maximus’s death but also because it appears to mimic the hagiographical template of a Life of the ninthcentury monastic iconodule Theodore the Studite.2 Also relevant to this debate is the Syriac Life of Maximus, edited by Sebastian Brock and published in 1973.3 It dates from much closer to Maximus’s own time. But it comes from a strongly hostile critic, the Monothelete cleric George Resh‘aina, a disciple of the Patriarch Sophronius of Jerusalem. It describes him as the illegitimate son of lowbrow parents in Palestine, who was trained up as a devout Origenist monk in the monastery of Palaia Lavra before he himself entered the intimate circle of Sophronius, where he was allegedly instrumental in corrupting the bishop with the dyothelete “heresy.” Ostensibly favoring the Greek Life of Maximus is certain evidence from his letters that connect him with imperial officials in Constantinople, in particular with two of

 For details on the Greek Life, with edited text and translation of Recension 3, see B. Neil and P. Allen, eds., The Life of Maximus the Confessor: Recension 3 (Strathfield: St. Paul’s, 2003).  See B. Roosen, “Maximi Confessoris Vitae et Passiones Graecae: The Development of a Hagiographic Dossier,” Byzantion 80 (2010): 446–51.  “An Early Syriac Life of Maximus the Confessor,” Analecta Bollandiana 91 (1973): 299–346. ✶ Paul M. Blowers (Ph.D., University of Notre Dame, 1988) is the Dean E. Walker Professor of Church History at Emmanuel Christian Seminary at Milligan University (Tennessee). He is a specialist in early Christianity and patristics, a past President of the North American Patristics Society, and was a Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology (2017–2018).

Paul M. Blowers, Milligan University https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-018

452

Paul M. Blowers

his correspondents, John the Chamberlain and Constantine Sacellarius.4 The Syriac Life, despite its polemical edge, references events that are noted in other sources, and would help explain both Maximus’s connections with desert monasticism in Palestine and Egypt, including Sophronius, his spiritual father and mentor. Even its accusation of “Origenism” (an innuendo still generously thrown around in monastic circles in Maximus’s day) is not implausible when one considers that the critical reappropriation of Origen’s legacy lay at the core of his teaching. It is possible, of course, that both the Greek and Syriac Lives contain specific elements of truth, but to be able to harmonize their accounts or finally to determine which one holds ultimate sway seems unlikely short of new evidence. Meanwhile, rather than detail all the differences between the Greek and Syriac Lives,5 this chapter will focus on how the two respectively account for Maximus’s arrival and connections in North Africa. According to the Greek Life, Maximus first entered the monastery at Chrysopolis, across the Bosporus from Constantinople, where he was quickly elevated to abbot.6 Certain of his letters have been referenced to suggest that he spent an intervening period of monastic life in Cyzicus, on the Sea of Marmara south of the imperial capital. But the Greek Life moves rather quickly to Maximus’s expeditious and heroic entrance into the fray of Christological controversy once the emperor and the patriarch of Constantinople had fallen into the monothelete error. Monotheletism claimed that the divine will effectively supplanted an independent human will in Christ, its critics countering that this undermined Christ’s full humanity.7 Maximus determined to go to Rome and aide the church there as it resisted this view. On the long journey to Rome, he first stopped in “some other islands close by” (most notably Cyprus and Crete), then went to North Africa where he persuaded its bishops to join the anti-Monothelete crusade. Then, at last, he was off to Rome for what was undoubtedly the Lateran Council of 649.8 The Greek Life does not indicate the full duration of Maximus’s visit to Africa, but it was long enough for him to woo multiple audiences, and the hagiographer would have us believe he became a genuine theological celebrity among the Africans: “not only all those who were priests and bishops, but also all the laity and all the first ranks of the multitude completely relied on him in everything.”9 Though projecting Rome as the true center of gravity of Maximus’s subsequent career, Africa still

 Maximus’s Ep. 2; 3; 4; 10; 12; 27; 44; and 45 are addressed to John the Chamberlain; and Ep. 5 and 24/ 43 to Constantine Sacellarius.  For a succinct survey, see P. Blowers, Maximus the Confessor: Jesus Christ and the Transfiguration of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 25–63.  Greek Life, Recension 3, §5 (Allen and Neil, 46‒8).  On this broad controversy, see Cyril Hovorun, Will, Action and Freedom: Christological Controversies in the Seventh Century (Leiden: Brill, 2008).  Greek Life, Recension 3, §7‒18 (Allen and Neil, 50‒72).  Greek Life, Recension 3, §14 (Allen and Neil, 62–64).

17 Scripture and Its Interpretation in the Works of Maximus the Confessor

453

appears as the base of his initial operations in building an alliance against imperial Monotheletism. Certainly this visit in Africa (late 620s and/or early 630s) would have been the one where Maximus connected with Sophronius as his spiritual father in the “Eukratas” monastery, titled after the original surname of Sophronius’s own mentor, John Moschus. Maximus himself writes of his company with “the divine Sophronius, who, with me and all the other exiled monks (peregrinis monachis), spent time in the land of the Africans.”10 Years later (ca. 641) he reminisces on “the many exceedingly pious monks who are in exile (ἐπιξενουμένων) there [in Africa], and especially the blessed servants of God, our fathers called the Eukratades.”11 By contrast, the Syriac Life has Maximus, along with his (native African) companion Anastasius and some other disciples, fleeing Palestine in the wake of the Arab invasion of Syria and settling in Africa since “Africa was [already] in rebellion against the Emperor at this time.” There they joined a community of “Nestorian” monks, and “led astray the whole of Africa” with Maximus’s dyothelete teachings, including the eparch, George.12 Only afterward did Maximus make “the rounds of all the islands of the sea” en route to Rome, where he ensnared Pope Martin I in his deviance, who, in turn, called a (Lateran) council. In the meantime, the acerbic author claims, the Arab invasions into territories that Maximus had contaminated, including Africa, were God’s punishment for his dissemination of heresy.13 The common ground here is that Maximus spent an extended period in North Africa, not only in an intimate monastic circle, but in a quite public ministry of instruction and exhortation that was part of a larger pattern of monastic migration covering significant territory on the way to the final and fateful events of his life, first in Rome and later in Constantinople and in his political exiles in Thrace and Georgia.14 As we can infer from his writings, his first period in Africa was followed by another in the 640s, such that Africa turned out to be the site of significant literary activity on his part as well as the cultivation of important friendships, including interactions with imperial officials at various levels. Unfortunately, Maximus was exceedingly sparing in details concerning his social, cultural, and ecclesiastical interactions in Africa, an approach that begs many questions. For example, did he know of the work and legacy of Augustine? It seems impossible that he did not, and yet there is no hard evidence for it, only some intriguing parallels,15 and the strong likelihood that Maximus knew, through documentation

 Opusculum 12 (PG 91:142A).  Ep. 12 (PG 91:461A).  Syriac Life, §18‒20 (Brock, 310‒1 and 317‒8).  Syriac Life, §20, 23 (Brock, 311; 312‒3; and 318).  For an updated portrait of the biography (including the African tenures) of Maximus in its broader historical landscape, see esp. P. Booth, Crisis of Empire: Doctrine and Dissent at the End of Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014).  Speculation persists, as with G. Berthold, “Did Maximus the Confessor Know Augustine?” in StPatr 17:14–7; and with B. Daley, “Making a Human Will Divine: Augustine and Maximus on Christ and

454

Paul M. Blowers

collected at the Lateran Council of 649, Augustine’s authoritative opinion on the volition of Christ.16 Nevertheless, even though Maximus and his fellow Eastern monks in North Africa were exiles and “foreigners” to the region during the period between the Byzantine reconquest under Justinian and the Arab onslaught, it proved an amazingly fertile time. As Averil Cameron has observed, the arrival of these literate Greek monks in Africa, precisely when the older Latin culture was dying out, provided a welcome boost, a “tonic,” a rallying point for opposition to the theological overextension of the Constantinopolitan establishment.17 By all accounts, including those of his letters, Maximus thrived in the African context and took full advantage of the networks that he built there. In effect, it was principally in North Africa that Maximus developed the credentials, gravitas, and public profile necessary to lead the dissent against imperial Monotheletism and eventually to make of himself an enemy of the state.

The Interpretation of the Bible in Maximus’s North African Writings Maximus had occasion during his productive tenures in Africa both to compose substantive works of biblical interpretation and to exhibit, across the diverse writings from his African context, the full range of his skills in the exegesis and use of Scripture.

Questions and Responses for Thalassius and Questions and Responses for Theopemptus: Origenian Hermeneutics for an African Context By the time Maximus first arrived in Africa in the late 620s or early 630s, he had already thoroughly absorbed the sophisticated hermeneutical legacy of Origen (d. ca. 254 CE). If his monastic formation happened in Asia Minor, as suggested by the Greek Life, then the probable conduit of this influence was his absorption of the work of the Cappadocian Fathers, whose profound impact on him is indisputable. He likely knew the Philokalia of Origen, an anthology edited by Basil of Caesarea (d. 379 CE) and Gregory Nazianzen (d. 390 CE) that contained rich resources from Origen’s treatment of biblical

Human Salvation,” in Orthodox Readings of Augustine, ed. A. Papanikolaou and G. Demacopoulos (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008), 101–26.  See J. Börjesson, “Augustine on the Will,” in The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor, eds. P. Allen and B. Neil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 212–34.  “Byzantine Africa: The Literary Evidence,” in Excavations at Carthage, 1978, ed. J. Humphrey (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1982), 38–46.

17 Scripture and Its Interpretation in the Works of Maximus the Confessor

455

interpretation in Book 4 of his On First Principles and his numerous exegetical works. He also clearly drew on various patterns of interpretation in Gregory of Nyssa which themselves bore the impact of Origen and Philo. If Maximus’s monastic training was instead in Palestine (so the Syriac Life), and if, as Christian Boudignon has argued,18 Maximus may well have spent time in Alexandria under the tutelage of his fellow Palestinian monk Sophronius, then he was beholden to a monastic culture that revered Origen’s exegesis and its fruitfulness for the spiritual life, even while debating the speculative aspects of his theology. At least two of Maximus’s principal works of biblical interpretation that reveal his devotion to Origen’s hermeneutics can reasonably be dated to his initial stay in North Africa, near Carthage, with the Eukratas community. They are both works in the genre of questions-and-responses, a common genre that became a staple of monastic literature, including biblical commentary.19 These are the Questions and Responses for Thalassius (Quaestiones ad Thalassium [Quaest. Thal.]), which dates to before 633/4,20 one of the Confessor’s longest works, and the much shorter Questions and Responses for Theopemptus (Quaestiones ad Theopemptum [Quaest. Theop.]), which dates to ca. 630‒633.21 Both of these writings operate on the basic Origenian premise that Scripture, by divine intention, is teeming with σκάνδαλα, enigmas and difficulties that demand painstaking but beneficial research.22 Maximus plays the concurrent roles of humble disciple of divine revelation (i.e., a learner in his own right) and sagely expositor of Scripture, pressing to deliver its moral and spiritual riches for audiences that included persons of varying maturity and receptivity. He routinely proposes multiple interpretative possibilities,23 admits that others may land on a more accurate reading, and, as he tells Theopemptus, ventures to answer the queries “conjecturally, but not conclusively.”24

 “Maxime était-il constantinopolitain?” in Philomathestatos: Studies in Greek and Byzantine Texts Presented to Jacques Noret for his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, eds. B. Janssens, B. Roosen, and P. van Deun, 11–43 (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), esp. 20‒1.  See P. Blowers, Exegesis and Spiritual Pedagogy in Maximus the Confessor: An Investigation of the Quaestiones ad Thalassium (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 36–73.  Critical edition by C. Laga and C. Steel, Maximi Confessoris Quaestiones ad Thalassium Quaestiones I–LV una cum latine interpretatione Ioannis Scotti Eriugenae, CCSG 7 and 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1980 and 1990); critical text reproduced with introduction and notes by J.-C. Larchet, and a French translation by F. Vinel, in SC 529, 554, and 569 (Paris: Cerf, 2010, 2012, and 2015).  Critical text edited by B. Roosen and P. van Deun, “A Critical Edition of the Quaestiones ad Theopemptum of Maximus the Confessor (CPG 7696),” Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 55 (2003): 65–79. We can almost certainly add to these African works his Quaestiones et dubia, ed. J. Declerck, CCSG 10 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1982).  See Origen’s Princ. 4.2.7–4.3.15 (On First Principles, 2 vols., ed. and trans. J. Behr, Oxford Early Christian Texts [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017], 2:508–61).  On this pattern, see Blowers, Exegesis and Spiritual Pedagogy, 185–92.  Quaest. Theop. (Roosen and van Deun, 75): “στοχαστικῶς, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀποφαντικῶς.” For pious “conjecture” (στοχασμός), see Quaest. Thal. 55 (CCSG 7:481–3; SC 554:234–6); Amb. Jo. 71 (PG 91:1412A–B). Maximus most likely appropriates this principle from Gregory of Nyssa (see, e.g., Hom. in Canticum Canticorum, Gregorii Nysseni Opera, Vol. VI, ed. H. Langerbeck [Leiden: Brill, 1960], 37), though it appears already in Philo.

456

Paul M. Blowers

When the Libyan abbot Thalassius solicited Maximus to respond to a long list of scriptural difficulties that were apparently vexing his community, the Confessor was dealing with a relatively mature constituency, monks for whom the spiritual reading of Scripture (later called the lectio divina) vitally informed their contemplative and ascetical disciplines. As for Thalassius himself, Phil Booth and Marek Jankowiak provide the following prosopographic profile: He appears to be that “Thalassius the Libyan” or “Thalassius the African” who authored the Greek Centuries on Theology (PG 91.1428A–1469C), and who is presented in an extant spiritual tale as the leader of the monks of Carthage during the reign of Heraclius. . . . Like Maximus’ disciple Anastasius, he seems to have been a bilingual North African, but whether he had resided there all his life is far from clear, in particular if he is also to be identified with that Thalassius who later led the Armenian monks of Renatus at Rome in 649. These monks seem to have been recent immigrants from the East via North Africa. . . . It is therefore probable that Maximus was acquainted with Thalassius for a considerable time.25

So, if Thalassius’s community of monks had relocated to Carthage from Libya (presumably during the Arab invasions), and if in fact Thalassius later ended up leading a group of Eastern monks in Rome around the time of the Lateran Council of 649, then his career strongly mirrors Maximus’s, and we can imagine him as another key player in the monastic dissent against imperial Monotheletism that was building in Africa during the mid-seventh century. Their friendship was obviously deep, as indicated by Maximus’s five extant letters to Thalassius and a miniature Christological treatise addressed to him.26 Maximus esteems Thalassius as a thoroughly enlightened pedagogue in his own right whose list of questions on Scripture betrays an urgency to discern the deepest mysteries of biblical revelation.27 Maximus also recognizes that his responses will be distributed to the larger community of monks, and probably the Christian public more generally, so that the aim of the Quaest. Thal. is clear. Only Thalassius’s very first query diverts from scriptural difficulties, asking instead about the “use” of the passions in the spiritual life; the remaining sixty-four questions deal with aporiae or textual difficulties that appear, at least to our modern eyes, as quite variably abstruse. Some of them recall traditional exegetical conundrums, such as the use of the plural and anthropomorphic language for God in Genesis,28 or idiosyncratic turns of phrase

 M. Jankowiak and P. Booth, in “A New Date-List of the Works of Maximus the Confessor,” in the Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor, eds. P. Allen and B. Neil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 25.  See Ep. 9; 26; 41; and 42 (PG 91:446C–449A; 616A–617B; and 636B–637B). The treatise On Energies and Wills in Christ (mistakenly said to have Marinus as its addressee instead of Thalassius) is extant as fragments in Opuscula 2 and 3 (PG 91:40A–56D). On the monastic friendship of Maximus and Thalassius, see M. Constas, “Introduction” in FC 136:8–12.  Quaest. Thal. Intro. (CCSG 7:17–23; SC 529:116–24).  Quaest. Thal. 28 (CCSG 7:203–7; SC 529:334–40); and 44 (CCSG 7:299–303; SC 554:36–40).

17 Scripture and Its Interpretation in the Works of Maximus the Confessor

457

in the Old Testament, like “eating your bread in the sweat of your face” (Gen 3:19),29 or, similarly, cryptic symbolism, as with certain Israelite sacrificial rites,30 or the “flying sickle” and “golden lampstand” in Zechariah’s prophetic visions (cf. Zech 4:2‒3 and 5:1–4).31 There are queries that grapple with the sheer strangeness of the biblical stories. For example, if God himself sent Moses to Egypt, why did he seek to kill him? Would he have killed him had Moses’s wife not quickly circumcised their young son and stayed the angel’s hand (cf. Exod 4:19–26)? Why did God not forewarn Moses that the boy needed to be circumcised?32 What seemingly intemperate hunger motivated Jesus to curse a fig tree for failing to bear fruit when it was out of season (Matt 21:18‒ 21)?33 Why did the venerable Paul go up to Jerusalem even when he had been warned precisely “through the Spirit” not to go there (Acts 21:4)?34 Several of Thalassius’s questions are open-ended inquiries, often with the expectation of a moral or allegorical elucidation since the literal meaning appears opaque. What is to be made, for example, of the census and demographics, including even beasts of burden, of the Israelites who returned from exile (1 Esdr 5:41–2), details that seem so inopportune (ἀκαιρόγραφος) despite being prophetic words inspired by the Holy Spirit?35

Theological Objectives Still other questions broached genuine tensions between biblical texts on important theological matters. For instance, Thalassius asks about the relation between the Creator’s “rest” from his labor on the seventh day (Gen 2:2) and Jesus’s statement on the Sabbath in John 5:17, “My Father is working still, and I am working.” Thalassius knows the traditional resolution, since he further asks whether Jesus was merely referencing the Father’s ongoing labor in sustaining the creation.36 In a concise but rich response, Maximus shows knowledge of the theory of a two-phased creation of the world that had appeared in various form in Philo, Clement, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine. His own version tracks positively with that of both Gregory and Augustine: the Creator simultaneously preconceived the constitutive principles (lόγoι = rationes) of all created things and thereupon, with the creation of time and space, actualized those principles in the creatures themselves, with a view not only to

 Quaest. Thal. 5 (CCSG 7:65–7; SC 529:172–6).  Quaest. Thal. 36 (CCSG 7:243; SC 378); and 45 (CCSG 7:305; SC 554:44).  Quaest. Thal. 62 (CCSG 22:115–37; SC 569:126–48); and 63 (CCSG 22:145–86; SC 569:154–86).  Quaest. Thal. 17 (CCSG 7:111–5; SC 529:232–6).  Quaest. Thal. 20 (CCSG 7:121–5; SC 529:244–8).  Quaest. Thal. 29 (CCSG 7:211–5; SC 529:344–8).  Quaest. Thal. 55 (CCSG 7:481–513; SC 554:234–68). It is notable that ἀκαιρόγραφος is a hapax legomenon.  Quaest. Thal. 2 (CCSG 7:51; SC 529:158).

458

Paul M. Blowers

preserve but also to deify them.37 Jesus was speaking ultimately of creation as a Trinitarian project: “The Father approves this work, the Son properly carries it out, and the Holy Spirit essentially completes both the Father’s approval of it all and the Son’s execution of it.”38 Less clear, meanwhile, is whether Maximus (or Thalassius) was acquainted with the longstanding use of John 5:17 alongside Gen 2:2 in earlier antiGnostic and anti-Manichaean exegesis. Manichean lampoons of the exhausted Old Testament Creator needing to rest from his work were frequently met with appeal to John 5:17 to prove that the Creator had never literally ceased from the labor of caring for his creation.39

The Ascetic Life Other discrepancies raised by Thalassius addressed problems of biblical interpretation having clear and immediate relevance for the ascetical life of his community. The Messalian controversy in the East, which began in the fourth century and manifested in Africa, particularly Egypt, had dealt with ascetics who denied the efficacy of sacraments in favor of a life of unceasing prayer and rigor. Its repercussions continued to register in monastic literature. Thalassius asks whether, in the light of 1 John 3:9 (“he who is born of God does not sin, because his seed dwells in God, and he cannot sin”) and John 3:5, where the one “born of water and Spirit” is clearly “born of God,” it is possible for one so born still to sin. Maximus’s reply recalls the teaching of two revered anti-Messalian authors Pseudo-Macarius (fl. ca. 400) and Mark the Monk (d. ca. 450): those born of God by baptism have the deifying grace of adoption implanted in them in potency (δυνάμει), but in the other phase of baptism, they must actively, in their ongoing “experience” (πείρᾳ) cooperate with that grace in orienting their intention and moral choice.40 A reminiscence of Messalianism may well color Thalassius’s additional question as to how, if the “incorruptible Spirit is present in all things” and “progressively reproaches trespassers” (Wis 12:1), the divine Wisdom will not indwell “a heart lacking understanding” nor “a body involved in sin” (Wis 1:4).41 Among the allegations against the Messalians was their belief that, after the Adamic fall, an evil  Quaest. Thal. 2 (CCSG 7:51; SC 529:158‒60).  Quaest. Thal. 2 (CCSG 7:51; SC 529:160).  Augustine did so more than once in confuting Manichaeans. Cf., e.g., Gen. Man. 1.22.33 (CSEL 91:101–2); Adim. 2 (CSEL 25/1:116–7); Gen. litt. 4.11.21–4.12.22 (CSEL 28:107–9); and Tract. ep. Jo. 20.2 (CCSL 36:203–4). But some of Maximus’s Eastern predecessors had linked these texts as well. Cf. Pseudo-Archelaeus, Acta disputationis cum Manete 31 (PG 10:1476B‒1477A); Origen, Hom. in Num. 23.4 (SC 461:124); and John Chrysostom, Hom. in Gen. 10.7 (PG 53:89). Cf. Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 30.11 (SC 250:248), who connects John 5:17 with the Creator’s original work of preserving his creation but without referencing the divine rest of Gen 2:2.  Quaest. Thal. 6 (CCSG 7:69–71; SC 529:178–82). Cf. Mark the Monk, De baptismo 1 (SC 445:296‒8).  Quaest. Thal. 15 (CCSG 7:101; SC 529:218).

17 Scripture and Its Interpretation in the Works of Maximus the Confessor

459

demon (or Satan himself) took possession of each human soul at birth, which could be supplanted only through fervent prayer ushering in the Holy Spirit, leading to a state of impassibility and infallibility. The Spirit was thus either fully present or fully absent in the soul. Pseudo-Macarius’s commonsense response was to emphasize the protracted existential struggle between grace and sin within the soul, and the necessity of continuous cooperation with the Spirit to progress incrementally toward perfection,42 lest the Spirit be “grieved” (Eph 4:30) or “quenched” (1 Thess 5:19).43 Maximus’s response to Thalassius reconciles Wis 12:1 and 1:4 by suggesting two “modes” (τρόποι) of the Spirit’s presence, the one being the Spirit’s constant presence in all creatures at the level of their constitutive ontological “principles” (λόγοι), the other being that presence which is proportionate to an individual Christian’s faith and obedience to the divine commandments.44 In view of this second mode, Maximus, like PseudoMacarius and Mark the Monk, assumes that the Spirit and sin ultimately do coexist in the soul amid the gradual progress toward deification, and that there is no sudden arrival in a blissful state that might render the monk complacent. This abiding anti-Messalian concern for an all-or-nothing mentality in monastic ethics or for expecting to arrive in a state of spiritual immunity shows up also in Thalassius’s resurrection of an old monastic quandary: “If ‘he who fears is not perfected in love’ (1 John 4:18), how is it that ‘that there is no deficiency in those who fear [God]’ (Ps 33:10, LXX)?”45 In short, can love and fear coexist in the ascetic’s soul? John Cassian (d. 435) had already juxtaposed these same two texts and resolved the discrepancy by distinguishing the mere fear of punishment (cf. 1 John 4:18) and the godly fear or reverence appropriate to spiritual maturity.46 Various Greek writers, including Diadochus of Photiki (d. ca. 486) and Dorotheus of Gaza (d. ca. 565), followed suit,47 and Maximus’s answer to Thalassius follows precisely the same logic. Progressive growth in virtue displaces the beginner’s fear as the other fear, that of the more advanced ascetic, increases.48 Still other groups of biblical questions with direct application for the ethics and religious life of Thalassius’s monastic community dealt with the ostensive equivocation regarding “the law” in the New Testament (especially in Paul), and with the implications of its “realized” eschatology. “If, according to the Apostle, ‘the doers of the law  E.g., Hom. spir. 15.41 (PTS 4:151–2).  Cf. Hom. Spir. 15.36 (PTS 4:148); Hom. spir. 17.8 (PTS 4:171); Hom. spir. 27.9 (PTS 4:223); Logos 33.1‒2, in Makarios/Symeon Reden und Briefe: Die Sammlung I des Vaticanus Graecus 694B, ed. H. Berthold (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1973), 2:28–9; Mark the Monk, Bapt. 5 (SC 445:338‒40); and Diadochus of Photiki, Capita de perfectione spirituali 28 (SC 5:99).  Quaest. Thal. 15 (CCSG 7:101–3; SC 529:218–22).  Quaest. Thal. 10 (CCSG 7:83; SC 529:194).  Collationes 11.13 (CSEL 13:329–30).  Diadochus of Photiki, Cap. perf. spir. 16 (SC 5:92–3); and Dorotheus of Gaza, Didaskaliai 4.47 (SC 92:220).  Quaest. Thal. 10 (CCSG 7:83–7; SC 529:194–200).

460

Paul M. Blowers

will be justified’ (Rom 2:13), how can he further say, ‘You who are justified by the law have fallen from grace’ (Gal 5:4)?” Maximus’s reply, which again follows an older logic of, among others, Pseudo-Macarius, imposes a distinction between mere law and the “spiritual law” (πνευματικῶς νόμος), true obedience to which precludes any lapsing.49 Thalassius’s next inquires how Paul can speak at the same time of judgment by the law (cf. Rom 2:12) and judgment of our inner secrets by Jesus Christ (cf. Rom 2:16). Here, as elsewhere, Maximus appeals to the “three laws” (“natural,” “scriptural,” and “spiritual”), all of which have been authored by Christ, who ultimately functions as Judge through each law.50 Thalassius’s eschatological questions concern what graces are already available to the monk and what have yet to be enjoyed in a future state. For example, how is it that 1 John 3:2 says that for the “children of God,” “what we shall be has not yet appeared,” while Paul indicates that “God has [already] revealed to us through the Spirit” our future blessings and benefits? For Maximus, John does not know the mode of future deification, which Paul nonetheless does know by direct revelation.51 Or again, “If ‘in the coming ages’ God ‘will show his riches’ (Eph. 2:7), how is it that ‘the end of the ages has [already] come upon us’ (1 Cor. 10:11)?” This question elicits from Maximus an extended discourse on the ordering and overlap between the “ages” of divine incarnation and creatures’ deification, which is designed to boost confidence in the present and to engender hope for the future.52 Looking back at the examples of Thalassius’s questions and Maximus’s responses cited thus far, it becomes quite clear that more was in play than simply defaulting to non-literal or “spiritual” exegesis as a means of resolving difficult or discrepant texts. In a way that compares favorably with Augustine’s principle of the “literal” sense as the true theological sense of a scriptural text determined from multiple angles, Maximus shows his dexterity in navigating the doctrinal meaning of Scripture, not only exploiting ostensible discrepancies or σκάνδαλα, but also in interpreting texts in the light of other texts, and in unfolding the deeper coherence and economy of biblical revelation. Like Augustine in his De Genesi ad Litteram, Maximus often pursues an exploratory approach to the theologically literal meaning. In answer to Thalassius’s query, noted just above, about the “ages” of the revelation of divine benefits, Maximus offers no less than three plausible interpretations of the aporia in question. This procedure is standard not only in the Quaest. Thal., but also in Maximus’s long Book of Ambiguities, where he comments on perplexities in the much-revered works of Gregory Nazianzen and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.

 Quaest. Thal. 18 (CCSG 7:117; SC 529:238).  Quaest. Thal. 19 (CCSG 7:119; SC 529:240–2); cf. also 39 (CCSG 7:259‒261; SC 529:396‒8); and 64 (CCSG 22:233‒9; SC 569:236‒42). On the “three laws” doctrine in Maximus, see Blowers, Exegesis and Spiritual Pedagogy, 117‒22.  Quaest. Thal. 9 (CCSG 7:79‒81; SC 529:190‒2).  Quaest. Thal. 22 (CCSG 7:137; SC 529:262).

17 Scripture and Its Interpretation in the Works of Maximus the Confessor

461

Scriptural Hermeneutics and Origenian Hermeneutics That said, a substantial part of the Quaest. Thal. is devoted to the classic Origenian model of identifying the moral and spiritual senses latent in Scripture, as set forth in Book 4 of Origen’s On First Principles and in his commentaries and homilies. The same holds true for the Questions and Responses for Theopemptus, a work in which Maximus was almost certainly addressing queries from Theopemptus the Scholastic, an associate of Maximus’s close friend George, the Byzantine “eparch” or chief government administrator of Africa.53 Origen’s non-literal senses of Scripture reappear in Maximus, with considerable fluidity between the figural, tropological (moral), allegorical, and anagogical senses, and Maximus tends to lump all of these non-literal meanings under “anagogy,” indicating the pursuit of an elevated, contemplative engagement with the letter of Scripture.54 This Origenian legacy is unmistakable in the Quaest. Thal., particularly with the open-ended questions about seemingly opaque narratives in the Old Testament, ones in which the monks are at a loss for edifying insights. A rather spectacular case in point occurs in Question 64: What kind of sense can be made of the statement in the prophet Jonah concerning Nineveh which reads: “ . . . in which more than twelve myriads of men dwell, who do not know their right hand from their left . . . ” (Jonah 4:11)? I ask this because I do not find anything edifying in its literal sense. For it speaks not of children, such that I would think of infants, but of men. What kind of man, being of a sound mind, is ignorant of his right hand or left? Explain for me who these “men” are, and what the “right hand” and the “left hand” signify according to an anagogical interpretation.55

What follows from Maximus is a condensed spiritual commentary on the story of Jonah. Employing the classic Alexandrian tool of onomastics (etymology), the moralspiritual interpretation of biblical proper names, he begins with no less than eight legitimate renderings of the name “Jonah.” He then identifies five principal episodes or situations faced by the prophet in the larger story: his presence in Joppa; his plunge into the sea; his time in the whale’s belly; his sojourn in Nineveh; and while sitting under the gourd plant – all of which are patently ripe for deeper exegesis. Finally, Maximus notes how Jonah himself is a four-fold τύπος of Adam or human nature, of Christ, of prophetic grace (transferring to the church), and of the ungrateful Jewish

 See Ep. 12 (PG 91:588D–589A), where Maximus writes in the persona of George in order to address a controversy that embroiled the eparch and mentions Theopemptus as George’s envoy.  For detailed discussion of Maximus’s approach to anagogy, see Blowers, Exegesis and Spiritual Pedagogy, 184–248.  Quaest. Thal. 64 (CCSG 22:187; SC 569:194), in On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ: Selected Writings from St. Maximus the Confessor, trans. P. Blowers (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 145.

462

Paul M. Blowers

people.56 At the outset it appears that Maximus intends to provide combinations of all of these; but he ends up structuring his exposition principally on the four typologies, though each one teems with diverse symbolic nuances and additional typologies.57 Figural interpretation is a more apt description of what Maximus is doing than “typological” or “figurative” interpretation, since typology can too easily hint of singular or straightforward correspondences between past persons or events and their future “fulfillments” (ἔκβασεις), a pattern of revelatory closure. The very fact that Maximus entertains multiple valid τύποι suggests a virtually kaleidoscopic approach that privileges God’s freedom to open different horizons of the literal meaning of Scripture in the gloriously complex but thoroughly Christocentric οἰκονομία of biblical revelation.58 Maximus calls this “the power of the literal meaning (ἱστορία) in the Spirit, which is always happening and abounding into its fullness.”59 As in Origen’s exegesis, the Word is contemplated both as inexhaustible and as always contemporary. One clear Origenian axiom in effect in Quaest. Thal. 64 is that, within a given narrative, any biblical character can appear under both laudable (ἐπαινετός) and culpable (ψεκτός) guises.60 Villain and hero are often the same, and typological or allegorical renderings must follow the moral cues, although the same actions might have quite variable moral vectors. Jonah typifies our Adamic nature when he leaves “Joppa” (itself rendered etymologically as a joyous “paradise”) and falls into the “sea” of the present state of human life, and further still into the “whale” of the Devil’s captivity, and still deeper into the “abyss,” the underwater “clefts of the mountains” and “the earth whose bars are its eternal constraints” (Jonah 2:6–7 [LXX]) precisely because they represent the despairing depths of human ignorance of God.61 With Jonah as a figure of God incarnate, however,

 Maximus projects this interpretive map at the beginning of his response. See Quaest. Thal. 64 (CCSG 22:187–9; SC 569:194–6).  See C. Laga, “Maximi Confessoris ad Thalassium Quaestio 64,” in After Chalcedon: Studies in Theology and Church History Offered to Professor Albert van Roey for His Seventieth Birthday, ed. C. Laga, J. A. Munitz, and L. van Rompay (Leuven: Departement Oriëntalistiek, 1985), 203–15.  On “figural” interpretation as exemplified in patristic exegesis, see J. D. Dawson, Christian Figural Reading and the Fashioning of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); and B. Fulford, Divine Eloquence and Human Transformation: Rethinking Scripture and History through Gregory of Nazianzus and Hans Frei (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013).  Quaest. Thal. 17 (CCSG 7:111; SC 529:232): “ . . . τὴν δὲ τῆς ἱστορίας ἐν πνεύματι δύναμιν . . . ἀεὶ γινομένην καὶ τῷ γίνεσθαι πλέον ἀκμάζουσαν.” For the complex relation between letter and spirit in Origen, see H. de Lubac, History and Spirit: The Understanding of Scripture according to Origen, trans. A. Englund Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007).  Maximus explicitly mentions this rule in Quaest. Thal. 64 (CCSG 22:213; SC 569:220); and Ambiguum ad Johannem 37 (PG 91:1296B); cf. Origen, Hom. in Jer. 19.14 (GCS 6:171); and Selecta in Ps. 8.3 (PG 12:1184C). For the same in Evagrius, see the introductory remarks of P. Géhin in SC 340:18‒9. Maximus applies this axiom generously in the Quaest. Thal., often with respect to kings in the OT: e.g. Nebuchadnezzar, in his ill-dealings, is a type of the Devil, but elsewhere, in his favorable acts, is a type of the “natural law” (Quaest. Thal. 26 [CCSG 7:173‒9 and 181‒5; SC 529:302‒8 and 312‒6]).  Quaest. Thal. 64 (CCSG 22:189‒95; SC 569:196‒200).

17 Scripture and Its Interpretation in the Works of Maximus the Confessor

463

these same actions and events come into a very different light. Christ descended from the “Joppa” of heaven itself into the “sea” of this world. While in this world he is swallowed by the whale for “three days and three nights,” a detail prefiguring the triduum of his death, burial, and resurrection. Likewise, his descent into the depths of the earth signifies his breaking through humanity’s captivity to darkness and ignorance.62 The patterns and impulses of Maximus’s figural interpretation of the Jonah story become plausible given this typological fluidity. Further on Jonah can be interpreted as the prophetic grace that has entered the “Nineveh” of the church, transferring from the “Joppa” of the material “cult of the law” (Judaism) to the domain of all the gentiles, the church, which has, like Nineveh, suffered all manner of tribulations and adversities (Rom 8:35).63 At last sulking in the shade of the gourd plant (cf. Jonah 4:6ff), Jonah prefigures the unbelieving Jews, consumed with envy and pride (“the wind of a burning heat”; Jonah 4:8) against this transmission of grace to the gentiles, seeking consolation in the “booth” which is the Jerusalem below and its earthly temple, until the “worm” (Jonah 4:7), who is Jesus Christ (cf. Ps. 21:7 [LXX]), arrived to abolish carnal observances.64 Meanwhile, there are surprises as well in Maximus’s exposition. When he finally gets around to expounding “the more than twelve myriads of men who do not know their right hand from their left” (4:11), where we would expect a metaphor of moral and spiritual ignorance and the need for repentance, Maximus finds two legitimate allegorical nuances. On the one hand, the city of Nineveh, which can also be a figure of the individual human soul, contains “more than twelve myriads of men who do not know their right hand from their left” in the symbolic sense of the ultimately innumerable λόγοι of nature and time contemplated by the most spiritually astute minds, or else those countless salutary thoughts (λογισμοί) by which they aspire to the highest divine mysteries. On the other hand, Nineveh, considered still as a type of the Church, can also be said to contain the same myriads of men if they symbolize all those diligent believers who have piously ignored carnal passions on their “left hand” and conceit over their accomplishments on their “right hand.”65 In his responses to Thalassius, Maximus, like Origen, generously applied the principle of “transposition” (μετάληψις), the inversion whereby characters, events, or other elements in the biblical text are rendered symbolic of aspects of the interior spiritual life of the individual Christian or of the church collectively. Amid a long exposition of King Hezekiah’s struggles with Judah’s enemies, Maximus writes, For even if “these things took place among them in figures,” according to the literal account, they were nonetheless “written down for our spiritual instruction” (1 Cor 10:11), since it is among us that the written words of Scripture are forever taking place; it is among us that the opposing

   

Quaest. Thal. 64 (CCSG 22:195–7; SC 569:200–4). Quaest. Thal. 64 (CCSG 22:197–203; SC 569:204–8). Quaest. Thal. 64 (CCSG 22:215–25; SC 569:220–30). Quaest. Thal. 64 (CCSG 22:209–13; SC 569:214–20).

464

Paul M. Blowers

power invisibly launches his attacks. As much as we can, then, let us transpose (μεταβιβάσαντες) the entire Scripture to the level of the intellect, so that we might illumine the intellect through divine meanings, while making the body bright with the modes of the more divine principles that we have understood, making it a “rational workshop of virtue” (cf. Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 43.12) by rejecting those passions that are inherent within us by nature.66

Maximus was also not averse to applying these same figural and allegorical methods to New Testament texts. Transposition, for example, shows up in the Quaest. Theop. in response to Theopemptus’s inquiry about the identity of the “unjust judge” (Luke 18:6) in Jesus’s parable of the persistent widow. This figure, says Maximus, is “our own human reasoning (λογισμός), which, ever since the original transgression, became unrighteous judgment because it did not regard the Creator’s commandment, but instead took counsel from the Defiler (Gen 3:1–6), through whom it much preferred earthliness to deification.” The “city” where the judge lived (Luke 18:2a) in turn becomes either “empirical experience” (αἴσθησις) or the “visible world” itself where our fallen reasoning has taken residence, giving up a visit (παροικία) for a fixed dwellingplace (κατοικία) wherein, out of foolishness, it has failed to “fear God” and, out of contempt, has also failed to “regard humanity” (18:2b). Hence it follows that the annoying “widow” pursuing justice from the “unjust judge” is none other than the “rational soul” itself, which, being exasperated by its own faculty of reason for failing to support holy living, issues its complaint against the materially minded flesh for allowing impure demons eagerly to spoil the beauty of the divine image and the dignity that goes with it.67 At the beginning of my discussion of these exegetical writings, I titled Maximus’s undertaking one of “Origenian hermeneutics for an African Context.” With the Quaest. Thal., of course, we must keep in mind that the African monks whom Maximus was addressing included mostly emigrés from the East, not native North Africans, though Thalassius was probably a native Libyan. And as I noted briefly, many of these Eastern monks would have been familiar already with Origen’s interpretive insights, which had so profoundly influenced monastic biblical interpretation, and which in monastic circles had survived the intermittent controversies over Origen’s cosmology and eschatology. Maximus, like his Western predecessor John Cassian, recognized that the appeal of Origen’s hermeneutics for monks rested not just on exegetical techniques that rendered obdurate texts fruitful for contemplation and asceticism, but also on the way that Origen integrated the reader of Scripture into the overarching drama of revelation.

 See Quaest. Thal. 52 (CCSG 7:425; SC 554:174–6; [English] FC 126:323, trans. Constas). For more on the principle of μετάληψις in Origen, see SC 302:133–5.  Quaest. Theop. (Roosen and van Deun, 75–6). The identity of the “unjust judge” and the “widow” in this parable also comes up in Maximus’s Quaestiones et dubia 140 (CCSG 10:99–100), where the judge stands for the “natural law” that has become calloused as a consequence of the Fall. As a result, he/it fails to honor either God or humanity. By contrast, the woman is, once again, the soul “widowed” of good works.

17 Scripture and Its Interpretation in the Works of Maximus the Confessor

465

The same Λόγος who instructed the very authors of Scripture in the divine mysteries was also the providential pedagogue of Scripture’s interpreters in the arduous pursuit of its profuse but often elusive treasures.68 Such a perspective, however, appealed to more than monks. Maximus’s Origenian approach to the Bible did not change when he was answering the queries of Theopemptus the Scholastic, an astute non-monastic Christian.69

Scripture and Soul Care in Maximus’s African Letters The letters of Maximus, which have yet to appear in a modern critical edition and which can only be treated here via a few evocative examples, are an enormous challenge to scholars seeking to reconstruct his biography. They also provide rich evidence for the networks that he developed during his time in Africa, and for his assiduous devotion to his confidants and correspondents, be they clergy, monastics, secular professionals, or imperial officials. In them, while he sometimes addresses personal crises or immediate challenges experienced by his correspondents, Maximus typically invokes Scripture straightforwardly to illustrate and exhort and, at least occasionally, to teach and to comfort pastorally. Though we cannot, with absolute certainty, ascribe Ep. 2 to Maximus’s African exile, it is dated to the 630s and was likely composed when he was living as a monk there. This letter and others to John the Chamberlain, an imperial dignitary, raise the vexing issue of whether Maximus had known him from his years in Constantinople or had only made friends with him at a later point, perhaps through mutual friends. Andrew Louth suggests that, since Ep. 2 is written to John in the second-person-plural, it is plausible that Maximus had not only known him in Constantinople, but that he had also nurtured a larger circle of courtiers there to whom he offered spiritual direction.70 Phil Booth speculates instead that Maximus had become acquainted with John (and presumably other imperial officials, including Constantine Sacellarius) during a possible visit to the capital with John Moschus and Sophronius.71 Whatever its precise origins, their friendship was sufficiently close that Maximus could urge John to pursue a high level of ascetical and spiritual discipline. Ep. 2 is an encomium on love that morphs into an entire treatise on the nature and exigencies of ἀγάπη. Due attention is given to love’s centrality in apostolic teaching, its exemplification by the saints, its consummate embodiment in God’s own incarnation, and its polymorphic character in

 See esp. Quaest. Thal. 59 (CCSG 22:45‒67; SC 569:58–78).  Boudignon, “Maxime était-il constantinopolitain?” 15, also notes that, in addition to being the eparch George’s envoy, Theopemptus was probably a lawyer among the Alexandrian lawyers with whom Maximus had connections.  A. Louth, Maximus the Confessor (London: Routledge, 1996), 84.  Booth, Crisis of Empire, 151‒2.

466

Paul M. Blowers

relation to multiple virtues.72 Scriptural citations are sprinkled throughout the letter, but Maximus brings it strategically to a close with a scriptural crescendo which begins, not surprisingly, with 1 Cor 13:4‒8, but moves then to a cento of texts from the Septuagint version in order to allow love to declare for itself, as it were. In the long passage quoted below, love speaks initially in the joint prophetic persona of Baruch and Jeremiah (and more basically as the voice of the divine Author who is Love [cf. 1 John 4:8]), before finally speaking in the voice of Maximus himself, even as Maximus borrows from both Jeremiah and Paul. In all these voices the Word is addressing and exhorting John the Chamberlain. “I say to you, this is the way (“book” in the LXX) of my commandments, and the law that endures forever. All who hold her fast will live, and those who forsake her will die. Take her, my child, and walk toward the shining of her light. Do not give your glory to another, or your advantages to an alien people. Blessed are you, because you know what is pleasing to God. Learn where there is sagacity, where there is strength, where there is understanding, where there is length of days, and life, where there is light for the eyes and peace,” and I have come to you in the way, “and appeared to you from afar.” Therefore, “I have loved you with an everlasting love, and in pity I have had mercy on you, and I will build you, and you shall be built, and you shall go forth in the dance of the merrymakers, that you may stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the eternal paths of the Lord,” and you will know where the good way is, and walk in it, and find sanctification for your soul” (Bar 4:1–4; 3:14; Jer 38:3–4; and 6:16). And again through Isaiah: “I am the Lord your God, who leads you in the way of righteousness, in which you should go, and you have heard my commandments.” Therefore, “your peace has become like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea” (Isa 48:17–8). And I, rejoicing at your goodness, dare to say with God, in the words of the great prophet Jeremiah, Blessed are you, because “you have taken off the garment of your sorrow and affliction,” I mean “the old man, which is corrupt through deceitful lusts, and put on for ever the beauty of the glory from God,” I mean “the new man, created” in the spirit in accordance with Christ “after the image of the Creator, and put on the robe of righteousness from God, and on your head the diadem of the glory of the Everlasting” (Bar 5:1–2; Eph 4:22; and Col 3:10), that is, adorned with the stable mode of the virtues and the infallible λόγος of wisdom. Therefore, “God will show your splendour everywhere under heaven, and your name will be called Peace of righteousness and Glory of godliness (Bar 5:3–4).73

With this scriptural flourish, Maximus effectively remolds John the Chamberlain into the latest bearer of love’s pedigree in the divine economy, and the latest embodiment of love’s all-encompassing glory, which is, without doubt, a powerful means of holding John accountable to such an illustrious profile. The use of Scripture here is reminiscent of another work which could conceivably have been completed during Maximus’s time in Africa, the Dialogue on the Ascetic Life. In the style of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, the Dialogue stages a “conference” (a monastic variation of the genre of question-and-response) between an abba and a novice monk that opens with a query about the purpose of the incarnation before proceeding expeditiously to a host of

 Ep. 2 (PG 91:392D–408B).  Ep. 2 (PG 91:405B–408A; trans. Louth, Maximus the Confessor, 92–3).

17 Scripture and Its Interpretation in the Works of Maximus the Confessor

467

questions about the exigencies of asceticism. The abbot’s responses, which give counsel on practices that follow from the grace of the incarnation, are saturated with Scripture. As Pablo Argárate observes, the Dialogue is “constructed like a dense tissue of biblical citations and references, a continuous meditation and rumination on the mystery of love revealed in Christ and present in biblical texts.” Interpretively, the texts are not set out for individual exposition or dogmatic demonstration, but as serviceable for a living, dynamic asceticism and for ongoing conversion and transformation.74 For example, when the novice asks why he struggles with compunction over his sins, the abba weaves together a plethora of texts from the Pentateuch, the prophets, Psalms, Wisdom literature, the Gospels, and Paul so as to allow Scripture, in its profound diversity, to speak with a single authoritative voice in commanding radical repentance.75 Maximus’s Ep. 11, to the abbess Iania (or Ioannia) of a monastery in Alexandria,76 takes up this same theme, with Maximus interceding on behalf of a nun who has left the community and become contrite, seeking to return even as the abbess has clearly been reticent to welcome her back. Maximus begins his appeal by holding up conversion through repentance (μετάνοια) as the great imperative grounded in God’s incarnational kenosis (κένωσις) on our behalf. And he immediately unfolds a tapestry of quotations and summaries of Jesus’s teaching on the priority of repentance (including Matt 9:13; 9:12; Luke 15:4; Matt 10:6; Matt 15:24; Luke 15:7; Luke 10:30ff; Luke 15:20ff; and Luke 15:4‒7),77 seemingly indifferent to the fact that in addressing an abbess he is, as it were, preaching to the choir. Maximus then adds citations from Jesus’s teaching on imitating God’s perfect mercy (Matt 11:28‒30; 5:48; and 7:12) before coming alongside the abbess, with rhetorical intimacy. Instead of an olive branch, he says, he offers his plea to her with “the life-giving sufferings of Christ our God and Savior,” in confidence that she is already Christ’s devout disciple, already prepared to receive back the contrite nun and to emulate the tender mercy of God in his own κένωσις.78 Maximus’s strategy is thus complete, placing the abbess herself side-by-side with the contrite nun as dual models of biblical repentance, despite their differing roles in the context of the alienation: the abbess repenting of her wrath; the nun repenting of defaming both her vocation and her community.

 P. Argárate, “‘Car mes iniquités dépassèrent ma tête’: Les fonctions du texte biblique dans la section katanyktique du Logos Asketikos de Maxime le Confesseur,” in The Reception and Interpretation of the Bible in Late Antiquity: Proceedings of the Montréal Colloquium in Honour of Charles Kannengiesser, 11‒13 October 2006, eds. L. DiTommaso and L. Turcescu (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 22 and 24–5.  Liber asceticus, ed. P. van Deun, CCSG 40 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 53–123.  See Jankowiak and Booth, “A New Date-List,” 23 and 54.  Ep. 11 (PG 91:454A–456C).  Ep. 11 (PG 91:456C–457D).

468

Paul M. Blowers

Theological Exegesis in Maximus’s African Opuscula Maximus’s Opuscula, also known as the Opuscula theologica et polemica from François Combefis’s 1675 edition, are not all miniature theological treatises pure and simple; some are actually letters, and some are of considerable length.79 Many of them, too, date from Maximus’s time in North Africa, and are of enormous importance for understanding both the development of his criticism of imperial Monotheletism and his cultivation, through Sophronius’s inspiration, of a broad-based dissent. Like the Ep., moreover, the Opuscula give us crucial evidence of Maximus’s personal relationships and connections as he rose to ecumenical renown as a Christological thinker and as the leading exponent of dyotheletism, a doctrinal position that would be confirmed well after his death at the Council of Constantinople of 681. Particular portions of the Opuscula showcase Maximus’s skill as a theological interpreter of Scripture. With or without recourse to Augustine’s hermeneutics, Maximus reveals, on his own terms, particularly in the Christological Opuscula, a substantial interest in the theologically “literal” meaning of biblical texts, that is, their distilled significance in and for the church, arrived at through a process of careful exegetical reasoning and discernment. The consummate example of this in Maximus is a select group of Christological Opuscula in which he wrestles with the prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matt 26:36–46; Mark 14:32–42; and Luke 22:40–46), passages which dominated the fierce debate on energies and wills in Jesus Christ. Interpretation of Jesus’s agony in the Garden went all the way back to the New Testament itself, not only in the Synoptic Gospels and John, but also in Heb 5:7–10, where Jesus’s prayer is recast in the context of his being “perfected” (τελειωθείς) through suffering, thus qualifying him as Messiah.80 Subsequent patristic expositors took considerable interest in the Gethsemane episode, identifying a number of Christological and soteriological themes therein: the suffering of the Righteous One (Justin Martyr); vindication of the unity between the Father and the Son (Tatian); Jesus’s aspiration to a superior, more severe “martyrdom” (Origen); Jesus’s solidarity with weak human beings (Cyprian); and Jesus’s controlled enactment of anguish for purposes of instructing and empowering his later followers in the face of suffering (John Chrysostom).81 In the fourth-century Trinitarian debates, Jesus’s prayer in Gethsemane was predictably scrutinized in terms of the volitional (as well as ontological) relation of the Father and the Son, with the first part of the prayer (“let this cup pass from me”) attributed to his human nature, and the second part (“thy will be done”) to

 See Jankowiak and Booth, “A New Date-List,” 22–3. Unfortunately, the Opuscula are also not yet available in a modern critical edition.  See esp. K. O. Sandnes, Early Christian Discourses on Jesus’ Prayer at Gethsemane: Courageous? Committed? Cowardly? (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 98–221.  For analysis of these approaches, with the illustrative texts, see Sandnes, Early Christian Discourses on Jesus’s Prayer at Gethsemane, 222‒34; 254–8; 270–1; and 282–8.

17 Scripture and Its Interpretation in the Works of Maximus the Confessor

469

his divinity.82 Even if the tension between his human and divine wills seemed to be on display in the Gethsemane prayer, the traditional exegetical momentum was to downplay it in order to emphasize Christ’s ultimate resolve, the fusion of his wills to a singular purpose. As Demetrios Bathrellos indicates, even orthodox exegetes ran the risk of undermining the role of the human will of Christ in the singular “fiat” whereby he chose to do the will of the Father.83 By affirming that Jesus’s human will was already deified, it was nonetheless possible to lose sight of its active role and to judge that will as merely passive. By the seventh century, Monothelete apologists had already begun enlisting the Gethsemane prayer as definitive proof that the hypostasis of Christ ultimately had no human will, only a divine one that ruled all his choices and actions. They were also touting this position as the upshot of prior patristic teaching, although the most obvious exponents of such a position, as Maximus pointed out, were the defamed bishop Apollinaris of Laodicea and the anti-Chalcedonian sectarian Themistius.84 Meanwhile, the fear of residual Nestorianism, an extremism that, to its critics, polarized Christ’s divine and human natures and undermined the unity of his subjectivity, loomed large in the East and gave impetus to Monotheletes anxious to show how a real duality of wills in Christ would be both ontologically impossible and soteriologically dangerous. Maximus moved quickly to counter Montheletes’ claims regarding Jesus’s prayer in the Garden. The result was a sustained Christological exegesis of the Gethsemane scene, spread across no less than six of the Opuscula.85 Especially disconcerting for Maximus was that Monotheletes had claimed the authority of Gregory Nazianzen (his most beloved theological predecessor) in their exposition of the Gethsemane prayer. In one of his Theological Orations, Gregory claimed that Jesus’s prayer in the Garden should be explained in the light of another text, John 6:38: “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.” Gregory comments: Certainly had these words [of John 6:38] not been spoken by the very one who “came down” we should have said the language bore the stamp of a mere man like us, not that of the Savior we know. His will is not in the least degree opposed to God, being wholly deified. Our merely human will does not always follow the divine; it often resists and struggles against it. This is the way we interpret: “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, but not what I will‒let your will prevail” (Matt 26:39). The alternative suppositions‒either he was ignorant of the thing’s possibility, or, he was opposing the Father’s will‒are both implausible. No, given that the words come from the one who assumed, that is to say, what “came down,” not from what was assumed, we

 Notably Athanasius and Marcellus of Ancyra. See D. Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ: Person, Nature, and Will in the Christology of St. Maximus the Confessor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 141–3.  Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ, 142–4.  Opusculum 15 (PG 91:169C–169D and 172B).  These include Opuscula 6; 7; 3; 20; 16; and 24, which are listed here in rough (and unconfirmed) chronological order.

470

Paul M. Blowers

must meet this problem in the same way as the previous one. The words there mean not that the Son has, but that he has not, a will of his own over against the Father’s.86

In their turn, the Monotheletes, including the Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople, took Gregory Nazianzen to mean that any human will in Christ had been effectively canceled out by the Son bringing his divine will to earth, a definite misreading of Gregory. His point in the quotation above was to show that the Son had no separate will from the Father and that the divine will from on high prevailed in the work of Christ’s incarnation. Concerned both to align his own literal exegesis of the Gethsemane prayer with that of Gregory and the larger patristic tradition, and, at the same time, to address it to the unique new circumstances of the intensifying Monothelete crisis, Maximus allowed that Nazianzen was exegeting John 6:38 together with the Gethsemane prayer in a Trinitarian key, in which context his literal interpretation was valid. But his interpretation was inadequate in a Christological register. As Maximus discreetly puts it, “I judge that [Gregory’s statement] hangs on an exceedingly pious thought . . . but it is lacking in precise wording for the issue at hand.”87 In the properly Christological register, the words of the prayer required ascription to Christ’s composite hypostasis, a view that includes seeing his human will as instrumental to the resolve to fulfill the divine purposes. Maximus thus sets out to demonstrate what a Christologically “literal” interpretation of the Gethsemane Prayer would entail. One of his breaks from earlier tradition was refusing to segregate the first part of Jesus’s prayer (“let this cup pass from me”) from the second part (“not as I will, but as you will”). Both parts of the prayer arose from Christ’s composite hypostasis and must be rendered accordingly. The divine and human wills of Jesus always worked in concert, and to affirm that the two wills were different is decidedly not to declare that they were intrinsically opposed to each other,88 which was the facile supposition of Monotheletes who then denied a human will in Christ altogether. As Maximus argues at length, the phrase “not as I will,” far from suggesting that Jesus’s human will had its own selfish trajectory (i.e., aiming to refuse the “cup” of suffering), merely accentuated the active rather than the passive role of Jesus’s natural human will (θέλημα ϕυσική) in submitting to the will of the Father.89 Thus, even though Christ’s human will was already thoroughly deified and remained so throughout his incarnation,90 he had to reveal and enact obedience for humanity’s sake. Any “literal” reading of the Gethsemane prayer, however, still had to account for the high drama of the scene, including Jesus’s expression of real fear and trepidation in

 Or. 30.12 (SC 250:248–50; trans. L. Wickham, St. Gregory of Nazianzus: On God and Christ–The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius [Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002], 102–3, slightly altered).  Opusc. 20 (PG 91:233B). I have translated the full text of Opusc. 6, with notes, in P. Blowers, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, 173–6.  Opusc. 6 (PG 91:65A–68A).  Opusc. 6 (PG 91:68A–68D).  Opusc. 7 (PG 91:80D, 81C–84A); and Opusc. 3 (PG 91:48A–48D).

17 Scripture and Its Interpretation in the Works of Maximus the Confessor

471

the face of death. It was insufficient to claim the presence of a human will in Christ without exploring more closely the character of that fear and positive role that it played. In further analysis, Maximus did just that. The fear, of course, was a reminder that the Son had truly assumed the flesh and its natural passibility or survival instincts. But the fact that, in the prayer, Jesus “varied and mingled his phrases,” striking different poses as it were, also exhibited that he was no mere man;91 thus, his fear, in the οἰκονομία of the incarnation, was no ordinary human fear. Christ’s conforming of his natural human will to the divine will was a matter neither of cool intellectual calculation about what the virtuous course of action was, nor of a deliberative waffling over what his options were (as in the case of the fallen, “gnomic” mode of volition that Maximus ultimately denied in Christ).92 It involved a total transformation and reorientation of the affective faculties (desire, aversion, etc.) that are interconnected with volition.93 In his Disputation with Pyrrhus, the transcript of a public debate held in Carthage July of 645 with the former Monothelete Patriarch of Constantinople, Maximus only alludes to the Gethsemane prayer, but he discourses at length on Jesus’s fear in the face of suffering. As with other “natural” inclinations and instincts, he deduces (in a Christianized Stoic key) that Christ made virtuous use (χρῆσις) of these things. Indeed, while confirming that fear in the face of death is natural, Christ’s mode (τρόπος) of fear was categorically unique. Not only was it neither dread (δειλία) nor some other irrational form of fear, it transcended our instinctual kind of fear, operating voluntarily (ἑκουσίως) and salvifically.94 Modern higher-critical exegetes might well take issue with Maximus’s exposition of Jesus’s prayer in Gethsemane as a literal one. It certainly cannot be faulted for lacking attention to the precise language and syntax of the prayer, or for failing to heed its unique significance and role in the larger Passion narrative at the culmination of Jesus’s ministry. The difference from a modern account lies in the thickness of this theologically inflected literal approach. In Maximus’s judgment, the drama in Gethsemane, and specifically the actions and words of Christ, signal all sorts of insights into divine κένωσις and incarnation, the internal composition of Christ’s person, and the nature of human volition and passibility as transfigured in the New Adam, just to

 Opusc. 24 (PG 91:268B–268C).  Discussion of “gnomic” will (γνώμη) stretched across Maximus’s writings, coming principally to connote the stunted mode of human volition after the Adamic fall, manifesting as deliberation or, what is worse, confusion and/or vacillation over the determination of and the choice for the good. In early writings Maximus allowed that Jesus had a gnomic will in the more innocent sense of basic intentionality. Later he overtly rejected it as present in Christ since the Savior never vacillated in embracing the will of the Father, exercising only his deified “natural” human will (cf. Opusc. 7, PG 91:81C–81D; Opusc. 3, PG 91:56A–56B; and Disp. Pyrrh., PG 91:308–313C). See also P. Blowers, “Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus on Gnomic Will (γνώμη) in Christ: Clarity and Ambiguity,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 63 (2012): 44–50.  See Quaest. Thal. 62 (CCSG 22:127–9).  Disp. Pyrrh. (PG 91:298B–300A); cf. Opusc. 7 (PG 91:80D).

472

Paul M. Blowers

list a few of the most important. Unlike much of his exegesis in the Questions and Responses for Thalassius, moreover, the approach here does not admit of multiple valid renderings, doubtless because the issues here cut to the very heart of the church’s dogmatic teaching where utter single-mindedness and precision were paramount.

Conclusion There is a certain irony in the fact that the writings of Maximus from his time in North Africa are the writings of a monastic “exile” and transient, whose removal to an intimate community near Carthage nevertheless proved tremendously fortuitous, providing him a formative haven and strategically crucial base from which he produced some of his most influential and representative works. Maximus emerged, like Sophronius, as a luminary in the relatively short history of Byzantine Africa. And, though he knew some native Africans such as Thalassius, it also bears noting that it is impossible to estimate whether he had acquired substantial knowledge of the older Romano-African culture, its intellectual elites, and its Catholic ecclesiastical background, including, as already noted, the legacy of Augustine. The same holds true of any knowledge he might have gained of the local peoples and indigenous North African cultures, or of the Donatist schism. Given that imperial officials and the Byzantine elites in Africa were largely non-Latin-speaking immigrants appointed to serve the government as it strove to deepen the political and cultural control of the region, Maximus’s acquaintances and friendships with such civil administrators certainly did not imply ready access to the local peoples and cultures, although the Greek Life of Maximus claims exceedingly wide celebrity for him during his African years.95 Unlike some Byzantine soldiers stationed in Africa, who intermarried with natives (including Vandals) and integrated into the culture, Byzantine monks were largely insulated in their communities, even if some, for example those who lived in a cosmopolitan center like Carthage, would have been able to observe the ethnic and cultural diversity of North Africa.96 All this leads to the conclusion that Maximus’s African writings had Eastern monastics and clerics as their primary audience, and that, with his rising visibility and influence in the emerging Monothelete controversy –aspects made all the greater after Sophronius’s departure from Africa –his readership expanded to include elite lay supporters and officials who were increasingly sympathetic with Maximus’s Christological campaign, over and beyond his renown as a monastic pedagogue. Genre-

 Cf. n9 supra.  On the various cultural and ethnic dynamics in play in Byzantine Africa, see J. Conant, Staying Roman: Conquest and Identity in Africa and the Mediterranean, 439–700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 239–51.

17 Scripture and Its Interpretation in the Works of Maximus the Confessor

473

wise, the wide gamut of literary production from Maximus’s time in Africa is indicative of his entire literary corpus. But a common element across all his works was the passion to explore Scripture’s depths, to serve the manifestation and embodiment of the living Λόγος which had begun with creation itself and which has continued throughout sacred history. Whether the “question” at hand was an aporia from Scripture itself that required investigation to disclose its higher moral or spiritual significance, or an ambiguity in the opinion of an earlier patristic authority, or one of a vast array of questions – both theological and existential – prompted by the incarnation of Jesus Christ and other mysteries of the faith, Maximus envisioned his entire authorial enterprise as a labor of relentless interpretation.97 His North African writings are certainly no exception.

Further Reading Primary Sources Brock, Sebastian, ed. and trans. “An Early Syriac Life of Maximus the Confessor.” Analecta Bollandiana 91 (1973): 299–364. Maximus the Confessor. Disputatio cum Pyrrho. 1675 critical edition with Latin translation by François Combefis; reprinted in S. P. N. Maximi Confessoris, opera omnia, Patrologia Graeca 91, edited by. J.-P. Migne. Paris, 1863. Maximus the Confessor. Epistulae. 1675 critical edition with Latin translation by François Combefis. Reprinted in S. P. N. Maximi Confessoris, opera omnia. Patrologia Graeca 91, edited by. J.-P. Migne. Paris, 1863. Neil, Bronwen and Pauline Allen, eds. and trans. The [Greek] Life of Maximus the Confessor: Recension 3. Strathfield, NSW: St. Paul’s, 2003. Maximus the Confessor. On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture: The Responses to Thalassios, translated by Maximos Constas. Fathers of the Church 136. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2018. Maximus the Confessor. On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ: Selected Writings from St. Maximus the Confessor, translated by Paul Blowers and Robert Louis Wilken. Popular Patristics Series 25. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003. Maximus the Confessor. Opuscula theologica et polemica. 1675 critical edition with Latin translation by François Combefis. Reprinted in S. P. N. Maximi Confessoris, opera omnia. Patrologia Graeca 91, edited by J.-P. Migne Paris, 1863. Maximus the Confessor. Quaestiones ad Thalassium Quaestiones I‒LV una cum latine interpretatione Ioannis Scotti Eriugenae, edited by Carl Laga and Carlos Steel. Corpus Christianorum: Series Graeca 7. Turnhout: Brepols, 1980. Maximus the Confessor. Quaestiones ad Theopemptum, edited by Bram Roosen and Peter van Deun. “A Critical Edition of the Quaestiones ad Theopemptum of Maximus the Confessor (CPG 7696).” Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 55 (2003): 65–79.

 See Blowers, Maximus the Confessor, 73 and 77–8.

474

Paul M. Blowers

Maximus the Confessor. Quaestiones LVI‒LXV, edited by Carl Laga and Carlos Steel, Corpus Christianorum: Series Graeca 22. Turnhout: Brepols, 1990. Maximus the Confessor. Questions à Thalassios, Laga-Steel text (CCSG 7 and 22), translated by Françoise Vinel; introduction and notes by Jean-Claude Larchet. Sources Chrétiennes 529, 554, and 569. Paris: Cerf, 2010, 2012, and 2015.

Secondary Sources Allen, Pauline and Neil, Bronwen, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Berthold, George. “History and Exegesis in Evagrius and Maximus.” In Origeniana Quarta, edited by Lothar Lies, 390–404. Innsbrucker Theologische Studien 19. Innsbruck: Tyrolia-Verlag, 1987. Blowers, Paul. Exegesis and Spiritual Pedagogy in Maximus the Confessor: An Investigation of the Quaestiones ad Thalassium. Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991. Blowers, Paul. “Exegesis of Scripture.” In the Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor, edited by Pauline Allen and Bronwen Neil, 253–73. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Blowers, Paul. Maximus the Confessor: Jesus Christ and the Transfiguration of the World. Christian Theology in Context. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Booth, Phil. Crisis of Empire: Doctrine and Dissent at the End of Late Antiquity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014. Cameron, Averil. “Byzantine Africa: The Literary Evidence.” In Excavations at Carthage, 1978, edited by J. Humphrey, 1–51. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1982. Jankowiak, Marek, and Phil Booth. “A New Date-List of the Works of Maximus the Confessor.” In the Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor, edited by Pauline Allen and Bronwen Neil, 19–83. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Kattan, Assaad. Verleiblichung und Synergie: Grundzüge der Bibelhermeneutik bei Maximus Confessor. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 63. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Louth, Andrew. Maximus the Confessor. Early Church Fathers. London: Routledge, 1996.

David Vopřada

18 Scripture and the Arians of North Africa Introduction It would be reasonable to suppose that Arianism in the West was defeated at the Council of Aquileia in 381 CE. However, the Germanic tribes that adopted Arian Christianity contributed to its survival and subsequent spread throughout the fifth and sixth centuries. This was especially true in Africa, where anti-Arian writings were abundant by the end of Augustine’s life and where the first “barbaric” kingdom, that of the Vandals, was established by Geiseric, the leader who captured Carthage, the metropolis of the African provinces on October 19, 439.1 Arianism developed in the first quarter of the fourth century within the Alexandrian church. Its origins are connected to the questions and debates regarding the relationship of the divine Persons to the one Godhead. One of the chief questioners was an Alexandrian priest named Arius who maintained that Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, was inferior to the Father. For Arius, Christ was the firstborn of the creatures and “there was a time where he was not.”2 Similarly, he claimed that the Holy Spirit was created by the Son and, thus, was inferior to both. According to other church representatives, Arius’s views undermined the divinity of Jesus Christ. When Emperor Constantine convoked the Council of Nicaea in 325, Arius’s theological views were condemned,

 For the history of Arianism in North Africa, see, e.g., J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, “Gens into Regnum: The Vandals,” in Regna and Gentes: The Relationship between Late Antique and Early Medieval Peoples and Kingdoms in the Transformation of the Roman World, eds. H.-W. Goetz, J. Jarnut, and W. Pohl (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 55–84; W. Pohl, “The Vandals: Fragments of a Narrative,” in Vandals, Romans and Berbers: New Perspectives on Late Antique North Africa, ed. A. H. Merrills (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), 31–48; R. Whelan, “Arianism in Africa,” in Arianism: Roman Heresy and Barbarian Creed, eds. G. M. Berndt and R. Steinacher (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 29–55; and D. Vopřada, Quodvultdeus: A Bishop Forming Christians in Vandal Africa (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 34–40.  Arius of Alexandria, Ep. ad Eus. 5; Ep. ad Alex. 4 (AW 3:3.13). ✶

David Vopřada is Associate Professor of Patrology and Ancient Church History at the Catholic Faculty of Theology, Charles University in Prague, and Canon Priest of the Royal Collegiate Chapter of Sts Peter and Paul at Prague – Vyšehrad. His research focuses on patristic homiletics, especially sermons by Ambrose and Augustine. Among his many published works are La mistagogia del Commento al Salmo 118 di sant’Ambrogio (2016) and Quodvultdeus: a Bishop Forming New Christians in Vandal Africa (2019). This chapter was completed thanks to the generous support of the Czech Science Foundation as part of project GA ČR 21–11977S “Reception of Alexandrine Exegetical Principles between East and West.” David Vopřada, Charles University (Prague) https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-019

476

David Vopřada

and a new formula of faith was generated: the Nicene Creed, which professed the relationship between the Father and the Son as that of consubstantiality (ὁμοούσιος). Although Arius and his supporters were exiled, the imperial interventions over the following decades that sought a compromise between the debate’s protagonists led to the hardening of the positions on both sides. The critical moment is represented by the Councils of Seleucia and Ariminium in 359, where the pronouncement of the “Homoian” party, according to which the Son is substantially like (ὁμοιός) but not substantially the same as the Father, won the official support of Emperor Constantius II. After the rejection of this settlement under Valentinian I and Valens, Emperor Theodosius strongly supported the “Homoousian” or “Nicene” party at the double Councils of Constantinople and Aquileia in 381. This brought an apparent end to this theological debate. As noted above, however, this was not the end of Arianism. On the contrary: the Roman army, which by this time relied on foederati (“allies by treaty”) of Germanic origin, was heavily Arian, and the Roman generals of the first decades of the fifth century contributed to the renewed flourishing of Arianism, especially in the West. One must bear this context in mind when examining the appearance of the Arians at the end of the 420s in North Africa. Although the religious thought of the African Arians covers a range of theological topics, this chapter focuses on the principal question: What was the African Arians’ approach to the Bible? In pursuit of an answer, the chapter will proceed as follows: First, the historical background of Arianism in the West and Roman North Africa will be sketched alongside a brief history of the Gothic translation of the Bible that played such a significant role in the evangelization of the Germanic peoples. The sources for our understanding of Arian biblical exegesis in Africa will also be briefly presented in this section. Second, the last years of Augustine’s life, the period when the Arians reappeared in Africa, will be reviewed, with a focus on Augustine’s debate with the Arian bishop Maximinus. Third, the early years of the Vandal conquest of Africa will be analyzed, while paying particular attention to the traces of Arian exegesis as documented in the sermons attributed to Quodvultdeus of Carthage.3 Finally, the later stages of the relationship between the Nicene Catholics and their Arian rulers in North Africa from the 480s to the Byzantine reconquest of the 530s is treated. A handful of extant writings from this era allows us to discuss a few basic approaches to the Bible in the context of this latter stage of the Arian controversy.4

 For more on Quodvultdeus, see the chapter “Quodvultdeus and Victor Vitensis,” by T. Clemmons in this volume.  In this chapter the terms “Nicenes” and “Catholics” are used interchangeably, though the Arians also described themselves as holding the “Catholic” faith. The African Arians usually called the Nicenes “Homoousians.” See, e.g., Augustine, Arian. 36.34 (CSEL 92:110) and Fastidiosus, Serm. 2 (CCSL 91:281). Similarly, the Vandals are referred to as both “Arians” and “Homoians,” even if “Arian” is regarded by some as more general and “Homoian” is taken as pointing specifically to the creed of the Councils of Seleucia and Ariminium of 359. See Vopřada, Quodvultdeus, 44–46.

18 Scripture and the Arians of North Africa

477

It must be noted that, for every stage of Vandal rule in Africa, we have much more information about Nicene theological works than we do about those of the Arians. Most of the information is only preserved indirectly and available via contemporaneous Catholic polemic works, responses to Arian statements of faith, or sermons. As we will see, the handful of preserved Arian works allow us to make only a limited assessment of their use of Scripture. Mostly, these remarks are limited to the expression of their firm belief in the authority of the Scripture or to the provision of biblical testimonies that support their theological views; it is rare to encounter a purely exegetical engagement with a passage of Scripture in an Arian composition.5

The History of the Arians in North Africa The presence of the Arians in Africa from the 420s onwards is related to the prominent place they occupied in the Roman army. It is possible that the Arianism of the Vandals who arrived in Africa in 429 “was shaped by their prolonged contact with the Roman military.”6 In fact, during the fourth and fifth centuries, Arian doctrine was not the central concern of the North African church: the Donatist schism dominated the debate.7 However, prior to the arrival of the Vandals in North Africa in 429, the disputes with the Arians had become increasingly frequent, as Augustine’s anti-Arian works suggest.8 When the Vandals arrived, they started to promote their Arian faith and to persecute Catholic clergy with a decisiveness that surprised the Roman population.9 It is no wonder that the Catholic clergy, who had been carefully instructed and was exceedingly well prepared for doctrinal debate, resisted not only the Arians’ usurpation of their property and churches, but also resisted violations of the Creed

 E.g., Serm. Arrian. or Fastidiosus, Serm. Cf. infra.  A. H. Merrills and R. Miles, The Vandals (Malden, MA; Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 178.  R. Whelan, “African Controversy: The Inheritance of the Donatist Schism in Vandal Africa,” JEH 65.3 (2014): 504–21; R. Whelan, “Surrogate Fathers: Imaginary Dialogue and Patristic Culture in Late Antiquity: Imaginary Dialogue and Patristic Culture in Late Antiquity,” EME 25.1 (2017): 19–37. For the contacts between the Arians and Donatists in Africa during the first century, see J. Zeiller, “L’arianisme en Afrique avant l’invasion vandale,” RH 173.3 (1934): 535–8.  For Augustine on Arianism, see, e.g., M. Simonetti, “S. Agostino e gli Ariani,” REA 13 (1967), 55–84; M. Simonetti, Studi sulla cristologia del II e III secolo (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1993), 291–324. For the reception of Augustine under the Vandals, see U. Heil, “Augustin-Rezeption im Reich der Vandalen. Die Altercatio sancti Augustini cum Pascentio Arriano,” ZAC 11.1 (2007): 6–29.  M. Simonetti, La produzione letteraria latina fra romani e barbari (sec. V–VIII) (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1986), 22–3; and R. González Salinero, Poder y conflicto religioso en el norte de África: Quodvultdeus de Cartago y los vándalos (Madrid: Signifer Libros, 2002), 112–3.

478

David Vopřada

even as they provocatively reacted to abuse and maltreatment.10 Even after the Roman foedus with the Vandals was enacted in 435, the Arians began to persecute Catholics who were living in Vandal territory, forcing them to convert to Arian faith.11 Since religion and politics were inseparable in Roman antiquity, it is all but impossible to assess whether the harsh reaction of the Catholic authors to the Vandal invaders was driven more by their concern for Romanitas or for the true faith.12 The contraposition between the Roman and the barbarian and between the Catholic Christian and the barbarian was further intensified by the techniques of ancient rhetoric that were routinely employed. These played with colorful contrasts and aimed to persuade the audience to adopt the desired views.13 For example, both Quodvultdeus in his sermons and Victor of Vita in his Historia persecutionis offer bleak pictures of the extent of Vandal persecution of the Nicenes.14 The hostility between the Vandal Arians and both the Catholic aristocracy and the Catholic clergy remained even after the capture of Carthage in 439.15 Geiseric’s political ambitions were sizable, and his fleet gained supremacy over much of the Mediterranean. The Vandals occupied Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, and the Balearic Islands, and could not be stopped from plundering Rome in 455. In 468, the Vandals were even able to repel the large Byzantine fleet of Leo, and, in 474, his successor Zeno negotiated the “eternal peace” with the Vandals that lasted for the next sixty years.16 After Geiseric’s death, his son Huneric came into power. During his relatively brief reign (477–484), another wave of anti-Catholic persecution broke out. The end of Huneric’s reign brought about a series of anti-Catholic laws and Huneric even convoked a conference in Carthage to discuss the theological disagreements between Arian and Catholic clergy.17 After Huneric, his two nephews Gunthamund (484–496) and Thrasamund (496–523) came successively to power. The later continued to engage in fierce theological debates with the Nicenes, as the history of his struggle with Fulgentius  E. Zocca, “Mutazioni della tipologia martiriale in età vandalica. Un diverso punto di osservazione sulla‘persecutio’ anticattolica,” in Hagiologica: studi per Réginald Grégoire, eds. A. Bartolomei Romagnoli, U. Paoli, P. Piatti, and R. Grégoire (Fabriano: Monastero San Silvestro Abate, 2012), 600.  Prosper, Chron. 1327 (MGH AA 9:475). For more on reinterpretations of ancient accounts of Vandal persecution, see, e.g., É. Fournier, “The Vandal Conquest of North Africa: The Origins of a Historiographical Persona,” JEH 68.4 (2017): 687–718.  González Salinero, Poder, 111.  P. Siniscalco, “Il termine Romanus e suoi significati in scrittori cristiani del V secolo,” in Hestíasis, ed. S. Calderone (Messina: Sicaria, 1986), 203–4.  For a description of the bilateral relationship between the Vandals and the Roman Africans, see R. W. Mathisen, “Barbarian ‘Arian’ Clergy, Church Organization, and Church Practices,” in Arianism: Roman Heresy (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 183–4. For more on both Quodvultdeus and Victor, see the chapter “Quodvultdeus and Victor Vitensis,” by T. Clemmons in this volume.  Victor of Vita, Hist. pers. 1.5 (Lancel, 103–5).  P. J. Heather, “The Huns and the End of the Roman Empire in Western Europe,” EHR 110.435 (1995): 4–41.  This Carthaginian conference provides a crucial part of the historical context which produced several of the writings that are discussed below.

18 Scripture and the Arians of North Africa

479

makes clear.18 With the rule of Huneric’s son Hilderic, the dynastic tensions between Geiseric’s Hasding family members escalated. When Geiseric’s great-grandson Gelimer revolted against Hilderic, he provided the Byzantines with a pretext to attack Africa in 533 and, under Belisarius’s command, reconquer much of North Africa. With the restoration of the Catholic bishops and exile of the Vandal aristocracy and clergy, the story of Arianism in North Africa comes to an abrupt end. As the imperial army shattered the Vandal rule in the western Mediterranean within a matter of weeks, African Arians lost their imperial support and, in the coming decades, only minor traces of their coexistence alongside the new elites remain.19

The Arian Bible and Arian Biblical Exegesis Arius’s doctrine that the divine Word was God’s creation and not a consubstantial, eternally-begotten Son of God was fundamentally based on his interpretation of Prov 8:22 (“The Lord created me”) and Acts 2:36 (“God made the Lord and Christ this Jesus”).20 Following some Origenian theologians who preceded him, Arius used the text of Prov 8:22 (κύριος ἔκτισέν με ἐν ἀρχῇ . . . πρὸ δὲ πάντων βουνῶν γεννᾷ με) to describe the Son as created (κτίσμα), and to ground his claim that the Son is “God’s perfect creation.”21 Τhis interpretation also made its way into the North African Arian controversy where the Latin translation of the verse, typically rendered as dominus creavit me (in) initio viarum suarum in opera sua, or as dominus creavit me initium/principium viarum suarum, became part of the essential arsenal that Arian polemists used to support their position regarding the Son as creature.22 A similar proof was drawn from Acts 2:36. Together with a handful of other biblical verses that pointed to Christ as having been “made” or “created” or as a mere creature, Acts 2:36 had been used by the Arians since the beginning of their movement.23 The Greek text of this verse (κύριον αὐτὸν καὶ χριστὸν ἐποίησεν ὁ θεός) was applied by Athanasius and the Nicenes to Christ’s assumed human nature. His opponents understood that the Son was “made” or “created”

 For Fulgentius, see the chapter “Scripture in Fulgentius of Ruspe” by F. Gumerlock in this volume.  Pohl, “The Vandals,” 39–41; and A. Merrills and R. Miles, The Vandals, 252–5.  M. Simonetti, “Alcune osservazioni sull’interpretazione teologica della Sacra Scrittura in età patristica,” Orfeus 2.2 (1981): 301–19.  Arius, Ep. ad Alex. 2 (AW 3/1:12). Origen once described the Son as the “creation” in De princ. 4.4.1 (GCS 22:349), as did his pupil Theognostus after him. See A. von Harnack, Die Hypotyposen des Theognost (Leipzig: Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1903), 74; and P. Dudzik, Počátky ariánského sporu (Prague: ΟΙΚΟΥΜΕΝΗ, 2019), 28–9.  Fastidiosus, Serm. 2 (CCSL 91:281); and Fulgentius, Dicta l. 14–5 and 135–6 (CCSL 91:67 and 74).  M. Simonetti, La crisi ariana del IV secolo (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1975), 52, lists other traditional Arian proofs of this kind such as, e.g., Heb 1:4; 3:1–2; and Col 1:15.

480

David Vopřada

by God as such.24 A Latin variant reading of the verse (dominum illum et christum deus fecit) would later be used very effectively by the Arians in Africa.25 According to older scholarship, as a disciple of Lucian of Antioch, Arius, along with his first supporters. followed his master’s tendency to interpret Scripture literally.26 Simonetti, however, finds this hypothesis problematic and draws attention to an important methodological distinction between biblical exegesis per se and biblical exegesis that has specific and overt doctrinal aims. In the latter, theologically important scriptural passages are interpreted independently from their original context as a norm and are prone to diverse interpretations according to the exegete’s intellectual and theological context. A clear example of this attitude among the earliest Arians is their exegesis of John 14:28: “The Father is greater than I.”27 They read it as supporting the Arian doctrine of Christ’s inferiority, while the Nicenes restricted its application to Christ’s human nature. Relevant here is that prominent allegorists such as Origen and Gregory of Nyssa frequently used literal exegesis when engaged in theological discussions and debates. Nevertheless, given that so few early Arian texts are extant, it seems unwise, if not impossible, to claim that literal exegesis was a typical characteristic of Arian biblical interpretation.28 In the Latin Arian context, the fact that Arian exegetical methods were not limited to literal interpretation is demonstrable via reference to the allegory present in the anonymous Commentarius in Job.29 The author of the Commentary presents Job as a figure (figura) of Christ, and Job’s suffering is a typos of Christ’s Passion. Nonetheless, he concentrates upon a moralizing reading of Job as a figura of those Christians “who came over to the new grace and simply suffered, without paying back anybody evil with evil, but fulfilling the Lord’s commandment: ‘Love your enemies’ (Luke 6:27),” as well as upon the martyrs.30 As Simonetti has shown, Arian exegetes demonstrate both strong allegorical and strong moralizing tendencies.31 Whenever a doctrinal approach

 Athanasius, Orat. c. Arr. 1.53; 2.1; and 2.11–7 (PG 26:121; 148; and 172–81); cf. M. Simonetti, La crisi ariana, 278.  Fastidiosus, Serm. 2 (CCSL 91:281).  E.g., T. E. Pollard, “The Exegesis of Scripture and the Arian Controversy,” BJRL 41.2 (1959): 415.  The Greek text of John 14:28: ὁ πατὴρ μείζων μού ἐστιν had been part of Arian theological discussion from the movement’s beginnings, as Alexander of Alexandria, Ep. ad Alex. 46 and 52 (AW 3/ 1:27–8) shows. In the West, the same verse (“Pater major me est”) was much discussed, for example, at the Council of Aquileia. See Acta Conc. Aquil. 36 (SC 267:356).  Simonetti, “Alcune osservazioni,” 304n4 and 314–5; and Simonetti, Lettera e/o allegoria (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1985), 307–9.  See pages 472–3 infra.  Comm. Job 2.10 (CSEL 96:262–3): “Qui in nova gratia transierunt atque sustinuerunt, ‘nulli malum pro malo reddentes,’ sed praeceptum domini adimplentes dicentis: ‘Diligite inimicos vestros.’” Cf. 2.30–1 (CSEL 96:293–6).  Simonetti, Lettera, 312–6.

18 Scripture and the Arians of North Africa

481

to the biblical text is adopted, however, the Arian authors, in a way similar to their Nicene opponents, tend toward literal interpretation. Despite the clear distinctions that existed between the various Germanic tribes, they seem to have shared an appreciation for Bishop Ulfila’s Gothic translation of the Bible.32 Their respect for the word of God, amplified by the first phase of the Arian controversy, led to a literal translation of a Greek text. This Greek text Ulfila used is consistent with a Byzantine recension of the biblical text witnessed from the eighth or ninth century in Constantinople and, therefore, represents one of the oldest records of the circulation of readings that were characteristic for this particular recension.33 It is also likely that Ulfila made use of some texts from the Vetus Latina that had circulated in the provinces of Dacia and Moesia where Latin and Greek-speaking populations coexisted.34 Ulfila is supposed to have translated the entire Bible, except for 1 and 2 Kings, since there was some concern that these books might have further inflamed the Goths, a tribe which was already inclined towards war.35 Ulfila’s translation of the Bible is extant in only seven fragmentary codices. These preserve brief passages from the Old Testament, namely Nehemiah, about three-fifths of the Gospels, and about two-thirds of the Pauline epistles.36 Besides this translation, Ulfila produced commentaries on the Bible called skeireins and provided annotations, which were called vulthres, to important passages in his translation.37 Ulfila’s translation was

 On the theological links between Ulfila’s creed and his text of the Bible, see, e.g., B. Luiselli, “Barbaritas theologica. Nuove frontiere teologiche nelle culture ‘barbariche’ dell occidente,” in La teologia del V all’VIII secolo fra sviluppo e crisi. XLI Incontro di Studiosi dell’Antichità Cristiana (Roma, 9–11 maggio 2013) (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 2014), 117–33.  C. Falluomini, “Il testo gotico nella tradizione biblica,” in Intorno alla Bibbia gotica, eds. V. Dolcetti Corazza and R. Gendre (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2008), 211–48.  V. Dolcetti Corazza, “Gothic Literature,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Literatures of the Roman Empire, eds. D. L. Selden and P. Vasunia (Oxford: University Press, 2017). For more on the Gothic manuscript tradition, see C. Falluomini, “I manoscritti dei Goti,” in Intorno alla Bibbia gotica. VII Seminario avanzato in Filologia Germanica, eds. V. Dolcetti Corazza and R. Gendre (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2008), 249–88. The reference edition is W. Streitberg, Die gotische Bibel (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1910–1919), which is available online at: www.wulfila.be. Amendments to Streitberg’s edition are proposed by M. Snædal, A Concordance to Biblical Gothic, i. Introduction, ii. Concordance (Reykjavík: University of Iceland Press, 1998), i. 3–70.  Philostorgius, Hist. eccl. 2.5 (GCS 21:17–8). Surprisingly, according to R. Gryson, “La version gotique des évangiles. Essai de réévaluation,” RTL 21.1 (1990): 13–4, a biography of Ulfila by his disciple Auxentius of Durostorum credits Ulfila with only (now lost) essays and biblical commentaries in Greek, Latin, and Gothic; it never mentions his Gothic translation of the Bible.  The list of these passages is presented by Corazza, “Gothic Literature.” For the manuscript tradition of the Gothic Bible see C. Falluomini, “I manoscritti dei Goti.” Falluomini offered an analysis of the Gospels and Pauline epistles in Gothic in The Gothic Version of the Gospels and Pauline Epistles: Cultural Background, Transmission and Character (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015).  For the skeireins, see W. H. Bennett, The Gothic Commentary on the Gospel of John: skeireins aiwaggeljon spairh iohannen: a Decipherment, Edition, and Translation (New York: Modern Language Association, 1960).

482

David Vopřada

also recognized as an authoritative text by other Arian Germanic populations. For example, it was used by the Visigoths in southern Gaul and Spain, by Ostrogoths, and probably by Lombards when they reigned in Italy. It is thus quite possible that it was used in Africa by the Arian Vandals.38 We do not possess concrete evidence of the Vandal’s use of Ulfila’s translation. However, it seems probable that they shared an interpretative framework with other Arians who very likely would have been familiar with it.

Arians and Augustine Arianism was already in the air in North Africa in the fourth century. Nevertheless, it was only in the later part of Augustine’s life that the debate between the Arians and Nicene Catholics took tangible shape.39 Augustine’s works show that he was interested in Arianism as early as 396.40 This interest grew stronger in the last decade or so of his life when the Arian presence in Africa grew stronger. It is at this point that he composed his major anti-Arian writings: the Contra sermonem Arianorum (C. Serm. Arrian.) in 418, the Conlatio cum Maximino (Coll. Max.) in 427, and the Contra Maximinum (Coll. Max.) in 428.

The Sermo Arrianorum and Augustine’s Answer In 418 or 419, Augustine reacted to a short sermon known as the Sermo Arrianus or Sermo Arrianorum (Serm. Arrian.). It is the oldest extant North African Arian text and was authored by an anonymous Arian who may have been a disciple of Maximinus.41 Serm. Arrian. was probably composed in Ulfila’s circle and disseminated among the Arian Goths who came to Italy with Alaric and Athaulf.42 It is quite probable that the work was sent to Augustine by Dionysius, who lived in the nearby town of Vicus Iuliani.43 The structure of Serm. Arrian. corresponds to ancient baptismal creeds and

 Corazza, “Gothic Literature.”  See G. Folliet, “L’épiscopat africain et la crise arienne au IVe siècle,” REB 24 (1966): 196–223; and Zeiller, “Arianisme.”  Augustine, Agon. 30.32 (CSEL 41:135). In fact, his acquaintance with Arianism, if not with actual Arians, began at least as early as 386 CE when he witnessed firsthand the fight for Milan basilicas and regularly heard Ambrose preach. Cf. Conf. 9.6.14–7.15 (CCSL 27:140–2). He encountered Arians again among the refugees who fled Italy for Africa after Alaric’s sack of Rome in 410. Cf. Tract. Ev. Jo. 40.7 (CCSL 36:354).  CPL 701; B. Capelle, B, “Un homiliaire de l’évêque arien Maximin,” RBén 34 (1922): 108.  H. E. Giesecke, Die Ostgermanen und der Arianismus (Leipzig: Teubner, 1939), 51f.; and M. Simonetti, “S. Agostino e gli Ariani,” REA 13.1 (1967): 55–84.  Ep. 23*A.3.2 (CSEL 88:122).

18 Scripture and the Arians of North Africa

483

explains the anti-Nicene view of the relationship between the Father and the Son.44 Its doctrine corresponds to the Homoian canons produced by the Council of Ariminium, as professed also by Palladius of Ratiaria and the Maximinus who came to Africa with comes Sigisvult (cf. infra). Since Serm. Arrian. presents doctrinal material in support of the author’s Arian views, there is little space left in it for biblical exegesis as such. Rather, it uses biblical testimonia to support the aforementioned doctrinal material. For example, when Serm. Arrian. comes to the question of the Son assuming flesh, the scriptural evidence employed intends to show that the Son followed the command or will of the Father. In this way, John 6:38 (“I came down from heaven, not to do my will, but to do the will of him who sent me”) is used to document the fact that various moments of Christ’s life happened at the will and command of the Father, and, on this reading, the word “will” (voluntas) is considered as literal proof of this. Moreover, when paired with the verb “sent” (misit), whose subject is clearly the Father, this verse is also read as a command of the Father and, as such, as implying that the Son’s obedience to the Father entails the former’s inferiority.45 Other passages of Scripture are then marshalled to corroborate the main theological claim.46 Similarly, when demonstrating the subordination of the Son to the Father and of the Holy Spirit to the Son, Serm. Arrian. claims that “the Spirit does not speak on his own but awaits the Son’s command for everything.” To support this, John 16:13 is brought forward: “He will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he will hear, and he will announce to you what is to come.”47 The words “he will not speak on his own” are taken out of their original context and used as a general assertion to support the author’s view regarding the relationship of the Spirit to the Son. This application is typical of what occurs in other extant Arian texts. Although Serm. Arrian. probably did not originate in Africa, it entered African theological debates thanks to Augustine’s reply to it in his Contra sermonem Arrianorum (c. Serm. Arrian.). Augustine rebuts Serm. Arrian. line by line and challenges the Arian theological interpretation of various biblical passages,48 especially those that combined literal interpretation with naturalistic or unspiritual or, to use a Pauline term, “fleshly” readings. For example, Augustine observes that Ps 109 (110):1: “Sit at my right hand” cannot be interpreted literally as the Father’s command to the Son; rather, it should be read spiritually in order to avoid obvious negative consequences,  B. E. Daley, “The Giant’s Twin Substances: Ambrose and the Christology of Augustine’s Contra sermonem Arianorum,” in Collectanea Augustiniana. Augustine: Presbyter Factus Sum, ed. J. T. Lienhard, E. C. Muller, and R. J. Teske (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 478–9; and R. J. Teske in WSA 1/18:119.  Serm. Arrian. 6 (PL 42:679): “‘Descendi de coelo, non ut faciam voluntatem meam, sed voluntatem ejus qui me misit.’ ipse et voluntate patris triginta annorum baptizatus, voce et testimonio patris manifestatus, voluntate et praecepto patris evangelium regni coelorum praedicabat.”  Serm. Arrian. 6 (PL 42:679): Gal 4:4; Luke 4:43; John 12:49; Matt 26:39; and Phil 2:8.  Serm. Arrian. 20 (PL 42:681; WSA 1/18:135, trans. Teske): “Non, inquit, a se loquetur; sed quaecumque audierit loquetur, et ventura annuntiabit vobis.”  See WSA 1/18:124–9.

484

David Vopřada

such as the implication that the Father sits at the Son’s left hand, i.e., at the less honorable place.49

Augustine’s Debate with Maximinus During the last years of Augustine’s life and ministry, the Arian presence in North Africa grew even more robust. In 427, the comes Sigisvultus led a Roman army into Africa in order to suppress the rebellion of the comes Bonifacius. Because he was an Arian Goth, Sigisvultus brought along Maximinus, an Arian bishop.50 We do not know whether this Maximinus is identical with the Maximinus related to Palladius and Secundinus, two bishops condemned at the Council of Aquileia in 381.51 Nonetheless, in 427 or 428 this Maximinus came to Hippo in order to debate with Augustine. The proceedings of this debate were recorded by a notarius,52 were signed by both bishops, and were handed down among the works of Augustine as the Coll. Max. Maximinus’s approaches to Scripture as revealed in this discussion may illustrate the Arian mentality during the first half of the fifth century. In any case, it proved crucial for relations between the Arians and Catholics of Africa. Theologically, Maximinus is an heir to the decisions of the Council of Ariminium of 359. He maintains that only the Father is the true and “great” God, since he is “incomparable, immense, infinite, unborn, and invisible,” and that the Son has none of these attributes. Thus, the Son is clearly not the true or “great” God, although he is a god.53 As Simonetti has shown, Maximinus belonged to the “school” of Ulfila; he may even have been the author of the Serm. Arrian. mentioned above.54 More important, however, is the method by which Maximinus locates his biblical arguments and then uses them to support his doctrine on God. At the beginning of the debate, Maximinus appealed to the Council of Ariminium while Augustine appealed to Nicaea. Given that neither accepted the other’s claim regarding the authority of the decrees of these different synods, they agreed to base the debate exclusively on the Bible:

 Serm. Arrian. 9 (PL 42:680): “Sede ad dexteram meam”; and Arian. 12 (CSEL 92:68–9).  Augustine, Coll. Max. 1 (PL 42:709); and R. W. Mathisen, “Sigisvult the Patrician, Maximinus the Arian, and Political Strategems in the Western Roman Empire c. 425–40,” EME 8.2 (2003): 173–96.  The authenticity of most of the works (sometimes) attributed to Maximinus is now doubted. See, e.g., R. Gryson, “Les citations scripturaires des œuvres attribuées à l’évêque arien Maximinus,” RBén 88 (1978): 45–80. For a wide-ranging evaluation of works attributed to Maximinus, see N. B. McLynn,“From Palladius to Maximinus: Passing the Arian Torch,” JECS 4.4 (1996): 477–93. For the current status quaestionis, see esp. J. T. Lienhard, “Maximinus Arrianus,” 220–1.  Augustine, Coll. Max. 10 (PL 42:713).  M. E. Barnes, “Maximino Arianorum episcopum, Conlatio con,” in ATAE, 549.  Giesecke, Die Ostgermanen, 53 ff.; and Simonetti, “S. Agostino,” 72.

18 Scripture and the Arians of North Africa

485

Maximinus answered, “I wanted the decree of the Council of Ariminium to be present, not to excuse myself, but to show the authority of the fathers who handed on to us in accord with the divine scriptures the faith which they learned from the divine scriptures. But have it your way, since “with the heart it is believed unto justice, but with the lips confession is made unto salvation (Rom 10:10).” We are, indeed, instructed and prepared to make answer to everyone who demands an account of the faith and hope which is in us. Moreover, the Lord Jesus himself says, “He who shall have confessed me before men, I will confess him before my Father who is in heaven, and he who shall have denied me before men, I will deny him before my Father who is in heaven (Matt 10:32–33).”55

Notably, it is not only the rules of the debate that compelled Maximinus to argue biblically; he claims to ground his entire profession of faith on Scripture.56 He even requires his opponent to follow the same rules, since he does not accept “those words which are not found in the Scriptures.”57 In other words, he is convinced that only biblical testimonies can be regarded as acceptable arguments. Although one can quote the Bible at length without “being guilty of wordiness,” the use of rhetoric or of a philosophy that compels one to issue “idle words” makes one accountable on the day of judgement.58 If Maximinus refers to the Council of Ariminium, it is because he is convinced that this Council was “in accord with the faith they learned from the divine Scriptures.”59 In fact, the Bible is the substance of Maximinus’s faith: “We believe the Scriptures; we venerate the Scriptures. We do not want a single particle of a letter to perish, for we fear the threat that is stated in them: ‘Woe to those who take away or add’ (cf. Deut 4:2).”60 Accepting everything in the Bible is a crucial for properly venerating the Scriptures. Nothing can be taken from them, and none can endeavor to “correct” them; for Maximinus, Scripture is the only source of instruction.61 Such thinking must have impacted the literal understanding of biblical quotations. Although Maximinus does not state this explicitly, he practically professes both the inerrancy and the omniscience

 Augustine, Coll. Max. 4 (PL 42:711; WSA 1/18:188–9; trans. Teske).  Augustine, Coll. Max. 3 (PL 42:710).  Augustine, Coll. Max. 1 (PL 42:709): “Eae vero voces quae extra Scripturam sunt, nullo casu a nobis suscipiuntur.”  Augustine, Coll. Max. 13 (PL 42:717–8): “Certum est enim, et divina nos monet Scriptura, quod ex multiloquio non effugies peccatum . . . . Quamvis etiam etsi per totum diem quisque de divinis Scripturis proferat testimonia, non in verbositate illi imputabitur revera: quod si aut litteraria arte usus, aut expressione spiritus sui quisque concinnet verba quae non continent sanctae Scripturae; et otiosa sunt et superflua.”  Augustine, Coll. Max. 4 (PL 42:711).  Augustine, Coll. Max. 15.13 (PL 42:730; WSA 1/18:208, trans. Teske): “Credimus Scripturis, et veneramur ipsas Scripturas divinas: et neque apicem unum praeterire optamus, timentes periculum quod in ipsis divinis Scripturis est positum: Vae detrahentibus aut addentibus.”  Augustine, Coll. Max. 15.20 (PL 42:736). Maximinus’s assertion of awe for every letter of the biblical text recalls a famous passage in Origen, Hom. Exod. 13:3 (SC 321:386) where the Alexandrian compares the awe generated by the Scripture to that generated by the Eucharist.

486

David Vopřada

of the Scriptures in matters of faith. To be a worthy disciple of the Bible is, for Maximinus, the ideal he strives after and prays for.62 The authority of the Bible is, for him, more substantial than that of the church or any Council, which can only try to follow what Scripture teaches. This is also the source of Maximinus’s Christology: “Even if I am tortured on the rack, I will not say otherwise.”63 In the second part of the debate, Maximinus offers a lengthy, Scripture-based exposition of his Homoian Arianism. He uses biblical testimonia to the subordinationist doctrine that also grounded the Creed of Ariminium of 359. His scriptural witnesses, drawn primarily from the New Testament, are already traditional and they fully correspond to the literal “theological exegesis” discussed above. In his interventions, Augustine noticed that the main points of difference between the Arians and Nicaean Christians revolve around a handful of biblical quotations including: John 1:10; 1:15; 5:17; 6:57; 8:54; 10:29; 12:44–50; 13:20; 14:10; 14:27–8; and 1 Cor 1:24.64 Nonetheless, Maximinus’s extensive use of Scripture and ability to quote various testimonia from memory demonstrates his profound degree of biblical knowledge. Augustine was keen to show the proper understanding of these biblical quotes in light of the Nicene claims about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, about how they comprise the one and only God, and about how all the divine persons are equal and consubstantial.65 Another point of disagreement involved the interpretation of John 10:30 (“the Father and I are one”).66 Of course, this verse already played a crucial role at the genesis of the Arian controversy in the early fourth century.67 As Teske rightly observes, the debate is “a splendid example of theological controversy, but is a complete failure as a dialogue and exchange of theological perspectives.”68 Both parties were already entrenched in their positions and both were well equipped with scriptural weaponry that could be used to counterattack their opponent’s arguments and to launch insults, for example, for taking too much time to intervene or for failing to stick to the subject.69 Because he could not reply to Maximinus’s long answer during the second half of the debate, Augustine promised a written response. The two books of Contra Maximinum (Coll. Max.) do precisely that. The first

 Augustine, Coll. Max. 15.26 (PL 42:739–40).  Augustine, Coll. Max. 13 (PL 42:720): “Etiamsi ad equuleum suspendar, aliter non sum dicturus: quod docent nos sanctae Scripturae, profiteor.”  Augustine, Tract. Ev. Jo. 13.3; 26.18; 37.7; and 43.14 (CCSL 36:131; 268; 335; and 379); as well as Trin. 2.6.11 and 6.1.1 (CCSL 50:94–6 and 228).  Augustine, Ep. 238.5.28–9 (CSEL 57:554–6); and Serm. 139.3.4; 135.2.3; and 226 (PL 38: 771–2; 746–7; and 1098–9).  Augustine, Tract. Ev. Jo. 97.4 (CCSL 36:575).  See also T. E. Pollard, “The Exegesis of John X. 30 In the Early Trinitarian Controversies,” NTS 3.4 (1957): 334–49.  WSA 1/18:183.  Coll. Max. 2–5 (PL 42:709–12).

18 Scripture and the Arians of North Africa

487

aims to show that Maximinus could not refute Augustine’s claims; the second focuses on countering Maximinus’s theses. In addition to sketching Maximinus’s theological understanding of the Trinity, Augustine, drawing from Maximinus’s own statements in Coll. Max., critiques Maximinus for taking certain words and phrases from Scripture at face value.70 Against this hyperliteralist, insensitive-to-genre approach, Augustine observes that Scripture often employs analogical language.71 Since Maximinus’s subordinationist view repeatedly drew from biblical testimonies, Augustine had to account for the biblical assertions that the Son is less than the Father. Augustine repeatedly adheres to the Catholic regula and affirms that whenever the Bible seems to teach that the Son is less than the Father, it intends to signal Christ incarnate in the “form of the servant,” Christ’s humanity, or to illustrate the Son’s origin from the Father.72 As Augustine’s work does not contain the complete transcription of Maximinus’s words, its importance for the Arian understanding of Scripture is limited to showing the contrast between the Augustinian explanation and that of his Arian opponent. In sum, given that Maximinus claims to be younger than Augustine and given that it is impossible to prove that other writings attributed to him are authentic, it seems fair to regard Maximinus as a point of continuity between the Arianism of Palladius that was challenged by Ambrose and the Arianism of the Vandals who arrived in Africa in 429, approximately one year after Augustine’s debate with Maximinus.73 While reading Coll. Max., one notices that the two debaters often talk past each other and never manage to enter into an honest dialogue. Both invoke the authority of a Council (Maximinus that of Ariminium; Augustine that of Nicaea). Still, they agree that the best arguments are those based solely on the Bible. However, even that does not help to bridge the theological chasm that lies between them. Both bishops’ approach to Scripture is complex and conditioned by their understanding of theological authority, which, of course, is driven by the differences in the councils they recognize as legitimate and in the church communities they belong to. Their situation provides a clear example of the limits of biblical testimonia that were so widely used by patristic authors, both Catholic and Arian.

 J. T. Lienhard, “Maximinum Arrianum (Contra),” in AugLex 3:1217.  Augustine, Coll. Max. 1.2 (PL 42:744–5).  Augustine, Coll. Max. 2.14.8 (PL 42:775–6).  Maximinus may have still been active while the Vandal’s reigned in Africa; cf. R. Gryson, Scolies ariennes sur le concile d’Aquilée (Paris: Cerf, 1980), 68.

488

David Vopřada

The First Years of Vandal Rule in Africa There are about a hundred extant texts that date from the period of Vandal rule in Africa. These include various sermons, florilegia, letters, treatises, and disputationes, which reflect – albeit sometimes in a distorted way – the complex relations and disagreements between the Arian Vandal and Nicene Roman populations.74 We do not possess any direct witness that dates from the period of Vandal rule in North Africa that shows how the Arians used Scripture. The major indirect sources are writings attributed to Quodvultdeus, the man who was serving as bishop of Carthage when Geiseric captured the city in 439.

The Biblical Text Used by the Vandals Both the Arians and the Nicenes used scriptural evidence in these debates. As Mathisen notes, “everyone of course knew what standard scriptural tags would be used by each side, so it was unlikely that anyone was going to come up with any new arguments on one side or the other.”75 The scriptural material used by both sides presented familiar texts as evidence, but it also functioned as an entertainment for the members of the public who witnessed the debate. Because the testimonia used by both sides were by this time already traditional, if a debater left out an important biblical citation, the audience, who had been educated in the details of these theological discussions would mention the omission. How well did the Vandal clerics know the Gothic tradition? That is, did they understand Ulfila’s translation of the Bible? Did they possess Gothic or Vandal summaries or an epitome of the Scriptures?76 We know that the use of Latin was not widespread in the rural areas of the African provinces. In the cities, however, it remained vital even under the Vandals. Indeed, it was comprehended well enough that preachers could avoid descending into low style in their homilies.77 In spite of Ulfila’s translation into Gothic, the language of the debates among the Vandals and the Nicenes in Africa seems to have been Latin. During his debate with Augustine in 427 or 428, Maximinus was able to communicate perfectly well in Latin. In fact, there is no evidence that anything other than the Latin version of the Bible was used in the Arian

 S. Fialon, “L’arianisme «vandale» et controverse religieuse: le cas de la Disputatio Cerealis contra Maximinum,” in Littérature, politique et religion en Afrique vandale, ed. É. Wolff, EAA 200 (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2015), 137.  Mathisen, “Sigisvult,” 176. Given that the arguments of both camps were so well known, it was equally unlikely that many, if any, of the debate’s attendees would change sides.  Mathisen, “Sigisvult,” 178–9.  M. Simonetti and G. Vian, Romani e barbari: le lettere latine alle origini dell’Europa (secoli V–VIII) (Rome: Carocci, 2006), 41.

18 Scripture and the Arians of North Africa

489

vs. Nicene debates in Africa, even while the Vandals were in power. On the contrary, at the Council of Carthage in 484, when the Vandal patriarcha Cyrila claimed (probably for political purposes) that he did not know Latin, the Nicene bishops first challenged then dismissed his assertion.78 At the same time, the issue of the language of the Bible they used is secondary. This point is made clear by examining two verses that were pivotal in the doctrinal debates: John 10:30 (“I and the Father are one”) and John 14:9 (“He that has seen me, has seen the Father, and how can you say then: Show us the Father?”). Ulfila’s translation of these verses correspond accurately to both the original Greek and the Latin version then in circulation. Moreover, as he rendered them, they are not necessarily more supportive of Arian theology.79

Quodvultdeus, Vandals, and Scripture The Liber promissionum et praedictorum dei (LP), attributed to Quodvultdeus, may be understood as “an extensive exegetical guide for pastoral and polemical purposes.” It brings forward and applies the biblical witnesses for catechesis that Augustine envisaged in his De catechizandis rudibus (Catech.). The sermons attributed to Quodvultdeus allow us to glimpse Arian biblical exegesis precisely because they are often antiArian in their conception and framing and because his comments occasionally highlight the verses that the Arians employed in their theological polemics. Quodvultdeus’s use of the Bible is consistent with Augustine’s, Quodvultdeus’s friend and teacher. At the same time, Quodvultdeus is reading and applying the Bible in a very different historical situation. To a significant degree, Quodvultdeus’s use of the Bible reveals his apocalyptic view of the Arians, a view that, in his mind, receives support from the mere fact that the Vandals are in power in Africa. Like some earlier authors such as Ambrose, Quodvultdeus perceived the invading “barbarians” as a fulfilment of both Old and New Testament apocalyptic prophecies. For example, they fulfil passages from both Ezekiel and Revelation that speak about Gog and Magog. This follows a typical Roman Christian tradition of seeing barbarians as a genuine threat. For his part, Quodvultdeus perceived the Arians as a threat both

 Victor of Vita, Hist. pers. 2.55 (Lancel, 147): “Cyrila dixit, nescio Latine. Nostri episcopi dixerunt: semper te esse locutum manifesto novimus”; “Cyrila said, ‘I don’t know Latin.’ Our bishops responded: ‘We know very well that you know Latin.’”  John 10:30: ik jah atta meins ain siju; in Greek ἐγὼ καὶ ὁ πατὴρ ἕν ἐσμεν; John 14:9: saei gasahv mik, gasahv attan, jah hvaiwa þu qiþis: augei unsis þana attan?; ὁ ἑωρακὼς ἐμὲ ἑώρακεν τὸν πατέρα: πῶς σὺ λέγεις, δεῖξον ἡμῖν τὸν πατέρα; The Gothic text of Ulfila’s translation is adopted from Streitberg’s 2019 edition, Die gotische Bibel, digitized and available online as part of the Wulfia project, consulted Feb. 04, 2021 (http://www.wulfila.be/gothic/browse).

490

David Vopřada

religiously and existentially.80 No extant passage in Quodvultdeus expresses his attitude toward the Arians better than the following excerpt from the first of his sermons De Symbolo Symb., in which he criticizes the division of the church’s body: Heretic, you do far worse than the Jew did. For behold, although the Jew [scil. Judas] was paid a reward for the purpose of killing Christ, and then only once pierced his side as he hung on the cross, still, he preserved his whole body intact. But you, indeed, pay money every day with the result that you cut off different bodily members of the One who sits in heaven. But may you, beloved, who have been nourished from the breasts of Holy Mother the Church in the beginning and have been weaned by her to solid food, remain in her.81

Quodvultdeus’s attitude towards the Arians also illustrates the limits of our ability to assess Arian approaches to Scripture through his sermons. Surprisingly, Quodvultdeus criticizes the Arians’ endeavor to reason about realities that exceed the human mind’s capacities.82 However, other Arian texts of the era suggest the opposite tendency: nothing except Scripture was acceptable. What is more, they accuse their “Homoousian” adversaries of injecting human reasoning into theological considerations that are best addressed using the Bible alone. This tendency to juxtapose their opponents’ human “reasoning” and the “divine teaching” of the Scriptures was already traditional for both sides of the Arian controversy in Quodvultdeus’s day.83 At the same time, Quodvultdeus denounces the Arians for not seeing spiritually, for being reluctant to accept Christ’s divine Sonship, and for failing to incorporate verses that exalt Christ as the “beginning” (principium) who existed from eternity.84 To convince his listeners, Quodvultdeus, like Augustine, employs an already traditional set of testimonia that has been interpreted so as to privilege the Nicene Trinitarianism.85 The most important of these was his explanation of John 14:28: “The Father is greater than I,”86 where he contrasts this verse, which had long been used by the Arians as a battering ram, with verses and traditional anti-Arian arguments that affirm the

 Quodvultdeus, LP D.13.22 (CCSL 60:207); M. Pavan, “Sant’Ambrogio e il problema dei barbari,” RomBarb 3 (1978): 167–87; G. Visonà, “Gog iste Gothus est. L’ombra di Adrianopoli su Ambrogio di Milano,” StAmbr 5 (2011): 133–68; and M. Sannazzaro, “Gog iste Gothus est. Presenze barbariche a Milano e in Lombardia tra fine IV e inizi V secolo alla luce delle testimonianze archeologiche ed epigrafiche,” StAmbr 5 (2011): 95–120. It is probable that this sentiment was shared by other North African Nicenes.  Quodvultdeus, Symb. 1.13.9–11 (CCSL 60:334; ACW 60:50, trans. Finn): “Peiora, haeretice, facis quam quae fecit Judaeus. Ecce enim Judaeus etsi praemio comparavit Christum occidendum, semel latus in cruce pendentis pupugit, sed totum ejus corpus integrum reservavit: tu vero ad hoc eum quotidie comparas pecunia, ut sedentis in caelo diversa laceres membra. Vos autem, dilectissimi, qui ab initio uberibus sanctae matris Ecclesiae nutriti, usque ad solidum cibum estis ab ea perducti, manete in ea.”  Quodvultdeus, CJPA 7.1–4 and A1 15.7 (CCSL 60:235–6 and 454).  Ambrose, Fid. 1.13.79 (SAEMO 15:96); Consentius apud Augustine, Ep. 119.1 (CSEL 34/2:699); Quodvultdeus, Symb. 2.9.12 (CCSL 60:346); and CN 7.3 (CCSL 60:388): “argumentatio humana, non auctoritas divina.”  Quodvultdeus, CN 7.14 (CCSL 60:389).  John 1:1–2; 8:56; and 14:9–11; see Quodvultdeus, CJPA 5.5–8 and A1 12.3–12 (CCSL 60:233 and 450–1).  Quodvultdeus, CJPA 8.1 and CN 7.10 (CCSL 60:228–9 and 388).

18 Scripture and the Arians of North Africa

491

Son’s existence from the beginning (John 1:1) as well as the omnipotence that may be inferred from the facts that all things were created through Christ (John 1:3),87 and that the Son acts in baptism and the other sacraments of the church.88 Although Quodvultdeus’s catecheses contain fictive dialogues with a “hermeneutical” Arian, these passages should not be taken as an appeal to the Vandals of Quodvultdeus’s time; they are better seen as a collective rhetorical device designed to embellish the discourse and to grab and hold the audience’s attention.89 His catecheses do, however, document the Arians’ efforts to preserve the unicity of God and his omnipotence by asserting full divinity and omnipotence only for the Father. Much like the formula of Ariminium of 359, the Serm. Arrian., and Maximinus in Coll. Max., Quodvultdeus’s theological opponents claimed that the Father is greater (major) than the Son, who is also less (minor) than the Father,90 and the Holy Spirit, who is even less than the Son (inferior; multo inferior).91 In this way, they denied the equality of the Son and the Father in terms of divinity.92 In doing so, they taught a gradual subordinationism and inequality between the hypostases.93 They explained the difference between the hypostases by highlighting the differences in the forms in which the hypostases were (in)visible: while the Father is invisible, the Son appeared in the form of a man, and the Spirit appeared in the form of a dove.94 Quodvultdeus labels these as “empty (Arian) scaffolds:”95 his own view transcends the literal understanding of the incarnation of the Spirit as a dove at the moment of Jesus’ baptism by reminding his audience that the Gospel also calls Christ the Lamb, even though no one would dare to suggest that the Word ever took the form of a literal lamb.96 An example drawn from Quodvultdeus’s set of testimonies demonstrates how the collection of scriptural testimonia used by both sides of the controversy was already clearly established when the Vandals began ruling Africa. Against the concept of two gods, Quodvultdeus uses John 8:56 and the notion of unity (unum) – not the identity – of the hypostases.97 To explain the united action of the persons of the Trinity, Quodvultdeus asks: Will it be the Father or the Son who will judge the living and the dead at

 Quodvultdeus, CN 7.11 and 13 (CCSL 60:389).  Quodvultdeus, Symb. 1.3.15; 1.3.21–22; 1.4.2; 3.9.2; and CN 7.13 (CCSL 60:311–2; 360; and 389).  Quodvultdeus, Catacl. 5.11–23 (CCSL 60:415–6).  Quodvultdeus, CJPA 7.7; 8.1–3; Symb. 1.3.10; 1.4.16; 1.9.6; 1.9.25–26; 3.9.2; CN 7.9–11; 7.17; UQF 6.20; A1 12.1–2; 12.5; 12.8; and 14.5 (CCSL 60:236–7; 311; 314; 326; 329; 360; 388–9; 404; 450–1; and 453).  Quodvultdeus, Symb. 1.9.6; UQF 6.20; and A1 12.1–2 (CCSL 60:326; 404; and 450).  Quodvultdeus, CN 7.1 (CCSL 60:388).  Quodvultdeus, 3 Serm. 3.9.8 and CN 7.17 (CCSL 60:361 and 389).  Quodvultdeus, 3 Serm. 1.9.7 (CCSL 60:326–7).  Quodvultdeus, 3 Serm. 1.9.18 (CCSL 60:328): “vanas machinas.”  Quodvultdeus, 3 Serm.Symb. 1.9.15 (CCSL 60:327). For Quodvultdeus’s approach to the Arians, see Vopřada, Quodvultdeus, 282–90.  Quodvultdeus, CJPA 5.6–7 (CCSL 60:233).

492

David Vopřada

the Last Judgement? He argues that it is the whole Trinity who will judge.98 Likewise, Quodvultdeus comments upon John 14:28: “the Father is greater than I,” a verse central to Arian subordinationism. Like Augustine, his teacher, Quodvultdeus applies this verse to the human nature of Christ, while asserting the equality of the Son with the Father.99 Quodvultdeus’s portrayal of Arianism is clearly indebted to Augustine’s Christology, even as it also makes clear that both Nicene and Arian approaches both to the controversy in general and to biblical exegesis in particular continued to flourish deep into the fifth century.

Contra Varimadum The fact that the Liber promissionum (LP) included a whole set of testimonia was part of a deliberate strategy to show that Nicene doctrine did not rely on philosophical terms such as ousia or homoousios as much as it did the biblical text.100 The same applies to Contra Varimadum (C. Varim.), a treatise which responds to each biblical verse brought forward by the Arians via an extensive set of scriptural testimonia in support of the Nicene case. It amounts to a sort of handbook on how to respond to the specific Arian assertions and how to counter Arian readings of specific biblical passages. Its composition can be situated with certainty to the years between the capture of Carthage in 439 and Huneric’s conference of Carthage that was held in 484. Most probably it was written by an unknown author between 445 and 450.101 Some sources ascribe it to an Arian deacon named Varimadus. However, his identity is uncertain: perhaps he can be identified with Maribadus or Marivaldus, prominent figures in the time of Huneric.102 The manuscript tradition variously attributed the text to Athanasius, Augustine, Vigilius of Thapsus, or Cerealis of Castellum Ripense.103 It seems very likely that the author was an African, a Nicene Christian victimized by Vandal persecution, and an exile living in Italy (and probably in Naples) when he wrote.104 The C. Varim. is best seen as a florilegium of biblical texts organized into three books according to theological topics. All three books draw from older Catholic rebuttals to Arian doctrine, such as Ambrose’s De fide. Book 1 touches the questions related to the unity of the Trinity and the equality of the Son to the Father. Book 2 focuses on the equality of the Holy Spirit to the other two Persons of the Trinity. Book 3 provides

 Quodvultdeus, Symb. 1.4.11–12 and 1.4.23 (CCSL 60:313–5).  Quodvultdeus, CJPA 8.1–9.1 (CCSL 60:236–8).  A. H. Merrills, The Vandals (Malden, MA; Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 179.  According to B. Schwank, “Zur Neuausgabe von Contra Varimadum nach dem Codex Paris B. N. Lat. 12217, im Corpus Christianorum Series Latina XC,” SacEr 12 (1961): 134.  Vigilius of Thapsus, Alterc. 2.45 (PL 62:226); and Victor of Vita, Hist. pers. 1.48 (Lancel, 119).  V. Lombino, “Varimadum, Contra,” in NDPAC 3 (2008): 5547.  C. Varim. praef. 1–2 (CCSL 90:9–10).

18 Scripture and the Arians of North Africa

493

biblical testimonia for the attribution of divine titles to each of the three persons of the Trinity, such as “God,” “Lord,” “Almighty,” etc.105 Because the C. Varim. desires to ground Nicene doctrine in Scripture, it omits the philosophical or unbiblical terms and language, such as “essence,” “consubstantiality” (homoousios), and “the two natures of Christ.” The biblical text of the C. Varim. is very similar to that used by Quodvultdeus.106 It also provides a witness to the use of the so-called comma Johanneum (cf. 1 John 5:7–8), which played an important role in the theological discussions that occurred at the conference of Carthage in 484. These verses read, “For there are three that testify [in heaven: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one].”107 This variant is found exclusively in later New Testament manuscripts and was used by other Nicene writers as part of their anti-Arian argumentation.108 The C. Varim. uses it as a reply to Arian invocations of John 14:28 (cf. supra).109 The following provides a good example of how the C. Varim. engages the biblical text, especially in the first two books: “If they say, what the Son said in the Gospel: ‘The Father is greater than I,’ you will answer in this way;” a short commentary then applies John 14:28 to the human nature of Christ and follows those comments with a traditional list of scriptural passages.110 As the work does not betray an independent theological agenda, its import stems from the collection of scriptural testimonia that were used by Arian and Nicene debaters in the early years of Vandal rule in Africa that it preserves.111 Its more than 1,200 Vetus Latina scriptural quotations are a treasure trove for both the history of the biblical canon and for the science of textual criticism.112 However, the Contra Varimadum contributes little to our understanding of the biblical text preferred by the African Arians.

 C. Varim. 3.1–3 (CCSL 90:101–2): “deus; dominus; omnipotens.”  Schwank, “Zur Neuausgabe,” 182.  Victor of Vita, Hist. pers. 2.82 (Lancel, 163) includes the VL version of 1 John 5:7–8: “Tres sunt qui testimonium perhibent in caelo, pater, verbum, et spiritus sanctus, et hi tres unum sunt.” The socalled Johannine Comma is an ancient gloss on these verses that was interpolated into the text of 1 John over time. The Greek form ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, ὁ πατήρ, ὁ λόγος, καὶ τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα· καὶ οὗτοι οἱ τρεῖς ἕν εἰσι. καὶ τρεῖς εἰσὶν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες ἐν τῇ γῇ does not appear in Greek manuscripts prior to the fifteenth century and under the influence of Latin manuscripts. The Comma is usually omitted in the modern versions of the Bible.  Fulgentius of Ruspe, C. Fab. 21.4 (CCSL 91A:797); Trin. 1.4 (CCSL 91A:634); Dicta l.883–5 (CCSL 91:93); and Ps.-Athanasius, Trin. 43.60 (CCSL 50:69).  C. Varim. 1.5 (CCSL 90:20). Cf. Lombino, “Varimadum, Contra,” 5548.  C. Varim 1.5 (CCSL 90:20): “Si tibi dixerint illud, quod filius in evangelio dixit: ‘Pater meus major me est.’ Ita respondes . . .” The verses marshalled in support of Nicene doctrine include: John 1:1; 5:13; 5:23; 10:30; 14:9–10; 15:23; 16:15; 17:10; 17:22–3; Phil 2:5–7; 1 John 5:7–8 (comma Johanneum); Sir 24:8; 42:21 (= 24:12; 4:21–22 in the Vulgate); and Ps 72(73):25.  Schwank, “Zur Neuausgabe,” 158.  Schwank, “Zur Neuausgabe,” 183.

494

David Vopřada

Latter Days of Vandal Rule in Africa The debates between the Nicenes and the Arians continued throughout the period of Vandal dominance in North Africa. The Nicene authors were primarily interested in formulating theological responses to Vandal Arianism, even though in the last days of the Vandal kingdom some of them, for example, Fulgentius, also participated in the Christological debates that were taking place in the East.113 The Vandal authors were also variously engaged; however, their writings have not been preserved. Still, their theological argumentation can be partially recovered thanks to the inclusion of excerpts of their works in the polemical responses made by Catholic authors.114 Nevertheless, the account of Huneric’s 484 conference at Carthage raises doubts about the ability of the Arians to withstand their Nicene adversaries.115 Several (mostly) brief Arian writings from the last decades of Vandal rule in Africa were preserved by being incorporated into responses composed by their Nicene Catholic opponents.

The Sermon of the Arian Fastidiosus A relatively brief discourse written by Fastidiosus, an Arian who lived between ca. 450 and 500, was preserved as part of a refutation to the discourse written by Fulgentius.116 The author of this text was a former Catholic monk and priest who had converted to Arianism. The sermon is directed against both the Catholics and the Donatists.117 The otherwise unknown church leader Victor was so disturbed by the content of this Arian sermon that, between 523 and 533, he forwarded it to Fulgentius and asked him to refute its Christological claims. It seemed to him that the author of the sermon “barked against the right faith and Catholic truth and, as if wounding the Homoousians with the spear of his objections . . . he laid claim to the Catholica for himself.”118

 For more on Fulgentius’s role in these debates, see the chapter “Scripture in Fulgentius of Ruspe” by F. Gumerlock in this volume.  See e.g., Fulgentius’s reaction to Fastidiosus’s Arian sermon (C. s. Fastid.) and cf. infra.  Simonetti and Vian, Romani e barbari, 33. Victor of Vita’s Hist. pers., which a major source for our knowledge of life under Huneric, is treated in the chapter “Quodvultdeus and Victor Vitensis,” by T. Clemmons in this volume.  CPL 708; CCSL 91:280–3; for an English trans., see FC 95:387–92.  Fulgentius, C. Fast. 1.1 (CCSL 91:283).  Victor, Ep. 9.4 (CCSL 91:279; FC 95:386, trans. Eno): “Adversus rectam fidem et catholicam veritatem visus est oblatrasse et homoousianos . . . sibi postea Catholicam vindicavit.” For the identity of this Victor, see “Victor 90” in PCBE 1:1183. It is not clear whether this Victor was a bishop; he certainly was a Catholic who had converted either from worldliness or from Arianism. In Ep. 9.3 (CCSL 91:278) he offered the following, which may well be mere rhetorical posturing: “Et ego ita confido vestro intercessu me vivum Ecclesiae matri restitui, qui videor gravantibus peccatis mortis aculeo detineri.”

18 Scripture and the Arians of North Africa

495

In his argumentation against the Catholics, Fastidiosus reuses the traditional arguments that put Christ on the level of created beings; against the Donatists, the sermon underlines the meaning and the significance of Arian baptism. As Simonetti notes, Fastidiosus’s arguments are updated in light of the Christological controversies of the fifth century.119 As a sermon, Fastidiosus’s text uses Scripture to illustrate his points and to persuade his audience to choose a side. The discourse starts with an appeal based upon Wis 1:13: “God did not make death and he does not delight in the death of the living” in order to show that “God did not make man for sin or for death.”120 Much like Nicene sermons, Fastidiosus’s composition seizes the opportunity to introduce the most critical prooftexts in favor of Christ’s createdness as well as those that countered the Nicene idea that the Trinity is inseparable: John 1:15; Acts 2:36; Prov 8:22–3; and John 1:14.121 Fastidiosus also draws arguments from Scripture against the undivided Trinity professed by the Nicenes and tries to demonstrate how it is impossible for the Trinity to be present at crucial moments of salvation history, especially the incarnation, the crucifixion of Jesus, and the sending of the Holy Spirit into the world.122 The final section of the sermon returns to parenesis. It is reasonable to presume that the sermon was given during the liturgy and was accompanied by liturgical readings. The only biblical evidence repeatedly quoted during the discourse are portions of John 1:1–14; it is certainly possible that this passage was read in the liturgy prior to the sermon. Fastidiosus’s address, apart from the traditional use of Arian theological argumentation, is, therefore, a good if rare example of the role played by the Bible in Arian homiletics. The paucity of verses explicitly mentioned in the text, however, prevents us from drawing general conclusions about Fastidiosus’s exegetical method, apart from the characteristics he shares in common with other extant African sermons composed by Catholics. Fulgentius (ca. 467–532), the most significant African theologian after Augustine, replied to Fastidiosus’s sermon with his Contra sermonem Fastidiosi (C. s. Fastid.). Given the brevity of Fastidiosus’s discourse, the length of Fulgentius’s answer is surprising; it even strikes some as an overreaction. The motivation behind Fulgentius’s detailed argumentation seems to have been the former Catholic Fastidiosus’s attack on the Catholic doctrine of the inseparability of the Trinity.123 In other words, the Trinity’s perfect coordination at various moments of salvation history gives Fulgentius’s reply its doctrinal focus.124 Fulgentius emphasizes the biblical foundation of Nicene Trinitarianism when he asserts that “the divine words do not cease to proclaim

 M. Simonetti, “Fastidioso ariano,” in NDPAC 2 (2007): 1910.  Fastidiosus, Serm. 1 (CCSL 91:280; FC 95:388, trans. Eno): “Nec ad peccatum fecit hominem, nec ad mortem, scriptura dicente: ‘Deus mortem non fecit, nec laetatur in perditione vivorum.’”  Fastidiosus, Serm. 3–4 (CCSL 91:282).  Fastidiosus, Serm. 4 (CCSL 91:282) uses both Ps 21:2 (22:1 LXX) and Luke 23:46.  Fulgentius, C. Fast. 1.1 (CCSL 91:283).  Fulgentius, C. Fast. 4.1 (CCSL 91:287).

496

David Vopřada

the infinity of the Holy Trinity.”125 The attention Fulgentius gives to the interpretation of important scriptural passages such as Prov 8:22–25 illustrates the existence of a traditional dimension within the biblical arguments between Arians and Nicenes during the last days of the Vandal rule in Africa.126

The Sayings of King Thrasamund Fastidiousus was not the only personage against whom Fulgentius reacted. Also noteworthy is his theological debate with King Thrasamund, a leader interested in theological and ecclesiastical matters. His short treatise known as Dicta regis Trasamundi (Dicta) has been preserved in Fulgentius’s corpus.127 These short Dicta provide a brief glimpse into the ways Scripture was used by the Arians in Vandal Africa. The king presents a typical set of biblical testimonia in support of the Arian position on the Son’s generation from the Father. This list opens with Is 53:8: “Generationem autem ejus quis enarrabit?” and uses it to show how, despite its authority, even the Bible is unable to describe the generation of the Son. This claim is then followed by a standard arsenal of supporting biblical quotations.128 According to Thrasamund, no one should pretend to be competent to do so, even if knowledge of such a mystery is within the bounds of human comprehension.129 Similarly, Thrasamund warns the Nicenes that they should learn from Scripture and not endeavor to assert the Son’s nativity from the Father’s substance.130 Thrasamund’s argument for distinctions between the persons of the Trinity demonstrates a tendency toward literal interpretation of the biblical witnesses: he often exegetes the Scriptures he quotes both out of context and word-for-word. This difference is shown by the use of “other” or “alius,” in John 5:32: “but there is another (alius) witness who speaks on my behalf, the Father,” and John 14:16: “and I will give you another (aliud) Paraclete.” In sum, King Thrasamund provides support for the Arian case via a series of biblical testimonia that is quite typical when compared with other authors. In his reply, Fulgentius briefly reinserts the verses brought forward by Thrasamund into their

 Fulgentius, C. Fast. 4.4 (CCSL 91:288): “Immensitatem itaque sanctae Trinitatis divina non cessant eloquia profiteri.”  Fulgentius, C. Fast. 8.4–5 (CCSL 91:293–4).  CPL 815; CCSL 91:67–70.  In this case, Prov 8:22–3; 8:25; John 16:28; Ps 2:7; John 1:14, and Col 1:15. Later, Thrasamund describes the lack of learning from the Bible as “very blasphemous crime.” Cf. CCSL 91:69: “scelus et valde esse blasphemum.”  CCSL 91:67: “Et quam nemo dixit scriptura, qui enarrat? Advertendi sunt hi homines, ut dicant se posse nosse, quia inerrabilis est generatio ejus, non autem ignorabilis.” Fulgentius later challenges this premise in his Dicta resp. l. 97–8 (CCSL 91:73): “Quod non potest enarrari, non potest sciri.”  CCSL 91:68: “Sed qui presumunt irrationabiliter dicere de Patris substantia natum esse Filium, doceant per scripturas tamen, quomodo non sit erroris falsa professi.”

18 Scripture and the Arians of North Africa

497

context and repeatedly appeals to the “true” or “apostolic faith” and its “rule,” which demonstrates that Nicene authors continued to appeal to the concept of the regula fidei (not to mention its apostolic origins) as they defended their views.131 At the same time, Fulgentius’s rebuttal of the Arian cliché that the “Homoousians” rely more on philosophical reasoning than on the biblical text illustrates how vital Scripture was for both Arians and Catholics at the beginning of the sixth century.132

Altercatio Augustini cum Pascentio Arriano The Altercatio Augustini cum Pascentio Arriano (Alterc.) has been preserved thanks to its inclusion among Augustine’s works in the manuscript tradition.133 It was often attributed to Vigilius of Thapsus, an African bishop active at the end of the fifth century. Contemporary scholarship leaves the question of Vigilius’s authorship open, acknowledging only that an unknown author composed the dialogue based on the correspondence between Pascentius and Augustine.134 E. Dekkers situates the writing in fifth- or sixthcentury North Africa. According to U. Heil, the Alterc. was very probably written at the end of the fifth century and in the context of Huneric’s Carthaginian conference of 484. In this fictive debate, Augustine and Pascentius discuss, under the supervision of Laurentius, a judex, many aspects of the Arian position that occur in the aforementioned epistolary correspondence. The writing itself focuses on the term ὁμοούσιος, one which Augustine defends against Pascentius’s criticism.135 For his part, Pascentius professes his Homoian belief in “God, the Father almighty, invisible, unbegotten, and unknowable, and in his Son Jesus Christ, God born before the ages, through whom all things were made, and in the Holy Spirit.”136 Such theological use of and reference to Augustine testify to the former bishop of Hippo’s growing prestige in the Vandal kingdom. His reputation only continued to grow during Fulgentius’s era.137 Pascentius’s use of Scripture corresponds to the views we have already encountered in the works of other North African Arians. He claims that “without the authority of the Scriptures, it is not appropriate for us to offer an opinion on anything divine.”138 Following this logic, he rejects the claim that ὁμοούσιος is not grounded in  Fulgentius, Dicta l.675 (CCSL 91:88): “Apostolica fides Deum non injuriat”; and l.899 (CCSL 91:94): “apostolicae fidei regulam retinentes.”  Fulgentius, Dicta l.568–70 (CCSL 91:85).  CPL 366; PL 33:1156–62.  Heil, “Augustin-Rezeption,” 9–10. Cf. Augustine, Ęp. 238; 239; 240, and 241.  Alterc. 6 (PL 33:1157).  Alterc. 10 (PL 33:1157): “Credere se in Deum Patrem omnipotentem, invisibilem, ingenitum, et incapabilem dixit, et in Jesum Christum Filium ejus, Deum natum ante saecula, per quem facta sunt omnia, et in Spiritum sanctum.”  Heil, “Augustin-Rezeption,” 28.  Alterc. 13 (PL 33:1158): “Non decet nos aliquid sine auctoritate Scripturarum ponere divinarum.”

498

David Vopřada

the Law; however, he nowhere explicitly appeals to any biblical text to support his view. By way of response, the fictive Augustine presents a lengthy series of biblical testimonia all of which oppose Pascentius’s profession of faith. These same testimonia also support the Catholic Trinitarian doctrine that, even though the word ὁμοούσιος is absent from the Bible, its essence can be recovered from a variety of verses.139 The dialogue closes with Pascentius accepting “Augustine’s” defense and with Laurentius pointing toward the “truth” regarding the Trinity as explained by the Catholic faith’s champion.140 Although the author of the Alterc. seems to be a Catholic from the end of the fifth century who used the older correspondence of Pascentius and Augustine, the writing nevertheless provides additional confirmation of the high regard that North African Arians had for Scripture, even as it witnesses to a continuation of previously established principles of Arian theological exegesis.

The Dialogue against Arians, Sabellians, and Photinians This fictive dialogue Dialogus contra Arrianos, Sabellianos, et Photinianos (C. Sab. et Phot.) exalts Athanasius as the champion of the Nicene faith.141 In the presence of Probus, another judex, Arius and Athanasius discuss questions related to the three heresies mentioned in the work’s title. According to an internal self-reference in the Adv. Eutych., the author of the C. Sab. et Phot. was Vigilius of Thapsus. However, the only reliable biographical detail that we know about him is that, as the bishop of Thapsus, he attended the Carthaginian conference of 484.142 In the prologue, Vigilius claims to have employed the dialogue form in order to present the doctrine of various heresies accessibly.143 The result is obviously closer to Vigilius understanding of the Arian approach to Scripture than it is to the Arians’ own attitude. The dialogue aims to undermine the heresies by playing them off one another and then to present the Catholic doctrine as a via media free from any extremism. The work is obviously anti-Arian in conception and just as obviously corresponds to a context in which the realities of Arian Vandal rule left Catholics struggling both religiously and theologically.144 Book 1 presents (fictive) arguments of Arius against both Photinus, in order to show that Christ was preexistent as the Son of God – not a mere man born of a woman – and

 Alterc. 15 (PL 33:1158–62). Here the author uses the following verses in order to defend the Nicene position: John 5:18; 10:30; 14:10; 17:10; 20:28; Matt 11:27; 18:16; 2 Cor 5:19; Phil 2:6; 1 Tim 1:17; Gen 18:1; and Deut 17:6.  Alterc. 17–18 (PL 33:1162). For an excellent presentation of the theological views of this fictitious Augustine, see Heil, “Augustinus-Rezeption,” 18–28.  CPL 807; PL 62:179–238.  Vigilius of Thapsus, Adv. Eutych. 5.3 (PL 62:136); see “Vigilius 3,” in PCBE 1204–5.  Vigilius of Thapsus, C. Sab. et Phot., praef. (PL 62:179).  Simonetti and Vian, Romani e pagani, 56–7.

18 Scripture and the Arians of North Africa

499

against Sabellius, in order to clarify that the Son of God is not merely a manifestation of the Father without his own distinct subsistence. Book 2 then focuses on the Nicene Creed and typical topics of the Arian controversy. It is also in Book 2 that Arius brings forward the standard inventory of biblical passages in order to support his doctrine,145 even though it only creates an opportunity for Athanasius to present his own views. Nonetheless, the collection of Arius’s testimonia illustrates how both parties used Scripture, usually taken out of context, in order to support theological arguments. In Book 3, Probus proclaims Athanasius the winner of the debate. The work then finishes with observations regarding the doctrinal similarities that exist between the three heresies under discussion.146

Commentarius in Iob The provenance of an incomplete Commentarius in Job (Comm. Job), formerly attributed to Origen but, in fact, stemming from the hand of an unknown Arian author, remained an enigma until recently. According to Meslin, its author is Maximinus, the man who debated both Ambrose and Augustine. This conjecture was based on (a) the use of the same version of the Scriptures; (b) expert knowledge of Arian sources; (c) a similar style; and (d) a moralizing vision of the economic problems of the times in which it was composed.147 Soon thereafter, Nautin challenged Meslin’s analysis and pointed out significant discrepancies in his assessments. Nautin dates it to the fifth century and thinks it was penned by an otherwise unknown North African Arian.148 While accepting arguments in favor of a North African provenance, Dossey proposed that the work is best dated to ca. 520.149 At the same time, she identified four Greek sermons on Job attributed to Severianus of Gabala that, in her view, served as the exegetical foundation for this commentary.150 The Comm. Job has been linked to a Greek text type of Job that was used by Lucian’s circle.151 The biblical text of the Commentary also contributed to the North African version of the Vetus Latina, a fact that

 E.g., in 2.29 (PL 62:216): John 6:38–9; 8:29; 8:42; 12:49–50; 14:28; 17:12; Matt 20:23; 26:39; 26:42; 26:53; Phil 2:9; Ps 44(45 LXX):8; and Eph 1:20.  Vigilius of Thapsus, C. Sab. et Phot. 3.11 (PL 62:236).  M. Meslin. Les Ariens d’Occident, 335–430 (Paris: Seuil, 1967), 226.  P. Nautin, “M. Meslin. Les Ariens d’Occident (335–430),” RHR 177.1 (1970): 81–2. This is also the view of H. J. Frede, Kirchenschriftsteller (Freiburg: Herder, 1999), 146, and E. Dekkers, CPL (Steenbrugis: In Abbatia Sancti Petri, 1995), 244–5.  Dossey, “The last days.”  CPG 4654; PG 56:563–83.  Lucian of Antioch (d. 312) is often portrayed as the first head of the School of Antioch and is credited with a critical edition of the Greek New Testament. His emphasis on the literal sense of the Scriptures were linked with Arius’ doctrine by Athanasius and other Alexandrian theologians since the beginning of the controversy.

500

David Vopřada

allowed Dossey to situate the composition of the Comm. Job in North Africa during the Vandal period.152 Steinhauser, the editor of the Commentary for the CSEL series, rejected Dossey’s conclusions and proposed an Italian origin for the work. He also attributed it to Auxentius of Durosturum, the man who served as the Arian bishop of Milan in the 380s.153 While scholars do agree that the text of Job used in the commentary contains North African characteristics, they also warn against taking it for granted that those responsible for the text’s final form were North African since it could well have been revised by a later editor or copyist living in another locale.154 For example, the Commentary’s reading of Job 1:12c “take care not to touch” (cave ne tangas) is identical to that used by African authors, such as Cyprian or Quodvultdeus.155 Similarly, Job 1:21 is read by both Cyprian and the Comm. Job as “naked I will go under the earth” (nudus ibo sub terram); the wide circulation of Cyprian’s texts, however, may in fact weaken the argument for the Commentary’s North African origin.156 Bogaert notices affinities of the prologue of the Commentary with polemical texts by Augustine: the reading of Job 2:3 “you have looked down . . . in simplicity” (respexisti . . . in simplicitate), for example, can be found in Augustine’s quotation of Petilianus, which could point to the same ancient translation of Job.157 Given that the ancient translation of the Bible could have originated elsewhere or could fairly easily have been distributed in various geographical areas, the mere presence of similarities in these and other biblical quotations among African authors do not resolve the question. In light of this uncertainty, it seems wise to exclude this elaborate and detailed commentary on Job 1:1–3:19 from consideration as part of our appraisal of North African Arian biblical exegesis.158

 See also P.-M. Bogaert, “Job latin chez les Pères et dans les bibles. D’une version courte à des versions longues sur le grec et sur l’hébreu,” RBén 122.1 (2012): 74.  K. B. Steinhauser, “Introduction” (CSEL 96:47).  Bogaert, “Job latin,” 74.  This is because the words “cave ne” do not appear in the Greek text. Cf. Cyprian, De orat. dom. 26 (CCSL 3A:106); Quodvultdeus, Liber 1.22.30 (CCSL 60:39); and K. B. Steinhauser, “Introduction” (CSEL 96:28).  Cyprian, De mort. 10 (CCSL 3:l.137); Ad Quir. 3.6 (CCSL 3:l.9); Commentarius in Job 1.92–94 (CSEL 96:231–4); and K. Steinhauser, “Introduction“ (CSEL 96:28).  Commentarius in Job 2.6 and 9 (CSEL 96:257 and 262); Augustine, C. litt. Petil. 2.49.113 (CSEL 52:86); and P.-M. Bogaert, “Job latin,” 64–5 and 74.  K. B. Steinhauser, “Introduction” (CSEL 96:38). For an analysis of the Commentarius in Job’s exegetical style, see Simonetti, Lettera, 312–3.

18 Scripture and the Arians of North Africa

501

Conclusion In 533 Arianism in North Africa abruptly lost much of its status and significance when the Byzantine army under Belisarius captured Carthage. After an unsuccessful insurgency led by Gelimer, the defeated Vandal kings and their troops were sent into quasi-exile in the eastern half of the Empire.159 The Byzantines returned the church property that had been confiscated by the Vandals to the Catholics, and, post-533, only traces of the Homoians’ presence in North Africa are discernible.160 The same applies, as we have seen, to Arian literary works, none of which provide us with a balanced or holistic view of North African Arian exegetical theories and methods, precisely because the extant firsthand sources are only fragmentarily preserved. The respect that the North African Arians had for Scripture, which they claimed to be the sole source for their theological arguments, is clear and certain. However, both Arian and Catholic debaters criticized their opponents for relying on philosophical and “human” thinking as opposed to scriptural evidence. This raises the question: To what degree did this ancient version of the sola scriptura principle characterize the objective approach of the North African Arians to the Bible? In a sense, it was clear to the participants that references to Scripture per se could not play a decisive role in their Christological and Trinitarian discussions. And this, in turn, eventually led some theologians, such as the author of the Contra Felicianum Arianum de unitate Trinitatis (Fel.) and Boethius, who lived in Italy under the Ostrogoths in the early sixth century, to compose their theological treatises deliberately using only minimal biblical references and allusions. The existence of Fel., which is listed among Vigilius’s dubia, may even be a sign that North African writers and ecclesiastics were aware that merely piling up scriptural quotations ultimately reduced Scripture’s ability to shed light on the topics that were perennially part of the Arian vs. Nicene debate.161 The extant examples of the North African versions of these debates, which almost always include a plethora of biblical quotations culled from various florilegia, also show the continuity between the North African Arian collections of scriptural evidence and those of the earlier (but still Latin) Arians who lived in northern Italy and Illyricum.162 When they are compared, the extant debates reveal a lack of genuine dialogue; the two sides were obviously speaking past one another. The existence and repeated use of standard sets of scriptural testimonies by both sides led North African Christianity to an impasse. As a result, the public discussions that were allegedly based on Scripture became more like empty displays than actual theological exchanges. With the notable exception of Fastidiosus’s sermon, the theological use of

 Merills and Miles, Vandals, 228–55; and J. Conant, Staying Roman: Conquest and Identity in Africa and the Mediterranean, 439–700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 196–9 and 306–16.  Justinian, Nov. 37 (Schöll, 244–5). Cf. Whelan, “Arianism in Africa,” 254–5.  CPL 808; PL 42:1157–72.  Meslin, “Ariens d’Occident,” 230–5.

502

David Vopřada

Scripture is the only clearly discernible approach that may be found in the extant North African Arian texts of the fifth and sixth centuries. Other testimonies to the Arian use of the Scripture in the liturgy or in the everyday life of Vandals Christians are probably lost forever.

Further Reading Primary Sources Augustine. Arianism and Other Heresies, translated by Roland J. Teske. Part I, vol. 18, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, edited by John E. Rotelle. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1995. Florilegia biblica Africana saec. V, edited by B. Schwank. Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina 90. Turnhout: Brepols, 1966. Fulgentius. Opera, edited by J. Fraipont. Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina 91. Turnhout: Brepols, 1968. Fulgentius. Selected Works, translated by Robert B. Eno. Fathers of the Church 95. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997. Quodvultdeus. Opera tributa, edited by René Braun. Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina 60. Turnhout: Brepols, 1976. Victor Vitensis. Histoire de la persécution vandale en Afrique. Suivi de La passion des sept martyrs. Registre des provinces et des cités d’Afrique, edited and translated by Serge Lancel. Collection des universités de France Série latine – Collection Budé 368. Paris: Les belles lettres, 2002.

Secondary Sources González Salinero, Raúl. Poder y conflicto religioso en el norte de África: Quodvultdeus de Cartago y los vándalos. Madrid: Signifer Libros, 2002. Luiselli, Bruno. “Barbaritas theologica. Nuove frontiere teologiche nelle culture ‚barbariche‘ dell’ occidente.” In La teologia del V all’VIII secolo fra sviluppo e crisi. XLI Incontro di Studiosi dell’Antichità Cristiana (Roma, 9–11 maggio 2013), 117–33. Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum 140. Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 2014. Merrills, Andrew H. The Vandals. Malden, MA; Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Merrills, Andrew H, and Richard Miles. The Vandals. Malden, MA; Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. Meslin, Michel. Les Ariens d’Occident, 335–430. Paris: Seuil, 1967. Simonetti, Manlio and Giovanni Vian. Romani e barbari: le lettere latine alle origini dell’Europa (secoli V–VIII). Rome: Carocci, 2006. Vopřada, David. Quodvultdeus: a Bishop Forming Christians in Vandal Africa: a Contextual Analysis of the PreBaptismal Sermons Attributed to Quodvultdeus of Carthage. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 154. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Zeiller, Jacques. “L’arianisme en Afrique avant l’invasion vandale.” Revue Historique 173.3 (1934): 535–40.

Robin M. Jensen

19 The Bible in the Pictorial Art of Late Antique North Africa Introduction Biblical narratives constitute the primary sources for nearly all surviving examples of third- and fourth-century Christian pictorial art in Roman Africa as well as in the early Christian world generally. The largest proportion, wall paintings from the Roman catacombs or relief sculpture on early Christian sarcophagi, depict a fairly limited repertoire of subjects from both the Old and New Testaments. Among these are representations of the sin of Adam and Eve (Gen 3); Abraham offering Isaac (Gen 22); Noah in the ark (Gen 6); Moses striking the rock in the wilderness (Exod 17); Jonah being cast into and out of the sea creature’s mouth (Jonah 1–2); Daniel with his lions (Dan 6); the Three Hebrew Youths in the Fiery Furnace (Dan 3); Jesus’s baptism by John (Matt 3 and parallels); and Jesus healing, raising the dead, and working wonders. The Good Shepherd, though not associated with any single biblical narrative, was particularly popular and has symbolic resonance across both Testaments. Even though each of these biblically inspired motifs is unique, their similarity to one another suggests that artisans followed a standard set of types. This allows viewers who are generally familiar with the body of work to easily identify the figures. For example, Daniel is frequently presented as a nude, facing forward, and with his hands outstretched in the posture of prayer while two docile lions crouch on either side. Jonah regularly appears in a rare sequential series of images: tossed overboard into the waiting jaws of the creature, emerging from the animal’s mouth, and reclining under a leafy pergola. Almost every example of early Christian biblical narrative iconography depicts a single, graphic moment from the story rather than illustrating the event as a whole. Repetitive and basically unvarying in their elements, they are abridged pictorial references. Their emblematic consistency reaches beyond catacomb paintings and sarcophagus reliefs to different types of contexts and media such as ivory diptychs, engraved gems, decorated gold glasses, ceramic wares, and mosaics. While the corpus of early Christian figural art from the environs of Rome and other parts of the Latin West is quite extensive, the collection of fourth- and fifthcentury Christian objects from North Africa is comparatively small. Yet, they are in ✶ Robin M. Jensen is the Patrick O’Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. Her research, teaching, and publications integrate evidence from early Christian material culture (pictorial art, artifacts, and architectural remains) with lived religious practices as reflected in contemporaneous theological, catechetical, exegetical, and sermonic literature.

Robin M. Jensen, University of Notre Dame https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-020

504

Robin M. Jensen

many ways quite similar. Like those found elsewhere, the North African remains display a similar, limited catalog of uniform and abbreviated depictions of biblical subjects. Although the African iconographic repertoire is analogous to works from elsewhere in terms of iconographic types, it also differs significantly in respect to its medium. Rather than occurring mainly on paintings and relief sculpture, the largest corpus of African biblical iconography occurs on a different type of artifact: ceramic ware lamps, bowls, platters, and some mold-made terracotta tiles manufactured for decorating ceilings and walls. While the pottery remains are the primary source, a minority of biblical motifs also occur on a small group of mosaics, a couple of sarcophagi, one or two bronze items, one grave slab with the figure of the Good Shepherd (Figure 1), and part of a stone ciborium with a depiction of Daniel.1 Overall, unlike other parts of the early Christian world, biblical iconography from North Africa appears chiefly on modest, mass-manufactured pottery wares. The fact that ceramic wares display the majority of surviving examples of biblical art in North Africa, along with the corresponding dearth of such images on other types of media, is striking, especially given the numerous examples of paintings, relief sculpture, and other types of objects (for example, gems, ivories, and gold glasses) that we find elsewhere. Moreover, the small number of surviving biblically themed mosaics seems particularly surprising, considering that polychrome mosaics were a major art form in the region. The magnificent pavements showing elaborate scenes from classical mythology that are currently housed in the museums of Tunisia and Algeria are unparalleled in Christian or Jewish artifacts. The impressive mosaic panels illustrating episodes from the Odyssey or depicting the triumph of Dionysus, Achilles at the Battle of Troy, Venus with her sea centaur companions, or Selene’s visit to Endymion have no biblical equivalents.2 Compared with those striking pavements, the fact that the extant corpus of comparable Christian mosaic works is relatively small and (mainly) modest in size and quality is noteworthy.3

 Numerous catalogues of North African ceramic ware, mosaics, and other types of objects are available, and many are noted below. A rare bronze bowl with an image of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, now in the Sbeitla Museum, is discussed by F. Bejaoui, “Sur quelques objets en bronze nouvellement trouvés en Tunisie,” Antiquité Tardive 13 (2005): 115–20.  Beautifully illustrated volumes featuring these monuments include M. Blanchard-Lemee, et al., Mosaics of Roman Tunisia (New York: George Braziller, 1996); and A. Abed, Tunisian Mosaics: Treasures from Roman Africa (Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 2006).  Published studies that include discussions of the African Christian mosaics include K. Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman North Africa: Studies in Iconography and Patronage (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 188–95.

19 The Bible in the Pictorial Art of Late Antique North Africa

505

Figure 1: Tomb inscription with the Good Shepherd, from the Good Shepherd cubiculum, Sousse. Now in the Sousse Archeological Museum. Photo: author.

Mosaics The few surviving Christian mosaics, although often original and quite ornamental, rarely feature biblical subjects. Mosaic tomb covers, inserted into the pavements of Christian basilicas and cemeteries, comprise the largest group. In some places, where entire floors of churches were covered with these small rectangular panels, the overall impression would have been more like a patchwork quilt than any cohesive pictorial program or narrative cycle. Some of these tomb mosaics feature portraits of the deceased along with brief epitaphs recording their names, ages at death, and other brief personal details. Where they were not covered by tomb mosaics, African basilica pavements tended to display abstract floral or geometric patterns. Mosaics also

506

Robin M. Jensen

embellished baptismal chambers and fonts. Whether basilica pavements, tomb covers, or baptistery mosaics, pictorial motifs were mostly limited to baskets of fruit, various species of aquatic life, different kinds of birds (for example, peacocks, quail, pheasants, and doves), candles, shells, and trees with fruit or flowers to indicate the four seasons. While many of these motifs (for example, fish or doves) might have conveyed some religious meaning, perhaps the hope for a blissful afterlife in a verdant paradise, to their viewers, they were not exclusively Christian. Most also occur in purely secular, domestic contexts. Yet, in addition to these generic decorative themes, certain more distinctively Christian motifs were also employed. Christograms or gemmed crosses appear on late fourth- and early fifth-century tomb mosaics and fonts, often surrounded by wreaths and joined by the alpha and omega to signify Christ. A lamb or lambs confront gemmed crosses within flowery meadows on a commemorative martyrs’ mosaic from Uppenna (Henchir Chigarnia) and baptistery mosaics at Sidi Mansour and Leptiminus (modern Lemta – Figure 2). Lambs may have been intended to represent the members of the Christian flock to which the newly initiated were joined.

Figure 2: Baptistery mosaic with lambs and cross on a pavement from Leptiminus. Now in the Archeological Museum of Lamta (Tunisia). Photo: author.

Similarly, two confronted deer, drinking from overflowing cantharoi or from the four rivers of Eden, turn up on sixth-century Tunisian baptisteries at Bir Ftouha in Carthage, Leptiminus, Bennafa (La Skhira – Figure 3), and Oued Ramel.4 In such contexts, these

 Now lost examples were found at Henchir Messaouda and Henchir Chigarnia (Uppenna). Two mosaics from the British Museum, one excavated by Nathan Davis in Carthage, may be from private homes and are not clearly Christian. On this motif see N. Dennis, “Welcome to Paradise: Threshold Mosaics and the Spiritual Geography of Eden in Early Christian Baptism,” in Proceedings of the 14th Conference of the Association Internationale pour l’Étude de la Mosaïque Antique, Nicosia 15–19 October 2018. Vol. 1. Ed. Demetrios Michaelides. Athens: ΣΗΜΑ Εκδοτική, 2023. 262–277.

19 The Bible in the Pictorial Art of Late Antique North Africa

507

deer almost certainly have specifically baptismal connotations. They evoke the imagery of Ps 41:2, “As a deer longs for springs of water, so my soul longs for you, O God.”5 This Psalm may have been intoned by the community as the candidates for baptism arrived for the ceremony. In his commentary on this Psalm, Augustine allows that while this passage prompts all Christians to desire God like the deer yearns for water, it is particularly apt for those seeking baptism: “Indeed, it is possible to hear the voice of the catechumens, hurrying to the grace of the sacred bath, as this psalm is solemnly chanted, to arouse their desire for the font that remits sins.”6

Figure 3: Mosaic pavement with deer coming to drink from a baptistery near Skhira (Tunisia). Now in the Sfax Archeological Museum. Photo: author.

The prevalence of this abstract and decorative imagery renders the paucity of explicitly narrative art more noticeable. The few exceptions include one or two Good Shepherds, a few Jonahs (cf. Figure 4), two depictions of Daniel with his lions (cf. Figures 26, 27), and a single fragmentary image that is possibly of Abraham sacrificing Isaac from the floor of the Carthaginian basilica known as Damous el-Karita.7 Compared with the  On the deer image in baptismal contexts, see R. M. Jensen, Living Water: Images, Symbols, and Settings of Early Christian Baptism (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 252–4. Confronted deer, coming to drink, are a widely popular motif in early Christian art, generally, but they also turn up on the fifth- or sixthcentury silver reliquary, known as the Capsella Africana as it was discovered in Henchir Zirara in Numidia (Algeria) and is now in the Vatican Museo Sacro della Biblioteca Apostolica.  Augustine, Enarrat. Ps. 41.1 (CCSL 38:460; trans. is my own): “Et quidem non male intellegitur vox esse eorum qui, cum sint catechumeni, ad gratiam sancti lavacri festinant.”  The Good Shepherd appears on a tomb mosaic found in a catacomb near Leptiminus. Mosaic depictions of Daniel are discussed below. Jonah appears on mosaics in the basilica at Bordj el Joudi and a tomb cover from Tabarka (Figure 4). A new, as yet unpublished Jonah mosaic on a tomb cover has

508

Robin M. Jensen

numerous and impressive mosaic panels illustrating episodes from mythology, this is an almost miniscule collection of objects. As Katherine Dunbabin put it bluntly, “the first impression produced by the Christian mosaics is one of iconographic poverty” and then concludes, “it does not amount to very much.” She notes that compared to the wealth of Christian iconography available in other media, the lack of biblical iconography in African mosaics is striking.8

Figure 4: Jonah on funerary mosaic from Tabarka. Now in the Bardo National Museum, Tunis. Photo: author.

Ceramics By contrast with the mosaics, the surviving examples on the ceramic wares are numerous and display a much wider variety of biblical subjects. As noted above, these small, mostly mass-produced artifacts constitute the most significant collection of African biblical been discovered at Bulla Regia but is mentioned in M. Chaouali, C. Fenwick, and D. Booms, “Bulla Regia I: A New Church and Christian Cemetery,” Libyan Studies 49 (2018): 187–97. An image of Jonah occurs on a stone sarcophagus that is now in the Bardo Museum. A mosaic covered sarcophagus discovered at Tipasa in Algeria also included an image of the three Hebrew youths, Noah, and Jesus healing the paralytic, but the images are badly conserved and thus somewhat uncertain. This was initially published by J. Lassus, “Les Mosaïques d’un sarophage de Tipasa,” Libyca 3 (1955): 265–79; and then noted by N. Duval, La Mosaïque funéraire dans l’Art Paléochrétien (Ravenna: Longo, 1976), 22, 39, and Figure 17; and M. Rassart-Debergh, “‘Les Trois Hébreux dans la Fournaise’ dans l’art paléochrétien,” Byzantion 48 (1978): 43–55.  Dunbabin, Mosaics of Roman North Africa, 188 and 191.

19 The Bible in the Pictorial Art of Late Antique North Africa

509

iconography. Most of these simple domestic products would have been relatively inexpensive, but some of high quality were made for elite markets. The Christian symbolism would thus have been a kind of everyday presence in the household, perhaps expressing or reinforcing their owner’s identity. Although such items would have been present in homes across the social spectrum, they represent a different type of religious expression than do the large and impressive mosaics, reliefs on massive stone sarcophagi, or wall paintings on burial chambers, like those of the Roman catacombs. Whether owned by the rich or the poor, they provide insight into how certain particularly popular biblical stories were incorporated into items that were part of people’s daily lives. Such goods are also representative of African material craft. Vases, bowls, jugs, and platters were fabricated from a type of fine red pottery known as terra sigillata or “red slip” ware. They were produced in small workshops throughout Africa Proconsularis and Byzacena and exported throughout the Roman Empire. The clay fabric of these objects was glazed with a thinner clay slip (liquid clay) that, when fired, took on a glossy red or red-orange hue. This explains them commonly being classified also as African Red Slip ware (ARS). The best quality examples and those with the widest variety of forms and designs date mostly from the fourth and fifth centuries, which was also the time when their decoration began to include Christian symbols and biblically themed motifs that were either stamped on or applied before firing.9 Biblical figures on ARS bowls and plates include images of Abraham sacrificing Isaac (Figure 5), Daniel with his lions, Jonah in sequential episodes, and the three Hebrew youths in the furnace. A fourth-century ARS bowl, now in the Köln Römisch-Germanisches Museum shows two New Testament scenes of Jesus’s healing: one of the paralytic and the other of the hemorrhaging woman.10 During the fourth century, potters also began to produce lamps in the same clay fabric and with a similar technique as they used for the tableware. These lamps were initially classified by John W. Hayes into two main types, grouped according to region (central or northern Tunisia), kind of clay and slip (smooth or coarse), basic shape (round or more elongated), and quality of execution (clearly delineated or less refined).11

 Common non-Christian designs included a variety of animals, floral motifs, depictions of gladiators, athletes, erotica, fishing and hunting scenes, and mythological subjects. Well-illustrated studies focused specifically on the Christian iconography of these objects include J. Herrmann, Jr. and A. van den Hoek, Light from the Age of Augustine: Late Antique Ceramics from North Africa (Austin, TX: The Institute for the Study of Antiquity and Christian Origins of the University of Texas at Austin, 2003); F. Bejaoui, Céramique et Religion Chrétienne: Les Thèmes Biblique sur la Sigillée Africaine (Tunis: Institute National du Patrimoine, 1997); and A. Ennabli, Lampes Chrétiennes de Tunisie (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1976).  See J. Garbsch and B. Overbeck, Spätantike zwischen Heidentum und Christentum (Munich: Prähistorische Staatssammlung, 1990), 136–7.  J. W. Hayes, Late Roman Pottery (London: The British School at Rome, 1972), esp. chap. 2 ( = 12–299). See also M. Bonifay, Études sur la céramique romaine tardive d’Afrique (Oxford: BAR International Series, 2004); J. Herrmann, Jr. and A. van den Hoek, “Ceramics in the Early Christian World,” in The Routledge Handbook of Early Christian Art, eds. R. M. Jensen and M. D. Ellison (London: Routledge, 2018),

510

Robin M. Jensen

Figure 5: African Red Slip Ware bowl with the Sacrifice of Isaac. Now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Photo credit: BMFA.

Normally, the figural subjects decorate the lamp’s depressed, central discus. A raised outer ring (shoulder) typically contains varying geometric designs, rosettes, or gem-type ornaments. In some cases, the decoration continued onto the spout. The motifs made for Christian clients ranged from symbols like doves, christograms, and fish to such Old Testament types as Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac (Figure 6), Daniel with his lions (Figure 7), the three Hebrew youths with Nebuchadnezzar or in the fiery furnace (cf. Figures 14, 15), the Israelite spies returning from their reconnaissance trip into Canaan with a load of grapes (Num 13:17–24, cf. Figure 16), and Jonah emerging from the mouth of the sea creature. Two New Testament subjects appear primarily on lamps and comprise virtually the only representations of New Testament narratives on African ceramics: Lazarus emerging from his tomb and Jesus’s ascension.12 Somewhat similar to these are lamps

169–90; and J. Bussière and L. Wohl, Ancient Lamps in the J. Paul Getty Museum, an online catalogue (J. Paul Getty Museum, 2017), http://www.getty.edu/publications/ancientlamps.  Lamps also depict the apostles Peter and Paul, as well as other saints, like Thecla, but, strictly speaking, these are not biblical narratives.

19 The Bible in the Pictorial Art of Late Antique North Africa

511

Figure 6: Pottery lamp with an image of Abraham sacrificing Isaac. Now in the Museum of Timgad (Algeria). Photo: author.

with depictions of Christ brandishing a cross-like scepter and stepping on a snake; a serpent (basilisk) is on his right, a dragon curls up to his left and a lion is beneath his feet. The lamp’s circular rim includes alternating christograms and rosette designs (Figure 8). The image was almost certainly inspired by the text of Ps 90(91):13 (Vulgate): “You will walk upon the asp and the basilisk and trample the lion and the dragon.” In his exposition of this Psalm, Augustine identifies these creatures with the evil one. Like the lion he storms around openly but like the snake he keeps himself hidden from his prey. When the martyrs are being tortured, he is a lion; when the heretics are teaching, they are like snakes.13 Depictions of Lazarus and Christ’s ascension are significantly different from their portrayal elsewhere in Christian art. This may partly be due to their needing to conform to the shape of the lamps. As elsewhere in early Christian iconography, African lamps show Lazarus emerging from a gabled, house-like tomb structure. However, they omit the figures of Jesus, and instead feature busts of Lazarus’s two sisters, Mary

 Augustine, Enarrat. Ps. 90.9 (CCSL 38:1261–2); see also Enarrat. Ps. 39.1 (CCSL 38:422–5).

512

Robin M. Jensen

Figure 7: African red slip ware lamp with Daniel, lions, angel, and Habakkuk. Now in the Museum of Timgad (Algeria). Photo: author.

and Martha, one to either side of the tomb.14 The ascension types are especially complex. They show Christ standing, facing forward, with a cross over his left shoulder and what looks like a scroll in his right hand. He is surrounded with a full-body halo around which are the symbols of the four evangelists. Beneath his feet two angels appear to be carrying him upward toward heaven. In an unusual addition, the upper sections of these lamps’ spouts depict two men, their faces seem to be turned upwards and one makes a gesture of acclamation.15 The two figures on the spout may be the

 The Lazarus iconography is presented in Herrmann, Jr. and van den Hoek, Light from the Age of Augustine, 48 (no. 36); and Bejaoui, Céramique et Religion Chrétienne, cat. nos. 73a and 73b. For a Lazarus image without the sisters as a detail on a platter see F. Bejaoui, “Les Dioscures, les Apôtres et Lazare sur des plats en céramique africaine,” Antiquités Africaines 21 (1985): 173–7.  On the ascension image, see J. Herrmann, Jr. and A. van den Hoek, “‘Two Men in White:’ Observations on an Early Christian Lamp from North Africa with the Ascension of Christ,” in Early Christian Voices in Texts, Traditions, and Symbols, Festschrift François Bovon, eds. D. Warren, A. Brock, and D. Pao (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 293–318 (republished in Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise: Iconographic and Textual Studies on Late Antiquity [Leiden: Brill, 2013], 107–32). Herrmann, Jr. and van den Hoek interpret the item in his right hand as the hand of God grasping Christ’s to lift him up, rather than a

19 The Bible in the Pictorial Art of Late Antique North Africa

513

Figure 8: African red slip ware lamp with Christ trampling on the beasts. Now in the Museum of Timgad (Algeria). Photo: author.

two men described in Acts 1:10, but alternatively might be two of the apostles. A third possibility is that these two figures represent Peter and James, mentioned in the Apocryphon of James as chosen by Christ as witnesses to his ascension.16 No other characters from the biblical narrative (for example, the Virgin Mary and the twelve as a group) are included.17

scroll. See also Herrmann, Jr. and van den Hoek, Light from the Age of Augustine, 49 (no. 37); Ennabli, Lampes Chrétiennes de Tunisie, cat. no 75; and Bejaoui, Céramique et Religion Chrétienne, cat no. 77, 77a, and 77b.  “The Apocryphon (or Letter) of James,” in The Apocryphal New Testament, trans. J. K. Elliott (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 675–81. Noted in Herrmann, Jr. and van den Hoek, “Two Men in White,” in Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise, 111.  Another type of design depicts a man in a tree house, which has no obvious biblical reference but may have resonance with some of the New Testament parables. See Herrmann, Jr. and van den Hoek, Light from the Age of Augustine, 61.

514

Robin M. Jensen

In addition to the tableware and lamps, African pottery are rectangular pottery tiles that are mass produced from molds that are also extant. The latter are found in many excavations and were probably used for decorating walls and ceilings; they were mainly produced from the fourth through the seventh centuries. These display a variety of comparatively crude figures of horses and riders, animals, fish, and birds. Many of the distinctively Christian types also portray biblical characters, including Adam and Eve (Figure 9), Abraham sacrificing Isaac, Daniel with his lions (cf. Figure 11), Jesus multiplying loaves of bread and fish, and Jesus with the Samaritan woman (Figure 10).18

Figure 9: Adam and Eve on terracotta tile from Hadrumetum (Sousse). Now in the Sousse Archeological Museum, Sousse. Photo: author.

The biblical subjects found on the tableware, lamps, and tiles, like those that appear also in Roman catacomb painting and sarcophagus reliefs, comprise a limited catalogue of stock biblical figures. Yet, many of the most common images from the Roman catacombs or sarcophagi are missing from the repertoire. No known depictions of

 For a study of how and where these tiles were fabricated and installed as well their iconographic typology, see N. Ben Lazreg, “Une production du pays d’El Jem: les carreaux de terre cuite chrétiens d’époque byzantine,” L’Africa romana, Atti dell’VIII convegno di studio Cagliari, 1990 (Venice: Sassari, 1990), 523–41. For a catalog, see J. Ferron and M. Pinard, “Plaques de terre cuite préfabriquées d’époque byzantine découvertes à Carthage,” Cahiers de Byrsa 2 (1952): 97–184.

19 The Bible in the Pictorial Art of Late Antique North Africa

Figure 10: Terracotta tile from the area with a scene of Jesus with the Samaritan Woman. Now in the Bardo National Museum, Tunis. Photo: author.

Figure 11: Terracotta tile with Daniel and the lions. Now in the Bardo National Museum, Tunis. Photo: author.

515

516

Robin M. Jensen

Moses striking the rock exist and, although some figures show a dove holding an olive branch in its beak, few (if any) representations of Noah in the ark have turned up. By contrast, a rare image that is almost unknown elsewhere in early Christian art turns up on several of the pottery lamps: a scene of the Israelite spies returning from Canaan with a load of grapes.19 Similarly, many of the most popular New Testament subjects, like scenes of the magi adoring the Christ child, Jesus’s baptism, or his healing of the blind man and the paralytic that occur in Christian art elsewhere are rarely, if ever, found among the African artifacts. Despite these limitations, instances of fourth- and fifth-century North African biblical art exhibit a number of other interesting and distinctive features that may shed light on how certain biblical stories were transmitted through visual media. Evaluating the iconography of certain frequently shown figures along with the function of the objects on which they appear prompts speculation about the similarities or differences between literary and material forms of scriptural exegesis. This includes noting only how those figures were depicted as well as asking why they might have been especially popular. The four examples discussed below may help to answer some of these questions.

Daniel and the Lions Among the most commonly represented biblical figures in African iconography is the biblical hero, Daniel. Daniel appears on several extant examples of lamps, bowls, platters, and pottery tiles.20 A relief carving of Daniel with his lions adorns a ciborium corbel discovered in a basilica at Beni Fonda (the region of Setif) and includes the legend DANIEL IN LACU LEONU(M), an excerpt from the Vulgate (Dan 6:27). Added to these is a diminutive figure of Daniel on the front frieze of the sarcophagus of Secundius and Possidius from ancient Leptiminus (modern Lamta, Tunisia). Daniel is nearly lost among the larger and evidently more important representations of the deceased bidding farewell to his wife and setting off on horseback with some companions, a

 The iconography of the Israelite spies is discussed below.  Daniel iconography is presented in Herrmann, Jr. and van den Hoek, Light from the Age of Augustine, 37 (no. 25) and 38 (no. 26); Bejaoui, Céramique et Religion Chrétienne, cat no 63; and Ennabli, Lampes Chrétiennes de Tunisie, cat. nos. 32–5. An excellent discussion is in A. Kalinowski, “A Mosaic of Daniel in the Lions’ Den from Borj el Youdi (Furnos Minos) Tunisia: The Iconography of Martyrdom and the Arena in North Africa,” Antiquités Africaines 53 (2017): 115–28. See also A. van den Hoek and J. Herrmann, Jr., “Celsus’ Competing Heroes: Jonah, Daniel, and their Rivals,” in Poussières de christianisme et de judaïsme antiques. Études réunies en l’honneur de Jean-Daniel Kastli et Éric Junod, eds. A. Frey and R. Gounelle (Lausanne: Éditions du Zèbre, 2007), 307–39 (republished in Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise, 203–54).

19 The Bible in the Pictorial Art of Late Antique North Africa

517

metaphor, perhaps, for his death.21 Only a few Africa mosaics feature the figure of Daniel, but those that do are almost all interesting and distinctive. Usually, the African artifacts present Daniel as clothed in an eastern-styled costume that evokes his Babylonian context: typically, a short tunic, cape, trousers, boots, and a Phrygian-type cap. He stands frontally with his hands outstretched in the prayer posture. He is presented in this manner on a fifth- or sixth-century lamp (cf. Figure 7), on a fifthcentury pottery tile now in Tunis’s Bardo Museum (Figure 11), and on an especially striking, sixth-century mosaic panel from the floor of a basilica, now in the Sfax Archeological Museum (Figure 12). A slightly later mosaic from the church of the priest Crescens at Henchir B’ghil, also shows Daniel as wearing a cape and leggings.22 Garbed in this fashion, Daniel differs from his standard presentation in Roman catacomb painting or sarcophagus reliefs as a front-facing nude in the prayer posture, his weight shifted to one leg in a classical contrapposto stance, between two hunkering lions. The African portrayals of Daniel in Babylonian garb may reflect Byzantine influence. Moreover, in these, Daniel is not only fully clothed, but the now-docile lions seem to bow down to him as if in veneration.23 A few additional details turn up on some of these items. On the lamps, Daniel’s knee-length tunic is pleated and topped with a cape clasped at his breast. He is accompanied by an angel to his right and the figure of Habakkuk offering him a loaf of bread on his left (cf. Dan 14:32–8). While Habakkuk often appears in the Roman images, the angel is a distinctly North African addition. On the pottery tile, Daniel, identified by the inscription S(AN)C(TU)S ΔANIEΛ, holds a crown of victory in each hand. He wears a long tunic, rather than his more usual eastern garb. Two imposing lions bow down to him, nearly standing on their heads. On some of the ARS bowls – as distinct from the lamps, mosaics, and tiles – Daniel sometimes appears as he commonly does in the Roman catacombs or sarcophagus reliefs (as a nude, with hands outstretched in prayer). On one example, he stands inside a large cantharos (two-handled vase); in another instance, he seems to be running from the two springing lions on either side which look as if they are about to devour him.24 A nude Daniel also shows up on a large, 5th or 6th century pavement from a mausoleum

 B. Christern-Briesenick, H. Brandenburg, G. Bovini, et al., Repertorium Der Christlich-Antiken Sarkophage. Dritter Band: Frankreich Algerien Tunesien (Mainz am Rhein: P. von Zabern, 2003), 642, taf. 152, 1–4; and 153, 1–4.  See T. Ghalia, “L’église du prêtre Crescens de Henchir B’ghil (El-Mahrine) et son pavement,” Bulletin de la Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France 2004–5 (2011): 364–70. Kalinowski, “A Mosaic of Daniel,” 120n31, mentions another discovered by N. Jeddi in Tunisia that is as yet unpublished.  Daniel also appears clothed on examples from Ravenna, Syria, and Spain, but rarely in Rome. See A. Arbeiter, “Frühe hispanische Darstellungen des Daniel in der Löwengrube,” Boreas 19 (1994): 5–12; and R. Sörries, Daniel in der Löwengrube. Zur Gesetzmäßigkeit frühchristlicher Ikonographie (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2005).  The bowl is discussed and illustrated in Herrmann, Jr. and van den Hoek, Light from the Age of Augustine, 38; the lamp is illustrated in Garbsch and Overbeck, Spätantike zwischen Heidentum und Christentum, 128.

518

Robin M. Jensen

Figure 12: Mosaic of Daniel with lions. Now in the Sfax Archeological Museum. Photo: author.

attached to the basilica in Bordj El Youdi, Tunisia (ancient Furnos Minus). Now in Tunis’s Bardo Museum, this pavement, commemorating the Blossus family, depicts Daniel standing in the orans (or praying) position amidst four, rather than two, menacing lions (Figure 13). Its inscription offers little information about the iconography; rather, it

19 The Bible in the Pictorial Art of Late Antique North Africa

519

Figure 13: Mosaic of Daniel (or martyr) with lions. Now in the Bardo National Museum, Tunis. Photo: author.

simply identifies the one who paid for its construction and his purpose for doing so: MEMORIA BLOSSI HONORATUS INGENUS ACTOR PERFECIT (A memorial of Blossus (or the Blossus family), Honoratus his agent, made this).25 The composition’s inclusion of four lions along with Daniel’s nudity has prompted some scholars to question whether the figure was actually meant to depict Daniel. Although most handbooks and museum catalogues simply identify him that way, it seems possible that it was actually intended to depict a Christian martyr facing the beasts in the arena, or possibly conflate the martyr with the hero.26 Daniel’s name appears nowhere in the image, nor does the figure of Habbakuk. Moreover, the four lions are poised on small, angled platforms that are consistent with images of victims condemned to the beasts (damnatio ad bestias) in the Roman spectacles.27

 CIL, 8.25817; E. Diehl, ILCV, 585.  This is one of the main arguments of Kalinowski, “A Mosaic of Daniel”; see also R. M. Jensen, “Visualizing Virtuous Victims: Martyrs and Spectacles in Roman Africa,” in Text and the Material World, Essays in Honour of Graeme Clarke, eds. E. Minchin and H. Jackson, Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 185 (Uppsala: Astrom Editions, 2017), 315–28.  The iconography of the arena and those condemned to the beasts are discussed in J. W. Solomonson, Voluptatem spectandi non perdat sed mutat: Observations sur l’iconographie du martyre en Afrique

520

Robin M. Jensen

The suggestion that the iconography here presents the Christian martyr as a kind of Daniel figure is persuasive, largely because that biblical episode was one of the biblical stories that earlier African fathers used to encourage Christians to repudiate idolatry and face persecution without falling into apostasy. For example, Tertullian’s treatise De idololatria (Idol.), specifically references Daniel, who, though obedient to King Darius in all respects, refused to honor the King as a god (Dan 6). Tertullian warns his readers that being thrown to the lions is better than burning in hell.28 Similarly, Cyprian, writing in the aftermath of the Decian persecution, describes the steadfast Daniel as a glorious example for martyrs, observing that he was tested and triumphed and, by God’s favor, survived.29 In another place, Cyprian insists that Daniel’s heroism was absolute, even though the lions did not devour him. He lived with God’s protection and his unwavering faith was his glorious witness.30 Thus, their resolute faith and resistance to evil establish the martyrs’ victory rather than their suffering and death. Cyprian’s notice here that Daniel’s damnatio ad bestias ends a bit differently than that of most Christian martyrs (Daniel escapes unscathed) was something Tertullian also had recognized. In his treatise, Scorpiace (Scorp.), Tertullian points out that God intervened and shut the lions’ mouths, rendering them harmless. While this happy ending might have consoled those condemned to die, it did require a bit of rationalization. Tertullian explains that although Daniel did not physically suffer, his martyrdom was complete. In fact, he allows, if the lions had devoured Daniel, God’s purpose, which was to reveal divine power, would not have been served. Tertullian adds that while those who repudiate idolatry should willingly accept suffering (as such submission demonstrates their trust and the truth of their faith), suffering is not a necessary element of their witness.31 The issue of dating raises a possible objection to the interpretation of Daniel iconography as referring to martyrdom. All of the artifacts discussed here were made well after the final, empire-wide persecution under Diocletian ended in the early 310s CE. Yet, even though imperially instigated persecutions were in the past, Daniel could still be regarded as a model for late fourth- or fifth-century Christians. This was also a time when Christians experienced intra-religious violence from both inside and outside their particular communities, so that ancient heroes like Daniel and the Maccabees, along with the memory of the earlier martyrs, still inspired steadfast resistance to various oppressive forces. For example, Augustine, writing to the priest Victorinus

Romaine (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing, 1979); see also A. van den Hoek and J. Herrmann Jr., “Thecla the Beast Fighter: A Female Emblem of Deliverance in Early Christian Art,” in In the Spirit of Faith: Studies in Philo and Early Christianity in Honor of David Hay, eds. D. Runia and G. E. Sterling, Brown Judaic Studies 332 (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 2001), 212–49 (republished in Pottery, Pavements and Paradise, 65–106).  Tertullian, Idol. 15.10 (CCSL 2:1117).  Cyprian, Laps. 19 (CCSL 3:231–2).  Cyprian, Ep. 61.2.1 (CCSL 3C:380–1).  Tertullian, Scorp. 8.7 (CCAL 2:1083–4).

19 The Bible in the Pictorial Art of Late Antique North Africa

521

regarding the Visigothic sack of Rome in 410 and the Vandal invasions of Gaul and Spain, compared the suffering wreaked by the invaders on the locals to the violence perpetrated by Donatists against Catholics in Africa. Referring to Daniel, as one of three righteous men with Noah and Job, whom only God could set free, Augustine emphasizes that, when captive, Daniel confessed his sins as well as those of the people, and thus admitted that his sufferings were according to God’s justice. He adds that if anyone were to think that they should then escape suffering just like Daniel was freed from the lions, they should remember that God delivered them precisely so that the kings who exacted these tortures upon them should realize that they (the righteous men) worshipped the true God.32 However, Quodvultdeus, Augustine’s younger contemporary and bishop of Carthage, likened Daniel to the beast fighters and professional hunters who entertained amphitheatre audiences rather than to martyrs. By this means, he hoped that he could persuade Christians to exchange their civic spectacles for piously imagining Daniel as a kind of divinely assisted arena champion: Beloved, may that cruel spectacle not invite you to watch two hunters fight with nine bears; rather may you delight to see one man, our Daniel, overcoming seven lions by prayer. Lover of the Spirit, discern between the two: one fight to satisfy guilty pleasure and the other innocent and full of faith. Consider those who offered up their souls to the beasts for an earthly reward and then the one who crying out in prayer: “Do not deliver to the souls of those who confess you to the beasts (Ps 74:19).” In the former spectacle, the showman is upset if the hunter, who has destroyed many of his beasts, escapes unharmed. In this spectacle of ours, the contest is waged and won without a sword; neither is Daniel hurt nor any beast killed, so that even the king is amazed and transformed, the people are fear struck, and the enemies are scattered. Our admirable spectacle is truly astonishing. God provides the assistance, faith is strengthened, innocence fights, holiness prevails, and the reward is such that the victor receives it, and He who bestows it loses nothing.33

Quodvultdeus’s depiction of Daniel as victoriously fighting with prayer instead of a sword, was a clever stratagem not only for making Daniel into a kind of Christian superhero, but also for diverting fans from Amphitheatre games and coaxing them into church.

 Augustine, Ep. 111.4–5 (CSEL 34/2:647–52).  Quodvultdeus, Symb.1.2.23–27 (CCSL 60:309–10; trans. is my own): “Non ergo vos, dilectissimi, illud spectaculum crudele invitet intueri, novem ursis duos altercantes venatores: sed delectet videre unum nostrum Danihelem orando superantem septem leones. Discerne, spiritalis amator, certamina: vide duos noxios voluptate, vide unum innocentem ac plenum fide. Vide illos pro praemio terreno suas animas bestiis obtulisse: vide istum in oratione clamantem: ‘Ne tradideris bestiis animas confitentes tibi.’ In illo spectaculo contristatur editor, si venator evadat illaesus, qui ei plures bestias interemit: in isto nostro sine ferro pugnatur, nec Danihel laeditur, nec fera occiditur; et sic vincitur, ut et rex miretur atque mutetur, et populi pertimescant, et inimici dispereant. Admirabile spectaculum nostrum, plane mirabile, in quo deus adiuvat, fides vires impetrat, innocentia pugnat, sanctitas vincit, praemium consequitur tale, quod et ille qui vicerit accipiat, et qui donaverit nihil amittat.” See also Quodvultdeus, Lib. Prom. 13.16 (CCSL 60:221).

522

Robin M. Jensen

Three Hebrew Youths The image of the three Hebrew Youths was popular in early Christian iconography, especially in the Roman catacombs and sarcophagus reliefs, where they turn up in two different scenes. In the first, they confront the figure of King Nebuchadnezzar, refusing to venerate a bust-like portrait of the ruler, which is mounted on a slender column instead of the sixty-cubit tall, golden statue described in the Book of Daniel (cf. Dan 3:1). Depictions of the king frequently show him in Roman military garb, thus associating the image of the biblical ruler with a common representation of a Roman emperor. Although the African examples do not always show the king in this same way, the surviving iconography, almost exclusively found on lamps, similarly allows an interpretation of the three youths as types of Christian martyrs refusing to participate in the idolatrous imperial cult (Figure 14).34

Figure 14: African red slip ware lamp with depiction of the three Hebrew Youths with Nebuchadnezzar. Photo courtesy Gabriel Vandervort, Ancient Resource.

 See R. M. Jensen, “The Three Hebrew Youths and the Problem of the Emperor’s Portrait in Early Christianity,” in Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context, eds., U. Leibner and C. Hezser (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 303–20.

19 The Bible in the Pictorial Art of Late Antique North Africa

523

In the second example, also frequently found on pottery lamps, the three are depicted within the fiery furnace, their hands extended in prayer (Figure 15). As in the Roman examples, in many of these compositions they are joined by a fourth figure meant to signify the mysterious person whom Nebuchadnezzar perceived as joining the three, who also went unscathed by the blaze, and who had “the appearance of a god (Dan 3:25).” In Rome, the fourth person usually resembles a seated male figure, his arms folded over his chest. In the African iconography, by contrast, the fourth person is a winged figure with a halo, floating above the flames.

Figure 15: African red slip ware lamp with depiction of the three Hebrew youths in the fiery furnace. Now in the Museum of Timgad (Algeria). Photo credit: author.

With only a few exceptions, the surviving representations of the three Hebrew youths in African iconography is of the first of these two scenes. At the same time, almost all of the instances of this subject are found on ceramic lamps where the iconography frequently, but not exclusively, showed the fourth person in the furnace with the boys. While the frequency of the first depiction may be due simply to losses of so many other examples over time, it may also be that the scene of the three refusing to apostatize was simply more popular in Africa than the fiery furnace motif because of the way it recreated a scene of martyrs making a courageous refusal to practice

524

Robin M. Jensen

idolatry. As with the Daniel iconography, the Babylonian youths prefigured Christian martyrs, who usually suffered for refusing to sacrifice to the Roman gods or worship the Roman emperor. As such, their storied bravery served as encouragement to be steadfast and loyal in the face of challenges from various sectarian groups. This interpretation is evident in African biblical exegesis, beginning with Tertullian. In Idol. Tertullian not only presents Daniel as a model martyr, but he also portrays the three youths as acquiescing to all of the King’s requirements except the one that commanded them to pay homage to “his image” (ejus imaginis).35 Tertullian’s use of the term imago here may be significant. Simulacrum is the Latin word most often used for a god’s statue, especially in a cultic context, whereas imago is more general and can simply refer to a portrait likeness. Although the Vetus Latina versions of Dan 3:12 or 3:18 vary between statua, imago, and simulacrum, the phrase “his image” might indicate that, at least to Tertullian’s mind, Nebuchadnezzar’s statue was a portrait of the king himself, rather than of an enormous god. This interpretation conforms to the way the scene is depicted in early Christian iconography. Tertullian also cites the three youths’ heroism in Scorp., although in this instance he is even less clear about whether the idol the youths repudiate is a portrait of the king or a divine being. Instead, he simply exhorts those undergoing persecution to resist fear and to steadfastly refuse to worship the pagan gods, urging them, like the three youths, to declare: “We have no reason to obey your command. For our God, whom we worship, is able to deliver us from the furnace of fire and your hands. Then it will be made plain to you that we shall neither serve your idol, nor adore your golden image, which you have set up.”36 Similar exegetical themes are evident in the writings of both Cyprian and Augustine. Cyprian, writing during the time of the Decian persecution, is particularly attentive to the story’s contemporary parallels and focuses more vividly on the scene inside the furnace and speaks briefly about the reasons for the torture. This allows Cyprian to emphasize the ways the narrative demonstrates God’s manifest power and unfailing care for the faithful who are willing to suffer and die rather than to apostatize. In a letter addressed to the confessors Sergius, Rogatianus, Felicissimus and some unnamed others, Cyprian reminds them that the Lord was present with Ananias, Azarias, and Misael when they were thrown into the flames. Because God abided with them there, they actually found the furnace to be a place of refreshment. This proves, he assures them, that

 Tertullian, Idol. 15 (CCSL 2:1115–7).  Tertullian, Scorp. 8.6 (CCSL 2:1083; trans. is my own): “Non habemus necessi tatem respondendi huic imperio. Est enim deus noster, quem colimus, petens eruere nos de furnace ignis et ex manibus tuis, et tunc manifestum fiet tibi, quod neque idolo tuo famulabimur nec imaginem tuam auream, quam statuist, adorabimus.”

19 The Bible in the Pictorial Art of Late Antique North Africa

525

they should fear neither earthly suffering nor hellfire because they will receive divine assistance and a promised deliverance, if not in this life, then certainly in the next.37 Cyprian then quotes the youths’ address to Nebuchadnezzar, in which they declare that, even if God does not save them, they will never serve the king’s gods or the golden statue he has raised (cf. Dan 3:16–8). This prompts Cyprian to point out that the three never boasted either of their courage or of their deliverance; instead they boasted only of God’s faithfulness. In other words, the glory was not theirs, but God’s. And, while they were delivered from death temporarily, the real victory was their final and eternal salvation.38 In another epistle, Cyprian, addresses the bishop Lucius, who survived his punishment by exile and was returned to his flock. Like Tertullian, he seems to feel compelled to account for the fact that, by divine providence, certain confessors, like the three youths and Daniel, are sometimes preserved from death. Here Cyprian explains that, “the dignity of the three youths’ martyrdom was in no way diminished because they emerged from the fiery furnace having escaped death. Nor were Daniel’s honors incomplete even though, while he was given as prey to the lions, he survived unto glory by the Lord’s protection.”39 They were true insofar as they were willing to burn or undergo any suffering meted out to them rather than to venerate the king’s gods or his idol. He concludes his letter, however, by offering the wish that Lucius’s martyrdom will soon be made perfect and that God may have preserved him for the time being so that he could return to his people and, in their own sight, become a visible example of courage unto death.40 In his letter to the presbyter Victorinus (Ep. 111; cf. supra), Augustine not only refers to Daniel’s fortitude in captivity but he also admonishes his reader that, whatever the servants of God suffer at the hands of invading tribes, including the torture and rape of some of the women, they should remember the three who were thrown into the flames for simply following God’s law. He then quotes the prayer of Azariah, uttered from the furnace, in which he not only praises the Lord but also confesses his unworthiness: “You certainly see, my brother, the kind of men they were, how holy, how brave in the midst of tribulation. Even when they were spared and the flames did not dare to burn them, they confessed their sins for which they knew that they

 Cyprian, Ep. 6.3.1 (CCSL 3B:34–5). See also Cyprian, Ep. 67.8.2 (CCSL 3C:458–9), where he compares Daniel and the three Hebrew youths to the Maccabean martyr Matthias (1 Macc 2:24) and to the prophet Elijah (1 Kings 19:10).  Cyprian, Ep. 6.3.1 (CCSL 3B:34–35). Here Cyprian seems to have been concerned that some of the confessors might fall into the sin of pride by taking personal credit for their heroism.  Cyprian, Ep. 61.2.1 (CCSL 3C:380–1; trans. is my own): “Neque enimin tribus minor fuit martyria dignitas, quia morte frustrata de camino ignis incolumes exierunt aut no consummates Daniel extitit in suis laudibus, quia qui leonibus missus fuerat ad praedam, protectus a domino vixit ad gloriam.”  Cyprian, Ep. 61.4.2 (CCSL 3C:383–4).

526

Robin M. Jensen

were deservedly and justly humiliated.”41 Toward the end of the letter, Augustine urges Victorinus to teach his flock to pray like Azariah, even when they are prevented by their captors from bringing their offerings to God in the usual manner. Then, he assures him that God, who brings solace and help to his chaste faithful, will not permit them to suffer sexual violence at the hands of their enemies or, if God does permit this, then the mind of the faithful will still protect their flesh from sin and any loss of chastity will be regarded by God as a wound of martyrdom.42 Augustine also refers to the story of the three Hebrew youths toward the end of De civitate Dei (Civ.), where he discusses the Last Judgment as described in 2 Peter, where the apostle declares that the earth, which once perished from the flood, would finally be destroyed by fire along with the godless (cf. 2 Peter 3:3–13). Augustine acknowledges that this raises the question of how the saints will escape the conflagration. He explains that the saints will be preserved because they will receive bodies that are immortal and incorruptible, and so, they will be like the three youths. Their bodies were mortal and corruptible, yet they were still able to survive in the blazing furnace.43

Israelite Spies Returning from Canaan with Grapes Numbers (cf. 13:17–33) recounts the Lord commanding Moses to send twelve spies, one from each tribe, to scout out the Land of Canaan. Their charge was to gauge whether or not the land was fertile and to discover if it was well defended. Moses also told them to “be bold and bring [back] some of the fruit of the land” (13:20). When they returned, they brought a cluster of grapes that was so large that when it was suspended from a pole it required two men to carry it. Depictions of this story are rare in early Christian iconography. Surviving examples, mostly dating to the late fourth century, appear on a few gold glasses from Rome and the lid of a sarcophagus from Gaul.44 This subject most often occurs on a collection of North African ceramic lamps that show two men, facing forward carrying an enormous bunch of grapes suspended from a pole between them on their shoulders (Figure 16).

 Augustine, Ep. 111.3 (CCSL 31B:95; trans. is my own): “Vides certe, frater, quales viri, quam sancti, quam fortes in media tribulation, ubi tamen eis parcebantur et eos urere ipsa flamma verebatur, peccata sua confitebantur, pro quibus se digne et juste humiliari noverant nec tacebant.”  Augustine, Ep. 111.8–9 (CCSL 31B:101–2).  Augustine, Civ. 20.18 (CCSL 48:729–30).  C.R. Morey, The Gold-Glass Collection of the Vatican Library with Additional Catalogues of Other Gold-Glass Collections, ed. G. Ferrari (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1959), nos 224 and 292; as well as B. Christern-Briesenick, H. Brandenburg, G. Bovini, et al., Repertorium Der ChristlichAntiken Sarkophage. Dritter Band, 300, taf. 77.1.

19 The Bible in the Pictorial Art of Late Antique North Africa

527

Figure 16: African red slip ware lamp with image of the Israelite spies. Now in the Museum of Timgad (Algeria). Photo credit: author.

The significance or meaning of this iconography on these small artifacts is unclear. The size of the bunch of grapes may simply be a symbol of the fruitfulness of the church or the promises of a blessed afterlife to those who remain faithful to God. Grape harvesting and vintaging scenes are common elsewhere in Christian art, and like those, this may also carry a Eucharistic significance. The large cluster of grapes might also be a visual symbol for Christ. The story of the Israelite spies turns up only occasionally in patristic exegesis. In African sources it appears at least twice in Augustine’s writings. In one instance, Augustine cites the story in his sermon on Ps 8, when he opens with a short exposition of the meaning of the Psalm’s traditional title, “On the Winepress,” which is based on a translation of the Hebrew word gittith. Acknowledging that the psalmist never says anything about a winepress in the text of the Psalm itself, Augustine concludes that one should understand the winepress as a reference to the church, as a place where the Christian faithful – the metaphorical harvest – is gathered and processed into good wine. Here he explains: “For the Divine Word may be understood as a grape. For the Lord has been described as a cluster of grapes, like the one carried back by those sent on ahead

528

Robin M. Jensen

from the people of Israel, suspended on a stick like a victim of crucifixion.”45 Augustine uses this same interpretation in his refutation of the Manichee, Faustus, when he argues that Jesus’s sacrifice was to forgive sin. Christ is, Augustine explains, “the cluster of grapes that hung on the tree.”46 Here Augustine is able to visually transform a story into a metaphor for Christ. Whether or not he would have seen lamps with this image is unknowable, but it seems quite possible that he would have known about this figurative image on ordinary objects like pottery lamps.

Conclusion Although relatively few in number, often small in size and of modest quality, the catalog of preserved Christian artifacts from fourth- and fifth-century North Africa allows a unique insight into the links between biblical stories and their figural representation. What is extant occurs predominantly on household items that were part of the daily lives of the members of these communities. Even images on mosaics belonged to the private realm of the grave, if not the home. How much the choices of imagery reflect the content of sermons or readings of the formal church liturgies is difficult to gauge, but it seems evident that certain figures, like Daniel, the three Hebrew youths, Abraham and Isaac, Jonah, the Israelite spies, and Lazarus were especially popular. Undoubtedly, much material evidence has been lost, a factor that makes it difficult to assert anything with certainty, but one may at least conclude that consumers were drawn to stories of biblical protagonists making ultimate sacrifices, facing down idolatrous tyrants, fighting off wild animals in the arena, spying out fertile land to conquer, and coming back to life from the tomb. The relatively rare depictions of Jesus show him trampling on the Evil One or being lifted up to heaven. It seems reasonable to conclude that these are the Christian versions of gladiators, beast fighters, adventurers, and apotheosized human heroes. These stories have happy endings, and their characters are rewarded with crowns – not those of winning athletes or triumphant soldiers – but the crowns promised by God to saintly champions and divine victors (cf., for example, 2 Tim 4:8; James 1:12; and 1 Peter 5:4). Their appearance on ordinary items (like a modern Noah’s ark-shaped cookie jar) as well as on elaborate mosaics in family mausolea allows us to develop some idea of which Bible stories were the favorites with all classes of Christians in Roman North Africa, from the rank-and-file to the elite.

 Augustine, Enarrat. Ps. 8.2 (CCSL 38:49–50; trans. is my own): “Nam et verbum divinum potest uva intellegi. Dictus est enim et dominus botrus uvae, quem ligno suspensum, de terra promissionis, qui praemissi errant a populo Israel, tamquam crucifixum adtulerunt.”  Augustine, Faust. 12.42 (CSEL 25:1:370; trans. is my own): “De quo dicitur, quod pro multis effundetur in remissionem peccatorum? Ipse est enim botrus ille, qui pependit in ligno.”

19 The Bible in the Pictorial Art of Late Antique North Africa

529

Further Reading Unlike those offered for prior chapters, this selected bibliography does not distinguish between “Primary” and “Secondary” sources. Obviously, the primary sources for this chapter are the artifacts themselves. The resources listed below have been chosen so as to provide the reader with an orientation to the complex world of ancient North African art and material culture, with a particular focus on Christian and biblically-influenced art and artifacts. Abed, Aïcha. Tunisian Mosaics: Treasures from Roman Africa. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 2006. Bejaoui, Fathi. Céramique et Religion Chrétienne: Les Thèmes Bibliques sur la Sigillée Africaine. Tunis: Institut National du Patrimoine, 1997. Bejaoui, Fathi. “Sur Quelques objets en bronze nouvellement trouvés en Tunisie,” Antiquité Tardive 13 (2005): 115–20. Blanchard-Lemee, Michele, Mongi Ennaifer, Hedi Slim, and Latifa Slim. Mosaics of Roman Tunisia. New York: George Braziller, 1996. Bonifay, Michel. Études sur la céramique romaine tardive d’Afrique. BAR International Series 1301. Oxford: BAR Publishing, 2004. Dunbabin, Katherine. The Mosaics of Roman North Africa: Studies in Iconography and Patronage. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. Ennabli, Abdelmajid. Lampes Chrétiennes de Tunisie. Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1976. Ferron, Jean and Maurice Pinard. “Plaques de terre cuite préfabriquées d’époque byzantine découvertes à Carthage.” Cahiers de Byrsa 2 (1952): 97–184. Garbsch, Jochen and Bernhard Overbeck. Spätantike zwischen Heidentum und Christentum. Munich: Prähistorische Staatssammlung, 1990. Hayes, John W. Late Roman Pottery. London: The British School at Rome, 1972. Herrmann, John J. Jr. and Annewies van den Hoek. “Ceramics in the Early Christian World.” In The Routledge Handbook of Early Christian Art, edited by Robin M. Jensen and Mark D. Ellison, 169–90. London: Routledge, 2018. Herrmann, John J. Jr. and Annewies van den Hoek. Light from the Age of Augustine: Late Antique Ceramics from North Africa. Austin, TX: The Institute for the Study of Antiquity and Christian Origins of the University of Texas at Austin, 2003. Kalinowski, Angela. “A Mosaic of Daniel in the Lions’ Den from Borj el Youdi (Furnos Minos) Tunisia: The Iconography of Martyrdom and the Arena in North Africa.” Antiquités africaines 53 (2017): 115–28. Solomonson, J. W. Voluptatem spectandi non perdat sed mutat: Observations sur l’iconographie du martyre en Afrique Romaine. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing, 1979.

Jonathan P. Yates and Anthony Dupont

20 Summary, Conclusions, and Avenues for Further Research A Summary of Part Two While it is indisputable that the single most important figure for North African Christianity between the late-fourth and the mid-seventh centuries CE was Augustine of Hippo, this volume has shown that the exegetical and theological history of this region in this period is far from synonymous with the exegetical and theological history of the doctor gratiae alone. Indeed, if this volume has rendered the story of the relationship between Scripture (however conceived) and the various Christian communities that flourished in North Africa after 400 CE more complex, and if it has made it clear that this story is much more than a collection of “footnotes to Augustine,” then it has been successful. Important questions for any community in the Judeo-Christian tradition include: What constitutes Scripture? What are the criteria for making such determinations and delineations? And, once a book is determined to be Scripture, how ought it to be treated by a community, its individual members, and its theological and liturgical leadership? Villegas Marín’s chapter helps to clarify these and related questions for the Christian movement(s) of late antique Roman North Africa. He highlights how Christianity in this region was deeply heterogeneous, with blurry boundaries between what counted as “orthodox” and what counted as “heterodox” regarding the canon and canonicity as well as the role played by councils and other authorities in making these and related determinations. In the fourth century things were messy enough that well-known but apocryphal gospels and acts may have been occasionally read in the liturgy of (at least) some of the churches even though North African Catholics had long established a de facto canon of Scripture. Just as significantly – especially since the North African conciliar pronouncements from 393 CE and after are often cited as the first official western endorsements of a canon – is the fact that even in the fifth century it remained difficult to get the Catholic churches in North Africa to conform to this exact scriptural canon and to exclude books that the councils had explicitly excised. If getting the churches which were on good terms with the council fathers to go along with a restricted canon was difficult, what must have been the situation in the more remote assemblies and with regard to the more marginal texts?

Jonathan P. Yates and Anthony Dupont, Villanova University and KU Leuven https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-021

532

Jonathan P. Yates and Anthony Dupont

In sum, then, the establishment of a canon of Scripture in North Africa was no easy task involving as it did the confluence of tradition, authority, availability, reading practices, liturgy, and doctrine/theology. These and other complexities are worth keeping in mind as one attempts to tell the story of the role played by Scripture in any region or era, not least Roman North Africa in late antiquity. Jensen’s chapter, though it concludes this volume, pairs nicely with that of Villegas Marín in that it offers an effective reminder of the extra-textual roles played by Scripture in late antique North Africa. While not as robust for North Africa as it is for other regions and eras, the artifact catalogue of the fourth and fifth century nevertheless helps us chronicle the links between biblical stories in texts and biblical stories in other media. The list of the most popular passages and figures is dominated by the Old Testament, with Daniel, the three Hebrew youths, Abraham, Isaac, and Jonah showing up repeatedly. The New Testament, though rarer, is predominantly referenced by depictions of Jesus triumphing over evil and/or being exalted. On the whole, these artifacts point to communities that wanted to generate and/ or to retain positive associations with the faith in its material culture and, just as they would with many of their homiletic efforts, to portray positive outcomes such as (spiritual) victory, eschatological triumph, and eternal rewards as realistic for those who remained faithful. The Old Testament books that Augustine was most drawn to and that he dedicated the most effort to explicating were Genesis and Psalms. Augustine’s most successful attempt to comment on Genesis, his De Genesi ad litteram (Gen. litt.), was completed in the 410s and, as Brachtendorf’s analysis makes clear, was deeply indebted to the Platonist framework that had enchanted Augustine since the 380s. Among other features, both Augustine’s concept of the creatura spiritalis and his conception of a two-step creation process betray strong Platonic parallels.1 At the same time, Augustine would not blur any distinction between God and creation: only God creates and the activity of the creatura spiritalis consists solely in the recognition of the principles of things as works of God. Augustine’s creational metaphysics also “corrects” Platonism along Nicene Christian lines. For Augustine, there can be no subordination at the divine level: the Son is consubstantial with the Father. Moreover, anything not part of the consubstantial Godhead – including matter – is created. Via his conception of the creatura spiritalis, Augustine removes the mediatorial position held by the world soul in the Platonic schema. This absolute distinction between Creator and creature is motivated by Genesis’s creation narratives and it is this privileging of Scripture that allows Augustine to uphold a nuanced understanding of ad litteram biblical hermeneutics.  Another more specific parallel is found in Augustine’s treatment of Genesis’s two creation narratives. While it is oriented on the two-step world-creation schema of Plato and Plotinus, it also replaces the notion of emanation process with the assertion that God alone creates and that he does so both willingly and consciously.

20 Summary, Conclusions, and Avenues for Further Research

533

While the Psalms are ubiquitous in Augustine’s extant works, his complete commentary on the Psalter, the Enarrationes in Psalmos (Enarrat. Ps.), is certainly his most ambitious attempt to engage them. Even though it was not always well-received or highlyregarded either in Augustine’s own day or in subsequent generations, its complexity, immediacy, and general accessibility ultimately gained it respect and admiration. As Müller notes, Augustine’s work on the Psalms effectively bridged the gap between the “then” of the Hebrew text and the “now” of the church, and does so with enough profundity to make even the modern reader wonder if Augustine was conscious of all that he had achieved. By avoiding the aridity of straightforward commentary and refusing to be bound by the “correct” literal understanding or “pure” historical contextualization, Augustine produced a highly-applicable exegetical monument replete with numerous layers that prevents readers of the Enarrat. Ps. from categorizing it merely as a relic of a remote past. This volume’s chapters dedicated to homiletic activities make it clear just how important sermons are for documenting and understanding the ways the Bible was used in late-antique North Africa, especially when it comes to the ways that Scripture was understood and proclaimed in the assembly and at the popular level. As Bass’s chapter highlights, sermons were the primary vehicle of transmission for African theology and biblical interpretation into Europe. In some cases, these compositions allowed otherwise unknown or minor figures to influence the western theological tradition, even as they offer insight into the variety of ways that North African beliefs and practices were unique or, in terms of Scripture, how North Africa apparently developed its own “canon within the canon” and particular traditions of interpretation. The collection of “anonymous sermons” – allegedly of African origin – are especially valuable to giving voice to marginalized communities that found themselves at odds with the state, including Donatists in the fourth and fifth centuries and the proNicene factions who struggled against Arian Vandals. Not only do these texts tend to incorporate themes such as persecution, martyrdom, and political oppression, but they also often choose to continue the long tradition of reading Scripture through an apocalyptic lens as a conscious reaction to overt opposition. At the same time, many of these sermons are marked by a relatively less sophisticated use of Scripture: they frequently resort to proof-texting, argue solely from the presumed authority of Scripture, and via such unnuanced labels as “heretic” and “heresy” when referencing one’s opponents. By far the largest collection of homiletic material from this period are the sermons of Augustine of Hippo. His techniques of composition and delivery – and, of course, his ability to communicate theological principles directly to his listeners – are extant via hundreds of exempla. Pauliat’s chapter illustrates the bishop of Hippo’s gift for engaging with and communicating to his audiences and, more impressively, his ability to adapting his sermons and biblical commentaries “on the fly.” This exchange between the speaker and the audience is well captured in the technical descriptor “aptum.” Augustine’s sermons are biblically aptum in two primary ways: (1) in the

534

Jonathan P. Yates and Anthony Dupont

choice of verses and themes treated; and (2) in the treatment those chosen verses and themes receive. For Augustine, an ideal sermon has only one purpose: to advance the relationship between the listener and God in the here and now. Augustine pursued this purpose by giving his audiences the gift of being able to interpret Scripture for themselves. It is also true that Augustine devoted much homiletical energy to the explication of particular books of the Bible such as the Psalter or those that comprise the Johannine corpus.2 While these efforts were often highly theological,3 they were always dedicated to the advancement of Christian spirituality and to his understanding of what it meant to live the Christian life, or, in Fitzgerald’s terms, personal virtue. Augustine’s treatments of the Johannine corpus are marked by an insistence on the role – indeed the necessity – of charity. Augustine taught that where this virtue is present, Christlike actions become possible; when it is lacking, however, division and selfishness become inevitable. According to Meconi, it is Scripture that fuels Augustine’s De civitate dei (Civ.). From the nature of God to the goodness of creation, from the effects of the fall and all the history unfolding therefrom up to the salvation of humanity in Christ, this magnum opus et arduum situates the mundane within the great biblically-driven story of God’s providence. The twofold world that Augustine constructs in Civ., a world divided into the civitas terrena and the civitas Dei, consistently uses Scripture’s main characters as its foundation. At the same time, Civ.’s engagement with Scripture is not limited to the past or even to the past and the present: all history – even that which is still future – is sustained in God and will be completed in God. In other words, Civ. asserts that to tell the human story is to tell the story of God’s providential involvement with the world, and, in order to tell the latter, Civ. also shows that any truthful storyteller must rely upon the truth that Scripture alone reveals. If the role played by Scripture in Civ. is as grand as possible, Bochet shows that Augustine’s later engagements with the Manichaeans are fundamentally attributable to a clash of competing critical methods: while the Manichaeans practiced a primitive sort of literary criticism based entirely on metaphysical dualism, Augustine, in order to counter both them and Faustus, their representative, practiced a type of historical criticism. She also demonstrates that Augustine’s “post-400 CE” anti-Manichaeanism includes the application of the rules for interpreting Scripture that he began to work out in the 390s in the initial version of De doctrina christiana. Against the total rejection of Jewish Scripture by the Manichaeans, Augustine advocated for (and then modeled) a systematic incorporation of them, an approach that simultaneously encompassed both the historical and the symbolic senses, and one that the Catholics saw as necessary for the full expression of the Gospel. This full expression necessarily included dedication to  Among the Christians of late antiquity, only Augustine explained 1 John in detail and treated it (virtually) in its entirety.  See, for example, Augustine’s exegesis of 1 John 4:8 and 4:16, both of which explicate his vision of “the one Christ loving himself” (unus Christus amans seipsum).

20 Summary, Conclusions, and Avenues for Further Research

535

the Old Testament since, like generations of Christians before him, Augustine recognized prophecies of Christ’s birth, life, death, and redemptive sacrifice embedded in it. A natural extension of this is the significant role Augustine’s framework assigned to Israel, “a prophetic nation” in the past, the present, and the future – a role that Israel fulfilled by guarding and guaranteeing her sacred texts for the church, while also serving as an essential witness to Scripture’s trustworthiness. Upon his return to North Africa in the late-380s, it is arguable that no distinct group of opponents challenged Augustine for as long or as consistently as did the Donatists. Even when a study like Ployd’s confines itself to the climactic decade that preceded 411, several salient details emerge. First, Augustine is remarkably consistent in how he employed Scripture against the Donatists, boiling a potentially wide-ranging debate down to a few fundamental assertions such as the universality of the church. Second, both Augustine and the Donatists shared many of the same exegetical commitments, despite the obvious fact that the two camps privileged different texts as normative for establishing Scripture’s overarching message. Third, the two camps’ different norms naturally led to the collection of two different interpretive Scriptural “constellations,” which, in turn, allowed the two camps to critique each other by injecting problem passages that required reconciliation if the integrity of that camp’s constellation was to be maintained. Malavasi correctly notes that Scripture and its interpretation were paramount during the Pelagian controversy. Indeed, the exegetical debates were so complex that the only way to effectively summarize them is via case studies. Likewise the theological issues were manifold and wide ranging. They included but were not limited to the nature and effects (or not) of Adam’s sin upon his posterity, the relationship between free will and divine grace, the possibility of genuine human righteousness in this life, and the nature and ubiquity of carnal concupiscence. Not surprisingly, both camps offered completely different exegeses of key (mostly-Pauline) passages. And this, in turn, led both camps to level charges of exegetical and theological innovation precisely because the other side’s claims were seen as lacking any obvious connection to church tradition. Given that neither Augustine nor Pelagius were content to regurgitate the exegeses of their forerunners, these charges were (at least partially) true, a fact which renders the rigid application of labels such as “heresy” and “orthodoxy” to this debate unhelpful. Crucially for further research, Malavasi also makes clear the degree to which the role played by exegesis as a basis for the theologies of the controversy remains underappreciated by modern research. Lamberigts’s chapter focuses on the controversy’s second phase and the debate between Julian of Aeclanum and Augustine, a debate that quickly devolved into a sort of trench warfare as the two theologians repeatedly failed to make any effort to understand each other. Because phase two revolved around the doctrine of original sin, it had much in common with phase one. But this is not to claim that the second was merely a continuation of the first. Phase two also included heated exchanges on the status of Creator and creation, the goodness of human nature, the goodness of marriage,

536

Jonathan P. Yates and Anthony Dupont

the justice of God, and the role of concupiscence in human sexuality and in the moral life generally. Lamberigts observes that Julian did not accept the existence of “natural sin,” a term he preferred over “original sin.” Contra Augustine, Julian refused to blame Adam’s sin exclusively, repeatedly emphasizing the moral responsibility of individuals and ideas that he saw as corollaries: the goodness of both the Creator and his creation. For his part, Augustine continued to emphasize the impacts of Adam’s “fall” including carnal concupiscence, suffering, death, and inherited guilt. If humans have no guilt, how could infants be subject to the penalties of death and alienation? Moreover, how could God continue to be regarded as just? To illustrate their divergent views on human sin, the freedom of the will, and God’s mercy, both protagonists appealed to the Bible. While it is obvious that Paul’s letters – especially Romans – were central, virtually the whole Bible, including large parts of the Old Testament, was reviewed, interpreted, and applied in this heated polemic. Matz’s chapter studies the role played by Scripture in the so-called Semi-Pelagian controversy of 425–430 CE and, specifically, the ways Scripture was used to affirm Augustine’s theology of grace. While he never failed to assert that humans possess a free will, and, thus, are responsible for their acts, Augustine insisted that grace was essential for every step on the way toward salvation: grace is necessary both at the initium fidei and at every subsequent point up to and including the moment of our death, with the latter comprising the core of Augustine’s doctrine of donum perseverantiae. Other ideas central to this particular discussion included human willing, the inscrutability of God’s will, and the mystery of the election and predestination complex (especially the question of why God wills to save only some). As Matz summarizes, Scripture attests that grace is encountered less in the “big picture” of knowing one’s salvific status than in the multitude of small, ordinary moments in which grace permits one to accept rebuke, to repent of sin, and to confess that it is God alone who endows one with perseverance unto salvation. While Augustine’s dominance over fourth- and fifth-century North African Christianity is unquestionable, many of the specifics regarding the degree to which that dominance continued after his death in 430 CE remain understudied. Several of this volume’s chapters mark a foray into the approaches that characterized several North African authors’ relationship to Scripture. Vanspauwen’s chapter investigates the innermost circle of Augustine’s friends and tests an important hypothesis regarding the rise of Augustinianism. The close links Alypius, Evodius, and Possidius had with Augustine are undeniable: all three served as Augustine’s allies during his various campaigns, all three championed the same causes, for example, church unity, and all three generally accepted Augustine’s approach to interpreting Scripture. With regard to the interpretation of Scripture, a predilection for certain biblical corpora seems to have existed among them, with the Pauline corpus and John being the most referenced biblical authorities. Paul is omnipresent in virtually every extant

20 Summary, Conclusions, and Avenues for Further Research

537

text attributable to these three, and John is often marshalled either to make Christological points relevant to the Incarnation and to Christ’s physical suffering contra the Manichaeans or to illustrate the consubstantiality of the Son to the Father contra the Arians. With regard to the contribution these three bishops made to the formation and growth of Augustinianism, there is a real sense in which the term “Augustinianism” is necessary, especially since most of what we know about their lives and writings is directly traceable to Augustine himself. However, to view Alypius, Evodius, and Possidius as constituting solely an early instance of “Augustinianism” would be unjust both to them and to their unique profiles. In sum, on the one hand, the historian must recognize the profound links that all three of these men had with Augustine, even if the depth of these links varied: Alypius is best seen as Augustine’s colleague; Evodius as Augustine’s pupil; and Possidius as a chronicler bent on shoring up Augustine’s legacy. On the other hand, the historian must also treat each of them as individual leaders, exegetes, and theologians. While not as close (in any sense of the word) to Augustine as were Alypius, Evodius, and Possidius, Quodvultdeus and Victor Vitensis are also important witnesses to the reception of the Bible in fifth century North Africa. As Clemmons demonstrates, Quodvultdeus clearly drew from and expanded upon North African exegetical traditions as he produced catechetical homilies marked by Christological exegesis and by figurative interpretation of Scripture more generally. Quodvultdeus also frequently referenced themes such as the eschaton, the triumph of Christ, and the exaltation of the church. Indeed, overt apocalypticism (and mining Scripture to pursue and to support that theme) is something that Quodvultdeus and Victor clearly had in common. Clemmons also shows that both authors – and especially Quodvultdeus – developed, altered, and occasionally transcended the North African exegetical traditions they inherited. Gumerlock’s chapter demonstrates that the role of Scripture in Fulgentius’s works is woefully underappreciated and, as such, remains a very fertile field for further study.4 This is surprising since, in addition to having been profoundly influenced by Augustine, he was probably the most important North African Christian theologian in the late fifth and early sixth centuries, not to mention very well received by the western church in the medieval period. Fulgentius held many offices throughout his career including that of bishop. He was also persecuted by Arians in both ecclesiastical and secular circles, persecutions that twice resulted in his exile. Given such vicissitudes, the fact that much of Fulgentius’s surviving corpus is polemical is to be expected. In these texts he used Scripture  For example, if comparative research on a collection of the (currently) anonymous Psalter Collects and texts that are certainly by Fulgentius can show the former to have been written by Fulgentius, scholars will learn more about his early exegesis of the Psalms as well as about the later reception history of the Psalter in North Africa.

538

Jonathan P. Yates and Anthony Dupont

to teach and to confirm pro-Nicene dogma regarding the Trinity, Christology, and soteriology. But he also used Scripture to challenge heretical teachings including those he saw as anti-Trinitarian, subordinationist, Pelagian, or Origenian. Fulgentius is also an important witness to the status of the biblical canon in his day, the survival of the Vetus Latina in North Africa (as well as other Latin translations), and not a few Augustinian exegetical principles such as explaining the relationship between the two testaments in terms of figure and reality, allowing clearer passages to interpret difficult ones, and occasionally betraying a marked preference for the “spiritual” or “deeper” meaning of a passage over the more literal. Fournier’s chapter examines the use of Scripture made by Facundus with particular reference to his defense of the Council of Chalcedon and his rebuttals of accusations against the Three Chapters. Via a wide-ranging collection of passages Facundus demonstrates that condemning those who have died and/or those who may have erred on certain doctrinal points is the equivalent of condemning (admittedly human) biblical figures. Facundus also used scriptural exempla both to attack the Emperor Justinian’s involvement in this controversy and to assert that biblical exegesis is the exclusive prerogative of the ordained, a connection that earlier scholarship seems to have overlooked. It went without saying that these biblical exempla were to be regarded as positive models worthy of emulation. As for his attacks on the emperor, while Facundus’s texts are overtly hostile, his rhetoric never devolves into abusive or invective; moreover, he never seems to have hoped that the emperor might still change his mind. This finds support in that Facundus usually limits himself to warning Justinian about what might befall him if he does not change course. Facundus’s defense of clerical privilege in the field of teaching and biblical exegesis also often made appeal to exempla, as when he alluded to himself as both another Ambrose and another Nathan, details which, by extension, imply that both Theodosius and King David are, or at least should be, exempla for Justinian. In sum, Facundus’s approach to Scripture, its exegesis, and its application explicitly linked the Christian imperial past with prominent biblical exempla and with wellknown bits of biblical history in order to attempt to shape both the ecclesiastical and political milieux of his own day. Implicit in this technique, of course, were the assumptions that Scripture was a profoundly valuable resource and that we already possess concrete illustrations of persons who and periods in which the Bible had already been interpreted correctly. While he is arguably the least African of the (identifiable) figures analyzed in this volume, as Blowers remarks, it is ironic that Maximus the Confessor’s North African writings are those of an “exile” and transient whose time as part of an African community ultimately provided him with a basis for some of his most influential works. Given that imperial officials and the Byzantine elites in Africa were largely nonLatin-speaking immigrants appointed to serve the government as it strove to strengthen its political and cultural hegemony over the region, Maximus’s acquaintances and

20 Summary, Conclusions, and Avenues for Further Research

539

friendships with such civil administrators certainly did not imply ready access to the local peoples, cultures, and traditions. Unlike some Byzantine soldiers stationed in Africa, Byzantine monks were largely insulated in their communities, even if the more urban of them would have had opportunities to observe the ethnic and cultural diversity of North Africa. This leads to the conclusion that Maximus’s African writings had Eastern monastics and clerics as their primary audience, and that his readership expanded to include elite lay supporters and officials who were increasingly sympathetic to his Christological teachings. At the same time, it is important to note that Maximus envisioned his entire authorial enterprise – including those works produced while in North Africa – as a labor of relentless interpretation of Scripture marked by a profound passion to explore Scripture’s depths, and to serve the manifestation and embodiment of the living Logos, a process which had begun with creation itself and that consistently marked every era of sacred history. In 533 the Byzantine army under Belisarius captured Carthage and (eventually) exiled the defeated Vandals. The Byzantines then returned the church property the Vandals had confiscated to the Catholics and inaugurated what amounted to a purge of Homoian thought from North Africa. This purge seems to have extended to Arian literary works since the extant primary sources are only fragmentarily preserved. Nevertheless, according to Vopřada, we can be certain that the North African Arians deeply respected Scripture, not least because they claimed it to be the sole source for theology. Vopřada frames his chapter via an important question: To what degree did what amounts to an ancient version of the sola scriptura principle characterize the approach of the North African Arians to the Bible? While it was clear to everyone involved that references to Scripture would not finally settle the fiercely debated Christological and Trinitarian issues that had already raged for over two centuries, the theological use of Scripture is the only clearly discernible approach that may be found in the extant North African Arian texts of the fifth and sixth centuries. Unfortunately, other testimonies to the Arian use of the Scripture in the liturgy or in the everyday life of Vandal Christians are probably lost forever. Nevertheless, a comparison of the extant debates reveals a lack of genuine dialogue with the two sides speaking past one another. The existence and repeated use of standard sets of scriptural testimonies by both sides led North African Christianity to an impasse. As a result, the public discussions that were allegedly based on Scripture became more like empty displays than actual theological exchanges. This brief summary of the arguments made by the expert contributors to this volume include hints and raise questions the pursuit of which would certainly enhance efforts to describe and explain the role played by the Bible in Roman North Africa and among late antique Christians. Further research into the periods, authors, and texts highlighted in this volume would also contribute to the role played by Scripture in subsequent ages both in the Christian west and, if to a lesser degree, in the Christian east. It is to a (partial) discussion of these hints and questions that this conclusion now turns.

540

Jonathan P. Yates and Anthony Dupont

Avenues for Further Research The two volumes of this handbook have endeavored to offer the most complete possible survey of the roles played by the Bible in the lives of late antique North African Christians and their communities. But no handbook can be comprehensive or definitive. Thus, this handbook has also opened avenues for further research into the role played by Scripture in these communities during this period and for a wide range of follow-up studies on how the Bible shaped the thinking, living, celebrating, and praying of Christians in late antique North Africa. A few of these avenues will be highlighted in the paragraphs that follow. A set of basic but essential issues revolves around the copies of the Scriptures themselves. How did Bible manuscripts arrive in North Africa, and how did they circulate between North African cities, smaller towns, rural areas, and monastic communities? In what language(s) were the first wave(s) of these manuscripts? Where, in what ways, and for how long did Vetus Latina readings survive in North Africa? Can we legitimately speak of textual variants unique to North Africa, to a specific period, and/or to a particular North African author? What can be demonstrated with regard to the presence of these textual variants for either the doctrines or the practices that were particularly strong in, if not unique to, Christian North Africa? What are the best ways to account for these and related phenomena, especially when it comes to such “late” figures as Augustine and authors who flourished in the fifth and sixth centuries? How did the biblical canon evolve in North Africa prior to 393 CE? What variations were there between the different Christian communities and how did these variations impact exegesis, doctrine, and the life of these communities? Can we speak of a “closing of the canon,” especially in rural areas far away from the more literate cities and the authority of the most influential bishops? Similarly, can we speak of a North African preference for certain books of the Bible? How about preferences within certain Christian movements, periods or authors? The popularity of Paul is indisputable, but just how North African is this and during what periods? What level of authority did other New Testament texts such as John or Matthew enjoy? Whatever they were, were these predilections inaugurated by preexisting doctrines? Can the intuition expressed in many of the case studies in this handbook, namely, that the use of “secondary” Scriptures such as the Catholic Epistles, Hebrews, Exodus, the Major Prophets, the Minor Prophets, the Wisdom Literature in the various controversies such as the Manichaean, Arian, Donatist, and Pelagian brought particular nuances to those controversies, be confirmed? For example, can we arrive at more precision with regard to North African views with regard to ideas and doctrines that were placed at the center of Augustine’s “anti-Pelagian” crusade, such as (original) sin and grace, prior to Augustine and/or to the outbreak of the Pelagian controversy in 411 CE? Likewise, can we improve our understanding of the legacy of “anti-Pelagian” views both in North Africa after Augustine’s death in 430 and outside North Africa both during and after Augustine’s day? How

20 Summary, Conclusions, and Avenues for Further Research

541

quickly (if at all) did Augustinian exegesis of crucial passages of Scripture become the accepted interpretive standards in North Africa and elsewhere in the West? And, if it did, when did it do so? Finally, what about the technique of biblical “clustering”? Though famously highlighted by La Bonnardière in numerous studies of Augustine, in what other authors – either before or after him – can this technique be demonstrated and for what reasons and effects? To what degree did this come to mark North African exegesis? What additional aspects of the North African Sitz im Leben as it relates to Christians and their use of Scriptures are worth pursuing or pursuing anew? To what degree are the biblical words, images, and motifs reflective of the day-to-day lives of ordinary Christians? Is it perhaps more accurate to reverse the flow and see Scripture as more fundamental, i.e., as the driving force behind the establishment of the Late Antique North African Christian lifestyle – at least on the ideal level? What about North African institutional life? For example, is there anything striking or unique about the way the North African bishops assumed the role of teacher for their congregations? What might be learned from careful diachronic investigations into the role of and respect for Scripture within the extant proceedings of North African synods and councils? When these synods and councils engaged with canonical questions, to what degree were they leading and to what degree were they reflecting established communal consensuses? To what degree were they reflecting established policies outside North Africa, for example, in Italy? What was the relationship between these synods and councils – which were typically comprised only of bishops – and the establishment of exegetical and interpretive norms in these communities? What about the evolving emphasis placed on the regula fidei both in general and in the establishment of hermeneutical norms? How do all of these factors relate to the evolution of the episcopal teaching office and to catechesis in North Africa over time? Conversely, in what specific ways did the North African Christian leadership incorporate information, data, and controversial materials from beyond North Africa? After all, as the chapters of Vanspauwen, Vopřada, and Blowers demonstrate, it is wrong to overemphasize notions of North African “isolationism” since there were many clear and obvious links in the works of many prominent authors to discussions going on outside North Africa throughout the period analyzed in these studies. These overseas contacts and conduits need to be mapped out in detail – especially with regard to the impact(s) they had on the reception of Scripture and its interpretation. Of course, the teaching office has always been closely allied with preaching and with sermon construction. The fact that preaching was especially important in and for North African Christian communities is shown not only by the numerous chapters in this handbook that are dedicated to this genre, but also by the centrality of the rhetorical formation and general working methods of so many of the authors discussed herein. Rhetoric is another element that requires further research on multiple levels. What role did rhetoric and the rhetorical education that many influential figures so clearly enjoyed play in sermons on the Bible, in biblical commentaries, and in specific polemical discussions about the Bible? Relatedly, what was the impact of catechesis

542

Jonathan P. Yates and Anthony Dupont

and the desire of the authors studied in this handbook to apply the Bible both pastorally and ethically? What was the impact of (still evolving) liturgy? When can we speak of the use of a (full and standardized) lectionary, and how did it influence North African biblical hermeneutics, especially in terms of preaching? What was the importance of the public reading of the Bible? Though this was surely traditional, was it also consciously performative? Moreover, how does this deepen our knowledge of the literacy levels of North African Christians both urban and rural? Further research is certainly in order in connection with the methods of exegesis that were employed among North African Christians. To list but a few examples that seem worthy of pursuing: How exactly can we account for the emergence of “historical-critical” hermeneutics in North Africa? What was the role of figurative exegesis (and the fluidity of the figural, the tropological, the allegorical and the anagogical) most broadly – especially in the era prior to Augustine’s conversion (among authors such as Cyprian and prominent Donatists) and in the era after Augustine’s death (among authors such as Quodvultdeus, Victor Vitensis, and Maximus the Confessor)? How might we best account for the transition from “prophetic/charismatic” exegeses to “rational” exegesis in such prominent figures as Optatus, Tyconius, and Augustine? What about the phenomenon of reading the Bible autobiographically? What more needs to be said about the African politically-motivated exegesis of the Bible, especially when such was combined with a preference for eschatology? Is it possible to locate indications of caritas as an exegetical paradigm outside the thought and/or direct influence of Augustine? Then there is the issue of the role played by Scripture, especially via argument, illustration, and invective in prominent North African polemics and how these controversies shaped or otherwise altered both doctrine and exegesis. Given the number and diversity of North African Christian communities, what connections can be made between ecclesial affiliation and hermeneutical commitments and/or exegetical preferences? That Augustine played an outsize role in the development of North African biblical hermeneutics is obvious to everyone. That he was far from being the only important player on the exegetical field, however, has been clearly demonstrated throughout these two volumes. It is essential that the exegetical influence of older or contemporary protagonists in North Africa such as Origen, Cyprian, Tyconius, Optatus, and Jerome be further investigated. In this context, to avoid the danger of reading the North African biblical tradition purely through Augustinian lenses, numerous important questions need to be pursued. For example, what role did Scripture play in assertions about (original) sin and grace in North Africa prior to Augustine? How do these assertions compare to the evidence that Augustine himself appealed to when he cited the exegesis of his predecessors? At the same time, we have to critically examine his reception. How was he perceived by his own compatriots? The notion of Augustinianism in North Africa both in general and exegetically needs to be reconsidered. How were Augustine’s major works (Civ.; Conf.; Gen. litt.; Enarrat. Ps.) read in North Africa during and after his lifetime? What about the wide variety of readings, exegeses, and applications of

20 Summary, Conclusions, and Avenues for Further Research

543

Scripture that we find therein? How many of these became normative? Regardless, what specific lines of influence can be traced and with what degree of probability? Interesting research also remains to be done on the legacy of Vit. Aug. in North Africa, not to mention the impact of less frequently studied North Africans such as Alypius, Evodius, Possidius, Quodvultdeus, Victor Vitensis, and Fulgentius of Ruspe. The connection between biblical exegesis and theology and non-literary sources and material culture in North Africa deserves special attention in future research. How reflective are the biblical words and images that we find in connection with material artifacts of the “day-to-day” experiences of “ordinary” Christians? Can we generate new and different hypotheses with respect to both which biblical figures and events were chosen and, even more particularly, why certain figures and events were presented together and, in some instances, conflated? Most broadly, there is a cluster of issues surrounding the role played by the Bible in the formation of Christian identities in this Roman North Africa. How closely (and quickly) did they self-identify as “People of the Book”? How many, if any, of the nonChristian communities viewed the Late Antique North African Christians this way? Relatedly, while the role of martyrdom within North African Christian communities has long been noted and carefully explicated, more work seems necessary regarding the relationship between the practices surrounding the veneration of martyrs and confessors on the one hand and the exegesis and application of Scripture on the other. Can we plausibly assert that Scripture was the driving force for North African expectations for and experiences of persecution and martyrdom? Or does it make more sense to begin with the experiences and document the ways that those experiences fueled North African exegesis? Like the contents of these two volumes, the foregoing list of possible avenues for further research is far from comprehensive. On the contrary, it is merely suggestive. At the same time, it is grounded in the diligent and detailed work of several dozen experts on the life, thought, and culture of Late Antique North African Christianity and the various communities that self-identified as Christian. If the study of these chapters and the pursuit of these (and other) avenues for research lead us to greater clarity about a region that quickly proved to be both fundamental and formative for western Christianity as a whole, then the labor that lies behind them will not have been in vain.

Subject Index Note: Page numbers in italics indicate illustrative material Acacius of Constantinople 419 Acephali 417, 419 Acts of John 25 Acts of Paul and Thecla 25 Acts of Peter 25 Adimantius 172, 173, 174 Aemilius of Beneventum 268 African Red Slip ware 509, 510, 512, 513, 522, 523, 527 Alaric 194, 221–222, 224, 482 Alexandria 418 Altercatio Augustini cum Pascentio Arriano 497–498 Alypius 9, 361–364, 366–370, 382, 536–537 Ambrose of Milan 36, 67, 81, 220, 259, 370 – De fide 492 – Hexaemeron 90 Ambrosiaster 253–254, 256 Anastasius 453 Apiarius 15–16 Apocryphon of James 513 Apollinarians 399, 400, 426 Apollinaris of Laodicea 469 aptum (rhetoric) 56–57, 533–534 Aquileia, Council of (381) 475, 476, 484, 485 Argárate, P. 467 Arians see also specific Arians – overview 11, 475–479, 537 – in Altercatio Augustini cum Pascentio Arriano 497–498 – Augustine on 368–370, 382, 484–487 – Bible and exegesis of 479–482 – decline 501–502 – Fulgentius on 397–399 – persecution of Catholics 387–388, 409 – Quodvultdeus on 345–346, 349, 351, 489–492 – in the Roman army 476, 477 – Vandals as 2, 11, 335, 358–359, 488–489, 489–492, 494 – Victor Vitensis on 353–354, 358–359 – works – Commentarius in Job 480, 499–500 – Contra Varimadum 492–493 – Sermo Arrianorum 482–484 – Verona Homilies see Verona Collection https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-022

Ariminium, Council of (359) 476, 483, 484, 485, 491 Arius 475–476, 479–480, 498–499 Arles, Council of (314) 213 Armamentarii Collection 68, 72, 73, 75, 78 Arnobius the Younger 243–244 – Praedestinatus 244 art, biblical motifs in – overview 11, 503–504, 528, 532 – ceramics 504, 508–516, 510–513, 515, 522, 523 – mosaics 504–508, 506–508, 518, 519 asceticism 26–27, 175n65, 251, 458–460, 465–467 Athanasius of Alexandria 318n27, 445, 446, 479–480, 492, 498–499 Athaulf 482 Atticus 90 Augustine of Hippo – in Altercatio Augustini cum Pascentio Arriano 497–498 – anti-Pelagian sermons 46 – and Arians 368–370, 382, 482–487 – audience 4, 80 – and the biblical canon 18, 20–21, 26–28, 140–141 – on Christian identity 141–142 – death of 335, 354–355 – and Donatists 6–7, 45–46, 151–155, 194–216, 535 – exegetical training and methods 36–37, 94–96, 534 – holistic approach to Scripture 197–198, 203 – influence on Fulgentius 407–409 – on initium fidei 304–305, 317, 320–321 – on Jews 6, 47, 96–97 – on justice 291–295 – on love and charity 163–164, 219 – as a Manichaean 6, 36, 167–168, 170, 272, 274 – and Manichaeans 6, 167–171, 534 – on marriage 270–271 – on original sin 243, 246–249, 253–257, 270–271, 275–278, 296–299, 330 – on paganism 226–227 – personality 4, 34–39 – and Platonism 89, 102–112, 227 – on private Scripture reading 23–24 – response to Rome’s fall 222–224

546

Subject Index

– rhetorical training and methods 34–36, 38–39, 56–57 – on righteousness 260–261 – works see also De civitate Dei; De Genesi ad litteram; Sermones ad populam – Ad Catholicos fratres / De unitate ecclesiae 207–209 – Ad Cresconium Grammaticum partis Donati 209–211 – Confessiones 91, 104, 144–145, 244, 268 – Contra duas epistulas pelagianorum 254, 274–276 – Contra epistulam Parmeniani 200–203 – Contra Faustum Manichaeum 167–168, 180–189, 374, 375 – Contra Felicem Manichaeum 167, 169, 374, 375 – Contra Iulianum 276–278 – Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum 278–281, 296–299 – Contra litteras Petiliani 197–200 – Contra Maximinum 482, 486–487 – Contra sermonem Arrianorum 482–484 – De baptismo contra Donatistas 140, 204–207 – De catecizandis rudibus 232 – De consensu evangelistarum 141 – De correptione et gratia 304, 312–317, 333 – De doctrina christiana 15, 18, 28, 35, 96–97, 148, 195, 534 – De dono perseverantiae 27, 244, 304, 318–319, 326–333 – De excidio urbis Romae 344 – De Genesi contra Manichaeos 95, 354 – De gestis Pelagii 244, 249, 264 – De gratia Christi et de peccato originali 258 – De gratia et libero arbitrio 304–311, 307–312, 313, 333 – De haeresibus 244 – De libero arbitrio 378 – De natura boni 167, 169–170 – De natura et gratia 244, 247–248 – De nuptiis et concupiscentia 262, 270–271, 272–273 – De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo parvulorum 246–247, 254, 257, 368 – De perfectione justitiae hominis 247, 261 – De praedestinatione sanctorum 27, 304, 317–326, 329, 333 – De quantitate animae 378 – De spiritu et littera 247, 257

– De unico baptismo 211–212 – Enarrationes in Psalmos 5, 37, 115–137, 225, 533 – In Evangelium Johannis tractatus 37, 133, 136, 140 – Gesta collationis Carthaginensis 212–215 – Retractiones 223, 319 “Augustinianism” 362–363, 381–383, 536–537, 542 Aurelius of Carthage 13–16, 20, 68, 245–246, 335, 361–362, 364 Auxentius of Durosturum 500 babies and children – baptism 246, 254, 262, 270, 273, 279, 330 – before birth 368, 400 – and God’s justice 8, 292–297, 299, 536 – goodness of 280 – suffering of 277 – whether sinful 269, 282, 283, 289 Babylon and Jerusalem 231–234, 238 baptism see also original sin – among Arians 345–346, 495 – Augustine on 197, 204–207, 210–212 – baptizer’s role 197, 211 – cooperation with grace 458 – death before 329–330 – effects of 275, 277–278 – infant 246, 254, 262, 270, 273, 279, 330 – parallel to Red Sea parting 338, 343 – unifying quality 358 – universal 246 baptisteries and fonts, art in 505, 506, 507 Barré, H. 79 Basil of Caesarea 90, 454 Basilica of Peace (Carthage) 65 Bass, A. 3, 416, 533 Bathrellos, D. 469 Belisarius 501, 539 Berrouard, M.-F. 151 Bianchini, G. 120 biblical text see canon; New Testament; Old Testament; Vetus Latina; Vulgate Biblioteca capitolare 120 bishops – authority vis-à-vis secular leaders 10, 414–415, 441–444, 538 – creating resources for clergy 68 – as disciples per Augustine 50n121 – fallibility 204 – persecution of 84, 357

Subject Index

– as stewards per Augustine 50n123 Blossus family 518–519 Blowers, P.M. 10–11, 538, 541 Bochet, I. 534 Boethius 501 Bogaert, P.-M. 500 Boniface of Rome 16, 273, 274 book markets and sales 23–25, 28 Booth, P. 456, 465 Boudignon, C. 455 Bouhot, J.-P. 70, 71 Brachtendorf, J. 4, 532 Breviarium Hipponense 13–20 Brown, P. 417 Bruyne, D. de 121, 122n31, 123–124 Caecilian 193 Caelestius 7, 241–242, 245–246, 251–252, 260, 267, 269 – Definitiones 247–248, 251–252, 264 Caesarius of Arles 24n39, 69, 318n27 Caillau, A.-B. 70 Cameron, A. 454 Cameron, M. 134–135, 147 canon – overview 2–3, 26–28, 531–532 – Breviarium Hipponense 13–20 – debate on Wisdom 319 – Faustus of Milevus on 175, 186–187 – Fulgentius of Ruspe’s 9–10, 393, 409, 538 – and liturgical reading 20–22 – and private reading 23–26 Capelle, P. 394 Capsella Africana 507n5 carnal concupiscence – as an effect of sin 256, 263, 301 – and free will 275 – interpretations of Romans on 255–256, 261–264 – and marriage 270–271, 272–273, 280 – usefulness 272, 277 – whether present in Christ 280 carnales vs. spiritales 4–5, 97, 103–112, 112, 339 Carthage – Arian capture and occupation 336, 337, 344–346, 357, 475, 478, 488, 492 – art in 506 – Byzantine capture 501, 539 – trial of Caelestius 245–246 Carthage, Conference of (411) 6, 212–213, 427

547

Carthage, Council of (397) 15, 393 Carthage, Council of (418) 267 Carthage, Council of (419) 15–16, 364 Carthage, Council of (484) 489, 494 Carthage, Synod of (416) 248 Cassian, John 317, 319, 387, 396, 459, 464 Cassiodorus 137 catechetical instruction 80–82 Cato 225 ceramic art 504, 508–516, 510, 511, 512, 513, 522, 523 Cerealis of Castellum Ripense 492 Chalcedon, Council of (451) 408, 417–420, 423–425, 428–429, 434–435, 538 charity 163–164, 344, 430–431, 534 see also love chastity 270, 329, 402, 526 see also carnal concupiscence children see babies and children Christ – Augustine’s attitudes toward 152–153 – carnal concupiscence and 280 – and Christian identity 141–142 – church as bride and body of 5, 150–151, 188, 341–342 – dual nature 396–397, 400, 418 – fish acrostic 349 – fulfilliment of the Law 348 – Gethsemane prayer 468–472 – humanity 280, 349, 396–397, 398, 403–404, 426–427 – indivisibility 348 – Jewishness 186 – as judge 460 – Manichaeans on 170–172, 381, 400, 537 – as mediator 148, 227 – newness in and of 338, 339–340, 350 – obedience to God 483 – pictorial art 11, 503, 508n7, 509, 510–516, 513, 515, 528 – presence in Old Testament 180, 230 – relationship with God the Father 170, 484, 491–492, 499, 537 – and salvation 147–148, 248, 296–297 – signs and miracles of 157–158 – sinlessness 260 – suffering of 44, 57, 344, 408, 537 – as teacher 50–51 – as “the way” 148–149 Christian identity formation 4, 141–142

548

Subject Index

Christograms 506, 511 Chromatius 67 Chrysostom, John 62, 64, 67, 68, 71, 72, 80, 418, 425, 468 church – authority vis-à-vis secular leaders 10, 414–415, 441–444, 538 – “binding” and “loosing” 160, 427 – as bride and body of Christ 5, 150–151, 188, 341–342 – exaltation of 537 – as mother 341–342 – Peter and John as metaphors for 159–160 – purity or virginity of 45, 214–215, 406 – unity and universality 195, 200–203, 207–209, 210–211 Cicero 35–36, 90 Circumcellions 194, 197–198, 199, 224 “city of God” see De civitate Dei Clancy, F. 391 Claudian 234 Clement of Rome 81, 457 Clemmons, T. 9, 537 Codex Vercellensis 165 14 Collection of 38 Homilies 68, 71 Combefis, F. 468 Congar, Y. 195 Constantine I 419, 475 Constantine Sacellarius 452, 465 Constantinople 418 Constantinople, Council of (381) 419, 468 Constantinople, Council of (681) 468 Constantius II 439, 476 Coon, L.L. 388, 389–390 Councils and Synods – Aquileia (381) 475, 476, 484, 485 – Ariminium (359) 476, 483, 484, 485, 491 – Arles (314) 213 – Carthage (annual) 193 – Carthage (397) 15, 393 – Carthage (411 Conference) 6, 212–213, 224, 427 – Carthage (416) 248 – Carthage (418) 267 – Carthage (419) 15–16, 364 – Carthage (484) 489, 494 – Chalcedon (451) 408, 417–420, 423–425, 428–429, 434–435, 538 – Constantinople (381) 419, 468 – Constantinople (681) 468

– Diospolis (415) 248, 361 – Ephesus (431) 417–418, 418 – Ephesus (449) 418, 440 – Hippo (393) 13–14, 16, 17, 146, 393 – Hippo (397) 13–14 – Jerusalem (415) 248 – Lateran Council (649) 454, 456 – Milevis, synod of (416) 248 – Nicaea (325) 16, 475 – Rimini (359) 440 – Seleucia (359) 476 creation see also De Genesi ad litteram – cosmology 89–90 – ex nihilo 107–108 – facta 99–100 – fallenness of 228, 230, 231–232 – God’s labor in 457–458 – goodness of 276, 281, 402, 536 – metaphysics 106–112 – Platonism and 102–104 creatura spiritalis 108–112, 532 Cresconius 209 Cunctos Populos 221 Cyprian of Carthage – Augustine cites on baptism 210–212 – canon used by 18 – as celebrity preacher 64, 76 – Commentarius in Job similarities 500 – on Daniel and the Three Hebrew Youths 520, 524–525 – Donatists claim legacy of 204–206 – Facundus cites, on unity 425 – on Gethsemane 468 – on persecution 79 – as resource for clergy 68 – Ad Quirinum testimonia adversus Judaeos 251 Cyril of Alexandria 249, 418, 425, 426, 427 Cyril of Jerusalem 80 – Catechesis 23, 25 Cyrila (Vandal) 489 Dacius of Milan 420 Dagemark, S. 379 Dalvit, M. 195 Damasus 250 Damous el-Karita 507 Davis, Nathan 506n4 De civitate Dei – overview 7, 219–220

Subject Index

– historical context 220–224 – and Platonism 102 – scriptural themes 231–237 – structure 224–230 – Three Hebrew Youths in 526 De Genesi ad litteram – overview 4–5, 89–92 – Augustine’s modes of interpretation 94–101 – and Platonism 102–112, 532 – structure 92–93 De Reditu Suo 222 death – Adam as origin 253, 254, 255, 274, 286 – Augustine on 301, 368 – Christ facing 408, 470–471 – Fastidiosus on 495 – judgment of the dead 427, 538 – Julian of Aeclanum on 269, 279, 281, 286, 288 – soul’s condition after 372–373 – twofold 228, 282 – of unbaptized infants 330 Decian persecution 520, 524 decorum (rhetoric) 56–57 Dekkers, E. 70, 497 Demetrias 7, 250–251 Dermer, S. 151, 153–154, 162 determinism 256 Di Sciascio, F. 407 Diadochus of Photiki 459 Dialogus contra Arrianos, Sabellianos, et Photinianos 498–499 Diocletian 21 Dionysius 482 Diospolis, synod of (415) 248, 361 Djuth, M. 403 Dolbeau, F. 71, 74 Donatists – anonymous sermons by 72, 75, 79, 84–85, 533 – attitudes toward Christ 152–153 – Augustine on 6–7, 45–46, 151–153, 154–155, 194–216, 535 – and baptism 204–207, 210–212 – and the canon 18–19, 25 – and charity 163–164 – Circumcellions 194, 197–198, 199, 224 – community defense 84–85 – Compendium 66–67 – Conference of Carthage (411) 212–216, 247 – Fastidiosus on 494–495

549

– historical context 193–194 – and love 7, 195 – Parmenian 65, 67, 200–203 – persecution of Catholics 521 – Petilian 197–200, 500 – Quodvultdeus on 349 – returning to the Catholic church 151–155, 163 Donatus 69, 76, 392 Dorotheus of Gaza 459 Dossey, L. 10, 62, 68, 70n63, 414, 445, 500 Dreyfus, F. 61 dualism 108, 169–170, 178, 186–188, 272, 534 Dunbabin, K. 508 Dupont, A. 195 dyotheletism 468 Edict of Thessalonica 221 Edict of Unity 152, 194 election, divine 8, 319, 323, 536 Ephesus, Council of (431) 417–418, 418 Ephesus, Council of (449) 418, 440 Ephrem of Antioch 420, 433 Epicurus 90 Epigonius of Bulla Regia 15 Escorial Collection 72 Étaix, R. 70, 74, 76 eternal vs. the temporal 97–101 Eugippius 391 Eusebius 69, 235 Eutyches 418, 419 Eutychians 417, 426, 427 Evodius of Uzalis 9, 304, 361–362, 370–371, 536, 537 – Adversus Manichaeos 362–363, 371, 373–378, 381–382 – Epistula ad Valentinum 371 – letters with Augustine 372–373, 377–378 exempla – in Augustine 39, 533 – Evodius asks Augustine to clarify 373 – in Facundus 10, 415, 428–432, 436–446, 538 – in Quodvultdeus 9, 342–344 Exuperius of Toulouse 16n14 Facundus of Hermiane – Christology 424–427 – defends Chalcedon 423–425, 434–435 – on judgment of theologians 427–429 – meeting with Vigilius 421

550

Subject Index

– on the Trinity 423–424 – use of exempla 10, 415, 428–432, 436–446, 538 – use of invective 10, 414–415, 432–444 – Pro defensio trium capitulorum 10, 416–422, 422–448 Fairbairn, D. 391 faith – “analogy of” 10 – grace necessary for 303, 333 – and humility toward Scripture 54 – initium fidei 257–258, 304–305, 317, 320–321, 536 – Manichaean confessions of 375 – merits as result of 275 – origin 8 – Paul on the law and 284 – woman who touched Jesus’s cloak 432 Fastidiosus 494–496 Faustus of Milevus – Augustine against 180–188 – confession of faith 375 – contempt for Jews 6, 173, 177, 189 – criticism of the New Testament 175–179 – rejection of the Old Testament 171–174 – Capitula 167–168, 171–172 Faustus of Riez 69, 391 Felix of Abthungi 193 Felix of Rome 419 Felix the Manichee 167–169, 379n57 Ferguson, T. 409 Ferrandus 392, 394–395, 420–421 fish acrostic 349 Fisher, B. 70 Fitzgerald, A.D. 5–6 Fleury, Homiliary of 73, 75 Fortunatus 169, 364, 375 Fournier, É. 10, 538 Fraipont, J. 389–390, 393 Fraïsse-Bétoulières, A. 414 Fredriksen, P. 174 free will 256–258, 275–276, 305–311, 315, 320, 321–323, 333, 403 Fulgentius of Ruspe – overview 9–10, 409–410, 537–538 – anti-Arian polemics 390 – Augustine’s influence on 396, 407–409 – and the canon 9, 9–10, 393–395, 409 – on heresies 399–401 – life 387–389, 409 – name confusion 389

– persecution by Arians 387, 537 – preserved a sermon by Fastidiosus 494 – resolving biblical difficulties 403–406 – and spiritual meaning 10, 406–407, 538 – works – Ad Euthymium de remissione peccatorum 390 – Ad Johannem et Venerium de veritate praedestinationis et gratiae 392 – Ad Monimum 390–391 – Ad Trasamundum 390, 408 – Contra Fabianum 392 – Contra sermonem Fastidiosi 495–496 – Contra sermonem Fastidiosi Ariani ad Victorem 392 – De fide ad Petrum 392 – De incarnatione Filii Dei et vilium animalium auctore ad Scarilam 392, 401 – De Spiritu Sancto 393 – De Trinitate ad Felicem 390 – Dicta regis Trasamundi 390, 496–497 – Epistulae 390–391, 392 – Psalmus abecedarius 390 Fulgentius the Mythographer 389 future (futura) 97–101 Galileo Galilei 89 Gaudentius of Brescia 70 Geiseric 84–85, 356, 357, 475, 478, 488 Gelasius 445 Gelimer 479, 501 genera dicendi (rhetoric) 35 Generosus 364 George Resh‘aina 451 Gethsemane, Garden of 468–472 gladius (translation example) 127–128 God see also Christ; De civitate Dei; Holy Spirit; Trinity – eternity (aeterna) 99–101 – as “Good” 170, 178 – justice of 8, 131–132, 188, 278–279, 291–299, 536 – as love 146, 161–162, 466 – and Platonism 102–103 – separation from 404 – sovereignty 8, 108, 313, 323 – will of 235, 293, 322–323, 333, 404, 408, 483, 536 Golden Rule 131 good will 256–258 Gothic Bible 476, 481–482, 488

Subject Index

grace – ante legem 9, 347 – carnal concupiscence and 271 – cooperation with 458 – deification 460 – and free will 256–258, 275–276, 305–333, 391, 535 – Holy Spirit and 161–162 – initium fidei 257, 304–305, 317, 320–321, 536 – insufficience of 274 – and law 188, 261–264, 282, 460 – as necessity for faith 8, 303, 333, 536 – Pelagius on 244, 248 – sub gratia 9, 347–348 – sub lege 9, 347–348 – Zosimus on 249 Grégoire, R. 73 Gregory Nazianzen 454, 460, 469–470 Gregory of Nyssa 455, 457, 480 – Apologia in Hexaemeron 90 Gryson, R. 70 Guiliano, Zachary 81 Gumerlock, F.X. 9–10, 537 Gunthamund 478 Hadrumentum debate 8, 241, 303–305, 308, 312–313, 317, 371, 372n36, 377, 405 Hayes, J.W. 509 Hays, R. 80 “heaven” and “earth” 107–108 Heil, U. 497 Henchir Chigarnia 506 Heraclius 75 heresies 349, 399–401, 429–432, 535 see also specific heresies Hermes Trismegistus, Asclepius 349 Hilary (and Prosper) 303–304, 318–319, 323, 326 Hilary of Marseille 26 Hilary of Poitiers 445 Hilderic 388, 479 Hippo, Council of (393) 13–14, 16, 17, 146, 393 Hippo, Council of (397) 13–14 Holy Spirit – as author of Scripture 403 – as love 146, 161–162 – love of 153–154, 180, 184–185, 247, 285 – presence in the soul 459 Homoians vs. Homoousians 66, 72, 73, 85, 476, 483, 501, 539 see also Arians

551

Honorius 152, 194, 213, 267, 361 Humphries, T. 392 Huneric 352, 356–358, 478, 492, 494 Ibas’s letter to Mari the Persian 416–419, 426, 428–429 see also Three Chapters controversy iconography see art, biblical motifs in infants see babies and children initium fidei 257, 304–305, 317, 320–321, 536 Innocent I 16n14, 248–249, 267, 269, 364, 370 Itala biblical translation 40, 119–120 Jankowiak, M. 456 Jensen, R. M. 11, 532 Jerome 3, 17, 19, 40, 73, 137, 363–364 – Dialogus adversus Pelagianos 260 Jerusalem, synod of (415) 248 Jerusalem and Babylon 231–234, 238 Jewish community see also Old Testament – Augustine on 6, 47, 96–97 – Manichaean rejection of 6, 171–174, 177, 179, 189 – Maximus the Confessor on 463 – prophetic witness of 6, 186 John and Johannine corpus – Augustine’s commentaries, overview 5–6, 139–143, 152–156, 165 – Augustine’s commentary on John’s Gospel 156–162 – Augustine’s commentary on 1 John 163–164 – and Christian identity 141–142 – and the church 150–151 – coherence as a work 158–159 – as disciple 143 – “disciple whom Jesus loved” 140, 143 – Jesus as the way 148–149 – signs and miracles of Jesus 157–158 John Moschus 453, 465 John the Chamberlain 452, 465–466 Julian of Aeclanum – overview 8, 241 – debates with Augustine 535–536 – enters Pelagian controversy 249–250, 269–278 – on justice 291–295 – letters against Augustine 273–276 – life 268–269, 271n41 – works – Ad Florum 278–281, 283–295 – Ad Turbantium 271–272, 276–278

552

Subject Index

justice, divine 8, 131–132, 188, 278–279, 291–299, 536 justice and the Golden Rule 131 Justin I 419 Justin Martyr 468 Justinian see also Three Chapters controversy – condemns the Three Chapters 417, 419–420 – Facundus on 10, 423–425, 432–444, 538 – theological ambition 413–414 Kephalaia 168, 176 Kuehn, E. 153, 154 La Bonnardière, A.-M. 15, 136, 196, 541 Lamberigts, M. 8, 535–536 Lambert, M. 71, 75 Lambot, C. 70 Laon Collection 73 Lapeyre, G. 388 Lateran Council (649) 454, 456 law see also Old Testament – Augustine on grace and 257 – Augustine on the “letter” of 126, 247 – Christ as fulfillment 188, 348 – divine vs. earthly 236 – Julian of Aeclanum’s defense of 274, 291 – Maximus the Confessor on 459–460, 463, 466 – Paul on 261–264, 284 – and sin vs. transgression 284, 287–288 Leclercq, J. 70, 74 Lemarié, J. 75 Leo, Emperor 436, 438–440, 442, 445, 478 Leo I 67 – Tome 418, 426 Leroy, F. 75 “letter” vs. “spirit” errors 96–97 Leucius 373–374 lex talionis 185 Liber fidei Catholicae 353 Liber genealogus 66, 85 Livy, Ab Urbe Condita Libri 226 logos 110–112, 539 Lord’s Prayer 327–329 Lorsch Collection 81, 82–84 Louth, A. 465 love – caritas/charity 163–164, 180, 184–185, 344, 430–431, 534 – in De civitate Dei 219, 227, 230, 231–233, 234, 236

– “disciple whom Jesus loved” 140, 143 – and Donatists 7, 151, 195 – of enemies 480 – faith working through 313–314 – and fear 459 – of God and neighbor 48, 58n176, 154, 163–164 – God as 146, 161–162, 466 – of the Holy Spirit 153–154, 180, 184–185, 247, 285 – mystery of 465–467 – Quodvultdeus on 343 Lucan 229 Lucian of Antioch 480 Lucifer of Cagliari 445, 446 Luciferianism 349 Lucius, bishop 525 Machielsen, J. 70 MacMullen, R. 55 Mai, A. 70 Maiorinus 193 Malavasi, G. 7, 535 Mani 176, 179, 186, 189, 295 – Thesaurus 374 Manichaeans see also specific Manichaeans – overview – Augustine as 6, 36, 167–168, 170, 272, 274 – Augustine on 44–45, 95, 167–171, 180–189, 354, 374–375, 534 – on the canon 17–18, 21 – on Christ 170–172, 381, 400, 537 – confessions of faith 375 – dualism 108, 169–170, 178, 186–188, 534 – Evodius on 362–363, 371, 373–378, 381–382 – Fulgentius on 400 – on Genesis 105–106 – on God’s labor 458 – Julian of Aeclanum on 294–295 – on the New Testament 170–171, 175–179, 181–182, 187–188 – on Paul the Apostle 170–171, 175–179, 181–182, 187–188 – Possidius on 379n57 – Quodvultdeus on 349 – rejection of Jews and Jewish Scripture 6, 171–174, 177, 179, 189, 534 Mapwar, Bashuth 390 Marcellinus 213, 215, 224, 247 Marcian 10, 436–440, 442, 445 Margerie, B. de 390

Subject Index

Margoni-Kögler, M. 42 Maribadus 492 Marius Mercator 242 Marivaldus 492 Mark the Monk 458–459 Markus, R. 235, 414 marriage 270–271, 273, 276, 279–280, 535 martyrs 14, 41, 130, 519–526, 519 Mary 49, 400, 417, 424–426, 433, 513 Mathisen, R.W. 488 Matz, B. 8, 536 Maxentius, John 392 Maximinus (Arian bishop) 483, 484–487, 499 Maximinus of Siniti 75 Maximus of Turin 70, 72 Maximus the Confessor – overview 10–11, 538–539 – on asceticism 458–460, 466–467 – friendship with Thalassius 456 – on Gethsemane 468–472 – on Jonah 461–463 – life 451–454, 472–473 – on love 465–466 – and Origen’s hermeneutics 454–457, 461–465 – on repentance 467 – theological objectives 457–458 – works – Book of Ambiguities 460 – Dialogue on the Ascetic Life 466–467 – Disputation with Pyrrhus 471 – Epistulae 465–467 – Opuscula 11, 468–472 – Quaestiones ad Thalassium 10–11, 454–465 – Quaestiones ad Theopemptum 10–11, 455, 461, 464–465 – Quaestiones et dubia 10 Maxwell, D. 391, 408 Meconi, D. 534 Memorius 268 Menas of Constantinople 420, 433 Mensurius of Carthage 21 Meslin, M. 499 Messalianism 458–460 Miaphysites / Monophysites 387, 417–418, 419 Micaelli, C. 408 Milevis, synod of (416) 248 Milewski, D. 151 Miscellanea Agostiniana 121 Mizonius 13–14

553

Modéran, Y. 421 Monimus 391 Monotheletism 452–453, 456, 468, 469–470 Moreschini, C. 410 Morin, G. 70, 74–75 Morin Collection 71, 73 mosaic art 504, 505–508, 506, 507, 508, 518, 519 Müller, H. 5, 532 Munier, C. 13, 15 Muratorian Fragment / Canon Muratori 22 Murphy, E. 416 natural sin 280, 283, 287–300, 295, 536 see also original sin Nautin, P. 499 Nebridius, argument of 169 Nectarius 231 Nestorians 349, 400, 417, 426, 433, 453, 469 Nestorius 400, 417, 419, 426 New Testament see also canon; John and Johannine corpus; Paul and Pauline Epistles – Augustine on 186–188 – Evodius’ preference for 374–375 – Fulgentius on 395 – Manichaean criticism of 171, 175–179 Nicaea, Council of (325) 16, 475 Nicene Creed 318n27, 419, 476, 499 Norelli, E. 410 nous (spirit) 106–111 O’Donnell, J. 237 Ohlig, K.-H. 18 Old Testament see also canon; De Genesi ad litteram – Augustine on 180–186, 374, 395, 534–535 – canonical authority 16 – Fulgentius on 395 – Manichaean rejection of 6, 171–174, 179, 189, 534 Olivar, A. 63 Olomouc Collection 73, 74 Optatus of Milevis 65, 67, 75, 416 Optatus of Thamugadi 75, 202 Origen of Alexandria – authorship questions 499 – on free will 256 – Fulgentius on 400 – hermeneutics used by Maximus 454–457, 461–465 – literal interpretation of Scripture 480

554

Subject Index

– “Origenism” 451–452 – on righteousness 259 – on sin 262 – on the soul 400 – Theodore Mopsuestia’s condemnation of 419 – two-phased creation 457 – De principiis 90, 256 original sin see also grace – in Alypius’ letters 367–368 – Augustine on 243, 246–249, 253–257, 270–271, 275–278, 296–299, 330 – in baptized parents 277–278 – carnal concupiscence and 255–256, 270–271 – Conference of Carthage (411) 245–246 – and free will 256–257 – Julian of Aeclanum on 271–272, 273–274, 282–295, 299–301 – and justice 291–299 – and marriage 270–271, 279 – Paul on 282–291, 536 – in the Pelagian controversy 241–245, 253–256, 264–265 – pre-Adam 400–401 Orosius 235, 248 – Liber apologeticus 260 pagans 47, 173, 223, 226–227, 233, 283–284, 287 Palladius of Ratiaria 483 Parmenian 65, 67, 200–203 parrhesia 442–444 parvuli in Christo 105–106 Pascentius 497–498 pastoral care 4, 78–79 Paul and Pauline Epistles – in Alypius’ letters 366–370 – Augustine vs. Julian of Aeclanum on 282–291, 300 – and baptism 211, 212 – on concupiscence and chastity 261–265, 271n40, 275, 280, 329 – in Evodius’ work 376–378 – Galatians 147–148 – and good will 256–258 – on Jews 171, 284 – on the law 261–262, 284–285, 459–460 – on literal vs. spiritual meaning 4–5, 95–97, 103–105, 112 – Manichaeans on 170–171, 175–179, 181–182, 187–188

– on original sin 282–291, 536 – on pastoral ministry 209–210 – Pelagius’ commentaries on 250 – in Possidius’ work 379–380 – reprimand to Peter 429 – on sin 253, 310, 314, 319 – Victor Vitensis on 358–359 Pauliat, M. 4, 533 Paulinus of Milan 245, 267 Paulinus of Nola 268–269, 364, 368, 370 Pelagian controversy see also Julian of Aeclanum – overview 7–8, 535 – Alypius’ letters on 366–368, 370 – Augustine enters the controversy 246–250 – carnal concupiscence 261–264 – grace and free will 535 – historical context 241–246 – human good will 256–258 – human righteousness 259–261 – original sin 241–245, 253–256, 264–265 – Quodvultdeus on 349 Pelagius 7, 155, 241–251, 259–262, 267, 269, 361 – De natura 46, 244, 247, 254 – Letter to Demetrias / Ad Demetriadem 250–251 – Liber testimoniorum 251, 252, 264 – Pro libero arbitrio 258, 259, 262 Pereira, M. 391–392 Perler, O. 125 Perpetua and Felicity 344 perseverance, gift of 312–315, 317, 326–332, 536 Peter Mongus of Alexandria 419 Peter of Jerusalem 420, 433 Petilian 197–200, 500 Philo of Alexandria 457 – De opificio mundi 90 philosophical vs. scriptural reasoning 490, 497, 501, 539 Photinians 349, 400 Photinus 498–499 Pignot, M. 62n9, 70n63 Plato 89, 108, 231 – Timaeus 90, 102 Platonism 89–90, 102–112, 227, 532 Plotinus 54, 107, 108–111, 109 Ployd, A. 6, 153, 535 Pontianus of Byzacena 421 Porphyry 90 Possidius of Calama 9, 361–362, 378, 516, 536, 537 – Indiculum 140

Subject Index

– Vita Augustini 9, 362–363, 379–381 pottery see ceramic art predestination 536 – Augustine on 303, 317–323 – criticism of 26, 241, 244 – perseverance and 326–327, 329, 331 – rebukes and 312–313 – whether “all” are saved 404–406 Priscillian of Avila 26n45 Priscillianism 349 Privatio 21 Proba 397 Probus 498 procreation 272, 277, 282, 285–287 Prosper of Aquitaine 303–304, 318–320, 323, 326 Psalter Collects 409 Psalterium Gallicanum 119 Psalterium iuxta Hebraeos 119 Psalterium Romanum 126 Psalterium Veronense 120–123, 126 Pseudo-Augustinian sermons 62, 75 Pseudo-Chrysostomian sermons 79 Pseudo-Cyprianic materials 64 Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite 460 Pseudo-Fulgentian Collection 73, 75–76, 82–84 Pseudo-Fulgentius 68–69 Pseudo-Macarius 458–459 Quicumquevult 318n27 Quintianus of Vegesela 20–21, 22n32, 28 Quintilian 35–36 Quodvultdeus 9, 75, 335–346, 405, 488–492, 500, 521, 537 – Adversus quinque haereses 337 – Contra Judaeos, Paganos et Arrianos 337 – De accedentibus ad gratiam 339–340 – De cantico novo 340 – De cataclysmo 338 – De quattuor virtutibus caritatis 337, 343 – De symbolo 341, 490 – De tempore barbarico 9, 337, 344–346, 351 – Liber promissionum et praedictorum 9, 346–352, 359, 489, 492 Rabbula 418 rape 525–526 red slip ware 509, 510, 512, 513, 522, 523, 527 Reginus 392

555

repentance 344–345, 398–399, 467 rhetoric 35–36, 38–39, 56–57, 533–534 righteousness 10, 259–261, 314, 367 Rimini, Council of (359) 440 Rome – foundations in De civitate Dei 225–226 – gods and goddesses 226–227, 233 – sack of 49–50, 155, 220–224, 237, 344, 521 Rufinus of Aquileia 17 Rufinus of Rome 242, 246 Rufus of Thessalonica 273 Rusticus 421 Rutilius Claudius Namatianus 222 Sabellians 399 “sacred dispensation” 10, 347–348 Sallust – Bellum Jugurthinum 226 – De conjuratione Catilinae 226 salvation see also baptism; grace; predestination – Christ’s humanity mediates 146–149 – divine action 197–198, 277, 391 – economy of 52n132, 58, 155, 183, 359 – universality and 404–406 salvation history 96, 98, 350–351, 495 Samsucius 364 Saturus 355 Sebastianus 364, 421 secular power vis-à-vis church leaders 10, 414–415, 441–444, 538 Secundinus (manichaean) 169–170, 189 Secundinus of Cediae 205 Secundius 516 Seleucia, Council of (359) 476 Seneca 226 Septuagint 3, 16, 18–19, 26, 119–120, 126–127 Sergius of Constantinople 470 Sermo Arrianorum 482–484 Sermones ad populam (Augustine) – overview 3–5, 31–32 – audience 48–58 – Augustine’s personality 34–39 – biblical content 40–41 – dating 32–33 – liturgical contexts 40–43 – pedagogical role 50–55 – polemics 43–47 – reception 55–57 – transmission 32

556

Subject Index

sermons, anonymous – overview 3, 61–64, 76–77, 86, 533 – catechetical 80–84 – community defense and polemics 84–85 – identification 69–76 – liturgical contexts 64–66 – pastoral care 78–79 – preparation 66–67 – publication and transmission 67–69 Severans 417, 419 Severian of Ceramussa 75 Severian of Gabala 68 Severianus of Gabala 499 Severus of Antioch 419 sexual violence 525–526 sexuality see carnal concupiscence Shaw, B. 62, 70n63 Shepherd of Hermas / Hermae Pastor 22, 326–322 Sibylline Oracles 349–350 Simonetti, M. 480 Simplicianus 144 sin see also law; original sin – Donatists on 214–215 – natural 280, 283, 287–300, 295, 536 – saints capable of 401–403 – transmission debate 282–283, 297–298, 300 – wages of 253 Sixtus 304 sola scriptura vs. philosophical reasoning 490, 497, 501, 539 Sophronius of Jerusalem 451–453, 455, 465, 468 soul – Adam’s 228–229 – anima rationalis 44 – Augustine on 92 – of babies and children 294 – and the body 299 – and civic polity 231 – creatura spiritalis 108–112, 532 – and death 228, 372–373 – Evodius on 372–373 – Fulgentius on 400 – Holy Spirit’s presence in 458–459 – Manichaeans on 44 – Origen on 400 – origin 8, 92, 102, 294, 298n262 – Platonism 102–103 sovereignty, divine 8, 108, 313, 323 spiritales vs. carnales 4–5, 97, 103–112, 339

spiritaliter intellegere 53, 96–101 Steinhauser, K.B. 500 Stephen (apocrisiarius) 420 Studer, B. 153 Symmachus 221 Synods see Councils and Synods Tardieu, M. 171, 188 Tatian 468 temporal vs. the eternal 97–101 terra sigillata 509 Tertullian 63, 403 – De idololatria 520, 524 – Scorpiace 520, 524 testimonia genre 11, 397–399, 483, 486–488, 490–491, 496–499 Thalassius 456, 456–457, 458, 459–460 Themistius 469 Theodora, Empress 419 Theodore Askidas 419 Theodore of Mopsuestia 242, 416–419, 426, 430–431 see also Three Chapters controversy Theodoret of Cyrrhus 416–419 see also Three Chapters controversy Theodosius I 221, 443, 476 Theodosius II 418 theopaschitism 391 Theophilus 425 Theotokos debate 417–418, 426 Therasia 364 Thomas, Gospel of 23 Thrasamund 387, 478, 496–497 Three Chapters controversy see also Facundus of Hermiane – overview 10, 413–417, 538 – Council of Chalcedon (451) 418–419 – Council of Ephesus (431) 417–418 – history 417–422 Tilley, M. 196 “totalizing discourse” 4, 49–50 Totila 420 Totus Christus 5, 53, 133–135, 340 tria officia (rhetoric) 38–39 Trinity – and Arians 369, 387, 479–480, 486, 493, 495, 537 – Augustine on 153–154, 160, 487 – Facundus on 423, 424–425 – Fulgentius on 391, 396–397, 399–400, 495–496 – and Manichaeans 178, 187

Subject Index

– Quodvultdeus on 339, 352, 491–492 Turbatius 271 Tyconius 19, 75, 200, 396, 405 Ulfila 481–482, 484, 488 unity and universality of the church 195, 200–203, 207–209, 210–211 Uppenna (Henchir Chigarnia) 506 Urbanus of Sicca Veneria 16 Valens 476 Valentine (abbot of Hadrumentum) 303–304, 371 Valentinian I 476 Valerius of Hippo 37, 122n31, 144–145, 225, 270 Van Slyke, D. 397 Vandals see also Arians – in Africa: invasion and occupation 9, 11, 69, 336, 344–345, 347, 352–353, 477–478 – in Africa: decline and defeat 494, 501 – biblical text used by 488–489 – community defense 84–85 – invasion of Gaul and Spain 521 – persecution of Catholics 353–359, 421, 477–478, 533 Vanspauwen, A. 9, 536, 541 Varimadus 492 Varro 226 Verona Collection 72, 73, 85 Vetus Latina 250 – Augustine’s preference for 5 – Augustine’s Psalters 119–120 – Commentarius in Job 499–500 – Contra Varimadum 493 – Fulgentius’s use of 10, 394, 409, 538 – Gothic Bible 481 – North African preference for 74 Victor of Tunnona 421 Victor Vitensis 352–353, 537 – Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae 9, 353–359, 478

557

Victorinus of Malliana 21, 521, 525–526 Vienna Collection 72, 73, 75, 81–85 Vienna Homiliary 73, 84 Vigilius, bishop of Rome 420, 421–422 Vigilius of Thapsus 492, 497, 498 Villegas Marín, R. 2–3, 531–532 Virgil 349, 350 – Aeneid 229 Vopřada, D. 11, 539, 541 Vulgate – Augustine’s adoption of 40–41 – compared to other versions 120, 123, 128, 140n36, 183n22, 308–309, 394, 429n70 – not used in Enarrationes in Psalmos 117, 124n39 – Pelagius on 250 Weaver, R. H. 408 Weidmann, C. 67 Wielfaert, J. 399 Wilken, R. L. 2n4 will – divine 235, 293, 322–323, 333, 404, 408 – human freedom of 256–258, 275–276, 305–311, 315, 320, 321–323, 333, 403 – human good will 256–258 Wilmart Collection 68, 71 world soul (creatura spiritalis) 108–112, 532 Wyrwa, D. 158 Young, F. 77, 414–415 Zeno, Emperor 418–419, 478 – Henotikon 419, 442 Zeno of Verona 70 Zocca, E. 85 Zoilus of Alexandria 420, 433 Zosimus 16, 273, 364 – Epistula tractoria 249–250, 267, 269

Ancient Sources Index Early Christian Literature Acta Concilii Aquileiensis 36 480n27 Adversus Fulgentius

Epistulae festalis xxxix 17 17n15 xxxix 20 22n35 Orationes contra Arianos 1.53 480n24 2.1 480n24 2.11–7 480n24

75

Alexander of Alexandria Epistula ad Alexandrum Byzantinum 46 480n27 52 480n27 Altercatio Augustini cum Pascentio Arriano 497–498 2.45 492n102 6 497n135 10 497n136 13 497n138 15 498n139 17–18 498n140

74,

Ambrose of Milan De fide 492 1.13.79 490n83 Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucam 1.17–18 259n86 Hexaemeron / Exameron 90 In Lucam 7.234 296n241 Ambrosiaster Commentarius in epistulas Paulinas (ad Filippenses) 2.13 256n73 Arius Epistula ad Alexandrum Byzantinum 2 479n21 Armamentarii Collection 9 75n95 15 78 Arnobius Praedestinatus 244 1.88 244n11 Athanasius of Alexandria https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-023

Augustine of Hippo Ad Catholicos fratres 207–209 2.2 208n66 5.8 208n65 6.11–12.31 208n67 13.33 209n72 14.35 201n44 16.11 198n27 19.51 198n27 23.66 210n80 Ad Crescronium Grammaticum partis Donati 209–211 1 209–210 1.6.8 210n75 1.14.18 210n76 1.27.32 198n21, 210n77 1.33.39 210n78 2 210 2.15.18 210n80 2.36.45 198n27 3 210–211 3.11.12 211n81 3.11.14 45n92 3.63.70 198n27, 211n83 4.8.10 202n51 4.61.74 198n27 Adnotationes in Job 116n4 Breviculus conlationis cum Donatistis libri tres 21n31 De catechizandis rudibus 81n137, 347n90 Confessiones 144–145, 244, 268 2 104 5.3.3 168n2 5.13.23 221n10 5.14.24 220n9 6–7 103 6.2.2 120n24 6.4.6 36n27, 103n46

560

Ancient Sources Index

6.5.8 103n48 6.7.11 363n9 6.10–7.13 168n2 7.3 169n11 7.9.13 103n47, 103n49 7.9.13–14 144n33, 144n34 7.10.16 103n47 7.18.24–7.21.27 144n33 9.4.8 118n12 9.4.9–11 123–124n35 9.6.14–7.15 482n40 10.46 379n59 11–13 91 12.4.4 103n50, 107n57 12.14.17 104n51 12.27.37 103n50 13.7.8 91n12 13.18.23 103n50 13.29.44 105n53 13.31.46 105n53 Conlatio cum Maximino 484 1 484n50, 485n57 1.2 487n71 2–5 486n69 2.14.8 487n72 3 485n56 4 485n55, 485n59 10 484n52 13 485n58, 486n63 15.13 485n60 15.20 485n61 15.26 486n62 Contra Adimantum 2 173n42, 458n39 8 174n54 15 173n42 16 173n42 22 44n83 Contra aduersarium legis et prophetarum 1.11 107n58 Contra duas epistulas pelagianorum 254 1 274–275 1.1.3 268n7, 269n22, 273n55 1.2.4 273 1.2.4–1.4.8 275 1.5.9 273 1.5.9–1.6.11 275 1.7.12 273 1.8.13–1.11.24 275 275

1.12.25 273 1.13.26 273 1.13.27 256n70 1.15.30ff 273 1.16.32–1.17.36 275 1.18.36 273 1.18.36–1.20.38 275 1.22.40 273 1.22.40–1.23.41 275 1.23.41 273 2 275 2.1.1 274 2.1.1–2.2.4 275 2.2.2 275n63 2.3.5 274 2.3.5–2.4.8 275 2.4.8 274 2.5.9 274 2.5.9–2.10.22 275 3 275 3.2.2–3.3.5 275 3.3.4 274 3.4.6–3.4.14 275 3.5.14–3.6.17 275 3.7.17–23 275 3.10.26 274, 275 4 276–277 4.1.1 274 4.2.2 274 4.2.2–4.7.19 276 4.4.6 274 4.4.7 254n59, 255n66 4.4.7–8 4.5.10 274 4.8.20–4.11.31 276 4.12.33 274 4.12.34 274 Contra epistulam Parmeniani 1 200–201 1.2.2 198n27, 200n42 1.4.6 198n27, 200n42 1.14.21 201n43 2 201–202 2.1.1 201n47 2.1.2 201n48, 202n49 2.1.3 202n50 2.13.27 198n27 2.15.35 202n51 2.32.74 202n51

200–203

Ancient Sources Index

2.69.155 202n51 2.78.174 202n51 3 202–203 3.1.1 203n53 3.4.23 203n53 3.5.6 202n51 Contra Faustum Manichaeum 167–168, 180–189, 374, 375 1.2 176n72 2.1 175n58, 177n76, 376n51 3.1 175n59, 178n82, 376n51 3.2–4 187n145 3.5 186n142 4.1 174n55 4.2 185n135 5.1 172n37, 175n58, 175n64, 177n76 5.2 175n63 6.1 173nn46–47 6.2 183n123, 185n129 7.1 175n59, 178n83, 376n51 7.2 186n143 8.1 171n33, 173n43, 179n94 9.1 173n44 9.2 183n116 10.1 173n46, 174n55 11.1 175n61, 177n78 11.2 186n140 11.3 376n49 11.5–6 186n141 11.7–8 187n147 12.1 172n35, 172n38 12.7 181nn101–102 12.9 184n127 12.11 180n95 12.23 189n161 12.25 180n96 12.25–26 180n100 12.27 180n98 12.28 180n99 12.37 181n103 12.42 528n46 12.45 182n114 12.46 183n119 12.47–48 182n110 12.48 183n117 13.1 172n39, 176n71 13.5 181n104 13.7–16 182n111 13.9–12 182n112

13.10 182n113, 185n129 13.18 183n118, 219n3 14.4 181n108 15.1 173n45, 174n55, 179nn92–93 15.2 182n115 15.8 183–184n122, 188n154 16.2 172n34 16.4 172n36 16.6 172n40 16.15 181n105 16.18 181n106 16.20–21 182n111 16.21 182n113 16.22 181n107 16.22–23 182n109 16.32 184n125 17.1 175n62, 178n84 17.3–4 187n146 18.1 171n32, 175n62 18.2 173n41, 173nn48–49 18.3 177n80 18.6 185n129 19.1 175n62 19.2–3 174n51 19.3 174nn52–53 19.4–6 173n47 19.7–8 184n123 19.16 184n126 19.19 185n130 19.22 185n131 19.23 185n132 19.25 185n133 19.27 185n134 19.31 183n120 20.2 44n82, 178nn85–86, 375n48 20.3 178n87 20.3–4 176n71 20.7 187n148 20.8 187n149 21.1 178–179n88 21.2 188n151 22.2 173n46, 174n50 22.4 174n56 22.5 174n57 22.6 184n124 22.13–14 185n136 22.18–21 186n137 22.23–24 186n138 22.94 183n121

561

562

Ancient Sources Index

23.1 175n60 24.1 179nn89–91 24.2 188nn152–153 30.1–4 177n78 31.1 177n78 32.1–2 177n75 32.2 176n73 32.3 176n74 32.6 176n68 32.7 177n81 32.15–17 176n69 32.18 180n97 33.7 187n144 33.9 168n5, 186n140 Contra Felicem Manichaeum 1.2 169n14 1.3 140n6 1.3–5 169n15 1.9 176n70 1.12 168n9, 379n57 1.17 171n31 2.1 168n9 2.2 169n16, 179n88 2.4 169n17 2.4–6 374n41 2.7 169n12, 169n18 2.10–11 169n19 2.14 169n13 Contra Fortunatum 375 37 379n58 Contra Iulianum 276–278 1.4.13 269n30 3.2.7–3.6.13 276 3.8.17–3.11.23 276 3.13.26–3.21.51 276 3.21.46 269n18 3.26.59–66 276–277 4.3.14–33 277 4.8.40–52 277 4.9.53–4.14.74 277 5.2.5–5.3.10 277 5.3.13–5.4.14 277 5.5.19–5.7.30 277 5.8.31– 5.12.48 277 5.11.44 277 5.15.52–58 277 5.16.59–64 277 6.2.3–5 277 6.4.8–6.5.14 278

167, 169, 374, 375

6.6.15–6.10.33 278 6.11.36 268n16 6.14.41–6.18.58 278 6.19.58–62 278 6.23.70–74 278 6.24.75 286n145 6.24.75–6.25.82 278 6.25.82 293–294n220 Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum 296–299 1.1 271n42 1.1–2 279 1.28–40 279 1.39 298n258 1.41–48 279 1.48 298n258 1.49 296n240 1.49–51 279 1.53–58 279 1.55 296n240 1.57 296n240 1.61–67 279 1.68–72 279 1.78 279 1.78–94 279 1.95–98 279 1.99–108 279 1.120 296n240 1.122–7 279 1.127 298n258 1.131–140 279 2 280 2.11 271n42 2.13 296n240 2.19 299n271 2.31–7 279 2.52–3 279 2.104–5 279 2.117–21 279 2.124 296n240 2.200 298n258 3 280 3.1 297n248 3.2 296n246 3.3 296n239 3.4 296n244 3.5–6 296n240 3.7 296n243 3.11 296n247

278–281,

Ancient Sources Index

3.12 297n249 3.13 297n252 3.15 297n253 3.16 297n253, 299n271 3.17 297n249 3.19 297n253 3.20 297n253 3.21 297n252, 297n254, 298n255 3.23 297n249 3.24 297n250 3.25 296n241 3.26 297n251 3.27 297n250 3.28–29 299n271 3.30 297n249 3.31 296n245 3.33 298n257 3.34 298n259 3.38 298nn261–263 3.39 299n263 3.40 298n261 3.41 298n261 3.42 299nn264–265 3.43 298n262 3.44 299n270 3.45 299n267 3.48 299n268 3.49 299n269 3.51–52 298n260 3.57 296n242, 297n250 3.153–194 280 3.177 269n18 4 280 4.30 271n42 4.48–87 280 4.114 280 5 280 5.4 271n42 5.5–13 280 5.15–16 280 5.17–23 280 5.26–29 280 5.31–38 280 5.38–53 280 5.56–60 280 5.61–62 280 6 280–281 6.7–15 280–281 6.16–20 281

6.23–25 281 6.27 281 6.31–40 281 Contra litteras Petiliani 197–200 1 197–198 1.3.4 198n22 1.8.9 45n92 1.13.14 214n92 2 198–200 2.8.20 198n27, 214n92 2.13.29 198n28 2.13.30 198n29 2.39.94 214n92 2.41.97 198n21 2.43.102 214n92 2.62.140 199nn34–35 2.64.143–4 199n36 2.92.210 214n92 3.50.62 198n27, 214n92 3.51.63 198n21 3.54.66 51n129 Contra Maximinum 482, 486–487 1.2 487n71 2–5 486n69 2.14.8 487n72 Contra mendacium 27 47n105 Contra Secundinum Manichaeum 167, 170, 171 5–7 170n23 10 170n24 21 189n160 21–23 170n26 26 171n28 Contra sermonem Arrianorum 482–484 12 484n49 De agone christiano 30.32 482n40 De anima et eius origine 1.10.12 140n11 De baptismo contra Donatistas 140, 204–207 1.7.9 207n62, 212n86 1.10.14 198n21 2.3.4 141n12, 204n56 2.6.8 202n51 3.14.19 198n21 3.16.21 210n80 4.9.13 201n44 4.10.16 207n63 5.26.37 198n21

563

564

Ancient Sources Index

6.7.10 202n51 6.12.18 202n51 6.18.30 206n59 6.18.31 206n60 7.51.99 202n51 De catechizandis rudibus 232, 489 11.16 232n37 De civitate Dei 7, 219–238, 526, 534 Praefatio 219n4, 220nn6–8 1–5 225–226 1.1 344n69 1.7 344n69 1.24 225n23 2.28 49n116 6–10 226–228 6.1 226n24 8 102 8.5 227n25 8.10 102n43 8.11 102n42, 102n44 10.20 227n26 10.29 144n32 11–12 92n14 11–14 90–91, 228–229 11.1 228n27 11.3 140n8 11.11–15 92n14 11.17–20 92n14 11.33–34 92n14 12.6–10 92n14 12.21 344n69 13.2 228n28 13.20 228n29 13.23 229n30 14.28 219n1 15–18 229 17.20 319n31 18.13–23 350n112 18.43 127n47 19–22 230 19.17 235n42 19.21 291n195 19.26 230n32 20.18 526n43 De consensu evangelistarum 141 1.3 37n31 1.4.7–1.6.9 156n105 1.4.7–6 158–159n118 1.4.9 158–159n118

4.10.20 155–156n105 De correptione et gratia 304, 312–317, 333 1.1 306–307n7 1.1–4.6 312 1.1–6.9 312 4.7–6.9 312 6.10–9.24 312 6.10–13.42 312 7.13 314 7.16 314 8.17 313n17 9.21 314, 321 9.25 312 10.26 314 10.26–12.36 309n12, 312 12.35 314 12.37–38 312 13.39–42 312 13.40 314 14.43 312–313 14.43–16.49 312 14.44 313 14.45 313 15.46–47 313 16.49 313 De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum 262 1.1.9 262n102 1.2.16 297n250 De diversis quaestionibus LXXXIII 61.6 347n93 66.3 347n93 De doctrina christiana 15, 18, 35, 96–97, 118, 534 Prooemium.6 52n132 Prooemium.9 52n133 1 148 1.10.10 54n156 1.11.11 148n57 1.13.12 149n59 1.14.13 148n57 1.34.38 149n61 1.35.39 219n2 1.35.39–1.40.44 58n176 1.35.39–1.37.41 54n159 1.36.40 48n111 1.39.43 52n132 2.6.8 322n42 2.7.9–11 202n52 2.8.12 28n50, 140n11 2.8.13 140n6, 141n13, 319n31

Ancient Sources Index

2.8.13 15n9, 16n14 2.12.17 123n34 2.13 393n29 2.15.22 40n56, 119n16 2.39.59 35n17, 36n28 2.40.60–61 35n17 3 96 3.5.9 96nn26–27, 98n33 3.5.9–3.6.10 96n25 3.10.14 96n25 3.10.14–16 195n7 3.15.23 96n25 3.16.24–3.19.28 322n42 3.24.34–3.29.41 96n25 3.25–26.37 322n42 3.26.37–3.27.38 195n8 3.27.38 139n3 3.30.42–3.37.56 189n157 3.37 403n85 3.6.10–3.9.13 96n28 4 124n36 4.1–5 35 4.2.3 35n18 4.3.4 36n22 4.4.6 43n80 4.6–9 35 4.7.11–14 36n23 4.7.15–21 36n24 4.9 35 4.12.27 38n38 4.15.32 51n125, 57n172 4.20.39–44 36n23 4.21.45–50 36n25 4.29.62 68n51 4.29.63 77n108 4.30.63 50n123 De dono perseverantiae 27, 244, 304, 318–319, 326–333 1.1–7.15 326, 327 2.4 328n48 2.5 328n49 3.6 328nn50–51 8.16–9.21 326 8.16–14.35 326 9.17 318n28 9.21 330 9.22 330n54 9.22–14.35 326, 327, 329–330 9.23 330n53

10.24 331nn55–56 14.35 331n57 14.36–16.39 327 14.36–20.53 326 14.37 329 16.40 327 16.41–17.42 327 17.37 327 17.43–46 327 17.47 327, 329 18.47 329n52 19.48–21.56 327 20.53 244n12 22.57–62 327 23.63–24.68 327 De duabus animabus 268 De excidio urbis Romae 49n119, 344 De fide et operibus 14.21 314n19 16.27 314n19 21.39 314n19 De fide et symbolo 9.19 146.45 De Genesi ad litteram 4–5, 89–112, 460, 532 1.1.1 97, 98 1.1.1–2 98n30 1.2.5 103n50 1.14.28 103n50, 107n57 1.17.34 98n30 1.19.39 89n1 2.1.4 98n30 2.6.13 103n50, 107n56 2.9.22 98n30 4.11.21–4.12.22 458n39 4.22.39 110n72, 111n73 4.24.41 99n34 4.28.45 98n30, 99–100 4.34.55 103n50 5.3.6 103n50 5.23.45 111n74 6.1.1 92n15 6.6.9 103n50 8.1.2 100n37, 101n38 8.1.2–8.2.5 98n30 8.21.41 103n50 9.14.24 103n50 11.1.2 98n30, 101n39 11.13.17–11.26.33 92n14 11.15.20 92n14

565

566

Ancient Sources Index

11.31.41 98n30 11.36.49–11.40.54 98n30 11.38.51–11.39.52 101n40 11.40.55 101n41 De Genesi ad litteram liber unus imperfectus 91, 96n24, 97 1.2–4 105n55 2.5 95–96 4.11 107n57 5.19 103n50, 107n56 De Genesi contra Manichaeos 97, 354 1.1.1–1.18.29 91n10 1.1.2 103n50, 105n54 1.5.8 107n57 1.7.12 107n57 1.17.27 94, 103n50 1.17.28 98n32 1.22.33 458n39 1.23.40 105n53 2.2.3 94, 98, 354n138 2.13.19 342n49, 354n138 2.17.26–2.18.27 101n38 2.24.37 342n49, 354n138 De gestis Pelagii 244, 264 6.16 251n51, 260n89 9 264n111 11.23 245–246nn21–22 20.44 248n37 22.46 244n13, 247n30 26.51 247n29 27.52 247n29 35.66 248n40 De gratia Christi et de peccato originali 258, 261 1.4.5 258n81 1.5.6 258n82 1.10.11 258n83 1.39.43 262n104 1.45.49 140n7 1.48.53 259n87, 261n98 2.2–4 383n71 2.3–4 245n20 2.3.3 246n23 2.11.12 245n21 2.34 401n72 De gratia et libero arbitrio 304–311, 307–312, 313, 333 1.1–4.6 305 2.4 307–309 3.5 309n11

4.7–9 305 4.15–9.21 305 5.10–6.14 305 5.10–23.45 305 8.19–20 309–310, 310n13 10.22–12.27 305 13.25 305 13.26–14.27 305 14.28–15.30 305 14.28–23.45 305 16.31–19.40 305 20.41–21.43 305 22.44–23.45 305 23.45 310 24.46 305 De haeresibus ad Quodvultdeum 244 46.9 335n3 De libero arbitrio 378 De moribus ecclesiae catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum 2.17.54–55 44n83 De musica 268 De natura boni 167, 169–170 De natura et gratia 46, 244 1.1 244n15, 248nn32–33 2.2 248n33 7.8 245n16 9.10 248n33, 254n63 10.11 245n17 37.43–44 245n18 40.47 248n33 41.48 255n65 45.53 245n17 63.74 259n87 De nuptiis et concupiscentia ad Valerium 262, 270–271, 272–273 1 263, 270–271 1.1.1 270 1.3.3–1.4.4 270 1.5.6–1.6.7 270 1.7.8–1.12–13 271 1.13.14–1.17.19 270n36 1.18.20 271 1.22.24 271 1.23.25 256n70 1.24.27 271 1.25.28–1.33.39 271 1.27.30–1.31.36 275n64 2 272–273

Ancient Sources Index

2.1.1–2.2.2 272n46 2.3.8 272, 295n233 2.3.9 272 2.4.10–2.9.22 272 2.8.20 295n233 2.10.23–2.15.30 272 2.12.25–2.23.48 280 2.19.34–2.24.39 273 2.25.40–2.32.55 273 2.27.45–2.27.46 282–283 2.27.46 289 2.33.55–2.35.60 273 2.34.57–58 280 De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo paruulorum ad Marcellinum 246–247, 254, 257, 368 1 254 1.2.2 255n68 1.8–9 401n72 1.9.9 254n61 1.10.11 255n66 1.11.13 256n71 1.13.16 256n71 1.26.39–1.28.56 246n27 1.29.57 255n69 2 257, 263 2.4.4 263nn108–109 2.5.5 244n12 2.6.7 260n93 2.12.17 263n107, 264n110 2.13.19 260–261n95 2.13.20 261n96 2.18.30 257n75 2.20.34 260n94 2.22.36–37 255n69 3.1.1 247n28, 265n113 3.3.5–6 243n9 De perfectione iustitiae hominis 247, 261 9.20 252n52 10.22 252n53 11.23–19.40 252n54 17.38 260n90, 261n97 De praedestinatione sanctorum 27, 304, 317–326, 329, 333 1.1–2 320n37 1.1–2.6 317 1.1–8.16 317 3.7–4.8 317

4.8 320n37 5.9–10 317 6.11–8.16 318 9.17–11.21 318 9.17–18 318 10.19–11.21 318, 329 11.22 318 11.22–18.37 318 12.23–13.25 318 13.25 320n37 14.26 27n48 14.26–29 318 14.27 27n48 15.30–31 318 16.32–18.37 318 16.32–33 322 16.33 323nn43–44 18.35 321n39 18.36 322nn40–41 19.38–21.43 318 21.43 320n37 De quantitate animae 378 33.75–76 341n40 De sermone Domini in monte 2.4.15–2.6.22 327n46 De spiritu et littera ad Marcellinum 247, 257 25.42 257n76 31.53–34.60 258n78 31.54 258n79 33.57 258n80 De Trinitate 2.6.11 486n64 3, prooem. 430n75 6.1.1 486n64 13.17.22 162n128 De unico baptismo 211–212 5.7 198n21 11.18 198n21 De utilitate credendi 97 6–8 96n23 De vera religione 3.3 344n69 7.13 189n163 10.19 344n69 Enarrationes in Psalmos 5, 115–137, 225, 533 2.1.3–4 340n39 8.2 528n45 9.8 234n41

567

568

Ancient Sources Index

15 151 15–32 150 16 151 17 151 21 151 27 151 29 151 30 151 30.2.1 342n49 33 126 33.1.3 339n27 33.1.9–11 349n106 36 24–25n41 39.1 511n13 41.1 507n6 45.1 135n74, 141n20 51–60 128n54 51.1 116n4 51.5 125 51.6.30–34 129n56 56 134 56.1 134n71 56.12 127 57 131–132, 133n66 57.1 131nn63–64 57.4 132n65 57.6 124n36 58 (s.1).22 130n61 61–70 128n54 61.6 233n38 64 117n6 66 130n59 67 127 67.16 125n39 70 (s.1).19 126n45 74.12 395n41 80 130n59 88.1.10 80n129 90.9 511n13 102 130n59 103 130n59 103.1 139n3, 141n17 118 117 119.1 152n85 119.9 155n101 135.3 125n39 136 117n6 138 117n6 138.1 130n58

145.20 237n46 147 130n59 147.15 80n128 Epistulae 10.1 272n42 16.1 68n52 19*3 348n38 21.3 122n31, 225n21 21.3–4 37n29 21.4 145n39 21.6 225n22 22.1.1 273n53 23*A.3.2 482n43 23A.3 68n52 24 364n13, 365–366, 381n66 29 365 41 365 41.1–2 68n48 53 365 62 365 64.3 20n27, 21n28 69 365 75.19 125n39 79 168n10 83 365 83.5 364n12 91.1 231n33 101.4 268n13 102 304, 318 111.3 526n41 111.4–5 521n32 111.8–9 526n42 125 365 130 327n46 138.5 56n168 147.7 140n8 147.39 51n126 148.15 51n126 158 372 158.6 372n33 158.8 372n31 159 372 160 372 161 372 162 372 162.2 378n53 162.9 372n31 163 372 164 372

Ancient Sources Index

164.22 372n31 169 372 169.4.13 248n39 170 365, 366–370, 382 176 365–366, 370 176.2 249n41 177 261, 361, 365–366, 370 177.11 249n41 177.16 261n99 179.2 244n15 182.5 249n42 186 304, 365–368, 370 186.1 242n1, 387n19 186.2 387n20 188 365–366, 370 194 303, 304, 371 207 276n71 214 303 215 303 216 304 221.4 335n2 224.2 155n103 225 318n30 225.9 318n28 226 318n28, 318–319n30 227 365–366 238 497n134 238.5.28–9 486n65 239 497n134 240 497n134 241 497n134 248 365 261 121–122 261.2 50n123 266.3 52n132 Expositio in epistulam ad Galatas 31 47n104 Expositio quarumdam quaestionum in epistula ad Romanos §72 237n45 Gesta collationis Carthaginensis 212–215 1.4 194n4 1.55 198n21, 198n27, 201n44, 213n91 3.55 198n27, 214n93 3.258 214–215nn93–98 In epistulam Iohannis ad Parthos tractatus Prologue 163n134 1.1 140n6 3.13 51n130

569

5.1 143n30 5.4 163n134 5.7 163n134 5.10 162n132 5.13 163n134, 164n136 6.2 163n135 7.4 163n134 8.4 163n134 8.14 163n134 10.7 163n134 20.2 458n39 In Iohannis evangelium tractatus 37, 133, 136, 140 1.1 143n30 1.1–2 105n53 1.5 143n31 1.7 157n111 1.8–13 105n53 2.1 145n40, 151n78, 157n110 3.17 154n94 5.15 154n96 8.1 158n115 9.1 158n115 9.8 154n99 13.2 140n6 13.3 486n64 13.10–11 152n83 15.1 143n31 15.12 162n130 15.17 154n97 16.2 143n28, 143n30 16.3 145n40 18.1 143n30, 156n106 19.7 141n19 20.1 143n30, 156n108, 157n111 20.13 143n31 21.12 156n109 24.1 158n116 24.7 156n108 25.11 162 26.18 486n64 26.3 154n98 30.1 142n23, 156n108 32.8 162n131 34.1 52n134 34.9 160n125 35.7 129n55 35.9 145n40 36.1 143n30, 156n106, 157nn111–112 36.5 140n6

570

Ancient Sources Index

37.7 486n64 38.4 143n31 38.9 153n87 40.7 482n40 43.14 486n64 48.6 143n31 49.1 142n23, 156n108, 158n115 61.4f 143n30 61.6 143n30 74 161n127, 162 74.2 154n98 74.3 162n129, 162n131 97.4 486n66 104.2 156n108 108.3 160n125 110.2 405n91 111.5 405n91 119.2 143n28, 143n30 122.1 159n119 122.6 159n119 124.1 159n120 124.5 159n121, 160n124 124.7 140n6, 156n108, 157n113, 160n123, 161n126 Quaestiones in Heptateuchum 92 Regula 3 365n14 Retractationes 223, 319 1.17 91 1.21.3 197n15 1.22.1 45n89 2.4 319n31 2.7 168n7 2.7.1 168n3 2.8 168n8, 379n57 2.9 169n20 2.10 171n29 2.10–11 170n21 2.13 116–117n4 2.15 122n32 2.27.54 211n84 2.28.55 211n85 2.32 116n4 2.33 246n24 2.43 122n32 2.43.1 223nn15–16 2.43.2 223n17 2.93.2 67n44 Sermones 1 45

1.2 24–25n41 1.6.22 67n39 2 45 2.6.17 67n39 2.7 53n144, 53n148 4.18 47n108 6.1 53n141 6.8 54n154 7.3–4 53n140 8.1 53n144 8.17 53n150 8.18 55n161 10 42n73 12 45 12.2 44n87, 53n149 13–34 37 14.1 39n45 18.33 41n60 19.4 80n131 22 341n40 23.2 50n121 23.8 35n17 24 38n36 25 49n119 25.1–2 53n141 26 67n39 37.12.17 80n130 37.29 39n45 41.6 53n140 43.1 54n152 45.1 43n75 46 46n95 46.2 50n123 50 45 51–91 37, 38n36 51.1 51n126, 54n155 51.32–35 53n150 51.35 52n134 51.5–6 55n161 51.6 36n26 52 55n160 52.1 41n65 52.20 56n167 55 39n49, 46 56–59 39n43 61 39n45, 55n160 62 41n64 62.5–7 47n105 65A 341n40

Ancient Sources Index

66.1 54n155 70 38n36, 39n40 71 45 71.10 55n161 71.38 51n126 71.8 41n65 73.2 54n151 73.3 51n128 74.1 35n17 77.6–8 47n105 77.8 47n107 78 42n69 80 45 80.8 222n14 81 49n119, 57n174 81.4 39nn52–53 82 39n50 82.14 49n114 82.15 50n122 85.6 49n115 86 39n47 87 49n113 89 52 89.4 53n139, 54n153 91 54n156 93.1 51n126 95.1 51n124 95.2 140n6 98.3 53n146 105 49n119 105.10 236n44 112 43n75 112.6 140n6 114.5 327n46 124.1 53n146 125.7–10 53n150 126.8 44n87 133 52 134.1 50n121 135.2.3 486n65 135.7 327n46 137.6 47n102 138.5 47n104 139.3.4 486n65 145.1 65n26 149.11 38n36 151–156 55n160 153–156 43n74

160 39n40 165 35, 368 169 43n74 169.1 35n17 170 43n74 170.1 53n142 181.6 327n46 185.3 162n128 198 65n21 202.2.2 66n29 206–210 39n46 226 486n65 232.1.1 66n28 240–242 42n73 251 45n94 252.1 53n148 261.2 50n121 265.9 53n140, 55n162 266.8 43n75 273.8 140n6 292.5–7 45n92 294.17.17–18.7 341n40 294.20.19 265n113 296 49n119 300.3–5 53n143 308 43n75 316.2 124n36 319.3 35n17 347.1 43n75 348A.11 327n46 351–352 39n48 358.4 80n127 359.4–6 341n40 363.4 338n20 375 47n103 Caillau 2, 5 (73A).2 49n114 Denis 12 (147A) 37 Denis 13 (305A).7 39n45 Denis 21 (15A) 49n119 Denis 23 (33A) 49n119 Denis 24 (113A) 49n119 Denis 25 (72A) 49n117, 53n150 Denis 25 (72A).1–2 43n75 Dolbeau 2 (395B) 49n116 Dolbeau 4 (299A auct.).3 44n85 Dolbeau 4 (299A auct.).8 234n39 Dolbeau 10 (162C) 52 Dolbeau 11 (90A) 34n13

571

572

Ancient Sources Index

Dolbeau 11 (90A).3 39n42, 56n165 Dolbeau 12 (354A) 39n51 Dolbeau 22 (341 auct.) 53n147 Dolbeau 22 (341 auct.).22 55n161 Dolbeau 23 (374 auct.).19 37n30 Dolbeau 26 (198 auct.) 39n40 Dolbeau 26 (198 auct.).45 44n85 Dolbeau 30 (348/A.6) 248n35 Dolbeau 30 (348/A.7) 248n40 Dolbeau 31 (272B auct.) 53n145 Guelf. 17 (229O).4 44n86 Guelf. 23 (299B) 47n105 Guelf. 24 (299C) 47n105 Guelf. 27 (313D).3 57n173 Mai 14 (350A).2 53n145 Mai 25 (63A).3 47n105 Mai 26 (60A) 39n43 Mai 26 (60A).1 55n161 Mai 26 (60A).2 47n104, 47nn107–108 Mai 95 (375C).6 47n105 Mai 126 41n64, 65n21 Mai 127 (70A) 39n40 Morin 5 (358A).2 39n45 Morin 7 (63B).1–3 47n105 Morin 11 (53A).6 39n45 Morin 15 (306C).4 54n155 Wilmart 12 (61A).1 41n64, 43n75 Basil of Caesarea Homiliae in Hexaemeron Breviarium Hipponense Canon 36 18–20 Caelestius Definitiones

90 13–15

247–248, 251–252, 264

Cassian Collationes 11.13 459n46 Cassiodorus Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum 1.1 347n89 Celestine I Epistula 21.9.10

249n44

Commentarius in Job 1.92–94 500n156 2.6 500n157 2.10–11 480n30 9 500n157

480, 499–500

Conlatio cum Maximino 13 369n27 Consentius apud Augustine Epistula 119.1 490n83 Contra Varimadum 492–493 praef. 1–2 492n104 1.5 493nn109–110 3.1–3 493n105 Cyprian of Carthage Ad Quirinum testimonia adversus Judaeos 3.6 500n156 De bono patientiae 64n16 De catholicae ecclesiae unitate 6 205n57, 426n53 6.11–12.31 214 7.10 206n60 9 201n45 De dominica oratione 12 328n47 16 328n50 26 500n155 De lapsis 2 341n40 6 210n79 9 341n40 19 520n29 De mortalitate 64n16 10 500n156 De zelo et livore 64n16 Epistulae 6.3.1 525nn37–38 37.2.2 201n45 39 61n2 54.3 211n85 55.25.1 201n45 61.2.1 520n30, 525n39 61.4.2 525n40 63.18.2 201n45

251

Ancient Sources Index

66.8.1 201n45 67.8.2 525n37 70.3.1–70.3.2 205n58 71.1.1 196n14 Cyril of Jerusalem Catechesis 4.35 17n15, 23n36 4.36 23n36 De aleatoribus 2 22n33 Diadochus of Photiki Capita de perfectione spirituali 16 459n47 28 459n43 Dialogus contra Arrianos, Sabellianos, et Photinianos 498–499 praef. 498n143 2.29 499n145 3.11 499n146 Dorotheus of Gaza Didaskaliai 4.47 459n47 Eusebius Historia Ecclesiastica 4.26.14 16n15 6.25.2 17n15 Evodius Adversus Manichaeos 362–363, 371, 373–378, 381–383 1 375n48 5 374n40 22 376n50, 381n67 37 374n45, 382n70 38 374n45 41 375n46 Epistulae 371, 372–373, 377–378 Facundus of Hermiane Pro Defensione Trium Capitulorum 422–448 Praefatio 2 420n28 1.1.1 423nn39–40

10, 413–416,

1.1.2 423n41, 423n43 1.1.3 423n42 1.1.4 423n39 1.1.15–6 424n45 1.1.17 424–425nn46–47 1.1.19 423n44, 425n48 1.3.1 425n52 1.3.13 425n53 1.3.32 425nn49–50 1.4.15–16 425n51 1.4.43 426n54 1.4.49 433n87 2.6.19 426n55 3.2.16 426n56 3.3.1–35 426n59 3.3.13 413n2 3.3.14 427n60 3.3.21–24 427n61 3.3.25 427n60 3.3.33 427n61 3.6.7 444n141 4.4.9 433n89 4.4.10 433–434nn90–91 5.4.1 434n93 5.4.10 434n94 5.4.11 434n95 5.4.18 435n96 5.4.19 435nn97–98 5.4.36 435n99 6.1.10 428nn65–66 6.1.15 428n67 6.1.21–24 428n68 6.1.25 429n69 6.4.2 426n57 6.5.35 427n62 6.5.38 435nn100–101, 446n146 10.2.10 429n71 10.2.14 429n72 10.3.12 430n73 10.4.25 431n81 10.4.32 427n63 11.6.17 430n74 11.6.17–18 430n75 11.7.33 427n64 12.1.12 432n82 12.1.13–16 432n83 12.1.16 426n58 12.1.19–21 432n83 12.1.20 432n84

573

574

Ancient Sources Index

12.1.48 431n77 12.1.49 431nn78–80 12.1.52 430n76 12.2.1 445n142 12.2.20 436n102 12.2.23 436n103 12.3.1 436nn104–105 12.3.2 437n106 12.3.4 437n107, 446n146 12.3.5 437n108 12.3.12 438n109 12.3.14 438n110 12.3.16 438nn111–112 12.3.17 438nn112–113 12.3.21 439n115 12.3.23 439n116 12.3.24–5 439n117 12.3.26 440nn118–119 12.3.27 440n120 12.3.30 440n121, 446n146 12.3.32 440n122 12.3.33 441n123 12.3.34 441n124 12.3.35 441n125 12.3.36 441n126 12.3.37 442n127 12.4.1 442n128 12.4.11–12 442n129 12.4.15 442n130 12.5.4 443n131 12.5.5 443n132 12.5.6 443n133 12.5.9 443n134 12.5.10 443n135 12.5.12 443–444nn136–137 12.5.14 444n138 12.5.19 444n139 12.5.20 444n140 Fastidiosus Sermones 1 495n120 2 479n22, 480n25 3–4 495n122 4 495n122 Ferrandus Epistula 6 421n31

Fleury Homilies 4 76n104 Fulgentius of Ruspe Ad Euthymium de remissione peccatorum 390 Ad Johannem et Venerium de veritate praedestinationis et gratiae 392, 404 1.20 403n81 1.35 397n53 2.6 396n45 2.6–7 402n77 2.9 399n59 2.21–2 397n53 3.1 396n43 3.10 402n77 3.18–19 405n89 3.23 396n44, 397n55 25 397n53 35 401n70, 401n72 Ad Monimum 390–391 Ad Trasamundum 390, 408 2.13.1–2 404n86 2.15 394n36 2.17.3 397n49 3.5–6 397n48 3.17.3 397n51 3.21.2–5 397n50 3.24.1–3 397n50 3.35.1 396n46 Contra Fabianum 392, 408 15 394n33 21.4 493n108 Contra sermonem Fastidiosi Ariani 392, 404, 494n114, 495–496 1.1 494n117, 495n123 4.1 495n124 4.1–5.2 404n87 4.4 496n125 7 400n65 8.4–5 496n126 De fide ad Petrum 392 54 394n32 63 394n32 De incarnatione Filii Dei et vilium animalium auctore ad Scarilam 392, 401 14 400n65 16–20 396n47 29 402n77

Ancient Sources Index

39 401n74 De Spiritu Sancto 391n25, 393 De Trinitate ad Felicem 390 1.4 493n108 Dicta regis Trasamundi 390, 496–497 1.14–5 479n22 1.568–70 497n132 1.675 497n131 1.883–5 493n108 135–6 479n22 Epistulae 1–7 390 2.19 402n76 3.7–4.8 394n34 3.10 406n95 3.20 402n76 3.32–4 397n54 4.2 397n53 4.4–11 397n54 4.6 397n52 6 439n117 6.10 397n52 8 391 8.24 400n64 8.25–7 400n63 8.26 400n66 8.27 399 8.28 400n68 9 402n75 12 391 14 391, 394–395 14.38 399n61, 400nn64–65 14.46 395n38, 395n40 14.46–7 395n39 14.47 395n37 15 391 15.7 402n75 15.13 397n52 17 390, 391, 398, 404 17.5 398n57 17.6 401n73 17.21–2 400n67 17.30 401n71 17.34 398n58 17.36–7 402n80 17.37 397n53 17.61–63 404n88

18 391 19 391n25 Psalmus abecedarius Sermones 4.11 407n98 6.6–7 406n97

390

Gennadius of Massilia De viris illustribus 46 268n12, 269n20 Gregory Nazianzen Theological Orations 30.11 458n39

469–470

Gregory of Nyssa Apologia in Hexaemeron

90

Hilary of Arles Epistula 226.9 320n35 Hilary of Marseille Epistula (inter Augustinianas) 226.4 26–27n47 Homiliae vindobonenses 20 75 Januarius Epistula ad Valentinum

406n94

Jerome Commentarius in Danielem 347n91 Commentarius in Jeremiam 3.1.4 242n1 Dialogi contra Pelagianos 260 1.12 260n91 1.26 276n67 1.33 251n50 2.2–3 262n105 2.16 276n67 3.3 276n67 3.12 276n67 Epistulae 50 242n2 105.5 137n79 112.19 125n39

575

576

Ancient Sources Index

123.16 224n18 127.12 224n19 130.16 242n3 John Chrysostom Homiliae in Genesim 10.7 458n39 In Matthaeum Homiliae 83.1 427n60 Julian of Aeclanum Ad Florum 281–295 1 278–281 1.1 271n42 1.22 293n212 1.27 292n199 1.35 291n194, 293n212 1.37 292n198, 292n202, 292n207 1.38 292n203, 292n206, 292n207 1.50 292n204 1.52 274n62 1.67 292n201 1.79 292n207 1.85 274n62 1.94 276n69 1.113–40 295n233 1.122 292n200 1.130 292n207 1.131 291n194 2 281–291 2.1–150 283 2.17 285n123 2.20 292n208 2.26 293n217 2.31–32 293n218 2.34 293n218 2.35 283n109 2.36 293n219 2.38 285n123, 293n220 2.42 294n221 2.44 294n223 2.46 294n225 2.47 294n226 2.48 285n126, 294n227 2.49 294n228 2.50 285n127 2.52 285n126, 294n229 2.53 285n125, 295n231 2.54 295n232

2.55 285n128, 295n230 2.56 285nn129–130 2.57 285n131 2.59–61 286n132 2.60 294n228 2.62 283n108 2.63 286n135 2.64 285n129 2.66 286n136 2.67 286n137 2.67–79 295n236 2.68 286n138, 287n150 2.69 285n129 2.70–71 287n152 2.72 287n153 2.75 285n129 2.77 287n153, 295n238 2.82 295n235 2.83 286n133 2.87 288n166 2.89 288n167 2.91–92 288n168 2.94 288n169 2.97 288n169 2.98–9 289n172 2.101 289n173 2.104 289n175 2.105 289n176 2.107 289n177 2.109 289n178 2.110 289n175 2.112 289n179 2.114 289n180 2.117 290n181 2.128–35 295n236 2.129 289n175 2.135 290n182 2.138 290nn184–185 2.139 288n169, 290n183 2.146 291n187 2.147 291n188 2.151 284n110 2.151–72 283 2.151–222 283 2.153–4 284n111 2.154 284nn112–113 2.155–6 284n114 2.157 284n116 2.160 284n115

Ancient Sources Index

2.161 284n118 2.162 284n113 2.165 285n119 2.166 285nn120–21 2.167–168 285n122 2.173 285n124, 286nn140–141 2.173–222 283 2.174 286n142, 287n146 2.175 287n150 2.176 287n149, 287n151 2.177 285n124, 287n147 2.183 285n129 2.184 287n148 2.185 287n155, 287n157 2.186 288n158 2.187 287n156, 293n209 2.189 288n163 2.191 288n159 2.191–2 288n160 2.193 288n161 2.194 285n129, 288n162 2.196 286n139 2.197 287n148 2.201 287n154 2.204 288n165, 288n170 2.205 288n171 2.215 290n186 2.219–21 291n190 2.220 287n157, 291n191 2.220–221 291n192 3 293 3.2 291n195, 292n205 3.2–3 293n214 3.6 293n216 3.12–13 293n213 3.25 293n215 3.33 292n204 3.38 292n207 3.48 292n207 3.83 292n204 3.104 293n212 3.107 293n209 4.2 295n237 4.30 271n42 4.89 293n212 4.104 286n134 4.123–36 295n233 4.129 292n207 5.2 292n204

5.26 5.64

577

268n14 292n201

Ad Turbantium 271–272, 276–278 frg. 2a 269n25 frg. 9 269n24 frg. 51 269n26, 294n224 frg. 108 293n210 frg. 109 293n211 frg. 168 292n201 frg. 271b 269n24 frg. 275 269n23 frg. 313 281n95 frg. 323 291n191 frg. 326 287n149 frg. 327 293n220 Epistula ad Rufum frg. 20 291n191 frg. 28 269n24, 269n27 Epistula ad Zosimum

269nn28–29

Epistula quam ad Romanos misisse dicebatur Iulianus 273n54 Justinian Codex Justinianus 1.1.8 423n39 In damnationem Trium Capitulorum Novellae 37 501n160 On the Orthodox Faith 414n5 Lactantius Divinarum institutionum 4.6–8 350n112 13–20 350n112 Leo I Tome

418, 426

Leucius Acta 373–374 Liber fidei Catholicae Liber Genealogus W 39 85n151

353

413n4, 433n88

578

Ancient Sources Index

Marius Mercator Commonitorium lectori adversum haeresim Pelagii et Caelestii vel etiam scripta Juliani 242 ACO 1.5.1:5 242n1 ACO 1.5.1:5–6 242n3 ACO 1.5.1:9 268n11 ACO 1.5.1:11–12 269n28 Mark the Monk De baptismo 1 458n40 5 459n43 Maximus the Confessor Ambiguum ad Johannem 37 462n60 Disputation with Pyrrhus 471 Epistulae 465–467 2 452n4, 465–466 3 452n4 4 452n4 5 452n4 9 456n26 10 452n4 11 467 12 452n4, 453n11, 461n53 24 452n4 26 456n26 27 452n4 41 456n26 42 456n26 43 452n4 44 452n4 45 452n4 Life 451–455 §18‒20 453n12 §20, 23 453n13 Recension 3, §5 452n6 Recension 3, §7‒18 452n8 Recension 3, §14 452n9 Opuscula 11, 468–472 3 470n90, 471n92 6 470nn87–89 7 470n90, 471n92, 471n94 12 453n10 15 469n84 20 470n87 24 471n91 Quaestiones ad Thalassium 10, 455–465 2 457–458nn36–38

5 6 9 10 15 17 18 19 20 22 28 36 39 44 45 52 55 59 62 63 64

457n29 458n40 460n51 459n45, 459n48 458n41, 459n44 457n32, 462n59 460n49 460n50 457n33 460n52 456n28 457n30 457n34, 460n50 456n28 457n30 464n66 455n24, 457n35 465n68 457n31, 471n93 457n31 460n50, 461–452nn55–56, 462–463nn60–65

Quaestiones ad Theopemptum Quaestiones et dubia 10 140 464n67 Melito of Sardis Eclogae 16n15

10, 455, 461, 464

Muratorian Fragment / Canon Muratori 73–80 22n34

22

Optatus of Milevus De schismate Donatistarum adversus Parmenianum 1.4 67n42 3.3 76n103 5.1.11 19n25 Origen Commentarius in Epistulam ad Romanos 6.9 262nn100–101 De principiis 90 1.13.16 256n72 Historia adversum Paganos 347n91 Homiliae in Exodum 13:3 485n61 Homiliae in Jeremiam 19.14 462n60 Homiliae in Numeros 23.4 458n39 De Principiis

Ancient Sources Index

4 461 4.2.7–4.3.15 455n22 Selecta in Psalmos 1 17n15 8.3 462n60 Orosius Liber apologeticus 3–6 248n36 12 242n1 21 260n92

16

26n45

Prosper of Aquitaine Chronicon 1327 478n11 Epistulae 225.2 319n32 225.3 319–320nn33–34 225.7 320n35 225.8 320n36

344n70

Pelagius De natura 46, 244, 254, 259 In Romanos 5.12 254n62, 254–255nn64–65 5.15 243n6 7.7 262n103 Letter to Demetrias / Ad Demetriadem 23.66 251n48 Liber testimoniorum 251, 252, 264 Pro libero arbitrio 258, 259, 262

Pseudo-Archelaeus Acta disputationis cum Manete 31 458n39 Pseudo-Athanasius De Trinitate 43.60 493n108 250–251

Philostorgius Historia Ecclesiastica 2.5 481n35 Pontianus Epistle to the Emperor Justinian

379n57

Priscillian of Avila Liber de fide et de Apocryphis

260

Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis 4.3 128n51

579

421n32

Pontius of Carthage Vita Cypriani 9 64n16 Possidius Indiculum 140 10.5 140n8 10.6 140n8 Vita Augustini 362–363, 378–382, 384 praef. 378n56 3.2 381n64 5 32n8 6 379n58 6.3 380n62 7.4 380n62 10.3 381n65

Pseudo-Augustine See Altercatio Augustini cum Pascentio Arriano De Decimis Dandis 79 Sermo 246 85n154 Sermo contra Judaeos, paganos, et Arianos 75 Sermon Mai 42 77n106 Pseudo-Fulgentius Praefatio 68n49 Sermo de Simbolo 74n88 Sermones 56 74 Pseudo-Macarius Homilia spiritualis 15.36 459n43 15.41 459n42 17.8 459n43 27.9 459n43 Logos 33.1‒2 459n43 Quicumquevult

318n27

Quodvultdeus Adversus quinque haereses

337, 374n43

580

Ancient Sources Index

Contra Judaeos, Paganos et Arrianos 337 5.5–8 490n85 7.1–4 490n82 7.7 491n90 8.1 490n86 8.1–3 491n90 8.1–9.1 492n99 10.4–12 343n56 11.1–2 346n86 11.2–3 346n87 13.10 346n88 22 340n39 De accedentibus ad gratiam 339–340 1.12.1–2 491nn90–91 1.12.3–12 490n85 1.12.5 491n90 1.12.8 491n90 1.14.5 491n90 1.15–16 339n31 1.15.7 490n82 1.16.1–3 340n32 1.16.4 340n33 1.17.6 340n34 2.6.1 338n17, 340n34 De cantico novo 340 1 339n26 1.3 340n36 1.4 340n37 1.22 340n38 5.6–7 491n97 7.1 491n92 7.3 490n83 7.9–11 491n90 7.10 490n86 7.11 491n87 7.13 491n88 7.14 490n84 7.17 491n90, 491n93 10.1 341n42 13 491n87 De cataclysmo 338 3–4 338n18 3.22 338n19 3.23 338n21 3.6 342n52 4.8–10 342n51 5 338n22 5.11–23 491n89 6.1–4 338n23

6.6–7 339n24 6.7–16 339n25 6.17–25 342n55 De quattuor virtutibus caritatis 2.2 343n57 2.3 343n58 3–4 343n59 5 343n60 5.1–8.5 343n61 9.1 343n62 9.1–10.7 343n63 11–12 343n64 14.1 344n65 14.8–9 344n66 De Symbolo 341 1 490 1.2.2 342n53 1.2.5–28 342n54 1.2.23–27 521n33 1.3.10 491n90 1.3.15 491n88 1.3.21–22 491n88 1.4.2 491n88 1.4.11–12 492n98 1.4.16 491n90 1.4.23 492n98 1.6 342n49 1.6.1–5 341n48 1.6.4 342n50 1.6.5 342n51 1.9.6 491nn90–91 1.9.7 491n94 1.9.15 491n96 1.9.18 491n95 1.9.25–26 491n90 1.13.9–11 490n81 2.4.9–17 343n56 2.9.12 490n83 3 341 3.1 341n41 3.3 339n29 3.3.12 339n28 3.4.10–18 343n56 3.9.2 491n88, 491n90 3.9.8 491n93 3.13 341n44 3.13.1 341n43 3.13.2 341n45 3.13.3–4 341n46

337, 343

581

Ancient Sources Index

3.13.7 341n47 De tempore barbarico 9, 337, 344–346, 351 1 De tempore barbarico 1.2 344n71 1.4 344n71 1.14 345n74 2.11–4.17 344n71 3.1–11 345n75 3.21 344n68 4.1–22 344n69 5.1–2 344n70 6.9 345n76 7.1–22 345n77 8.1–10 345n78 8.7–14 345n79 2 De tempore barbarico 5.12 345n80 12.1–6 345n81 13.4 345n82 14.2–10 346n83 14.10–11 346n84 De ultima quarta feria 6.20 491nn90–91 Liber promissionum et praedictorum 9, 346–352, 359, 489, 492 Prologue 347n95 1 347–348 1. Prologue 2 342n49, 347n93 1.1.3 342n49 1.7.11 339n25 1.12.18 348nn97–99 1.12.19 348nn100–101 1.22.30 500n155 2 348–349 2.1.1 348n102 2.6.10 348n104, 349n106 2.6.11 347n91, 349n107 2.9–12 348n103 2.23.48 348n103 2.34.72 346n85 2.34.74 347n91 2.35.79 347n91 2.37.83–2.38.86 348n103 2.38.87–88 348n103 2.39.90 349nn110–111 2.40.91–92 348n103 2.55 405n92 3 349–350 3.24.25 350nn113–115

3.33.34 350nn116–117 3.35 405n93 3.38.44 346n85 3.40.47 347n91 13.16 521n33 Dimidium temporis 350–351 D. Prologue 1 351n122 D.5.7 351n122, 351n125 D.6.8 351n120 D.6.11–12 346n85 D.6.12 346n85 D.7.13–14 351n121 D.8.16 351n123 D.10.18 351n124 D.13.22 347n91, 351n126, 490n80 Gloria Sanctorum 351–352 3 352n127 13.15 347n92, 347n94, 352n128 13.16–18 352n129 Rufinus of Aquileia Historia Ecclesiastica Sermo Arrianorum 6 483nn45–46 9 484n49 20 483n47 24 369n27 Sermo sacerdotis dei

347n91 482–484

78

Shepherd of Hermas / Hermae Pastor Symmachus Relatio §3.16 221n10 Tertullian Ad martyras 1.1 341n40 Apologeticum 39.4 63n13 De anima 9 63n12 43.10 342n49 De baptismo 9.1–4 342n50 16.1–2 342n50 De fuga in persecutione

3, 22

582

Ancient Sources Index

11.1–2 338n20 De idololatria 520, 524 15 524n35 15.10 520n28 De monogamia 5.1–7 342n49 De resurrectione carnis 21 403n84 Scorpiace 520, 524 8.6 524n36 8.7 520n31

2.19 356n150 2.20 356n151 2.27–28 352n130 2.31 356n149 2.32 357n154 2.33 357n155 2.34 357nn156–157 2.37 357n153 2.40 358n159 3.39 358n164 3.61 358n161 3.62 358n160 3.63 359n165 3.64 358n162 3.65–68 358n163

Tyconius Liber regularum Prologue 77n113 5.1 405n90 5.3.4 405n90

Vienna Homilies 11 77n109 24 75n98 25 75n98 39 74 40 74n86 55 79

Verona Homilies 14 77n105 15 78 Victor 90 Epistulae 9.3 494n118 9.4 494n118

Vigilius, Pope Iudicatum 421

Victor of Tunnona Chronicon 141 422n35 142 422n36

Vigilius of Thapsus Adversus Eutychetem

Victor Vitensis Historia Ecclesiastica 494n115 1.48 492n102 2.55 489n78 2.82 493n107 Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae 353–359, 494 1.4 354n137 1.5 478n15 1.7 354nn139–141 1.11 354–355nn142–143 1.22 355n144 1.23 355n145 1.45 355n146 1.48–50 355n147 2.17 356n148

Zeno, Emperor Henotikon 419, 442

Vita Fulgentii

9,

498

388

Zosimus Epistula tractoria Magnum pondus 8 267n4

267–268, 269

Greco-Roman Literature Cicero Orator 70 56n170 70–71 56n168 123 56n168

Ancient Sources Index

Claudian Carmina Minora XX.1, XX.11–12 234n40

II 4.4.7–20 109n65 II 4.5.31–35 109n66 IV 8.6.18 107n58 V 1.3.7–8 110n68 V 1.3.15–18 108n62 V 1.3.20–24 108n63 V 1.7.36–38 108n61 V 9.3.31–33 110n69 V 9.4.10–12 108n64 V 9.6.8–24 110n70

Codex Theodosianus xvi.10.10 222n13 Epistula ad Menoch

280

Herme Trismegistus Asclepius 349 Kephalaia

Mani Thesaurus

Rutilius Claudius Namatianus De Reditu Suo 222

168, 176

Livy History of Rome (Ab Urbe Condita Libri)

374

Paulinus of Nola Carmen 25 268–269 Philo of Alexandria De opificio mundi 90 Plato The Republic 231 Timaeus 90 30c 108n59 36c 108n60 52d–53c 107n58 Plotinus Enneads I.6.9 54n157

583

226

Sallust De conjuratione Catilinae 226 Bellum Jugurthinum 226 Secundinus Epistula 170n22, 170nn24–25, 171n27, 189n159 Sybelline Oracle / Oracula Sibyllina 8.284–330 349–350 8.303–304 350n113 Virgil Aeneid 229 VIII.114 364n13 Eclogue 4.8–9 350n118 4.24–25 350n114

Biblical Citations Index to Volume Two Old Testament Genesis 89–112, 229 1 1–3 1:1 1:1–5 1:1–19 1:1–26 1:1–27 1:1–2:4 1:1–2:5 1:1–2:7 1:1–3:24 1:1–5:1 1:2 1:3–4 1:3–5 1:5 1:6–19 1:20–31 1:27 1:28 1:31 2:1 2:1–3 2:2 2:4–6 2:5 2:6–24 2:7 2:7a 2:7b 2:8–17 2:8–3:24 2:17 2:18–24 2:21–23 2:22 2:24 2:25–3:24 3 3:1–6 3:7 3:7ff

79 4, 91, 92, 99–101 91 93 90 91 91 90 111 99 90, 91 90 91n12 109 100 110 93 93 95 273 315 109n67 93 457–458 93 112 111 92, 228 93 93 93, 100 91, 99, 100 433 93 394 374, 376–377 53, 94, 95, 275 93, 100 503 464 281 277

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-024

3:16–19 3:19 3:21 3:24 4 4:5 5:24 6 7–9 8:6–10 8:8–11 8:20 12:1ff. 15:7–11 18–19 18:1 19:24 19:26 22 22:16–18 22:17–18 22:18 25 25:22–26 26:3–5 26:4 27 28:12 28:13–14 28:14 Exodus 229 1:12 3:14 4:19–26 12:9–11 15:9 17 20:5 22:29 24:8 28:29 32:1–8

101 457 101 101 92 348 209 229, 503 297 348 136 343 343 347 227 498n139 297 341 343, 348n99, 503 214 211 198, 200 229 342 214 200 11 339 200 214

355 102 457 342n51 356 503 297, 298–299 79 348 443 431

586

Biblical Citations Index to Volume Two

Leviticus 9–10 13:46 17:11 19:2 24:40–41 26:39

348 349 79 328 348 297

Numbers 10, 229, 348 4:15 13:17–24 13:17–33 13:20 14:18 16:24–26 16:30–32 16:32 21:4–9 22:22–35

437 510 526 526 297 437 437n107 348 94n20, 95 443n136

Deuteronomy 229 4:2 5:9 6:13 17:6 18:15–18 18:18 21:23 24:14–16 24:14–18 24:16 26:2–12 28:66

485 297 369 498n139 172 181 147, 169 297 280, 293n213 243, 293, 300 79 182

Joshua 7:21 10:32–40

297 297

Ruth 348 1 Samuel 100, 229 10:25–27

14 15:11 18 19:10

428 428 428 525n37

2 Kings 100 2:9–12 8:12 18:3, 5–7 18:4 20:6 20:17–18

342 354 429n70 429n70 402 429n70

1 Chronicles 12:18

319

2 Chronicles 10 10 12 16:7 18:1–24 19:2 20:32 20:33 20:37 26:18–19 32:24–25

428 428 428 428n68 428n68 428n68 428n68 428n68 436 429n70

Nehemiah 9:6

109n67

Job 480–481, 499–500 1:1–3:19 1:12c 1:21 2:3 2:10 7:1 14:4 40:16 41:25–26

500 500 500 500 355 230 259 351 351

Psalms 5, 115–137, 306 1:2 2 2:7 2:8 2:24 3:8

307, 381 214 496n128 198 341 197

319

2 Samuel 10, 100, 229 6:7 11–12

438 431

1 Kings 100 12–13

428

Biblical Citations Index to Volume Two

4 7:3 7:12 8 13:3 16:9 16:14 17:3 17:8–9 17:46 18 18:6 18:30 19:33–34 21:2 21:5 21:7 21:14 24:1 25:15 26:2 30:6–8 30:16 31:9 33:6 33:9 33:10 34:26 35:9 36:4 37:5 37:7 37:9 37:11 38:2 38:6–9 38:12 41:2 41:4 43:13 44:8 45 45:6–7 46:5 48:2 48:2–3 50:9 50:11

123 345 402 527–528 344 228n29 358n163 77n111 397 358n163 42n69 341 397 341 495n122 343 463 356 79 397 77n111 397 345 307 169 343, 374, 375 459 358n163 355 307 397 79 285n126 358n163 355 397 358n163 507 358n163 345 499n145 408 408 231 231 358 350 39n48

50:16 51:7 56:5b 57:6 60:11 62:8 62:12 67 68:8 68:21–22 68:22 68:27 69:9 70:15 72 72:8 72(73):25 73:5–7 73:27 74 81:10 85:6 87:3 87(86):5 90(91):13 94:15 95:1 109(110):1 112:10 118:8 118:9 119:73 119:140 120:7 124:7 126:6 127:1 132:1–2 133 133:1 139:9 141:5–6 143:2 143:7–8 143:9 147:14 148:2–5 149:9

121n25 401 127 124n36 197 219 308 127 123 358n163 342n51, 350 358n163 219 126 214 197 493n110 354 404 135n73, 395 399 402 231 433 511 219 340n36 483 381 197 286 397 77n111 381 397 397 397 349, 349n106 199, 397 201 394 345 260, 265n112 358n163 340 80 109n67 357

587

588

Biblical Citations Index to Volume Two

Proverbs 306 1:8 1:29 3:1 3:5 3:11 3:27 3:29 3:34 5:3 5:16–17 8:22 8:22–23 8:22–25 8:25 8:35 10:10 20:8–9 24:12

307 307 307 307 307 307 307 185, 219, 230 307 210 85, 479 495, 496n128 496 496n128 297 39n50 344 308

Song of Songs / Canticle of Canticles 1:6–7 46n95, 195 4:7 214 6:8 136 Isaiah 1:3 1:19 5:20 6:3 6:5 7:9 14:19–21 26:20 39:6–7 46:3 48:17–18 49:6 52:10 53:5, 8 53:8 54:1–5 61:10 62:4–5

47, 79 402 201–202 183 77n111 54 214 356 429n70 358 466 214 214 348 496 214 53 406

Jeremiah 466 2:27 6:16 17:5

345 466 197

23:24 31:31 31:31–33 32:18 32:33 38:3–4 43:19 62:2 95:1

404 340n36 350 298 345 466 350 350 350

Lamentations 1:1–2 1:4 1:6 1:10 1:11 1:12 1:17 1:18 1:19 1:20 2:16 4:1 4:5 5:17 5:21

358n163 358n163 358n163 358n163 358n163 358n163 358n163 358n163 358n163 358n163 358n163 358n163 357 358 398–399

Ezekiel 489 3:17–19 18 18:1–30 18:2 18:3–4 18:4 18:20 18:21–22 18:29–30 19:19–20 30:4

443n131 280, 294 293, 298, 300 298 294 298n262, 300 294, 295n231 294 294 294 295n231

Daniel 230, 516–521 3 3:1 3:12 3:16–18 3:18 3:25 3:38 6

11, 402, 503 522 524 525 524 523 355 503, 520

Biblical Citations Index to Volume Two

6:27 11:31 11:31–32 12:11 13:8, 45 14:32–38 Hosea 2:4

516 351 351 351 342 517

214

Maccabees 348 1 Maccabees 2:24

525n37

Baruch 393, 466 3:14 4:1–4 5:1–2 5:3–4

466 466 466 466

Joel 2:28

404

Amos 8:10

358

Jonah 1–2 2:6–7 4:6ff 4:7 4:8 4:11

503 462 463 461–463, 463 463 461

Habakkuk 2:4

225

Haggai 2:14

214

Sirach / Ecclesiasticus 393 12:11 296 24:8 493n110 29:15 39n45 34:25 196 40:1 296 42:21 493n110 Wisdom 393 1:3–5 1:4 1:13 2:25 4:11 9:15 10:21 12:1 12:10–11

404 458, 459 495 282, 285n126 26–27, 318 299 399 458, 459 295n233

Tobit Zechariah 4:2‒3 5:1–4 Malachi 1:6 3:8

457 457

6:1–22 8:2–3

349 349

Judith 348, 393 16:6

354

214 79

New Testament Deuterocanonical Books 1 Esdras 348 5:41–42 2 Esdras 348 3 Esdras 348

457

Matthew 2 2:12 3 3:2 3:12 3:13–17 3:14–16 4:10

79 407 503 344 356 55n160 136 369

589

590

Biblical Citations Index to Volume Two

4:17 5:6 5:17 5:21 5:22 5:27 5:31–32 5:33 5:38–40 5:39 5:43–44 5:48 6 6:9 6:9–13 6:10 6:12 6:16 7:1–2 7:6–8 7:7–11 7:7b 7:12 7:17 7:22–23 8:10 9:9 9:12 9:13 9:16 9:16–17 9:18–26 9:39–40 10:6 10:16 10:16–18 10:23 10:28 10:32–33 – 11–13 11:21 11:22 11:25 11:27 11:28 11:28–30 11:29 12:30 12:31

344 169 173, 175, 178, 183, 187 174 39n49 174 174n53 174 174 185 174n53 285n126, 467 327 328 39n43 285n126 230 285n126 427 39n43 39n45 54 467 169 206 185n136 178 467 467 173 182 47 206 467 41n60 84 157n113, 427n61 228, 427n61 485 234 330–331 330 332 498n139 39n40 38n36, 467 38n36 205–206 394

12:31–32 12:33 12:46–50 13 13:4–30 13:11 13:27–28 13:30–39 13:57 15:8 15:24 16:27 17:1–9 17:18–20 18:7 18:15–18 18:16 18:18 19 19:3–12 19:11 19:21 19:28 19:29 20:1–16 20:4 20:14 20:16 20:23 20:30–34 21:18‒ 21 21:18–22 22:14 22:21 22:40 23:2–3 24:14 24:24–25 24:45–46 25 25:2 25:31–32 25:31–41 25:35–36 26:36–46 26:38 26:39 26:42 26:53

55n160, 199 45, 169, 373 49n117 206, 212, 215 51n128 404 169 202 181n106 404 47, 467 308 42n69 39n43 57n174 39n50 498n139 357, 427 234 39n51 329 39n47 444 343 49n113 38n36 313 313, 333 499n145 47 457 44 318, 321, 323 291n195 39n42 51 211 351 441 230, 234, 356 349 427 169 39n45 57n173, 468 397 469, 483n46, 499n145 499n145 499n145

Biblical Citations Index to Volume Two

28:9 28:19 28:20

403–404 400, 425 397

4:11–12 5:33 14:29 14:32–42

404 432n83 342 468

Mark

Luke 1:6 1:26 1:33 2 2:40 3 4:43 8:8 8:10 8:45 8:46–47 8:48 10:30ff 12:42–43 13:8 13:49 14:26 15 15:3–31 15:4 15:4–6 15:4‒7 15:7 15:20ff 17:34 18:2a 18:2b 18:6 18:8 18:19 19:10 21:33 22:32 22:40–46 22:42 23:32–45 23:34

7, 252, 259–261 376, 377 236 271, 376 162 356 483n46 329 404 185n136, 432n83 432n83 432, 432n83 467 441 344 77n111 355 345 294 467 338 467 467 467 348 464 464 464 434 345 367, 367n20 236 313 468 427n61 345 345

23:40–43 23:46 24 24:36–49 24:46–47 24:47 24:49 John 139–145, 148–162 1 1:1

1:1–14 1:1–18 1:3 1:10 1:12 1:14

1:15 1:17 1:33 2:17 3:5 3:14–16 3:34 4:7–42 4:21–24 4:23–24 5 5:13 5:17 5:18 5:23 5:25 5:32 5:32–37 5:46 6 6:29 6:35 6:37 6:38 6:38–39 6:39 6:44 6:54

591

431 495n122 214 169 341 209n73 400

53 149, 160, 399, 426, 432n83, 433, 491, 493n110 495 144 109n67, 157, 491 486 170 149, 160, 162, 339, 400, 426, 432n83, 433, 495, 496n128 486, 495 183–184 136 185n136, 219 458 396 161, 162 78 425 85 235 493n110 111, 457–458, 486 498n139 493n110 187 496 396 172 320–321, 329, 333 320–321 150 320 469, 470 499n145 313, 320 320 249, 298

592

Biblical Citations Index to Volume Two

6:57 6:65 7:37–39 7:38–39 8:12 8:13 8:29 8:36 8:42 8:44 8:54 8:56 8:58 9:35–38 10:16 10:18 10:24 10:25 10:29 10:30 10:34–36 11 11:21, 32 11:27 11:39 12:27 12:27–28 12:32 12:44–50 12:49 12:49–50 13:20 14:6 14:9 14:9–10 14:10 14:15–17 14:16 14:27–28 14:28 15:5 15:13 15:15 15:23 15:26 16:10, 13

486 320 425 154 150 346 499n145 274, 313, 343 499n145 198–199 486 491 150 396 47 427n61 346 346 486 369, 426n53, 486, 489, 493n110, 498n139 396 11 432n83 339 432n83 397, 426 427 404 486 483n46 499n145 486 148, 149, 160, 339, 344 489 493n110 486, 498n139 396 496 486 53, 369, 382, 480, 490, 492, 493, 499n145 313 397 345 493n110 396 169

16:13 16:14–16 16:15 16:28 17:1 17:1–26 17:5 17:10 17:12 17:22–23 19:28–30 20 20:11–18 20:17 20:25–31 20:28 21 21:1–14 21:11 21:15–17 21:18–19 21:20–24

483 176 493n110 496n128 396 150 339 493n110, 498n139 499n145 493n110 350 159 79 53, 396, 403 78 498n139 159 45n94 347 342, 358 427n60 187

Acts of the Apostles 1 1:1–2:12 1:8 1:10 2 2:36 2:38 3:2–8 5:14–15 5:16 7 10 11:18 16:14 17:17 19 19:12 21:4

11, 214 169 209 513 176 479, 495 425n50 342 432n83 432n83 81 403 398 399 210, 212 425n50 432n83 457

Romans 306, 367 1 1:3 1:27 2:2

212 177, 187 280 333

Biblical Citations Index to Volume Two

2:4ff 2:6 2:6–10 2:12 2:13 2:14 2:16 3:15 4:13–5:11 4:13–22 4:14 4:15 4:17 4:20–21 4:23–25 4:25 5 – 5–6 5:1–2 5:3–5 5:5 5:9 5:12

5:12–21

5:13 5:13–14 5:14 5:15 5:16 5:16b 5:17–18 5:18 5:18–19 5:19 5:20–21 6:4 6:14 6:20–22 7 7–8

292n201 308, 309–311 367n20 460 460 277, 293 460 188 283 284 284 284 375 313 284n113 284 283 278 284 285 146, 210, 247, 285, 367n20 277 7, 249, 252, 253–256, 264, 270n34, 273, 276, 278, 282, 285, 288, 290, 291, 401 280, 281–291, 283, 300 282 287 282, 288 282, 288, 290, 291 282 289 282, 289 290 300 283, 287, 290–291 291 425n50 188 274 261–264, 264, 275n64, 278, 279 55n160

7:2–3 7:7 7:7–25 7:15–25 7:18 7:18–20 7:19–20 7:20 7:24–25 7:25 – 8–11 – 8–12 8:3 8:7 8:25 8:28 8:31–32 8:35 9 9:5 9:11 9:14–15 9:16 9:19 9:21 9:22 9:22–23 9:23 9:29 10:3 10:4 10:9 11 11:1 11:1–6 11:2 11:4 11:5–6 11:13–26 11:21 11:25–26 11:25–29 11:32 11:33 11:36 12:1–2 12:3 12:15 12:19

188 262 271n40 277 263, 264 7, 252, 261–264 263–264 280 249 367 322 320 277 169 225 313 425n51 463 279 400 367, 368, 400 188 264 319 295n233 277 188 323 323 126n44 134, 135 318, 319 323, 329, 333 329 325 329 329 320–321 182 327 405 322–323 404 298n256, 313, 333 340n32, 352, 369 227 319, 367n20 358 297

593

594

Biblical Citations Index to Volume Two

12:21 13:7 14:23 15:19 1 Corinthians 306, 367 1 1:12–13 1:13 1:15–16 1:24 1:31 2–3 2:1 2:10–16 2:10–3:3 3:1–2 3:2 3:7 4:7 6:12 6:18 6:19–20 7:3–7, 27–33 7:7 10:1–11 10:3–4 10:6 10:11 10:33 11:1–6 11:3 12:6 12:18 13:1–2 13:1–12 13:4‒8 13:7–8 13:12 15 15:10 15:12–57 15:21–22 15:22 15:22a 15:35–40 15:44–45 15:45

307 291n195 423 358

212 210 197, 348 210–211 178, 346, 486 313, 333, 367n20 105n53 285n126 105 97 4, 104 105 51 257, 258, 313, 333, 367, 367n20 427 199 369 39n51 329 94n20, 95 339 181n103, 185 181n103, 185, 460 145 329 349n105 319 188 339 42n69 337, 466 343 157n113 230 249 281 281, 405 264 273n51 188 228 229

15:47 15:49 2 Corinthians 367 1:24 2:10 3:5 3:6 3:13–16 4:4 5:1–4 5:15 5:16 5:17 5:19 6:45 10:17 11:2 11:24 12:7–8 13:7 Galatians 147–148, 367 2:14 2:21 3:13 3:15–16 3:16 3:27–28 4:4 4:26 5 5:4 5:6 5:16–21 5:17 Ephesians 320–321, 367 1 1:3–12 1:4 1:5 1:9 1:20 2:3 2:7 2:9 2:20

340, 367 350

440 397 398 96, 97, 103, 247 298 169, 178, 187 427n61 181n108 187 339n30, 340, 350 498n139 38n36 367n20 214 38n36 169 313

429 248, 367 147, 148, 169, 181n108 211 198, 200 179 186, 369, 374, 375, 376–377, 483n46 352 279 460 313–314, 333, 367n20 277 264

322–323, 333 321 322 322 322 499n145 296, 400 460 367n20 47, 339

Biblical Citations Index to Volume Two

3:13–18 3:14, 16 3:17–19 3:18 4:3 4:15–16 4:22 4:24 4:30 5:1–2 5:25–27 5:26–27 5:27 5:31–32 5:32 6:12 6:12–18 Philippians 2:5–7 2:5–11 2:6 2:6–7 2:8 2:9 2:13 2:19 2:20–21 2:20–30 3 3:2 3:3–16 3:4–8 4:2–3 4:5–6 Colossians 1:15 1:16 1:18 1:20 2:5 2:8 2:9 2:16–17 3:9–10 3:10

35 344 339 35 202–203 48 466 339n30 459 400 214 342 259 342 95 109n67, 170 78

493n110 227 227, 400, 498n139 369 483n46 499n145 7, 252, 256–258, 264, 397 434 434 434 261 434 43n74 171 434 345

479n23, 496n128 109n67 200 404 432n82 39n40 397 395 339n30 466

1 Thessalonians 5:19 5:21

459 430, 445

2 Thessalonians 2:9–10

351

1 Timothy 1:5 1:13 1:17 2:4 2:5 4:1–3 5:20 6:16 2 Timothy 2:24–26 2:25–26 3:12 3:16 4:2 4:6 4:8

80 402 498n139 404, 405, 408 147, 148, 227, 367, 425n51 177 39n50 169, 178, 187, 375

209 398 38n36 444 210 355 528

Titus 1:15 2:11–12 2:11–13 Hebrews 1 1:4 1:14 2:9 2:16 3:1–2 4:12 5:1 5:7–10 7:26–27 9:19–20 12:6–7 12:7 13:17

177 423n44 423

81 479n23 109n67 408 400 479n23 340 400 468 260–261 348 344 345 441

595

596

Biblical Citations Index to Volume Two

James 1:12 1:16 2:1 2:10 3:1–2 3:8 4:6

528 309 309 265n112 429 46 185, 219, 230

1 Peter 1:1 2:6–7 2:17 2:21 3:18–19 3:18–20 3:19 3:20 4:1 5:4 5:5 5:8

209 339 441 344, 358 372 343 209n71 209 408 528 185, 219, 230 356

2 Peter 3:3–13

526

1 John 139–143, 146, 163–164, 534n2 1:1–2 433 2:15 309 2:19 321, 345, 351 3:2 460 3:9 458

3:15 3:16 3:18 4:7 4:8 4:16 4:18 4:20 5:1b–2a 5:7–8 5:8 5:20 Revelation 489 1:7 1:11 1:16 2:11 12:6 12:10 13:8 17 17:8, 11–12 17:9–10 17:14 20 21:2 21:4 21:8 22:5 22:12

79 397 163 146 164, 534n3 146, 164, 534n3 146n47, 459 164 164 425, 492, 493n110 426n53 424, 425n51

394 209 128 228 351 199 405 351 351 351 351 235 352 352 228 352 308

Bible and Related Literature Index to Volume One Old Testament Genesis 22n28, 296 1 1:1 1:1–5 1:3 1:14–16 1:14–18 1:16 1:27 1:28 2 2:4 3:15 6:3 9:20–23 15:13 25:23 28:12–30

274–275, 346, 354, 361 183n97, 360 163 362 163 363 163 173, 173n21 361 115, 361 274 63n49, 64n56 97 133n110, 139n155 312 303 109

Exodus 22n28 3:14 12:2–3 12:2–11 12:6 12:46 18 20:5 21:24 34:29–30

219 163 163 133n112 181n88 330 269 269 66n71

Leviticus 16:5–29 Numbers 15:32–36 16 23:19 24:7 25

6:5 6:13 10:20 17:12–13 18:17–19 21:23 25:5–10 28:66 30:6 Joshua 5:2

216, 328n40 222 217, 222 140 180 270 270 180 180n71

180

Ruth 84 1 Samuel 296 2:35 8:7

179 124n52

2 Samuel 296 7

179

1 Kings 296 9:6–9 18 19:19

180 204 178

2 Kings 296 1 Chronicles 84, 296

93

269 199, 204 180 179 204

2 Chronicles 296 24:20

125n62

Nehemiah 84 Esther 84, 85 Job 222

Deuteronomy 4:23–24 6:1

269 217

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492613-025

Psalms 137, 296, 354 1–2 1:1

150 108, 197, 200

598

Bible and Related Literature Index to Volume One

1:5 2:7 2:12 3:6 5:12 15:10 17:44 18 21:17–19 21:27 24 24:9 24:18 27:4 32 32:2 32:6 34:15 34:15–16 34:20 35:2 37:35–36 44:2 44:3 (45:2 LXX) 49:20 64:12 68:5 68:6 (67:7 LXX) 68:10 68:21 68:22 71:6 71:6–7 71:17 83:11 84:12 93:21 95:10 96[97]:5 97:3 101[102]:25–26 109:1 109:3 111:10 113:21–22 117:23–24 126:1 139:15

186 183, 183n101, 187 134n117 181 338 181 178 164 180 355 357 357 357 179 164 164 178 180 186n117 181n88 338 (36:35–36 LXX) 131n101 178 66 196, 196n36 363 181n86 137n132 276 186n117 180, 184n103 180 186n117 183n97 186n117 178 180 158 96n92 100 96n92 179 183n97 336n83 186n117 152 179 337

140:5 141:2 (140:2 LXX)

203 133n113

Proverbs 3:34 LXX 8:22 9:17 15:10 15:12 16:27 17:4 22:2

335n79 177n41 338 135 135 139n151 139n151 270

Ecclesiastes 1:2–3 28:24

217, 217n13, 221 139n151

Song of Songs 2:1 4:8 4:12 4:15 6:8

48 207 126n67, 199 126n67 126n67, 208n112

Isaiah 155, 296 1:2 1:11–13 1:19 2:1–5 2:19 6:10 6:12 7:9 7:14 9:6 10:23 11:1–3 11:2–3 11:2–3 LXX 11:6 11:10 14:4–21 19:20 22:2 23 30:26 34:4 35:3–6 40:4

178, 178n48 153 303 210 96n92 94 185n107 326, 326n30 178 178 154 179 329, 335–337 336 185n107 179 316–317 179 196 204 185n107 96n92 179 185n111

Bible and Related Literature Index to Volume One

40:5 40:7 41:4 41:17 42:3–4 42:6 42:15 44:6 44:24 45:1 45:1–3 45:1–4 45:8 45:14 45:14–16 45:23 47:14 48:12 50:5 50:7 52:11 53:1–6 53:4–6 53:4–11 53:7 53:8–19 53:10–11 57:16–18 58:7 63:10 63:10–11 66:18

97 97 96 96n92 150 181 96n92 96, 182n91 96 303 179 302n65 178 182n91 179 96 100 96 180, 180n73 180n73 151, 159 180 306–307 306 180, 180n74 180 307 161 326 178 186n117 178

Jeremiah 155 1:5 2:13 3:15 4:3 4:4 5:30–31 8:7–9 10:24 11:18 12:7–8 12:17 15:3 17:9 24:8–10

178n43 182n91 134n117 180 180n71 340 178 161 180, 180n74 186n117 181 181 179, 179n58 156

25:4–6 31:31

178 181

Ezekiel 155, 296 12:13 28 28:1–19 28:2 28:18 28:19 34:2–16 34:3–6 34:10 34:16 36:16–36 36:17–23

156 204 317 196 317 317 161 161 161 161 307n92 161

Daniel 7 7:13

185n110 178, 184

Hosea 6:3 9:4 9:14 12:2–4 13:6 13:13

181 154n60 269 303 182n91 181, 186n117

Joel 2:28 2:31 3:1 Amos 2:3–6 6:1–6 8:9

58 185n112 97

269 329 181

Obadiah 84 Micah 4:2 7:8

180 153

Habakkuk 2:5

131n101

599

600

Bible and Related Literature Index to Volume One

3:3b–4

74n113

1 Maccabees 27, 85, 325n23 1:62–63 131n101

Haggai 84 2:14

210

Zechariah 3:1–5 4:7 12:10

179n65 185n111 180

2 Maccabees 27, 84, 85, 222, 325n23 7 217n15 9:5–28 173n20 12:8 173n20 13:10–17 173n20 15 173n20

Malachi 1:2–3 1:10 1:10–11

259 178 153

1 Esdras 86, 121, 184, 325n23 2 Esdras 86 9:26

178

Deuterocanonical Works

Old Testament Pseudepigrapha

Tobit 85, 325n23

Enoch 86–87, 103

Judith 84, 85, 325n23

Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah 86

Additions to Esther 325n23

Odes of Solomon 19

Wisdom of Solomon 85, 325n23 2:12–17 180 2:12–21 165 3:11 134–135, 134n117 4:3 199 6:12–20 217 6:13–21 221 9:15 219n28 13:1–9 176n34 Sirach 85, 325n23 19:1 24:5 27:4–6 34:30

218, 222 178 217n15 22, 24

Baruch 85 3:36–38

179

Additions to Daniel 325n23 Bel and the Dragon 85 Prayer of Azariah 85 Susanna 85

183

New Testament Matthew 27, 32, 90, 137, 296, 354 2 191 3 218 3:2 362 3:10 268, 277 3:17 183n100 4:17 362 5:3–11 24 5:14–16 74n111 5:16 137n129 5:22 134n114 5:38–40 269 5:43–48 70n89 5:44 24, 93, 94 5:45 94n79, 269 5:47 24 6:16–18 109 6:19 174n23 6:24 222

Bible and Related Literature Index to Volume One

7:6 7:7 7:7–8 7:14 7:17–18 7:17–19 8:4 9:13 9:38 10:16 10:17–18 10:19 10:33 10:36 11 11:5 11:25 11:28 11:28–30 12:20 12:39–40 12:47 13:3–8 13:24–30 13:39 15:13 16:18 16:26 17:2 17:5 18:19 18:22 19:11–12 19:12 19:16–22 21:33–46 22:1–14 22:14 22:37 22:37–40 22:44 23:12 24:13 24:22 24:29 24:35

112 93, 95, 219n31, 345, 355–356 221 117, 136n126 268 269 125n53 69n85 363 338 269 159 153, 160 132 357 186 357 357 337 150 233 24 154 268 363 268 125n56, 200, 208, 208n110 161 74n112 66 137n132 269 69 174n27 69 157 157, 208 261 220 216, 218, 328n40, 329, 334, 335 179n53 175 138n138 186n113 185n112 96n92

24:42 25:1–30 25:13 25:36 25:41 26:24 26:27–29 26:31 26:34 26:38 26:41 26:45 27 27:29 27:48 28:19

217, 222 219 217 138, 138n140 277 217 139n156 196n37 23 217 217 196n37 165 181n87 181n86 151, 197

Mark 27, 32 1:15 8:38 10:28–30 12:36 13:24 14:58 15:17 15:36 16:8 16:17–18

183n100 128n79 157 179n53 74n112 180n72 181n87 181n86 30 63n51

Luke 27, 90, 354 1:2 1:43 3:22 4:31 5:24 6:1–5 6:20 6:28 6:29 7:39–47a 9:26 9:62 10:19 11:9 12:33 12:49 12:50 14:8–10 14:33

333n66 183n101 183n100 98 269 270 270 94 269 161 128n79 198 63n49 93, 95 174n23 186n114, 277 130n97 23 270

601

602

Bible and Related Literature Index to Volume One

15:11–32 16:13 16:16 16:19–25 19:9 20:34–36 20:50–52 22:34–36 23:36 23:43 24:32 24:36 John 22n28, 27, 137, 354 1:1 1:1–2 1:1–12 1:1–18 1:5 1:9 1:14 1:18 1:29 1:46 2:17 2:18–20 2:19 2:19–21 3:5 3:19–21 4:4 4:9 4:38 5:14 5:37–38 6:6–7 6:51 6:68–69 7:38 7:53–8:11 8:12 8:39 8:39b 9:5 10:1–8 10:2 10:9

106 222 269 124n51 136n127 60 108 69 181n86 130n97 277 63n53, 64n58

88, 175n29, 178, 183n97 337 356 74n111 268 218 218n23, 329, 330, 332, 333, 334, 335, 356 269 329, 330, 335 337 276 164 180n72 150 130 74n111 196n37 24 363 138 269 125n55 338 125n56 276, 338 32 74n111, 152 149 158 230 63n51 170n11 170n11

10:30 12:25 12:35 13:10 13:35 13:38 14:1 14:6 14:27 15 15:5 15:12 15:22 16:2–4 16:20–24 16:24 17:25 18:22 19:2 19:5 19:29 19:36 20:11–18 20:19 20:23 20:26 Acts 33, 137, 155 1:8 2:17 2:17–18 2:38 2:38–39 4:32 4:33 5:39 7:22 8:14–17 8:26–35 9:3–8 10:23–43 10:48 17:28 18:9–10 23:4–5 26:12–18 26:13

300 159 161, 222 197n40, 198 209 23 219n31 170n11, 333n63, 334, 335 131n102, 197 194 139n154 137n132 269 132n109 67n73 66 269 125n53 181n87 181n87 181n86 181n88 192 64n58 208 64n58

59n29 58 58 63n49 130 137n132 59n32 94n79 337 129 330 330 330 63n49 322 63n53 125n54 74n111 74n112

Bible and Related Literature Index to Volume One

Romans 98, 296, 354 1 1:7 1:8 1:18–32 1:25 2:27–29 2:29 3:20 4–8 4:1–2 4:15 5 5–7 5:2–5 5:3–4 5:3–5 5:5 5:6 5:17–20 5:20 6–7 6:6 6:14 7 7–8 7:2–3 7:6 7:7–25a 7:8 7:9 7:12 7:15 7:18 7:22 7:23–25 7:24–25 8 8:7 8:8 8:10 8:10–11 8:14–17 8:16–17 8:17 8:18 8:18–24

357 64n58, 253n83 125, 125n60 176n34 217, 222 269 180n71 248, 269 249 269 248 357 249 72 217, 222 339 255, 258n114 357 58n27 248 268 126n69, 217, 218 248 243, 244, 257–258, 262–263, 268, 283–285 268 251 269 257 281 281 258 281–282 97 257 279 249 357 279 97 65n63 248 126n68 61 62n45, 159 61n43, 73n105, 150–151, 162 251

8:19–20 8:23 8:26 8:28 8:28–39 8:32 8:33 9 9:10–29 9:11 9:12 9:13 9:16 9:20 9:30 10:4 10:14 11:5 11:33 12:1 12:1–21 12:2 12:4 12:6–16 12:21 13:1 13:6–8 13:9–10 13:10 13:11–12 13:11–14 13:12–14 13:13–14 14 14:1 14:4 16:16 1 Corinthians 98, 240, 354 1:3 1:10 1:24 1:25 2:1 2:1–9 2:9 3:2 3:7

603

96 250 59 154, 218 216, 340 357 337 251, 252, 257, 259–262, 284–285 257, 259 259 259 259 260–261, 284 252 337 226n62 355 263 286 340 5 151, 217, 221 335 340 70n89 94n79, 251 340 328n40, 334n69 218, 255, 258n114 363 74n111 340 245 218 246 153 64n58

64n58 199 223 170n11, 328 6n20 6 6, 183n96 276 328

604

Bible and Related Literature Index to Volume One

3:16 3:19 4:7 4:16 5:3–5 5:6 5:9–13 5:11 6:1–9 6:10 6:10b 6:11 6:12–7:1 6:15 6:20 7 7:7 7:9 7:9b 7:12–14 7:25 7:31 7:39 8 8:4–13 8:13 9:9 9:24 10:1–11 10:4 10:11 10:19–25 10:28–11:1 11 11:1 11:2–16 11:3 11:4 11:6 11:7–10 11:23–26 12 12:13 12:26 13:3 13:12 15 15:22

97, 138n144 175, 175n30 330, 330n49 159 277 217 113 113 340 131n102 134n114 62n45, 63n49 218 97 97 111 159, 161, 174n27 112 131n104 112, 113 114 331 17, 112 218 218 131n104 92 159 233 92 235 218 218 114, 115 159 113, 114 115 115 114 115 139n156 59, 63n53 62 138n143 129n85 338 252, 268 286

15:28 15:31 15:33 15:46–50 15:47–49 15:57 16:20 2 Corinthians 98, 240, 354 1:2 2:14 2:14–15 2:14a 3 3–4 3:6 3:6–11 3:7–11 3:14 3:18 4 4:3–18 4:4 4:4–7 4:6 4:7 4:16 4:16–17 4:18 5:1 5:7 5:17 6:1–9 6:2–11 6:14 9 9:7 9:15 11:2 11:3 11:16–30 11:29 12:2–5 12:9 13:5 13:12

252 337 139n148 269 69n83, 217, 221 6 64n58

64n58 68 66 6 74n114 70, 71 235, 244, 329, 337–338 269 71 225 65n63, 70n93, 72 72 74n111 268 72 74 59n29 217, 268 72 217, 221 180n72 328n40 363 340 340 130n91 66 73n106 66 276–277 338 340 138 61 59n29, 65n63, 72–73 65n63 64n58

Bible and Related Literature Index to Volume One

Galatians 98, 240 1:6–9 1:10 2 2:13 2:18 2:19 2:19b–20a 3:6 3:6–9 3:13 3:15–18 3:15–29 3:17 3:19–22 3:24 3:27 3:28–29 4:1–2 4:1–7 4:5 4:9 4:10–20 4:19 4:21–26 4:22–24 4:22–26 4:23 4:24 5 5:4 5:6 5:9 5:14 5:14b–15 5:17 5:21 6:2 6:14 6:17 Ephesians 22n28, 98, 240 1:23 2:1–3 2:1–6 2:5 2:7

132 127 254 254 269 255 65n63 152 136, 136n127 269, 270 340 107 177 340 225 138n145 61 151 176 62n45 269 340 65n63, 255 340 92 233 233 338 254, 255 225 255 217 255 131n102 97, 243, 255–256, 268, 279 337 252 159 97

335 279 268 279 58n27

2:15 3–4 3:9 3:17–18 4:5 4:22–24 4:26 5:8 5:8–14 5:22 5:25–26 5:25–33 5:25b–26 5:26–27 5:27 5:29 5:31–32 6:12–17 6:16 Philippians 27, 98, 240 1:8 1:21 1:22–24 1:27 2:6–11 2:7 2:13 2:15 3:8 3:21 4:4–13 4:18–20

269 268 90 221 140n165 126n69, 217, 218 175n28 362 74n111 335 126n67 275 127n71, 132n119 208n112 328n40, 335 328n40 92, 126, 132n119 126 338

129 162 337 63n53 356 253 284 137n129 269 64–65, 71, 74n113, 124n48 361 66n68

Colossians 27, 98 1:12–27 1:27b 2:6–15 2:11 2:20 3:9–10 3:9–11 4:2

74n111 65n63 67n74 180n72 159, 161, 162 268 217, 218 135

1 Thessalonians 98 2:7 3:7

276 337

605

606

Bible and Related Literature Index to Volume One

5:4–5 5:8 5:26

74n111 338 64n58

2 Thessalonians 27, 98, 185 2:3 185n106 3:10 242 1 Timothy 121n18, 151 1:5 1:14 1:17 2:2 2:5 2:50 3:22 4:12 5:1–2 5:22 6:10 6:15 6:16

334n69 58n27 269 94, 198, 206 181 332n62 6 137, 137n135 340 88 217 179n54 5n15

2 Timothy 121n18, 151 1:8 2:2 2:17 3:1–5 3:5 4:6–8 4:8

63n53 197n40 130n91, 139n147 132n109 315 6 75n117

9:15–19 9:16–17 9:17 10:14 10:22 11 12:1–2

202n79 177, 177n39 253 76n120 94 335n75 76n120

James 26, 27, 84–85, 120–121 4:6 335n79 4:11 196n38 1 Peter 33 2:11–12 2:13 3:20–21 5:4 5:8 2 Peter 26, 27, 33, 85 1 John 33 1:5–7 2:15–16 3:2 3:9 4:3 4:7 5:7–8

137n129 94n79 126n67 335n79 338

74n111 218 362 68n80 130n91 68n80 332n57

2 John 26, 84 3 John 26, 27, 84

Titus 121n18, 151, 240 1:9 1:15a 3:1 3:5b 3:10–11

328 128n81 94n79 126n69 139

Philemon 26, 121, 240 2:17

5n14

Hebrews 26, 27, 86, 121, 296 1:3 74, 74n111, 74n112, 74n114 2:9–10 76n120 2:10 181 5:9 76n120 7:3 177

Jude 26, 27, 85, 87 Revelation 33, 155, 185 1:12 1:20 4:10 4:14 5 5:5 6:6 6:7 6:12 6:13 7:14 7:17

302 298 298n46 69 308 338 185n109 315 185n109 96n92 302, 302n70 89

Bible and Related Literature Index to Volume One

8:7–11 9:13 9:15–18 10:9–10 11:3 11:3–9 12:6 12:9 13:4–8 13:18 14:5 14:19 17:3–4 17:4 17:15 18:4 19:11–21 20:5 20:11 21:1 22:18

185n109 298 185n106 63n51 313 185n106 313 63n49 185n106 298 303 298n49 297n44 109, 297n44 133n111, 297, 338 151, 159, 207n105 186n114 185 96n92 96n92 297n45

607

New Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha Acts of Andrew 15

171n13

Acts of Paul and Thecla 86, 103 Gospel of the Ebionites 183

Nag Hammadi Scriptures Gospel of Philip 57

182n95

Gospel of Thomas 19

182n95