This is the introductory message to a 6-week or so "interscripta" session, in the series initiated by Deborah Everhart and Martin Irvine at Georgetown to support focused internet discussions on particular topics of interest to medievalists. I'm sending this message to all those on the interscripta list *and* to the veterans on my spring term Augustine seminar (I still owe them a summary of results and some reflections: that's coming soon). If those of you on the Augustine list are not on interscripta and wish to be, send mail to listserv@morgan . . . (GET THE FULL ADDRESS FROM THE HEADER OF THIS MESSAGE) and just say SUB INTERSCRIPTA Your Name. Similarly, for any of you to post a message to this discussion, send mail to interscripta@morgan . . . and it will go to all subscribers.
For those of you not familiar with the Augustine seminar, some of what I say may be telegraphic in brevity or surprising in form. To see the archives of the seminar, the syllabi, etc., take a world-wide web tour to http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/augustine.html or else a gopher tour to ccat.sas.upenn.edu, under "Course Materials" then "Classical Studies" then "Latin 566".
Good, so what about Augustine's influence? I agreed to do this seminar mainly because I wanted to hear what other people knew and thought, to bring out of the woodwork things we don't all know, or things we all know but don't realize we know. Let me briefly state my global interest.
Augustine had a powerful influence on the western middle ages. We all know that. Says so in all the books. What is our evidence for this belief? Well, it says so in all the books. Now this is a case of something that is universally known, true, and woefully under-documented. Scholarship has been so content to accept the obvious that it has failed to address questions of nature, extent, and mechanism. How did Aug. get his reputation? How did he work his influence? Once you ask those questions, all sorts of things pop up.
Some examples:
--Augustine wasn't anti-semitic enough to suit medieval
prejudices; so ps.-Aug. works were cooked up to make him more acceptable;
*those* works won their credit because they had Aug.'s name on them. It
was *his* influence -- and it wasn't.
--Similarly, the first printed work of "Augustine" was in fact
ps.-Aug. "de vita Christiana".
--In late medieval schooling, "Augustine" was best known from the
excerpts from his teaching made by Prosper of Aquitaine to begin the
process of making his views on predestination palatable in monastic
circles in Gaul -- *this* was undoubtedly at that period the most
ubiquitous form of Augustine's influence (see Paul Grendler, Schooling in
Renaissance Italy, for handy access to details)
--at the other end of the middle ages, we have the fifth and
sixth century. After a generation of important work in which we've
learned that the Pelagians weren't always quite what Aug. made them out
to be, now Tom Smith of Loyola (New Orleans) has written an important
book on Faustus of Riez, who is in all the books as a "semi-Pelagian",
but in which Smith shows that in fact F. was much closer to Augustine and
that the debate in Gaul was far more collaborative and constructive than
early moderns, expecting controversy and opposition, might have
expected. I had said something like that, only much less clearly and
well, in an article on "Salvian and Augustine" in Augustinian Studies ten
years ago.
--in the sixth century, Cassiodorus found Pelagius' commentary on
Paul and thought it valuable but flawed by his heresy, and so sat down to
"purge the poison" of it. We know he got through Romans on his own, then
left the rest to be cleaned up by his disciples at Vivarium. Now David
Johnson, in a doctoral thesis at Princeton Theological Seminary, has done
a careful study of the results. It turns out that, after all, knowing
what Augustine thought about Paul is a tricky question; looking at
Pelagius' commentary and figuring out which parts are penally different
from Augustine is hard, but they made a go at it, mainly striking out the
most obviously "Pelagian" slogans and inserting the odd quotation from
Augustine here and there; but the underlying "anthropology" and all the
assumptions of the commentary are thoroughly Pelagian, but Cassiodorus
and even more his disciples missed all that and left it in. The result
is that Pelagius' own commentary on Paul was given the Good Housekeeping
Seal of Approval (the inserted quotations from Augustine alone were
enough to do that) and sent off in the middle ages to be a purportedly
anti-Pelagian Paul when in fact they were just the opposite.
My point is this: once asked in a rigorous scholarly way, the "influence" of "Augustine" turns into a veritable labyrinth of historical and cultural questions. Under the sign of the Georgetown Labyrinth, I'd like to see us explore some of those byways for the next month or so, and I propose to proceed in a very simple way: by asking readers to talk back to the list. Simple question: tell us where you've run in to Augustine lately. Don't be shy, and don't assume that others will all know of one or another familiar chestnut. The value of this discussion will be if we all go rummage around in our memories and bring out *all* the Augustine we've run into lately (let's put a lower chronological limit on it of the Council of Trent), and then all listen hard for a pattern (or patterns, if any) to emerge. A net seminar like this can be a fruitful kind of collaborative bricolage. I've given you a few rummaged bits of my own here. Where have you seen Augustine lately? What's he been up to? Were friends or foes doing anything odd with him?
Jim O'Donnell
Classics, U. of Penn
jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
Date: Fri, 10 Jun 1994 10:43:16 NDT
From: "James O'Donnell"
Subject: administrivia correction
The correct address to subscribe, unsubscribe, or postpone for the interscripta seminar is:
listserver@morgan.ucs.mun.ca
N.B. "listserver" -- there is some controversy about which programs may licitly use the shorter, familiar form "listserv", and in this case the sysops have chosen to be discreet and use the longer.
Those on the Augustine list will now receive no further messages from this thread unless they sign up for interscripta.
jo'd
Date: Fri, 10 Jun 1994 14:51:24 NDT
From: "Bill Stevenson"
Subject: Aquinas and Augustine
Responding to jod's "fishing" trip, I've always found it interesting the way Aquinas tends to misinterpret, even misquote, Augustine. Perhaps the most outrageous example I've run across is from ST II-II, Q. 42, A. 2, "Of Sedition." Here Aquinas quotes Aug's quote of CICERO'S definition of "populus" in DCD II, 21, as though Aug. were citing Cicero to support *his own* position, when in fact Aug. states explicitly at the end of that chapter that he finds Cicero's definition deeply flawed at best (and perverse at worst), and that he intends to examine it more thoroughly later. When he does examine it more thoroughly later (Book XIX, 21 and 24) he not only explicitly, even exhaustively, refutes it, he ends by offering an alternative definition, one based on common *will* rather than *consensus juris*.
Yet Aquinas uses his "Augustinian" (actually *Ciceronian*) definition of "populus" to go on to argue that sedition is a *mortal* sin, since it "is opposed to the unity of law and the common good." Thus armed, he can then, as he does in a number of places, go on to use Augustine as an authority for a subject's (church-sanctioned) disobedience to the rule of a "tyrant" (since a "tyrant" is one whose rule "is directed, NOT to the common good but to the private good of the ruler") [ST II-II, Q. 42, A. 2, reply obj. 3]; when Augustine, who sees obedience as clearly the highest virtue, sees no significant distinction even between "kingdoms" ("regna") and "bands of robbers" ("latrocinia") [DCD IV, 4], at least in terms of a subject's obligation to obey. [See DCD XIX, 15.]
The "obedience" question is, of course, a complicated one, but I still find it puzzling that Aquinas could be so sloppy in his use of Augustine as an authority. Any ideas as to how that could happen? Or am I missing something? (I admit to only a very limited knowledge of the thinkers in the period between Augustine and the Reformation.) Did Aquinas actually READ much Augustine, or did he rely more on earlier interpreters of Aug.?
Bill Stevenson
William R. Stevenson, Jr. Phone/Voicemail: 616-957-6235
Department of Political Science Fax: 616-957-8551
Calvin College Internet: Stew@Legacy.Calvin.edu
Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546
Date: Fri, 10 Jun 1994 17:30:09 NDT
From: "James O'Donnell"
Subject: Re: Augustine/influence
Forwarded to the list with permission of the author:
According to JMHALLMAN@stthomas.edu:
Date: Fri, 10 Jun 1994 12:36:09 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Re: Augustine/influence
To: jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
What would really be fascinating to me is a study of the influence of Augustine on Thomas Aquinas. After having studied Thomas in the seminary many years ago, I discovered that reading Thomas himself was a joy (we studied textbook Thomism in the seminary); then I discovered the brilliance of Augustine later and came to think of him as a much greater genius (for all of his supposed lack of logical rigor) than Thomas. Yet time and time again when I read Augustine I see how Thomas re-did him, or so it seems. For instance one way out of the quandry of grace vs free will might be to see grace as a final, not an efficient or formal cause, which would translate into a doctrine of divine persuasion rather than coercion (a contrast loved by my fellow Whiteheadians, and by me of course!). It seems that Augustine suggests this type of causality, but I have not studied any of this in depth.
Date: Fri, 10 Jun 1994 22:11:09 NDT
From: Deborah Everhart
Subject: (from Mark Vessey) Augustine in England, c1553
> What could a non-Latinate Englishman or -woman read of Augustine before 1600?
>
> I have recently begun working through the Augustinian and
> pseudo-Augustinian works listed in the *Short-Title Catalogue of English
> Books, 1475-1640*. Predictably, most of the "Augustine" rendered into
> English and printed in the later fifteenth and earlier sixteenth centuries
> is spurious by post-Benedictine standards (and there's a great deal of it).
> But there are one or two items that we recognize from the *Retractationes*
> and/or the *Indiculum*: a version of the authentic *De praedestinatione
> sanctorum et de dono perseverantiae* of 1550, another of the same work
> c1556, and a *De fide et operibus* of 1569. Also, a volume of sermons
> attributed to the saint and translated by Thomas Paynell (who Englished
> several works of Erasmus), dated 1553, with a second, enlarged edition 1557
> (both printed in London). The sermons caught my eye. Were any of them by
> Augustine? First, here's part of the preface, in which the estimable
> Paynell explains what he's about:
>
>
> [sig. A2] To the moost vertuous mighty and moost gratious Queene Marye,
> daughter vnto the moost victorious and mooste noble prynce, kinge Henry the
> viii. kynge of Englande, Fraunce and Ireland Thomas Paynell wysheth most
> prosperous helth and felicitie.
>
> . . .
>
> [sig. A3v] There was neuer more sincere and true preachynge, than is nowe
> of late, nor the worde of God more spoken of, the[n] is in these our dayes.
> But so muche preachynge, & so lytle folowynge, so muche exhortation to
> charite, and so feable & weake loue, so much perswasion to succoure and
> ayde the poore, and so greate pouertie, so much good counsel geuen to ensue
> vertu, and so litle apprehended & used, was neuer sene. Why so? For euery
> man (as now th[e] worlde [sig. A4] is fashioned) be he neuer so rude and
> vnlearned, wyll be his owne doctour, his owne interpreter of scripture, and
> folowe his owne sense and opinion, his owne maner of liuyng and pleasure,
> clean co[n]trary to all wysedome, reaso[n], and good learnyng. The old
> aunciente fathers, and true interpreters of Gods holye worde, the masters
> of vertuous and godly conuersation, are amonge many lytle or no thing
> regarded. What were they (say thei) but men as we be? Truth it is: but
> yet farre more excellente both in learnynge and vertuous operations tha[n]
> we be: blessed martyrs, holy confessors, the chosen seruauntes and vessels
> of God, the ensuers of his steps and statutes, the reprouers of vyce, men
> of most perfecte lyfe, & the sincere preachers and expounders of the word
> of God. For who is he liuing that (as for an ensample) in subtilite of
> wyt, in profounde learnyng, in cleare declaration of scripture, or in godly
> example, that may be compared unto S. Augustine? Whose workes are
> incomparable, & singuler in all kindes of good learninge: and to reduce
> ma[n] from vice to vertue, from the actiue, to the contemplatyue lyfe most
> excellente. Oute of whose sermons, to admonish and reuoke the people from
> theyr dissolute and vitious lyuinge, and to put them in remembraunce of
> theyr duetye, and unthankefulnes to-[sig. A5]wardes god: I haue selected
> and translated these twelue sermones, the whych in mine opinion and mynde,
> are most worthy, and most necessarye to be knowen and had in memorye, but
> to be folowed, much more necessary. Desirynge your hyghnes thankfully to
> accepte this my rude translation. Rude it is (I co[n]fess) and barbarous,
> because I woulde be playne vnto the playne and simple people, the whiche
> thynge (as I coniecture) is not far amis, nor yet greatlye to be blamed.
>
> [End of quotation.]
>
> There are twelve sermons in the 1550 edition, the Latin for most of which -
> it turns out - is to be looked for now in the appendix to PL 39. NONE OF
> THESE IS GENUINE IN ITS PRESENT FORM ACCORDING TO THE MAURISTS
> (and those
> who have come after them). Many of them have been claimed by a later
> Benedictine editor, Dom Germain Morin, for Caesarius, bishop of Arles at
> the beginning of the sixth century. In the list below a short form of the
> English title assigned to each sermon by Paynell is followed by a reference
> to the *Clavis Patristica Pseudepigraphorum Medii Aevi* of J. Machielsen,
> vol. 1A (Turnhout, 1990) and, where appropriate, the number of the sermon
> in Morin's edition of Caesarius (repr. in Corpus Christianorum 103-4).
>
>
> Sermon 1 Of a Christen name = CPPMA 1050 = Caes. 13
> Sermon 2 Of a Christen name = CPPMA 1051 = Caes. 16
> Sermon 3 Of fastynge in Lent = CPPMA 928
> Sermon 4 Of fastynge in Lent = CPPMA 927 = Caes. 199
> Sermon 5 Of confession and penaunce = CPPMA 1039
> Sermon 6 Of auricular confession = CPPMA 1157
> Sermon 7 Of penaunce = CPPMA 1043 = Caes. 65
> Sermon 8 Of almose dedes = CPPMA 1091 = Caes. 31
> Sermon 9 Of chastitie = CPPMA 1074 = Caes. 43
> Sermon 10 Of paymente of tithes = CPPMA 1062 = Caes. 33
> Sermon 11 Of sorcery & witchecrafte = CPPMA 1063 = Caes. 54
> Sermon 12 Of exchuynge ebrietie = CPPMA 1079 = Caes. 46
>
> The enlarged edition of 1557 contains five additional sermons, the last of
> which is explicitly attributed to St Bernard. The other four are further
> Augustinian pseudepigrapha:
>
> Sermon 1 [On] the feastes of saintes = CPPMA 1065
> Sermon 11 Of the fyer of purgatory = CPPMA 889 = Caes. 179
> Sermon 12 Of chastite and clene lyuynge = CPPMA 1076
> Sermon 13 Of peace and unitee = CPPMA 883
>
> It would be worth replacing the contents of these volumes in the double
> context (1) of contemporary editions of "Augustine's" sermons and (2) of
> English religious life in the reign of Queen Mary. Meanwhile, there's
> clear testimony here to the continuing influence of the sixth-century
> "edition" of Augustine procured by Caesarius and his assistants in Arles,
> as part of the larger pastoral enterprise now so lucidly described by
> William Klingshirn in his *Caesarius of Arles: The Making of a Christian
> Community in Late Antique Gaul* (Cambridge UP, 1994). Would it be fair to
> call Caesarius the most important editor/producer of Augustine after
> Prosper of Aquitaine? It may be that his influence lasted longer. (I'm
> not sure at what stage or by what process the sermons compiled by Caesarius
> - or a large number of them - came to be attributed to Augustine. His
> "editorship", as such, was perhaps less witting than Prosper's.)
>
>
> (For anyone interested in the early print-history of the English
> "Confessions": I've tried to map this out in an article in the latest
> number of *Augustinian Studies*, under cover of reviewing the new
> translation by Sir Henry Chadwick. Needless to say, there's a lot more to
> be done there too.)
>
> MARK VESSEY
> DEPT. OF ENGLISH
> UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
> 397-1873 EAST MALL
> VANCOUVER, BC
> CANADA V6T 1Z1
Date: Sat, 11 Jun 1994 20:25:09 NDT
From: SteveRiker@aol.com
Subject: Re: Augustine/Influence
I found intriguing Jim O'Donnell's mention of Faustus of Riez, the so-called "semi-Pelagian". G.R. Evans in "Augustine on Evil" says the "reaction against A. in Provence worked itself out during the course of the century after his death" (p. 172).
What I want to know is, how did we go from Faustus' machinations in the condemnations of A. at Arles in 473 and Lyons in 475 to the condemnation of semi-Pelagianism in 529 at Orange? It is my suspicion that what was being moved toward was a "semi-Augustinian position" on free will and grace that was more palatable than in some of the writings at the end of his life.
"Semi-Pelagianism", on the other hand, had to be condemned, and what this condemnation entails seems to be the rejection of the idea that a person could make the first step toward God. Yet, barring that, one can easily move over the razor's edge of supposed heresy to the idea that grace is prevenient (that is, God makes the first move) and that human free will cooperates with grace, a more moderate view that continued to gain acceptance. To be sure, this isn't the view held at the end of his life, and that is why one might call it, tongue-in-cheek, as "semi-Augustinian". Does this reading of the situation in the late 5th and early 6th century in Provence concur with anyone else's reading of the situation?
Date: Sat, 11 Jun 1994 11:10:54 NDT
From: FITZGERAL@UCIS.VILL.EDU
Subject: Re: Augustine/influence
An interesting article by Joseph Wawrykow (Augustinian Studies 22(1991)
125-140 shows how Thomas Aquinas' understanding of conversion and
perseverance developed through the reading of certain writings of the
later Augustine.
"In reading the later A., Thomas would have perceived the continuity
between his own operative auxilium, responsible for good intention, and
the prevenient, inwardly working grace of God on which A. insists in
both conversion and perseverance. The reading of A. thus gave to
Thomas's mature theology of grace its definitive form." (p. 134)
The whole article is worth reading.
Allan Fitzgerald
Date: Sat, 11 Jun 1994 11:39:05 NDT
From: W Schipper
Subject: Re: Augustine/influence
Jim:
I haven't yet run into Augustine in Rabanus, though I most likely will if I put my mind to it. However, I first really ran into him in connection with Aelfric's Sermon "On Augury" (LS 17). One of the sources for this piece is Caesarius of Arles, a sermon (I believe it is no. 54 in Morin's edition -- my notes are in the office, as usual). The source according to Aelfric is "Augustinus se snottera bisceop" -- Augustine the wise/learned bishop. And it is attributed to A in many of the MSS. As far as I could determine this was a ploy on the part of Caesarius to give his sermons more authority -- using A's name to lend authority. Almost a kind of reverse plagiarism, as if A was a honey covered tree to whom all subsequent things stuck easily.
Hope this is of some use.
Bill
W. Schipper Email: schipper@morgan.ucs.mun.ca Department of English, Tel: 709-737-4406 Memorial University Fax: 709-737-4000 St John's, Nfld. A1C 5S7
Date: Sat, 11 Jun 1994 12:10:43 NDT
From: Deborah Everhart
Subject: (from Graham White) Re: Aquinas and Augustine
> >The "obedience" question is, of course, a complicated one, but I
> >still find it puzzling that Aquinas could be so sloppy in his use of
> >Augustine as an authority. Any ideas as to how that could happen?
> >Or am I missing something?
> >
> >William R. Stevenson, Jr. Phone/Voicemail: 616-957-6235
> >Department of Political Science Fax: 616-957-8551
> >Calvin College Internet: Stew@Legacy.Calvin.edu
> >Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546
> Well, a few random thoughts. I don't know about this case in particular,
> but what one would say in general is this:
> Firstly, florilegia were very widely used in the Middle Ages. Especially
> for figures like Augustine. So it's quite likely that Aquinas would have
> got it from a florilegium of some sort. The question is, which one? You
> would imagine that someone would have done some work on this (especially
> with two such major figures), but maybe not. The people who know about
> such things are usually the people who are involved in the critical
> editions of Aquinas, or whoever. If all else fails, then I suppose you
> could get a list of the editors of the Leonine, and do a literature search
> for their publications...
>
> Secondly, punctuation plays a role. The medievals had a device for
> indicating the beginning of a quote (namely, the word "li" or "ly") but
> not for indicating the end of it. So if the passage in question comes at
> the end of a longish citation, you could imagine a medieval author being
> genuinely in doubt as to what it belonged with.
>
> That being said, the picture wasn't always as bad as you might imagine.
> Accuracy of citation does vary a lot in the Middle Ages. Some authors
> could be really good (Henry of Ghent, for example, and many fourteenth
> century figures were usually incredibly accurate).
>
> And there's another factor, which is this. From about the middle of the
> thirteenth century on, medieval academics were part of a rapidly changing
> academic debate. The people they debated with, and were mostly concerned
> to cite accurately, were their contemporaries. The timescale is usually
> very short; for example, Duns Scotus -- who lived about a generation after
> Aquinas -- is not very much concerned with Aquinas; he cites him
> relatively infrequently, and almost always from florilegia. His immediate
> opponents are people like Henry of Ghent, who was contemporary with him.
> Now Augustine was much more of an authority for the medievals than
> Aquinas, but even so one could imagine an attitude whereby they just took
> their Augustine from florilegia, and didn't worry about it much.
>
> Anyway, hope this helps
> Graham White
>
Date: Sat, 11 Jun 1994 12:46:00 NDT
From: Deborah Everhart
Subject: New discussion on Augustine
This is the announcement of a new discussion on Interscripta, Augustine and his Influence in the Middle Ages, moderated by James O'Donnell. You are currently set to POSTPONE, so if you wish to participate in this discussion, simply send the command "set interscripta mail ack" to listserv@morgan.ucs.mun.ca. If you do not wish to receive notices of future discussions on Interscripta, please send the command "unsub interscripta" to listserv@morgan.ucs.mun.ca. If you do nothing, you will not receive any mail from the list until the announcement of the next discussion.
All questions and problems should be directed to the listowner, Deborah Everhart (everhart@gusun.georgetown.edu).
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 1994 16:40:49 NDT
From: "Bill Stevenson"
Subject: Aug. & Aquinas
Thanks to Graham White and Allan Fitzgerald for their good responses to my queries.
Bill Stevenson
William R. Stevenson, Jr. Phone/Voicemail: 616-957-6235 Department of Political Science Fax: 616-957-8551 Calvin College Internet: Stew@Legacy.Calvin.edu Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 1994 19:52:54 NDT
From: Sheila Delany
Subject: augustine
The arena where I've encountered Augustine recently is in the legendary of Osbern Bokenham, the 15th-c Austin friar and poet on whose work I've just completed a study. It's called -Patronage, Politics and Augustinian Poetics in Fifteenth Century England. The Work of Osbern Bokenham- so you can see that the theological background looms large. Since one of the things OB uses his legendary for is a manifesto for, and exemplification of, Christian poetry (counterposed against the courtly-classicizing tendency of his period, the mid 15th c), a major text (as might be expected) is De Doctrina Christiana. There are quite a few actual verbal echoes, as well as occasional structural-sequential parallels and of course ideological positioning.
Bokenham wd also know--every Augustinian was required to know and defend--the works of Giles of Rome, the order's foremost intellectual at the time, and I believe I can demonstrate OB's use of certain of Giles's work (though of course this is not the same thing as knowing and using Augustine).
Various of Augustine's specific theological positions become relevant at various points in OB's hagiography: attitudes toward the body, for instance, or resurrection theory, and these can be located in various texts, whether sermons, City of God, or particular treatises.
Chaucer too had a frequently Augustinian agenda in The Legend of Good Women, or so I have argued in -The Naked Text. C's LGW-, recently out from California. He reveals some knowledge of -City-, probably not much more. It's interesting to reflect that GC grew up, or at least spent some early years, in the household of Lionel of Clarence, who was very close to Augustinian friars. Lionel's confessor was an Austin from the Clare priory (where OB wd later live), who accompanied him on the ill-fated Italian marriage-trip (GC may have been on this trip as well), and Lionel was buried at Clare --at least his bones and heart were, though other parts of him were buried at Pavia.
Sheila Delany sdelany@sfu.ca
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 1994 23:57:58 NDT
From: "Alice V. Clark"
Subject: Re: Augustine/influence
Where have I seen Augustine lately? In a very strange-seeming place..... I recently discovered a tenor source in a responsory for St. Augustine. (I should say that I work on the motet in fourteenth-century France, when most motets were built on a tenor which was a fragment of Gregorian chant; one thing that interests me is the symbolic value attached to the liturgical context of these chant-based tenors.) The motet, however, is not devotional, nor do the texts of the upper voices connect with Augustine in any obvious way. The motet appears in two forms: the presumably original one in the Brussels rotulus (Bibliotheque Royale, 19606) has one Latin text and one French: An diex! ou pora ge trover / Trahunt in precipicia / T. [Displicebat ei]. The other source is the Roman de Fauvel (Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, fonds francais 146), where it is radically altered: the French text is dropped (though used elsewhere in the manuscript), and another voice is added. All three Latin upper-voice texts, including Trahunt in precipicia, the original motetus, are verses from the thirteenth-century conductus repertory. The motet in this form is Quasi non ministerium / Trahunt in precipicia / Ve, qui gregi deficiunt / T. Displicebat ei. Here it functions in a context of clerical criticism, and the upper-voice texts support this, demonstrating just how bad the world has become since Fauvel came to town. But to add Augustine to all this is a can of worms I've avoided opening so far. What does it mean to evoke Augustine in the fourteenth century? I think I can see a case for the criticisms of the clergy, but the tenor was present even in the earlier stage of the motet, when one voice indeed complains that those who should lead us are leading us astray--but the other voice complains about love!
I know this is a far cry from considerations of Augustine and Aquinas, but it should muddy the waters a bit....
Alice V. Clark
Princeton University
avclark@phoenix.princeton.edu
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 1994 01:40:09 NDT
From: James Boitano
Subject: Re: Aquinas and Augustine
To: Bill Stevenson of Calvin College:
Could part of the problem with Augustine/Aquinas on this issue be the fact that both saw the purpose of political society in very different ways. Thus, even though Aquinas might have wished to read Augustine carefully, [even if he could do so, cf. the comments of others on this issue] he was "blinded" by the positive purpose he saw the state playing in the moral development of the lives of the citizens. Thus, Cicero would have more of an appeal to him than he would have had for Augustine, who saw the purpose of civil society as rather negative. No matter what role a person played in civil society for the latter, it was certainly a less noble enterprise than other roles one could play within the religious community. Thus, Cicero would serve as a person who was praising human roles within society which were inferior to the higher roles which Augustine would hope people would aspire to. I may be wrong on this, but it seems to me this might be one possible way of looking at it. Thanks for raising the issue, and I look forward to further response.
Best Wishes-- Jim Boitano, Dept. of Political Science Dominican College of San Rafael, CA.
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 1994 13:15:58 NDT
From: "Bill Stevenson"
Subject: Re: Aquinas and Augustine
To: James Boitano
Thanks for your reply. I've been suspecting for some time that what you say might be true. However, the question remains whether Thomas's "blindness" was as *innocent* as your message implies. In other words, I keep finding myself on the horns of a dilemma. If Aquinas had so internalized his own intellectual milieu that he could not really discern a set of assumptions distinct from his own, then maybe he was not the gifted scholar that we have traditionally understood him to be. On the other hand, if he *was* the gifted scholar that we have traditionally understood him to be, then surely he would have clearly discerned the development of his own intellectual milieu, not to mention the *novelty* of the Aristotelian "world-view" he was apparently attempting to legitimize, and we would have to attribute his misinterpretations of Augustine to iniquitous scholarly motives.
Graham White's recent message is a welcome one because he appears to offer a third alternative, namely that Thomas may simply not have had access to a reliable compendium of the full body of Augustine's work. Yet even in the face of this third possibility I'm not sure the question can be put *entirely* to rest. For even if Thomas did not have access to reliable editions of *Augustine,* wouldn't he still have known (even with some personal intensity!) of the jarring effect Aristotle's rediscovered writings were having on the intellectual milieu of his time? In other words, would it not have been obvious to him that Aristotle's assumptions (including Aristotle's assumptions about the content of political life) were deeply disturbing to the Church's inherited (and more "Augustinian"?) traditions?
I guess I keep coming back to the rather vicious choice between a Thomas who was naively, even wholly, out of touch with the intellectual battles of his own time, on the one hand, or a Thomas who intentionally determined to manipulate scholarly argument to further some partisan intellectual goal, on the other. Needless to say, I am unhappy with either of these alternatives.
Bill Stevenson
> From: James Boitano
> To: Bill Stevenson of Calvin College:
I've been interested in how Augustine's image of the "opaque and
secret pages" of scripture as a forest (*enn. Ps.* 28:9; *Conf.*
10.2.3) show up in later writers. Just after mentioning Augustine,
the 9th c. figure Jonas, Bishop of Orleans remarks upon the forest of
the scriptures (PL 106:124, cited in du Lubac *Exegese Medievale*
I.1, p. 59). In the 13th c., Bonaventure mentions Aug's 3 rules of
exegesis from *De Doctrina*, and then notes: "If a man is to make his
way securely in the forest of Scripture, cutting through it and
opening it out, it is necessary that he first have acquired a
knowledge of scriptural truth...", and then: "Beginners in the study
of theology often dread the Scripture itself, feeling it to be as
confusing, orderless, and uncharted as some impenetrable forest"
(*Brev.* Prol. 6.4-6.5). Dante's *Monarchia* does not refer to the
silvan metaphor, but it does cite *DDC* on the misinterpretation of
the Bible as losing the straight way; the person who does so must be
corrected as one who fears a lion in the clouds (*Mon.* 3.4.8-10;
*DDC* 1.36.41-1.37.41), perhaps recalling the pilgrim in the dark
wood of *Inf.* 1. Edmund Gardner cites Aug's passage as a subtext of
*Par.* 4.124-29 (*Dante and the Mystics* [London: Dent, 1913], p.
64).
Lawrence Warner, University of Pennsylvania
> Perhaps the first and most spectacularly complete dominance
Apologies for the wrong *Confessions* reference in my last post on
his metaphor of scripture as a forest. It's in *Conf.* 11.2.3, not
10.2.3 (though there is an interesting forest in book 10: curiosity
is "an immense forest full of traps and dangers" 10.35.56).
Lawrence Warner, University of Pennsylvania
I am not a medievalist, and am a student of Augustine primarily as
an extension of my work in ethics, so I might be making some faulty
assumptions. But:
I wonder what we would learn if someone took on the following
research project:
1. Assume that Lombard's *Sentences* provides a base-line indicating
what texts from and in the name of Augustine were most influential by
Aquinas's time. Identify which are authentic and which are pseudo-.
2. Make (or hopefully, find) an exhaustive list of which texts from
or in the name of Augustine Aquinas cited in his major works (ST and SCG
for starters, I suppose). Corollate the citations in the *Sentences*
with the citations in Aquinas.
3. This might give some indication of (a) how much Aquinas was reading
beyond or deeper than the vague and snippet-based "Augustinianism" of
his day and (b) how good of an intuitive sense he had of what was
authentically Augustinian.
What think ye?
Just to respond to the Boitano/Stevenson exchange: Although I am
familiar witht the political philosophy of Thomas, I do believe the
observation is correct that Thomas is not as brilliant as some thought
or still think. I say this with their many theological positions in mind.
Of course it all depends what brilliance means. I think that Thomas
looked at various positions developed by Muslim and Jewish thinkers via
Aristotle and had the nagging (and correct) hunch that these thinkers
were getting ahead of the Christian Church, the same hunch incidentally
that post-Enlightenment Christian thinkers like Schleiermacher had that
the Enlightenment was not going to go away. Augustine lacks logical
precision and rigor. His position on free will and predestination, for
example, is probably contradictory at least in some respects. It seems
that every time one resolves the contradiction, some other problem
appears. I have never seen anyone get around the predestination of some
to hell for example. Thomas moderates this apparent contradiction with
the argument that since God knows some will abuse free will, he knows
they will be damned, hence predestines them to hell. Not so bad!
Thomas takes Augustine's constant insistence that God is absolutely
immutable and undergirds it with Aristotles understanding of actus
purus. Thomas' understanding of God is very Augustinian - he just
discovered a better way to argue it, via Aristotle's logic. The
first twenty some questions of the Summa are meant to be acceptable
to Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike - until Thomas gets to the
Trinity which he clearly states is unknowable by reason.
Bill Stevenson writes:
Since Aquinas spent some of his later life in Paris battling an emergent
series of errant derivations of Aristotle (he was ostensibly trying to
correct them with a more "accurate" version of Aristotle - although,
contrary to much popular belief, William of Morebuck's retranslation of
Aristotle from the Greek was only partially completed prior to Aquinas'
death), the "out of touch" version doesn't seem likely (at least in a
simple fashion). Does that mean that he can then only be seen as partisan
in the meanest sense? That the latin texts of Aristotle that he used were
largely poor translations (vastly inferior to the Arabic translations of
Greek philosophers), and the latin translations of the Arabic commentators
were horrendous, and nonetheless Aquinas could discern well much of
Aristotle (though he does introduce his own brand of deviate theories),
shows that he was not entirely blind and was capable of insight.
Your opposition may be too simplistic. Part of what the current discussion
might help clarify is whether the textbook version of Church history - viz.
it was dominated throughout the early Middle Ages by Augustine (and
Platonism) only to be supplanted by Aquinas (and Aristoteleanism) - is
accurate or another oversimplification. Part of the question is: how
dominant was Augustine by Aquinas' time? If Augustine was by then mostly a
figure invoked but rarely read, and his ideas had already been hopelessly
conflated with others' (and opposing ideas), then, unless Aquinas was a
concerted student of Augustine, there may be little reason for us to expect
him to get Augustine right.
Personally, I am no great fan of Aquinas; but I think we can develop a more
realistic picture of him that avoids the extremes of painting him as either
an angel or a devil.
Dan Lusthaus
In response to my earlier query, Dan Lusthaus writes:
These are indeed key questions. Anyone out there have some plausible
answers?
> Personally, I am no great fan of Aquinas; but I think we can develop a more
I agree on all counts, which is why I raised the issue to begin with!
Thanks for your response.
Bill Stevenson
The following are some of my perceptions of Augustinian (or pseudo-Aug.?)
reception as it affects late-medieval music; I am no specialist in these
matters and would welcome corrections on matters of fact and/or
interpretation. (I thought a new thread might be helpful.)
A key role in some aspects of medieval musical aesthetics (if that term is
admissible) seems to be played by the concepts underlying the late-Latin
word "jubilare", with noun cognates "jubilum" and "jubilus". These are
traceable of course through TLL and (for the German loan-word "jubilieren")
the Grimms' _Woerterbuch_, and as far as I can see, the reception of
Augustine and the reception of these concepts hang together in interesting
ways. As early as Varro, jubilare means uncultivated singing; thus still
in Augustine _in psalm._ ("maxime iubilant, qui aliquid in agris
operantur"). But for Augustine _in psalm._ it is also the singing that
expresses the joy that cannot be put in words ("qui iubilat, non verba
dicit, sed sonus quidam est laetitiae sine verbis"). What this means in
its original historical context, I can only guess.
As is well known, the term "jubilus" becomes part of the technical
vocabulary of "Gregorian" chant in the 9th century, now meaning the
wordless melisma which concludes the alleluia chants at the Mass. But in
the late Middle Ages it seems to become part of the vocabulary of the
mystics, meaning the inner ecstasy of the soul during contemplation (thus
in Meister Eckhart). And I know of at least one 16th-century instance
where the term "jubilus" is expounded as something derived from Augustine,
in a sense apparently almost opposite to its original meaning where the
music takes over from the words, to mean singing with rational
understanding, so that heart and mouth act in unison. (Of course the
relationship between text and music is an important issue in 16th-century
music, on a number of fronts.) This is in the Commentary on the Rule of
St Augustine by the Scottish Augustinian Robertus Richardinus (Lutetiae,
1530): he was sent by his abbot to study in Paris, and writes in this
book in favour of moderate monastic reform; he shows a particular interest
in music, giving interesting documentation of practice in France and also
offering interesting criticisms of the florid polyphonic writing of the
pre-Reformation period in Scotland and England, from this point of view,
with specific quotations from Augustine ("Ideo dicit Augustinus: Cum
mihi accidat ut me amplius cantus, quam res quae canitur moveat, inaniter,
graviter me peccasse confiteor ... Nihil enim prodest concentus cantus, si
non sit concentus charitatis, et dilectionis. Quid enim conducit voce
convenire, si mente discrepes?", etc). And he was probably the Robert
Richardson who, two decades later, was sent to preach against the Pope in
Scotland.
I would certainly be glad to know how far Augustinian or pseudo-Augustinian
ideas, rather than the humanist-revival ideas usually cited, went to make up
16th-century attitudes to the ideal relationship between text and music in
sacred (or for that matter secular) vocal music.
Geoffrey Chew
This will sound much like several earlier postings, but may add something
as well. I encounter the same passage from Augustine (Enchiridion, 110--in
the Corpus christianorum edition) constantly in my work on the early
medieval ideology of prayer for the dead. This is the passage in which
Augustine suggests that prayer might be useful in different ways for three
categories of Christians--for the very good, for those who were not very
good, and for the very bad.
Everyone--from Isidore of Seville to Jonas of Orleans to the anonymous
compiler of a canon law collection in the eleventh century--cites this
passage. However, the text changes from citation to citation, sometimes in
quite important ways. In particular, as Le Goff noted in The Birth of
Purgatory, some citations turn Augustine's three categories into four--the
"not very good" are split into "the not very good and the not very bad,"
and the effects of prayer are changed to accomodate them. Needless to say,
interpretations of the text vary widely as well, with some people--Dhuoda
is an interesting example--saying some very un-Augustinian things based on
"Augustine's" authority.
I suppose my take on all this would be that educated people in the early
middle ages tried to understand and apply the texts of someone they
considered an important authority. But this hardly means that they (let
alone everyone else) were really very Augustinian in their ideas.
Megan McLaughlin, History Dept., Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Just a word to say that the assortment of places people have found Aug.
is fascinating: I hope we can hear more for a few days longer, and then
I will try to summarize and get some conversation going about what we've
seen. In the meantime, it occurs to me to pass this along, not at all
untypical of queries I get regularly. The short answer is that the
CETEDOC disk does not show any such quotation, but in our cultures,
"quotations" attributed to Great Men of Old are a nickel a hundredweight,
and represent a form of tribute paid to the past . . . I should have
started keeping a list of such quotations years ago . . .
jo'd
A good friend just E-mailed me a question about a quote credited to
Augustine which in English is rendered "God is a circle whose center is
everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere." Would you know if this is a
real quotation and where the Latin is located? I haven't the resources
immediately on hand to find out the answer, and I thought you might be
willing to help. Forgive me if I am imposing. You can directly reply to ...
>Augustine which in English is rendered "God is a circle whose center is
This is from Pascal's Pensees, not Augustine, though Nicolas of Cusa said
similar things.
Dan Lusthaus
The influence Augustine had on the later Middle Ages was surely
shaped by the canons regular in the twelfth century, and this is especially
true for scholars in Paris from the thirteenth century, both Dominicans
and Franciscans. One of the best ways to get a more accurate picture of
how much Augustine was known first hand would be to study book lists of the
period, and those of Augustinian houses from the twelfth century would
be useful. In the case of the Royal Abbey of St. Victor, where Hugh of
St. Victor, and later Richard of St. Victor, were steeped in the writings
of Augustine, copies of the saint's writings were prominent early volumes
The first copying campaign is being studied by Patricia Stirnemann and
Yvonne Gasparri, and included several volumes of Augustine's works:
Paris lat. 14290 contains Augustine on the Psalms, and other works are in
lat. 14480, 14858, 15082, and Arsenal 250. A look at these sources could
make the beginnings of a good article "The Copying and Study of Augustine
at St. Victor in the Mid-Twelfth Century."
My own work (Gothic Song: Victorine Sequences and Augustinian
Reform in Twelfth-Century Paris [Cambridge, 1993]) has focused on
the ways in which the Augustinians at St. Victor were trying to adapt
what they thought were Augustine's view of monastic life to their own
customs and liturgy. The sequences, long chants sung just before the
Gospel at Mass, are calls to the common life as the Victorines thought
they had it from Augustine.
THere are lots of us who work on Hugh and the Victorines and I
hope others will contribute as well.
Margot Fassler
The jubilus in the Middle Ages was connected from the ninth century onwards
with the sequences and in a variety of ways. The subject is much
discussed in the musicological literature and I have reviewed some of this
in my book Gothic Song, Chapter 3, "Early Medieval Sequences as Alleluia
Commentaries." Both the jubilus and the sequence are rooted in the
medieval understanding of the Alleluia of the Mass liturgy. Augustine wrote
a fair amount about the liturgical Alleluia in his own day, see for
example, Jim McKinnon's section on him in Music in Early Christian
Literature (Cambridge, 1987).
I have argued that the twelfth-century Augustinian canons regular
were, in part, at least, so interested in sequences because they understood
them, as did everyone, as Alleluia commentaries, and places in the
liturgy to jubilate. To write sequences probably seemed to them as if
they were following continuing Augustine's own interest in liturgical
jubilation connected with the Alleluia at Mass. This was the music
proper for the canons regular. From Richard of St. Victor's Liber
Exceptionum:
We ought, dear brothers, to have the ship through faith, the mast
through hope, the said through charity, the crow's nest through the
testing of spirits, the ropes through the exercise of virtue, the oars
through the public production of good works, the rudder through discretion,
the anchor through humility, the food through the reading of Scripture, the
net through preaching, and we ought to sing the celeuma [the call given by
the chief oarsman to help the other rowers keep time] through the jubilation
of the praise of God.
(That's "sail through charity.")
Margot Fassler
Margot Fassler is quite right to recommend attention to book lists in
specific houses. A relatively recent addition to our resources can help
do this. Here first is the on-line catalogue description from Penn:
What this is is a project to catalogue *all* the MSS of Augustine
*everywhere*; the volumes are divided by nation of origin; even USA will
have part of a vol. This differs from earlier projects in that the
traditional text editor seeks out the oldest and best manuscripts and is
happy to ignore a cloud of later witnesses. But by listing say all the
MSS of Aug. now surviving in Austrian libraries, with the possibility of
analyzing by place of presumed origin of the copy, date, present
location, etc., you get a valuable way of tracing what the specific
heritage of A. was in a particular place and time. Several queries
posted to this seminar already could be at least partially addressed by
finding out whether specific works were even known in country X in
century Y, etc.
A side benefit of this project has been the discovery of valuable
material hitherto unknown. The so-called Divjak letters (seen best now
in CSEL 88 or Bibliotheque Augustinienne 46B) are 29 letters of Aug.
discovered in two copies in Montpellier and Paris by the Austrian scholar
Johannes Divjak around 1980. Since then a passel of sermons have turned
up in Mainz, being edited in Revue des etudes augustiniennes by Francois
Dolbeau. (Letters and sermons are the hardest of A.'s works to catalogue
properly in manuscript indices, since the eye so quickly wearies of
checking yet another collection of 50 or 100 items against the list of
what we already have: it takes a cataloguing project of this sort to get
anywhere near exhaustive results.)
jo'd
Augustinian influence is pervasive enough to have affected late
medieval morality plays, though often or usually, no doubt, at
several removes. The Winchester College pedagogic dialogue "Lucidus
and Dubius" (a 15th cent. dramatic dialogue now printed by Norman
Davis) is a much abbreviated translation of the "Elucidarium" (c.
1100) of Honorius of Autun: a pupil, Discipulus, asks a series of
questions about the fall, redemption, good and bad priests, the
afterlife, etc., and his master, Magister, answers them. The
English dialogue is more dramatic in that the pupil, Dubius, is
constantly trying to provoke and catch out his master Lucidus, of
course in vain. The dramatist also gets some ideas from Lombard's
"Sentences" (see my article on L&D in _Medium Aevum_ 45 (1976).)
Y. Lefevre discusses Augustine's influence on Honorius's treatise
on pp. 194ff. of his edition (1954). But Honorius wasn't always
entirely orthodox: I don't know Augustine well enough to say how far
the following deviates from his teachings. On the basis of Matt.
23:3, that the Pharisees should be obeyed but not imitated, Honorius
allows sacraments administered by bad priests even if excommunicated
to be effective, provided the priests aren't _known_ to be
excommunicate. "D. Possunt solvere vel ligare? M. Si ab Ecclesia
publico judicio separati non sunt, quamvis ipsi [vinculo
excommunicationis] fortiter ligati sint, utrumque possunt, quia non
ipsi, sed Christus per eorum officium ligat et solvit." In "Lucidus
and Dubius" this becomes :
Would Augustine agree with this view of bad priests? It would help
to explain how Chaucer's avaricious friar could still be thought of
as beneficial:
Brian S. Lee
Confirmation on Pascal with some other thoughts . . .
jo'd
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 94 08:15:38 CST
Jim, Pascal has the passage "Nature is an infinite sphere whose centre is
everywhere and circumference nowhere" (Pensees #199 in Penguin tr.); and in
Bonaventure *Itinerarium* c. 5 or 6 (I don't have it on my desk) there is a
similar passage only the subject is Being Itself (its Pascal who
brilliantly changes the subject to Nature). I bet there *is* a
pseudo-Augustine somewhere who says this with the subject God. But one
would have to start tracing the sources of these later passages. -J.
John C. Cavadini
I was chasing this around a few years ago--God is an
infinite sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere--
because it popped up in Bartholomaeus Anglicus' _De proprietatibus
rerum_. It seems to come most popularly from the XXIV Philosophers.
Unhappily, I am away from those materials for another 2 weeks and
my wife's library lacks the volume where I summarized Bartholomew's
source, but anyone with it can look it up--it's in _Bartholomaeus
Anglicus and His Encyclopedia_ by M.C. Seymour et al., among the
source notes that I did for the tail end of Book XIX.
Juris
The other recent treasure trove is:
jo'd
Here's one more tool that *many* medievalists will want to know and use.
Briefly, the Glossa Ordinaria (if you don't know it) is the 12th
century's massive "Study Bible" with interlinear and marginal glosses
drawn heavily from the patristic tradition. It's a fascinating document
and richly influential as the "bearer" of patristic exegesis to much
later medieval thought. It has never been properly available in print in
modern times. The PL reprint, which appears as though the author were
Walafrid Strabo (it was Beryl Smalley's great early achievement to have
worked through the authorship question in *The Study of the Bible in the
Middle Ages*, and Christopher De Hamel's recent book on glossed books and
the Paris book trade supplements that well), guts the thing by not
printing the interlinear, and by a *highly* selective and erratic way of
choosing what to print. E.g., for Job, since 99% of what the Gloss has
comes from Gregory the Great's Moralia, PL just omits that book and
refers you to Gregory! Well, an international coniuratio led by Margaret
Gibson and Karlfried Froelich has begun looking at the question of how to
make this thing available and usable -- is it even possible to *imagine*
a critical edition? In the meantime, they have done a truly wonderful
thing. They have gotten Brepols to reprint the 1480 editio princeps in
its entirety. This edition was laid out on the printed page with a very
high degree of fidelity to match the manuscript page layout of Gloss
books; there are places where it takes a magnifying glass and some
patience to decipher, but on balance it's much easier to read than any
manuscript version. It's expensive, but no serious research library
should be without it, and no serious medievalist with interests in
exegesis should fail at least to covet it.
The Augustine influence relevance: the digesting, paraphrasing,
and mis-attributing of texts in the Gloss to Augustine had the effect of
putting a very visible seal of approval on one version of A.'s exegetical
legacy, and many people in the later middle ages would encounter A. the
exegete here rather than in the original works. With this facsimile, it
*begins* to be possible to trace that kind of transformation. Ann Matter
(who is a member of the Gibson-Froelich coniuratio) and I did a seminar
at Penn two springs ago on the Psalms as rendered by the Gloss and found
the material inexhaustibly interesting.
jo'd
>
The _Oxford Dictionary of Quotations_ is hardly a final authority but
anyhow, it places the quotation under "anonymous" with the notation that it
is "suppposed to have been traced to a lost work of Empedocles", and also
notes that is found in the _Roman de la Rose_ (alas, no line ##s are
given). It gives the quotation in the form "The nature of God is...."
It looks like this could use a lot more study.
Norman Hinton hinton@eagle.sangamon.edu
Whoops--my wife's library did have a copy, and here's the
stuff I came up with for Bartholomaeus Anglicus' source, as edited
& supplemented by Seymour:
the Hermetic _Liber XXIV philosophrum_ (ed. C. Baumker in _Beitra"ge_
XXV. 208), found in the _Summa_ of Alexander of Hales (I. 19a and 60a);
on which see M.-T. d'Alverny in P.O. Kristeller, _Catalogus translationum
et commentatiorum_ (Washington DC, 1960), pp. 151-4. In DPR I. 16 (p. 53)
BA cites Trismegistus as the author of the definition here ascribed to
Secundus. Vincent, _Speculum naturale_ I. 4 (Venice 1591, IV. 4 va)
attributes the first definition to Empedocles and gives the second as
_mens immortalis_. Within the metaphor of the rational soul as a circle
of perfection BA joins these two Hermetic statements with an orthodox
restatement of the philosophical concept of the Trinity, cf. DPR I. 2
and III. 13 (pp. 44-5, 103), which depends on Innocent III, _Liber extra_
published with his other decretals at the Fourth Lateran Cuncil of
1215. See further, A. Garci'a y Garci'a, _Constitutiones concilii
quarti lateranensis_ (Vatican, 1981), pp. 41-6, and notes to 44/15
and 53/1.
Sorry for the typos, but I'm sneaking in on a library computer not
meant for my e-mail and editing is almost impossible. The references
to the _De proprietatibus rerum_ are to the Seymour et al. edition
of the Trevisa translation. The note here belongs to the text in
that Trevisa, pp. 1369 line 25-1370 line 7.
Juris G. Lidaka / Campus Box 32 / English / West Virginia State College
Bitnet: Lidaka@WVNWVSC
> >Augustine which in English is rendered "God is a circle whose center is
However, now that I'm here, I have a similar question of my own. I have
been working on Jean Gerson's _Anagogicum de verbo et hymno gloriae_, a
short but dense technical treatise on mystical theology. At one point,
Gerson writes as follows: "Glorificatio Patris et Filii cum Spiritu
Sancto in beatis dici potest habere gradum vel, ut Bernardus loquitur,
modum sine modo." He adds a short while later, "gloria Dei est gradus
sine gradu, modus sine modo." It should be noted that this in the context
of a discussion of the divine infinity. The closest thing I find to an
explicit source for
this in Bernard is the beginning of _De Diligendo Dei_, where Bernard
says that the "modus [of our love for God ought to be] sine modo." Not
only is this not the same thing, but there is no reference to Augustine
whatsoever. However, one finds the following in
Bonaventure's _Disputed questions on the mystery of the Trinity_
(IV.1.reply 5): ". . . according to Augustine, 'God is mode without
mode.'" The reference in the footnote is to _De natura boni_, C.3, which
might generously be understood as implying this, but certainly does not go so
far as to state it in so many words.
The questions, then (setting aside Gerson's use, about which I have
several ideas):
(1) Is this sentence, "God is mode without mode," anywhere in Augustine?
Jeffrey Fisher
There is a wonderful book by Georges Poulet in English translation
published as *The Metamorphosis of the Circle* that treats this
topos in great critical and historical depth. It's the first place
to look both for a source citation and for critical discussion.
Bob Stein
Augustine's presence in the Greek east is far less pervasive than
in the west; translations are relatively few and late. But he
crops up in odd places: Critobolus of Imbros was the leading
citizen of that island (itself one of the last bastions of
Byzantine polity), who made the choice to surrender to Sultan
Mehmet in 1453, and then wrote in his own hand his five book
history in Greek of the 1450s and 1460s in about 1467, in honor
of Sultan Mehmet. He imitates Thucydides more than any other
author, and indeed we still possess the MS of Thuc. that he
owned. (Critobolus' literary merit is variously assessed:
Grecophone scholars cannot swallow his collaboration with the
Sultan and so find him of limited merit, but Islamic historians
value him very highly.) After a lengthy prayer at the head of
his manuscript, there are seventeen lines of Greek verse in honor
of Augustine. He treats Augustine as a neo-Platonic mystic
bringing intelligible light into the heart. Critical edition at
Critobuli Imbriotae Historiae rec. D.R. Reinsch (Berlin 1983), p.
16*; some discussion Michael Rackl, "Die griechischen
Augustinusuebersetzungen', Miscellanea Fr. Ehrle I (1924) 1-38 =
Studi e Testi 37.
jo'd
The numbers below preceded by an asterisk refer to passages
that may be considered quotations from Augustine, although
this does not necessarily imply that Saint Benedict was
directly citing the work in question. All others indicate
possible sources and allusions that illustrate the cultural
and linguistic background, even though they may not be
immediate sources. For indications of English translations,
see RB 1980, pp. xxii-xxiii.
RB 1980 was produced by a team of Benedictine scholars to mark the fifteenth
centenary of the birth date traditionally ascribed to St. Benedict of
Nursia, A.D. 480. It is the first English translation of the Rule that
follows the versification of the Latin text established by Anselm Lentini
in 1947.
*Many* thanks to R. Oliver for the Aug. --> Reg. Ben. posting, which he
had first offered me during the Augustine seminar last spring. This
gives an opportunity to make a point about what such things are, and
perhaps to begin discussion of methodology arising out of the whole data
set of what we've seen these last two weeks.
As Oliver's posting makes clear, the parallels posted are just
parallels. No claim is made by RB 1980 that all these passages are ones
where "Benedict" (i.e., Benedict or his own immediate source) was
consciously echoing, or even aware of, the precise Augustinian passage in
question. My own judgment is that there's an interesting problem there,
far from solved, concerning the mediation of Augustinian ideas and texts
into Gaulish and then Italian use in the 5th century: Tom Smith's book
on Faustus of Riez that I mentioned in my first posting here points to
the kind of reconsideration that is needed.
But that's beside my point now, which is simply this: even, and almost
especially, when the question of conscious intertextuality is set aside,
there is considerable value in this kind of *exercise*. IF, let us
argue, we take an inclusive view, how much Augustine can we *possibly*
find in Benedict? The natural second thought experiment to follow that
is, of course, if we take a very hard-nosed view, how *little* Augustine
can we *prove* is in Benedict? I think we need to know the answers to
both questions in order to have a sense of what is possible and to go
forward suitably unsure of ourselves.
Other examples of this that I can think of are: editions of Boethius
Consolation in which an inclusive view is taken of echoes of scripture --
there is in fact probably a maximum of one conscious scriptural echo in
that text, and that may be a chimera we impose on it, and we need to know
*that*: but as long as we do, then it is also useful to know what
happens if we set our standards differently. A recent classic in this
vein is Henry Chadwick's translation of the *Confessions*: the notes
there are chock-a-block full of Plotinus (no surprise after Chadwick's
1986 *Augustine*), and I got curious and did a tabulation. Chadwick
gives footnotes in Conf. to many *more* treatises of Plotinus than the
most generous and Plotinizing of Augustine scholars has ever claimed
Augustine could have read himself. Does this mean Chadwick is wrong? Or
must he sustain a claim that Augustine *did* read these things? Better I
think to say that his annotation provides us with a strong Plotinian
reading of the Confessions -- and that's *one* of the ways I can learn
what the Confessions are like.
The problem is always *not* claiming more for your annotation than is
justified, and the rhetoric of Quellenforschung over time is both
inclusive and optimistic, and the natural critical reaction is to take
back "sources" "analogues" and the like that the optimistic searcher has
found. That critical dialogue is valuable, and my point is only that it
is a dialogue not possible without the optimistic, inclusive movement to
counterplay the skeptical, exclusive movement.
jo'd
>From Mark Vessey at Univ. Brit. Columb.:
Or, Mark:
As Thomas Wolfe puts it in *Look Homeward Angel*: "William
Shakespeare -- 1616-1923: A long and useful life."
John McLaughlin
>From today in the library:
A query, then a reply
PROF. MICHAEL GOODICH
jo'd
1. Early in the discussion I reported my experience with Caesarius of
Arles taking his own sermons and issuing them under Augustine's name to
give them more authority (this is well-documented). How common a
practice was this? And how soon after Augustine's time did it begin?
2. Does anyone know whether the the book Jim referred to earlier (*Die
Handschriftliche Ueberlieferung ...) is still in print? It seems we
don't have it hear, but our acquisitions person would be willing to
acquire it for the library.
Bill
A graduate student of mine would like to write on the influence of Augustinian
thought in Anglo-Saxon England. This is pretty far from my own areas of
interest, so that I would appreciate any help (bibliographic or otherwise) that
I could pass on to him. Thanks.
Mimi Miller
Probably the best place to start is F Biggs, T Hill, P Szarmach, eds,
Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture: A Trial Version
(Binhampton, 1990). There is a review opf the book in the
Oct 93 issue of Speculum. I think it will suggest several
jumping off points.
MA Claussen
Perhaps a good place to start to trace Augustine's influence in A/S England would
be to trace his influence over St. Gregory the Great and via Gregory to the
Roman mission. A good place to begin might be Mayr-Harting's >>Coming of
Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England<<. Of course, this entirely leaves aside
the question of Augustin's influence in the Celtic/British ecclesiastical orbit
at that time. By contrast, one might wish to read Charles Donahue's "Beowulf,
Ireland, and the Natural Good," >>Traditio<< 7 (1949-51): 253-277. Again, this
is only a suggestion. St. Augustine of Hippo's influence (one must always take
care in this area to distinguish the Latin Doctor from the sainted missionary
to Canterbury!) is a controverted area, or at any rate should be an area more
controverted. With thanks to all for this stimulating INTERSCRIPTA
discussion!
Gavin Ferriby
I'm sorry to bug you about this mysterious quote ("God is a circle...")
again, but I have just found a reference to it in one of my colleague's
manuscripts. He attributes it to Plotinus, and cites the _Enneads_ VI, 5.4.
Mark Murphy
I pass this on to the interscripta discussion, hoping to find a likely
answer here. I call to mind nothing immediately in Augustine, though I
do recall that Cassiodorus' *de anima* speaks of women's virtue as all
the more remarkable because women are women. Is there such in Aug.? Is
there such later? Can we blame him for this?
jo'd
Dear Professor O'Donnell:
As it is now July, I wonder if I am too late to ask a question of the
Augustine discussion group. I'm in the process of writing a paper on
medical reasons for female behaviour, as explained by writers in the
middle ages. Woman's lustfulness, loquacity, fickleness etc. are
functions of her physiology, not merely moral failings. It will
likely not surprise anyone that an appeal to _nature_ was
insufficient (generally) to avoid condemnation for her excesses, but
Vincent of Beauvais does indicate that in some ways Eve sinned less
than Adam because *he* ought to have known better whereas *she* was
acting according to Kind.
I seem to remember someone--and I think it was Augustine--saying that
it is *possible* for women to lead saintly lives, but it was harder
for them because of their natures. Does this ring a bell, or do I
simply misremember? Any help would be appreciated.
Carol Everest
Concerning the inquiry about wether it is more difficult for women to be
virtuous than men, etc. I believe that you will find A.'s sermons on the
feasts of Perpetua and Felicitas helpful. It has been a while since I have
looked at them, but I recall A. emphasizing how much more edifying their
example ought to be as they are women, etc. I know that theme occurs in A.'s
writings on the martyrs and I'm pretty sure that those sermons are how I know
it. Please correct me if I'm mistaken. Sorry to be so imprecise,
Louis Hamilton
May I join in on the thread started by Carol Everest. Firstly, does anyone have
the full citation for the Rosemary Reuther book _Religion and Sexism_ ?
Secondly, might I pose a related query to that of Carol. I am examining the
debate over the French royal succession during the Hundred Years War; one
aspect of my work, is to examine the authorities, acknowledged or not as the
case may be, for the various points made by the English and French. With regard
to the exclusion of women from the throne, both sides observed the incapacity
of females to rule etc. The two authorities used to justify this argument, were
Giles of Rome and St. Augustine, through the unacknowledged medium of the
glosses of Francois de Meyronnes and Raoul de Presles.
What I would like to know, though, is what authorities one might expect a
fourteenth century writer to turn to to demonstrate the incapacity of women to
hold public office, because of their mental inferiority, physical
incapabilities etc. Rather than consider, therefore, what arguments they did
use, I am as interested to know what authorities they might have employed. With
regard to this specific discussion forum, of course, I wonder if anyone might
be able to identify crucial sections in St. Aug's writings that could be used
in this manner, together with useful glosses; but straying beyond that, given
the general learning of the subscribers to this group, if
anyone can recommend worthy scholarship on this matter in general, I would be
most grateful - there is, after all, a mountain of work out there on attitudes
towards women (though I was fascinated to read in the intro to R. Howard
Bloch's new book on Misogyny, that the study of such ideas is frowned upon, as
it "automatically constitutes an endorsement of it") and it is hard for me to
locate where to find what ought to be fairly standard information.
Many thanks for your help,
Craig Taylor
In response to Craig Taylor's request for the full reference:
Megan McLaughlin, History Dept., Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Allan Fitzgerald
The canonical time for the interscripta discussion of Augustine's
influence is winding down, so this counts as last call for comments or
observations. I will add one note and a bibliographical reference:
The "Augustine" who appears in the mosaic of contributions to this
discussion does not much resemble a plaster saint, or even a Great
Bookie. The traces we have found do not reduce themselves transparently
to a single coherent picture. I would compare them rather to odd bits of
reflection from a single source in a huge variety of polished and
semi-polished surfaces, some of them almost flat but most with some
concavity or convexity to them, set at various distances from the
source. Those reflections can tell us two things: (1) something about
Augustine, for they are reflections either of the author himself or, in
the case of pseudonymous works, reflections of reflections, that is
images created to imitate what the later age thought Augustine was like;
(2) something about the people who received him. In fact, my judgement
is that they tell us more about the reception, and that in places and
times where the reception was particularly strong, they tell us a lot.
Troisieme Centenaire de l'Edition Mauriste de Saint Augustin:
Communications presentees au colloque des 19 et 20 avril 1990 (Paris:
Etudes Augustiniennes [distributed by Brepols], 1990): ISBN 2-85121019604
My thanks to Deborah Everhart and Martin Irvine for this opportunity, and
my attentive best wishes for other interscripta seminars to follow. One
small commercial: My fall term course on Boethius' Consolation will have
paying internet customers, but is open of course to any and all auditors,
lurkers, and discussants. We will read the Consolation on a regular
schedule through the fall. No discussion will begin until September, but
if you wish to be on the list well ahead of time, send mail to
listserv@ccat.sas.upenn.edu, nothing on the Subject: line, and the single
message line SUBSCRIBE BOETHIUS. One who has tried it reports that the
separation of sheep and goats will be done by the listserv on the basis
of ability to spell "Boethius" correctly!
Jim O'Donnell
The matter of the influence of Augustine continues to be an elusive
category. Writings seem to be very broadly presented, covering whole
time frames, or tightly fashioned, such that only near-experts are
involved. That presents a particular problem in a work that I am
engaged in: an encyclopedia of Augustine. The importance of having
good, concise articles that contribute valuable syntheses to the range
of potential readers is clear. Yet the fact that there is no accepted
framework for talking about the reception of Augustine, i.e., different
time periods call for different frameworks, and the fact that scholars
usually need to focus on one time (4th or 13th c) or on one figure (
(Luther or Augustine ...), means that it will not be simple to assure
the appropriate tone and emphasis that will be helpful.
Hence, it would be nice to hear some comments about bibliographical items
that deal with Augustine's influence or, perhaps better, to have some
people suggest scholars whose work is worthy of note, especially in
the areas that are projected for the encyclopedia: Fifth Century,
Carolingian period, Scholasticism, Renaissance, Reformation, Modern
and contemporary. Note that these `periods' are not necessarily the
precise title and that more than one author will be asked to contribute
to an area where it is important to include the different emphases that
exist. (Note too that there are numerous articles on individual people,
both those who influenced Augustine and those he influenced).
By way of example, I did not know that Ernst Troeltsch had written a
book on Augustine until an article was submitted by Prof. Starr (Cal.
State) for Augustinian Studies (v. 24 - 1993) or that it could be
important to include an article on Robt. Grosseteste until I heard a
paper by Prof. van Deusen (Claremont) at a Dayton conference. Since I
am at the end of a process of establishing the plan of the book (working
with Jim O'Donnell and others), some of your comments could prove helpful
for the fine tuning of the next month.
Allan Fitzgerald
Dear Allan,
I'm really not a specialist in Augustine, though I've maintained an
interest ever since I studied patristics with Hugo Rahner. I work
particularly on Anglo-Latin writers of the Anglo-Saxon period. I've done a
book on Bede in 1987 and am under contract to do one on Alcuin for 1996. In
Bede I have noticed his use of Augustine, esp. because Bede himself (unlike
most early medieval writers) acknowledges his authorities. It is
interesting to note, for example, where Bede sides with Agustine over
Jerome.
Regards, GHB
George Hardin Brown
Before the disucssion on Augustine ends, I would like
to pose a question to those of you who know: what is the
current opinion of Arquilliere's _L'augustinisme politique_?
I read it when I was in graduate school, and was quite taken
with it, but perhaps I mistook its qualities, because the ideas
Arquillere had so closely matched my needs. I was especially
interested in what he said about the Carolingians at the time;
but if he has fallen out of favor, has anyone replaced him?
MA Claussen
Department of History
Hello to all,
I am currently finishing up a M.A. thesis at U VA on Possidius. At
the request of Prof. O'Donnell, I am submitting to all of you a much belated
summation of that effort. Just as a refresher Possidius was an early 5th
century Bishop of Calama in No. Africa. He was among Augustine's first
disciples at Hippo, joining his community there sometime around 391. This
began a lifetime's friendship with A., lasting almost 40 yrs, until the death
of A. on 28 August 430. Possidius was a close friend of A., and later as
bishop, an important ecclesiastical ally in the lively No. African Church on
several occasions. He fled to Hippo when the Vandals invaded Calama in 428,
and prayed the penetential psalms with A. as he lay dying. He is known to us
through his principal work, that other, and significantly earlier biography
of Augustine, the *Vita Augustini*. The text is believed to have been
written sometime between 432 and 437. We do not know when Possidius died,
the last reference we have of him is in 439.
This Vita has been long recognized by historians as an invaluable source
for the period and Possidius is invariably described as "trustworthy" or
"honest", the inconsistancies in the life are then described as "oversights",
"innacuracies", even "streamlining." No less an authority than van der Meer
dismisses Possidius the author as, "so pedestrian and unimaginative and
honest a biographer." I would like to question this position and wonder if
many of the most important innacuracies and peculiarities of the text don't,
in fact, point to a much more purposeful work than heretofore imagined.
Attached is a slightly extended form of my abtract and I would be most
appreciative of any and all feedback. I have tried to be mercifully brief
without being too obscure.
This paper begins with the observation that Possidius' *Vita Augustini*
is a peculiar combination of two hagiographical types, the *uomo divino*
(such as Martin, Antony, and Ambrose) and *classico* models. Scholars have
typically classified this Vita within the latter category, primarily because
of its lack of miracles. (See, for e.g., L.C. Ruggini's piece in
*Hagiographie Cultures et Societes IVe-XIIe Siecles*. Paris (1981), pp.
161-204). It is curious that the *Vita* would lack a miraculous element as
Augustine had been very active in promoting the miraculous during the last
twenty years of his life. Indeed, his empathy for the miraculous would have
been widely known around the Mediterranean by the time of his death.
Further, Possidius would have had access to stories from Hippo about the
saint (stories we still have access to in Augustine' own wrtings) which he
could have used, had he been interested in doing so, to create the type of
*uomo divino* model which Augustine himself had shown so much interest in.
Close examination of the text demonstrates that Possidius was composing
for a strictly clerical, even monastic audience. It is asserted that
Possidius envisioned no liturgical or evangelizing role for the *Vita* and
therefore was not interested in seeking out the miraculous or emphasizing
Augustine's personal charismatic force. Rather, Possidius sees this text
offering a practicable model to the clergy and monastic communities of North
Africa. It is for this reason that Possidius included an incredible wealth
of minutiae concerning Augustine's daily practice and behavior as a bishop.
He described everything from Augustine's silver spoons and wooden bowls,
how Augustine would approach an official, Augustine's approach to church
property, to Augustine's advice on when not to give advice. Further,
Possidius chose to give over 20% of the *Vita* to a letter from Augustine to
Bishop Honoratus. This document, which Possidius described as "very useful
and necessary", details Augustine's thought on the appropriate response of
the clergy to Vandal invasion. The letter concerns itself exclusively with
the behavior of clerics and contains no information helpful to the pious lay
citizen. Like this letter, the detailed information concerning Augustine's
communal life was meant as a guide to clerics and monastics in the very
volatile situation of North Africa under the Vandals.
The second half of this work begins by arguing that Possidius is
attempting to promote Augustine's moderate ascetic ideal as the source of the
Catholic triumph over heresy and the source of the *pax et unitas* of the
North African church. The work is set up in such a way as to represent a
series of triumphs over heresy. First, Ambrose's baptism of Augustine is
represented as the conversion of a Manichean. (Here we have an example of
Possidian "streamlining". Possidius ignored the entire "tolle lege" episode,
and more importantly, ignored the Augustine's ascetic life at Cassiciacum.
It is only after Augustine's baptism that he "converts" to asceticism a la
Antony, through the Gospel imperative, "Go and sell ...." (This point was
first observed by Briita Stoll, "Die Vita Augustini des Possidius ..."
*Zetschrift fur Kirchengeschichte*, v. 1: 1, 1991, pp.1-13)) After his own
baptism, Augustine is portrayed meeting, debating, and defeating and or
converting members of all the major heresies of his day. This process is
matched with the continual growth of Augustine's own community. Soon,
Augustine is being asked to send out brothers all over North Africa to serve
as bishops and clergy. These in turn set up monastic communities and send
out more brothers. The troubled North African Church is thereby brought
together into the "pacis unitas et ecclesiae Dei fraternitas." (V.Aug. 13.1)
Next we assert that Possidius' emphasis on grace while promoting this
ascetic ideal reflects Augustine's own concerns for the natural sympathies
between ascetics of the rigorous Eastern type and Pelagianism. A telling
example of Possidius' unique concern to emphasize grace can be seen in his
representation of Augustine's conversion to the ascetic life. At this
crtical moment Possidius is careful to precede the call which Antony hears
(Matthew 19.21) with Luke 12.32-33. In that passage the agency is shifted
away from the individual and toward God granting the kingdom to the fearful
little sheep, rather than Matthew's much more straightforward "Go and sell
... and you will have..." formula.
Lastly, it is shown that the two previous themes (the relationship
between asceticism and the *pax et unitas* of North Africa, and the emphasis
on grace) are caught up in Possidius' efforts to compose this *Vita* in the
tradition of the *De civitate dei* so that he might offer hope to his fellow
North African clergy in the face of Vandal invasion. That the Vandal
invasions were a major concern of this work is easily demonstrated by the
large portion of the text Possidius grants to them, almost the full, last
one-third of the *Vita* is overshadowed by thier invasion. That Augustine
and his bretheren discussed at length the events of the invasion (and seige
of Hippo) could be assumed but is stated by the text (V. Aug. 28.11-13).
That those discussions most likely reffered back to the Goths sack of Rome in
410 is implied not simply by the similarity of the situations, but also by
Augustine's recollection of Plotinus', "No one is great who is amazed that
wood and stone colapse and mortals die." Comforting words which Augustine
had used to steal the strength of the faithful often in the past when they
had been confronted with Rome's violation.
However, a material connection between this work and *Civ dei* comes in
Possidius' Preface. 3 when Possidius declared his intention to speak of
Augstine's life *et exortu et procursu et debito fine*. Herbert T.
Weiskotten, as far as I have been able to establish, is the only modern
editor of the Vita who takes this as a reference to Augustine's own
discussion of the City of God. He ascribes it to *Civ dei* XI.1, where
Augustine sets out to discuss *exortu et excursu et debitis finis* of the two
cities. Such a vague reference on the part of Possidius is not very
compelling and Weiskotten merely observes it in passing. Closer examination
reveals that Possidius clearly had a much more specific reference in mind.
The sequence, *exortus*, *procursus*, *debitus fines* occurs only five times
in Augustine's writings. Three of these are in *Civ dei*, one in
*Retractationes*, and once in his *Epistuala nuper in lucem prolatae*.
Structural comparison of Possidius and *Civ dei* 1, 35, 15 demonstrates that
Possidius had this passage specifically in mind, if not open in front of him.
It is a poignant passage.
For the purposes of our discussion, it has always struck me as odd that
such an important saint as Augustine, a saint who wielded so much "authority"
in the Middle Ages, would have had so comparatively little cultic activity
surrounding him. I think, and I don't intend to be unfair in suggesting
this, that we historians have explained this derth of cult to ourselves by
assuming that Augustine the Churh Doctor was somehow the exclusive preserve
of the intellectuals, leaving no room for an Augustine the Saint who could
appeal to the masses. Perhaps there is something to this. However, it may
well be simply be that his original biographer was not so much "honest" as
caught up in a very different historical circumstance and, therefore, not
concerned to compose the sort of *Vita* a popular cult would require.
I hope all of this proves a fruitful source for our further inquiry.
Once again, I'd be more than happy for any comments or direction anyone might
be able to provide.
Sincerely,
Harold Stone of Colgate University, who was in my summer seminar on Aug.
and his influence in 1993, knows a lot about the *cultus* of Saint
Augustine, at a great remove, for he is studying the 300+ pamphlets,
broadsides, and books published in/around Pavia in/around 1800 when the
relics of Augustine were (re-)discovered there (where they may still be
seen). The story is that the relics moved first to Sardinia in flight
from Vandals, thence to Pavia. The second transfer is better documented
than the first. But by 1800, Pavia was relatively insensible to what it
had, and the flurry of activity then has a lot of resemblance to that
which Ambrose set off by unearthing Protasius and Gervasius in Milan when
Augustine was there. Harold's is very much work-in-progress and I look
forward to its conclusion . . .
jo'd
> To: stew@legacy.calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: Aquinas and Augustine
>
> Could part of the problem with Augustine/Aquinas on this issue be the
> fact that both saw the purpose of political society in very different
> ways. Thus, even though Aquinas might have wished to read Augustine
> carefully, [even if he could do so, cf. the comments of others on this
> issue] he was "blinded" by the positive purpose he saw the state
> playing in the moral development of the lives of the citizens. Thus,
> Augustine, who saw the purpose of civil society as rather negative. No
> matter what role a person played in civil society for the latter, it was
> certainly a less noble enterprise than other roles one could play within
> the religious community. Thus, Cicero would serve as a person who was
> praising human roles within society which were inferior to the higher
> roles which Augustine would hope people would aspire to. I may be wrong
> on this, but it seems to me this might be one possible way of looking at
> it. Thanks for raising the issue, and I look forward to further
> response.
> Best Wishes-- Jim Boitano, Dept. of Political Science Dominican
> College of San Rafael, CA.
>
William R. Stevenson, Jr. Phone/Voicemail: 616-957-6235
Department of Political Science Fax: 616-957-8551
Calvin College Internet: Stew@Legacy.Calvin.edu
Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 1994 14:47:13 NDT
To: everhart@gusun.acc.georgetown.edu
Subject: Aug's Woods Re-appear
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 1994 16:06:56 NDT
From: Deborah Everhart
Subject: (from Richard Landes) Augustine/influence
> attributed to Augustine by historians of the EMA is his elimination of
> millenarianism from the theology of Latin xdm, a victory which lasts
> until Joachim of Fiore at the end of the 12th cn -- an intellectual
> dominance of almost 800 centuries. This is particularly
> visible in the Ticonian/Augustinian interpretations of every Revelation
> Commentary until the High Middle Ages (esp the post-millennial
> interpretation of Rev 20:1-9 -- the millennium is in progress, just
> "invisible" ie *not* the Kingdom of Heaven on earth). It is also
> evident in his impact on historiography -- Isidorre of Sevilles use of
> his 6 Ages to shape his chronology, Bede's copying
> verbatim the concluding passages of Augustine's anti-apocalyptic letter
> to Hesychius (419 CE, Ep #199) in his _De temporum ratione_ (67-71) at the
> conclusion of his _Chronica Maiora_ based on Augustine's six ages.
>
> My own work indicates that this victory is far less decisive at the oral
> level even among clerics -- in particular, the sabbatical millennium
> (one of Aug's main targets, see Enn. Ps. 89)
> continued to inform much of the clerical-lay dialogue for all these
> centuries, particularly
> when there were charismatic prophet/apostles/christs gathering large
> followings (eg. Gregory of Tours' False Xt in 591, Boniface's Adelbert in
> 742, Rudolf of Fulda's Thiota in 847, Abbo's preacher in Paris ca. 970).
> Thus, while Aug's theology dominated the most formal written texts --
> exegesis and most history -- the hints at more popular apocalyptic
> millenarianism in the EMA suggest that his interpretation of the mn
> represented the least efrfective position in a lively debate which
> pitted outright millenarian preachers with
> considerable popular success, even with lesser clergy (a common complaint),
> against beleaguered churchmen who used banned, but nevertheless
> functionally anti-apocalyptic conservative millennial doctrines (yes the mn,
> but not now, we have to wait until the
> year 6000... an argument generally invoked when the target date was
> some 100-3000 years off). The clerics who used the sabbatical mn argument
> were trying to cope with a reality slightly messier
> than Augustine's tidy dominance of the sources suggests.
> In fact the ultimate irony of this gap btw a literate Augn dominance and
> an oral discourse in which his position was rather marginal, is the fact
> that it was a kind of "Augustinisme chronologique" that gave the year 1000
> its apoc significance. When Abbo, a true Augustinian, attacked a
> preacher in the Cathedral in Paris who argued that the year 1000 wd see
> the releease of Antichrist followed shortly thereafter by the Last
> Judgment, he was not fighting some crazy millenarian (anticipating the mn),
> but a cleric who
> believed that the year 1000 wd mark the END of the (Augn) millennium and
> the events discussed in Rev 20:7-9 (it shd have been 1033, since Aug starts
> his "invisible" mn with the creation of the Church, DcD 20:7). Aug wd of
> course had sided with Abbo, but the other cleric clearly believed he was
> following Augn teaching. if you will, if Aug wasn't anti-Jewish enough
> so that thye MA had to invent some sentiments, so was he insufficiently
> apocalyptic.
> The final irony here is that modern historians are more likely to be
> swayed by the (documentary) dominance of Augustine than even those who
> claiumed to be his disciples (eg Quodvultdeus). Thereby Aug
> retrospectively (he was, after all, right, the end did not come)
> plays the role of the classic DWM who, in the service of
> a conservative agenda, writes his version of events over the palimpsest
> of a more widespread millenarian discourse, now not gone (hardly, when
> you think of the conditions of the 5-10th cns) but sous-rature. And like
> some classicist so delighted to discover his beloved Ovid in a Carolingian
> palimpsest that he makes no effort to discover anything about the erased
> Merovingian document beneath, modern historians continue to asssert,
> that Aug delivered the coup-de-grace to millenarianism for almost 800 years.
> Richard Landes.
>
>
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 1994 19:06:59 NDT
From: lwarner@dept.english.upenn.edu (Lawrence Warner)
Subject: Wrong Conf. ref.
lwarnner@english.upenn.edu
Date: Wed, 15 Jun 1994 12:35:38 NDT
From: "Gerald W. Schlabach"
Subject: Re: Aquinas and Augustine
| Gerald W. Schlabach | "And the Lord spake unto Job out |
| Theology, U. of Notre Dame | of the whirlwind, saying: 'So |
| phone: 219-289-7665 | what if there IS no technical fix? |
| email: Schlabach.1@nd.edu | What then kiddo?'" |
| smail: 426 N. William St. | Job 41:99 |
| South Bend IN 46601 | (paraphrased) |
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 1994 17:18:31 NDT
From: JMHALLMAN@stthomas.edu
Subject: Re: Aquinas and Augustine
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 1994 23:11:49 NDT
From: dlusthau@abacus.bates.edu (Dan Lusthaus)
Subject: Re: Aquinas and Augustine
>I guess I keep coming back to the rather vicious choice between a
>Thomas who was naively, even wholly, out of touch with the
>intellectual battles of his own time, on the one hand, or a Thomas
>who intentionally determined to manipulate scholarly argument
>to further some partisan intellectual goal, on the other. Needless to
>say, I am unhappy with either of these alternatives.
dlusthau@abacus.bates.edu
Bates College
Date: Wed, 15 Jun 1994 12:10:36 NDT
From: "Bill Stevenson"
Subject: Re: Aquinas and Augustine
>
> Your opposition may be too simplistic. Part of what the current discussion
> might help clarify is whether the textbook version of Church history - viz.
> it was dominated throughout the early Middle Ages by Augustine (and
> Platonism) only to be supplanted by Aquinas (and Aristoteleanism) - is
> accurate or another oversimplification. Part of the question is: how
> dominant was Augustine by Aquinas' time? If Augustine was by then mostly a
> figure invoked but rarely read, and his ideas had already been hopelessly
> conflated with others' (and opposing ideas), then, unless Aquinas was a
> concerted student of Augustine, there may be little reason for us to expect
> him to get Augustine right.
> realistic picture of him that avoids the extremes of painting him as either
> an angel or a devil.
William R. Stevenson, Jr. Phone/Voicemail: 616-957-6235
Department of Political Science Fax: 616-957-8551
Calvin College Internet: Stew@Legacy.Calvin.edu
Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546
Date: Wed, 15 Jun 1994 16:31:09 NDT
From: UHWM006@VAX.RHBNC.AC.UK
Subject: Augustine and music
Dept of Music
Royal Holloway College (University of London)
g.chew@vax.rhbnc.ac.uk
Date: Thu, 16 Jun 1994 17:44:21 NDT
From: megmclau@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu (Megan McLaughlin)
Subject: Augustine on Prayer for the Dead
309 Gregory Hall, 810 S. Wright St., Urbana, IL 61801
Tel: 217-244-2084
Fax: 217-333-2297
Bitnet: megmclau@uiucvmd
Internet: megmclau@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu
Date: Thu, 16 Jun 1994 21:00:49 NDT
From: "James O'Donnell"
Subject: Augustine quote
Dr. O'Donnell:
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 1994 00:16:13 NDT
From: dlusthau@abacus.bates.edu (Dan Lusthaus)
Subject: Re: Augustine quote
>everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere."
dlusthau@abacus.bates.edu
Bates College
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 1994 09:57:31 NDT
From: FASSLER@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU
Subject: Re: Augustine quote
Music Department
Brandeis University (Until July 30, then at the Yale Institute of
Sacred Music)
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 1994 10:19:38 NDT
From: FASSLER@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU
Subject: Re: Augustine and music
Music Dept., Brandeis University (through July 30)
Yale Institute of Sacred Music (after August 1)
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 1994 10:49:30 NDT
From: "James O'Donnell"
Subject: an Augustinian resource
(I got that on a title search, but you might also need to find it under
the series.)
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 1994 11:11:52 NDT
From: BSLEE@beattie.uct.ac.za
Subject: Re: Elucidarium
Syr, euery prest that hath cure ...
Be he neuer so cursed a wrecche,
Nat open, but alle preve, [accursed, but not known to be]
He may asoyle by the office of the cherche
And Criste hym soyleth [absolves] and nat he.
This is the obverse of what Augustine says in DCD 21.25, on the non-
efficacy of the sacraments for heretics and backsliders, and probably
in tune with it, since in both case it's the faith of the recipients,
not of the administrators, that counts.
He was an esy man to yeve penaunce,
Ther as he wiste to have a good pitaunce ...
For thogh a wydwe hadde noght a sho [widow hadn't a shoe]
So pleasaunt was his "In principio"
Yet wolde he have a ferthyng, er he wente.
BSLEE@Beattie.uct.ac.za
Department of English
University of Cape Town
Rondebosch, 7700
South Africa
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 1994 12:06:17 NDT
From: "James O'Donnell"
Subject: centre and circumference (fwd)
According to John C. Cavadini:
From: "John C. Cavadini"
To: jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
Subject: centre and circumference
University of Notre Dame
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 1994 16:02:52 NDT
From: "Juris G. Lidaka"
Subject: Re: centre and circumference (fwd)
Lidaka@wvsvax.wvnet.edu
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 1994 16:26:36 NDT
From: "James O'Donnell"
Subject: another resource
Clavis Patristica Pseudepigraphorum Medii Aevi, ed. J. Machielsen;
I: Opera homiletica, 2 vols., Brepols, 1990 (in serie Corpus
Christianorum, Series Latina): on sale now from Brepols for
c. $242 USA
This is the beginnings of a catalogue of works falsely attributed to the
church fathers by the Latin Middle Ages; this two volume set deals only
with sermons (more volumes to follow), and the largest single entry
(almost a whole volume) is devoted to sermons of "Augustine".
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 1994 17:32:12 NDT
From: "James O'Donnell"
Subject: and another *wonderful* resource
Here's the Brepols catalogue entry.
Biblia latina cum Glossa Ordinaria. Anastatical reproduction
of the first printed edition: Strassburg, c. 1480 (Adolph Rusch?)
With an introduction by M.T. Gibson and K. Froehlich / 4 vol.
(1992) / xxxii - 2415 p. (bound) 40,000 BEF
that's about $1200 for four folio volumes
They also sell in paper covers the Introduction only for 950 BEF, which
is a fair lot for 38 pages even of folio text, but I think it's worth it
for libraries that can't afford the big thing.
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 1994 18:02:04 NDT
From: Norman Hinton
Subject: Re: centre and circumference (fwd)
> Jim, Pascal has the passage "Nature is an infinite sphere whose centre is
> everywhere and circumference nowhere" (Pensees #199 in Penguin tr.); and in
> Bonaventure *Itinerarium* c. 5 or 6 (I don't have it on my desk) there is a
> similar passage only the subject is Being Itself (its Pascal who
> brilliantly changes the subject to Nature). I bet there *is* a
> pseudo-Augustine somewhere who says this with the subject God. But one
> would have to start tracing the sources of these later passages. -J.
>
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 1994 18:19:23 NDT
From: "Juris G. Lidaka"
Subject: God as intellectual circle, etc.
PO Box 1000 / Institute, WV / 25112-1000
Internet: Lidaka@WVSVAX.WVNET.EDU
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 1994 18:55:27 NDT
From: "Ronald Fisher (GD 1995)"
Subject: Re: Augustine quote
> >everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere." Would you know if this is a
>
> This is from Pascal's Pensees, not Augustine, though Nicolas of Cusa said
> similar things.
If we're actually after this thing, it's also in Alan of Lille's Sermon
on the intelligible sphere. See M-T d'Alverny's (wonderful) _Alain
de Lille: Textes inedits_, p.297: "Deus est spera intelligibilis cuius
centrum ubique, circumferentia nusquam." She cites also the Regulae
theologiae, 7 (PL 210, 627).
(2) In Bernard? If so, does _he_ attribute it to Augustine?
(3) If we suppose that the answer to both is negative, how and where did
it come about that this phrase was attributed to Augustine? Strangely,
none of the footnote references in the editions (of Bonaventure) I
consulted questioned the attribution, including one in which the
Augustinian reference was
quoted in full, rendering evident the simple fact that the phrase,
"modus sine modo," is not there. I have been unable to locate this phrase
in the Lombard (the obvious place to start), or even a deployment of the
Augustinian pseudo-reference.
gareth@minerva.cis.yale.edu
Date: Sat, 18 Jun 1994 22:52:18 NDT
From: rstein@purvid.purchase.edu (Robert Stein)
Subject: Re: centre and circumference (fwd)
rstein@purvid.purchase.edu
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 1994 16:46:49 NDT
From: "James O'Donnell"
Subject: Aug. among the Greeks
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 1994 22:25:18 NDT
From: RICHARD OLIVER
Subject: Augustine and Benedict
Citations and Allusions to Augustine
in the Rule of Saint Benedict.
"While the Rule of Benedict (RB) remains primarily in the
tradition of Egypt as mediated by Cassian and the Rule of the
Master, the second most important influence upon it is that of
Augustine, whose humaneness and concern for fraternal
relationships have contributed to the RB some of its best known
and most admired qualities. It has rightly been said that 'with
the Rule of Augustine western monasticism entered upon the road
which led to Benedict' [R. Lorenz, "Die Anfaenge des abendlaendischen
Moenchtums im 4. Jahrhundert" ZKG 77 (1966)]." For a
discussion of monasticism in Roman Africa from which the above
quotations were taken see RB 1980, pp. 59-64.
Augustine, De civitate Dei: PL 41.13; CCL 47 & 48.
11,28 RB Prol.2
13,20 71.1
14,6 64.11
19,19 64.8
22,2 2.33
Augustine, Confessiones: PL 32:659; CSEL 33,1.
8,12,28 RB Prol.28
Augustine, De consensu Evangelistarum: PL 34.1041; CSEL 43.
1,13 RB 5.14
Augustine, Contra Cresconium: PL 43:445; CSEL 52.
4,37 RB 1.9
Augustine, Contra epistulam Parmeniani: PL 43.33; CSEL 51.
2,13,31 RB 1.9
Augustine, Contra Faustum Manichaeum: PL 42.207; CSEL 25,1.
25,56 RB 64.8
Augustine, Ennarrationes in psalmos: PL 36.67; CCL 38-40.
25,11 RB 4.42-43
29,9 72.11
33,9 Prol.9-18
33,16-18 Prol.9-18
103,1,19 31.7
118,4,1 64.12
132,3 1.10-11
136,21 Prol.28
143,9 Prol.9-18
Augustine, Epistulae: PL 33.61; PLS 2,359; CSEL 34,44,57,58.
22,6 RB 31.16
48,3 19.7
130,20 20.3-4
157,40 4.27
211,5 33.6; 34.1; 55.20
*211,7 19.7; *52.1-3
211,9 34.3-4
*211,11 28.8; 46.3-4; *54.1; 64.11
*211,12 *54.2-3
*211,13 *35.13
*211,15 2.34; 64.7; *64.15
Augustine, In Ioannis epistulam ad Parthos, tractatus x: PL 35.1977.
43,1 RB 4.42-43
Augustine, De mendacio: PL 40.487; CSEL 41.
15,28 RB 4.27
Augustine, De moribus Ecclesiae catholicae et de moribus
Manichaeorum: PL 32.1309.
1,67 RB 21.1
1,70 48.8
Augustine, De natura et gratia: PL 44.247; CSEL 60.
20,22 RB Prol.2
Augustine, De opere monachorum: PL 40.547; CSEL 51.
36 RB 1.10-11
37 48.1
Augustine, Quaestiones in Heptateuchum: PL 34.547; CSEL 28,2,3; CCL 33.
3,31 RB 2.30
Augustine, Sermones: PL 38-39; PLS 2.742.
*49,5 RB *64.11
56,13 13.13
96,2 4.42-43
113,6 2.33
211,5 6.6
*340,1 *64.8
Augustine, Sermones codicis Guelferbytani: PLS 2.593.
22,5 RB 4.42-43
Pseudo-Augustine, De ordine monasterii: PL 32.1449; 66.995.
1 RB 41
2 42.2-6; 42.3-8
4 33.3
5 5.17-19
8 51.1; 57.4-7
10 21.5; 45.3; 73.8
-------------------------------------------------------------
RB 1980 includes other patristic and ancient works besides Augustine in
its two indexes: "Patristic and Ancient Works to RB" and "RB to Patristic
and Ancient Works." These indexes appear on pages 594-600 and 600-607.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Oliver, OSB roliver@csbsju.edu
St. John's Abbey & University
Collegeville, MN 56321-2015 http://www.csbsju.edu/index.html
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 1994 22:38:51 NDT
From: "James O'Donnell"
Subject: inclusive vs. exclusive Quellenforschung
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 1994 11:25:14 NDT
From: "James O'Donnell"
Subject: The limits of Quellenforschung
According to Mark Vessey:
Date: Mon, 20 Jun 94 22:25:34 PDT
To: jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
From: mvessey@unixg.ubc.ca (Mark Vessey)
The inner and outer limits of Quellenforschung. Nicely put. Before she
posted her piece on "Augustinian poetics" I told my friend and virtual
colleague Sheila Delany that I didn't believe there was such a thing. (We
had been arguing about something else and I was feeling spiteful.) Donne
scholars, inter alios, often claim that's what *their* man professed and
I've begun to make a sport of reducing Donne's Augustinian erudition to
what he could have fallen over in (e.g.) Nicholas of Lyra. But it's
probably true, as you say, that correct estimates in the matter of
"influence" are only possible on the basis of prior divergent
approximations. On reflection, I seem to be confusing the issue you raise
with another one, namely the question of what we mean by the attribution
"Augustinian" when we don't strictly mean *something attributable to
Augustine as the supposed producer of his own literary and doctrinal
oeuvre*. This, I take it, is as an aspect of the problematics of what
Michel Foucault called the "author function". Presumably the reason we
can't satisfy ourselves as students of "the influence of Augustine" in the
same way that we might satisfy ourselves as students, say, of the influence
of Lucretius, or even of Dante, is that Augustine was (with Marx and Freud)
one of those distinguished by F. as "founders of discourse". In other
words, his presence as author(-ity) is not institutionally confined in the
way that Lucretius' or Dante's is... But those are my words, not
Foucault's, because he only raised the issue, without ever dealing with it.
(I'm struck, looking again now at the introduction to vol. 2 of *The
History of Sexuality*, by the literary-theoretical unsophistication of F.'s
approach to his chosen "prescriptive texts". Could he, I wonder, ever have
completed a study of the "arts of the self", based largely on ancient Greek
and Latin "literary" sources, without confronting squarely the problem of
*authorial self-fashioning*, a problem already planted in the same
introduction in a footnote reference to the work of his Berkeley colleague
Stephen Greenblatt, *Renaissance Self-Fashioning* - which, to complete the
circuit, begins with a quotation from Augustine, Sermon 169, as cited by
Peter Brown.)
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 1994 12:52:36 NDT
From: John McLaughlin
Subject: Re: The limits of Quellenforschung
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 1994 16:42:23 NDT
From: "James O'Donnell"
Subject: two references
jo'd
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 1994 12:41:02 NDT
From: "James O'Donnell"
Subject: Aug. sermons
According to M. Goodich:
The three tools of most usefulness here would be (1) the CETEDOC CD of
Christian Latin texts, including all of Aug.'s works, sermons mainly from
the Patrologia Latin edition; (2) the Corpus Christianorum Clavis
Pseudoepigraphorum I mentioned a few messages ago; (3) P. Verbraken,
*Etudes critiques sur les sermons authentiques de saint Augustin* (The
Hague/Steenbrugge, 1976), which is the best compendium of information
about scholarly views of authenticity, date, etc., of A.'s own sermons.
At pp. 218-220, Verbraken lists the sermons that appear in the collection
"de verbis domini" which he describes as "la collection la plus vaste et,
de loin, la plus repandue" of A.'s sermons in the middle ages; he lists
dozens of manuscripts. Of the 65 sermons "de verbis domini" in that
collection, Verbraken identifies 9 as pseudo-Augustinian and 4 as
belonging to parts of A.'s corpus that moderns edit as separate works,
e.g., the tractates in John and in one case the de diversis
quaestionibus.
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 94 17:31:05 IST
From: "M. Goodich"
Subject: Re: administrivia correction
I have recently been editing a late thirteenth century Benedictine text
which cites Augustine's De verbis Domini with great frequency. Making
use of the tables provided in MPL's edition of the sermons of Augustine,I
have been attempting to locate these citations with little success. Although
the sermon number appears to be correct, the cited passages are lacking.
Can anyone suggest some further material concerning these sermons, which
would help me identify the cited passages.
Many thanks.
DEPARTMENT OF GENERAL HISTORY
UNIVERSITY OF HAIFA
MOUNT CARMEL
HAIFA, ISRAEL 31999 FAX: 972-4-240128
TEL: 972-4-246091 (HOME) 972-4-240456 (OFFICE)
E-MAIL: RHHG742@HAIFAUVM (BITNET) RHHG742@UVM.HAIFA.AC.IL (INTERNET)
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 1994 10:17:09 NDT
From: W Schipper
Subject: Two questions
W. Schipper Email: schipper@morgan.ucs.mun.ca
Department of English, Tel: 709-737-4406
Memorial University Fax: 709-737-4000
St John's, Nfld. A1C 5S7
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 1994 23:42:20 NDT
From: MYMEG@jazz.ucc.uno.edu
Subject: Augustine and Anglo-Saxon England: Query
Department of English
University of New Orleans
New Orleans LA 70148
mymeg@uno.edu
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 1994 00:13:42 NDT
From: CLAUSSENM@ALM.ADMIN.USFCA.EDU
Subject: RE: Augustine and Anglo-Saxon England: Query
History, University of San Francisco
Date: Thu, 30 Jun 1994 04:37:08 NDT
From: PFERRIBY@DREW.DREW.EDU
Subject: Aug. & A/S England: Beginnings
Ph.D. student, Dept. of Church History
Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton NJ 08542 USA
pferriby@drew.drew.edu
Date: Thu, 30 Jun 1994 04:48:06 NDT
From: Mark Murphy
Subject: Re: Augustine quote
University of Hawaii at Manoa
murphy@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu
Date: Mon, 4 Jul 1994 18:38:38 NDT
From: "James O'Donnell"
Subject: Augustine discussion (fwd)
ceverest@kingsu.ab.ca wrote:
To: "James O'Donnell"
Date: Mon, 4 Jul 1994 14:26:53 -0700
Subject: Augustine discussion
ceverest@KingsU.ab.ca
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 1994 00:22:31 NDT
From: John Wickstrom
Subject: Re: Augustine discussion (fwd)
>
> I pass this on to the interscripta discussion, hoping to find a likely
> answer here. I call to mind nothing immediately in Augustine, though I
> do recall that Cassiodorus' *de anima* speaks of women's virtue as all
> the more remarkable because women are women. Is there such in Aug.? Is
> there such later? Can we blame him for this?
>
> jo'd
>
> ceverest@kingsu.ab.ca wrote:
> To: "James O'Donnell"
The issue is discussed in somewhat strident but effective fashion by
Rosemary Reuther in "Misogyny and Virginal Feminism in the Fathers" in her
_Religion and Sexism_. For a more nuanced approach, see Chapter 19,
"Sexualityand Society: Augustine, in Peter Brown, _The Body and society_.
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 1994 11:01:05 NDT
From: "Louis I. Hamilton"
Subject: Re: Augustine and the virtue of women
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 1994 18:28:51 NDT
From: cdt@vax.ox.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Augustine discussion (fwd)
Worcester College
Oxford
cdt@vax.ox.ac.uk
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 1994 19:29:57 NDT
From: RICHARD
Subject: Re: Ruether, Rosemary Radford.
Source: PALS via telnet pals.msus.edu.
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 1994 19:52:21 NDT
From: megmclau@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu (Megan McLaughlin)
Subject: Ruether Ref.
Rosemary Ruether, ed., Religion and Sexism (New York: Simon And Schuster,
1974).
Ruether's stridency, of course, is in the eye of the beholder.
309 Gregory Hall, 810 S. Wright St., Urbana, IL 61801
Tel: 217-244-2084 Fax: 217-333-2297
Bitnet: megmclau@uiucvmd Internet: megmclau@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu
Date: Wed, 6 Jul 1994 17:22:20 NDT
From: FITZGERAL@UCIS.VILL.EDU
Subject: Re: Ruether, Rosemary Radford.
In relation to women and public office, see too Kari Borresen, "The
Ordination of Women: to nurture tradition by continuing inculturation"
Studia Theologica 46 (1992) 3-13. A good bibliography can by found in
the notes of her article in Augustinian Studies "Patristic `Feminism':
The Case of Augustine" (v. 25 1994 pp. 139-152).
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 1994 17:45:20 NDT
From: "James O'Donnell"
Subject: loose ends
But it is impossible to pursue this kind of study in any a priori
fashion. I will repeat what I said at the outset, that the bland
assumption that the middle ages were heavily influenced by Augustine has
not been to any significant extent matched by systematic investigation of
just what that means at particular places and times. We are probably
past the age when one wizard could helicopter through the centuries
collecting the scattered reflections and weaving them into one
light-show, and so the likeliest expectation is for the task of such
influence-hunting to devolve upon those who dwell in the later periods
themselves: John Baldwin's *Language of Sex* book seems to me to take up
this responsibility with verve.
In short, this discussion cannot possibly be over, but it will
move on in various ways. Here's a last bibliographical note of interest,
for an eighteenth-century Augustine:
Classics, U. of Penn
jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 1994 11:20:17 NDT
From: FITZGERAL@UCIS.VILL.EDU
Subject: RE: loose ends
Internet: "fitzgeral@ucis.vill.edu"
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 1994 14:14:24 NDT
From: brown@leland.stanford.edu (George Hardin Brown)
Subject: RE: loose ends
Jim O'Donnell encouraged me to submit a notice on Bede's use of Augustine
on Interscripta, but the discussion period has come to a close before
before I've had time to respond (I'm preparing a manuscript for press, due
August 1).
So, I'm busy and even overcommitted, but I recognize the great worth of
your project. If I can be of some help on Augustine's influence in the
8th-9th c., let me know. This offer is beyond a mere velleity on my part,
but I'm not sure how I could fit in with your larger project.
Department of English, Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2087
office: 415 723-3014 fax: 415 725-0755 home: 415 852-1231
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 1994 17:31:54 NDT
From: CLAUSSENM@ALM.ADMIN.USFCA.EDU
Subject: RE: loose ends
University of San Francisco
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 1994 18:43:29 NDT
From: "Louis I. Hamilton"
Subject: Re: The *other* biography
There, Augustine spoke of the Heavenly City under siege,
"She must bear in mind that among these enemies are hidden her
future citizens; and when confronted with them she must not think it a
fruitless task to bear with their hostility until she finds them
confessing the faith." (*Civ dei*, I, 35, 3-5)
In this way, the Vandals become the last in a long series of heretics, and
enemies of the Catholic Church to be converted. Augustine's legacy to the
African Church was not a miraculous virtue, or a charismatic force which was
now lost to them upon his death. Such a triumphalistic *Vita* could have had
little appeal when confronted with the harsh reality of Vandal occupation.
Rather, it was the very practiceable way of living and a corpus of writings
that had been the original source of peace and unity within the African
Church. He had left a legacy of monastic houses living in the manner of the
Apostles. This the African clerics could cling to in the hope of once again
reuniting the "Church of God in the unity of brotherly peace."
Louis
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 1994 19:23:50 NDT
From: "James O'Donnell"
Subject: footnote re cult
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