Saint Augustin by Louis Bertrand (page 4)

Four years earlier, about the same time of year, he had made the same voyage, coming the opposite way. He had a calm crossing; hardly could one notice the movement of the ship. It is the season of smooth seas in the Mediterranean. Never is it more etherial than in these summer months. The vague blue sky is confused with the bleached sea, spread out in a large sheet without creases–liquid and flexible silk, swept by quivering amber glow and orange saffron when the sun falls. No distinct shape, only strange suffusions of soft light, a pearl-like haze, the wistful blue reaching away indefinably.

At Carthage, Augustin had grown used to the magnificence of this pageantry of the sea. Now, the sea had the same appeased and gleaming face he had seen four years sooner. But how much his soul had since been changed! Instead of the tumult and falsehood which rent his heart and filled it with darkness, the serene light of Truth, and deeper than the sea’s peace, the great appeasement of Grace. Augustin dreamed. Far off the AEolian isles were gloomed in the impending shadows, the smoky crater of Stromboli was no more than a black point circled by the double blue of waves and sky. So the remembrance of his passions, of all that earlier life, sank under the triumphant uprising of heavenly peace. He believed that this blissful state was going to continue and fill all the hours of his new life, and he knew of nothing so sweet….

This time, again, he was mistaken about himself. Upon the thin plank of the boat which carried him, he did not feel the force of the immense element, asleep now under his feet, but quick to be unchained at the first gust of wind; and he did not feel either the overflowing energy swelling his heart renewed by Grace–an energy which was going to set in motion one of the most complete and strenuous existences, one of the richest in thought, charity, and works which have enlightened history. Thinking only of the cloister, amidst the friends who surrounded him, no doubt he repeated the words of the Psalm: “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.” He pressed the hands of Alypius and Evodius, and tears came to his eyes.

The sun was gone. All the cold waste of waters, forsaken by the gleam, blurred gradually in vague anguish beneath the fall of night.

* * * * *

After skirting the Sicilian coasts, they arrived at last at Carthage. Augustin did not linger there; he was eager to see Thagaste once more, and to retire finally from the world. Favourable omens drew him to the place, and seemed to hearten him in his resolution. A dream had foretold his return to his former pupil, Elogius, the rhetorician. He was present, too, at the miraculous cure of a Carthage lawyer, Innocentius, in whose house he dwelt with his friends.

Accordingly, he left for Thagaste as soon as he could. There he made himself popular at once by giving to the poor, as the Gospel prescribed, what little remained of his father’s heritage. But he does not make clear enough what this voluntary privation exactly meant. He speaks of a house and some little meadows–_paucis agellulis_–that he sequestrated. Still, he did not cease to live in the house all the time he was at Thagaste. The probability is that he did sell the few acres of land he still owned and bestowed the product of the sale on the poor. As to the house, he must have made it over with the outbuildings to the Catholic body of his native town, on condition of keeping the usufruct and of receiving for himself and his brethren the necessities of life. At this period many pious persons acted in this way when they gave their property to the Church. Church goods being unseizable, and exempt from taxation, this was a roundabout way of getting the better of fiscal extortion, whether in the shape of arbitrary confiscations, or eviction by force of arms. In any case, such souls as were tired of the world and longing for repose, found in these bequests an heroic method of saving themselves the trouble of looking after a fortune or a landed estate. When these fortunes and lands were extensive, the generous donors felt, we are told, an actual relief in getting rid of them.

This financial question settled, Augustin took up the task of turning the house into a monastery, like those he had seen at Rome and Milan. His son Adeodatus, his friends Alypius and Evodius, Severus, who became Bishop of Milevia, shared his solitude. But it is certain that he had other solitaries with him whom he alludes to in his letters. Their rule was as yet a little easy, no doubt. The brothers of Thagaste were not confined in a cloister. They were simply obliged to fasts, to a special diet, to prayers and meditations in common.

In this half-rustic retreat (the monastery was situated at the gates of the town) Augustin was happy: he had at last realized the project he had had so long at heart. To enter into himself, pray, above all, to study the Scripture, to fathom even its most obscure places, to comment it with the fervour and piety which the African of all times has brought to _what is written down_–it seemed to him that he had enough there to fill all the minutes of his life. But no man can teach, lecture, discuss, write, during twenty years, in vain. However much Augustin might be converted, he remembered the school at Thagaste, just as he did at Cassicium. Still, it was necessary to finish with this sort of thing once for all. The new monk made what may be called his will as a professor.

He finished, at this time, or revised his school treatises, which he had begun at Milan, comprising all the liberal arts–grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, philosophy, music. Of all these books he only finished the first, the treatise on grammar. The others were only summaries, and are now lost. On the other hand, we have still the six books on music, likewise begun at Milan, which he finished, almost as an amusement, at Thagaste. They are dialogues between himself and his pupil, the poet Licentius, upon metre and scansion. But we know from himself that he intended to make this book longer, and to write a second part upon melody, that is to say, music, properly so called. He never found the time: “Once,” he says, “the burthen of ecclesiastical affairs was placed on my shoulders, _all these pleasant things_ slipped from my hands.”

Thus, the monk Augustin only rests from prayer and meditation to study music and poetry. He has thought it necessary to excuse himself. “In all that,” says he, “I had but one purpose. For, as I did not wish to pluck away too suddenly either young men, or those of another age, on whom God had bestowed good wits, from ideas of the senses and carnal literature, _things it is very hard for them not to be attached to_, I have tried by reasoning lessons to turn them little by little, and by the love of unchanging truth, to attach them to God, sole master of all things…. He who reads these books will see that if I have touched upon the poets and grammarians, ’twas more by the exigency of the journey than by any desire to settle among them…. Such is the life I have chosen to walk with the feeble, not being very strong myself, rather than to hurl myself out on the void with wings still half-fledged….”

Here again, how human all that is, and wise–yes, and modest too. Augustin has no whit of the fanatic about him. No straighter conscience than his, or even more persistent in uprooting error. But he knows what man is, that life here below is a voyage among other men weak as himself, and he fits in with the needs of the voyage. Oh, yes, no doubt, for the Christian who has arrived at supreme renunciation–what is poetry, what is knowledge, “what is everything that is not eternal?” But this carnal literature and science are so many steps of a height proportionate to our feebleness, to lead us imperceptibly to the conceptual world. As a prudent guide of souls, Augustin did not wish to make the ascent too rapidly. As for music, he has still more indulgence for that than for any of the other arts, for “it is by sounds that we best perceive the power of numbers in every variety of movement, and their study thus leads us gradually to the closest and highest secrets of truth, and discovers to those who love and seek it the divine Wisdom and Providence in all things….” He is always coming back to it–to this music he loves so much; he comes back to it in spite of himself. Later, in great severity, he will reproach himself for the pleasure he takes in the liturgical chants, but nevertheless the old instinct will remain. He was born a musician. He will remain one to his last gasp.

If he did not break completely with profane art and letters at this present moment of his life, his chief reasons were of a practical order. Still another object may be discerned in these educational treatises–namely, to prove to the pagans that one may be a Christian and yet not be a barbarian and ignorant. Augustin’s position in front of his adversaries is very strong indeed. None of them can attempt to cope with him either in breadth of knowledge, or in happy versatility, or in plenitude of intellectual gifts. He had the entire heritage of the ancient world between his hands. Well might he say to the pagans: “What you admire in your orators and philosophers, I have made my own. Behold it! On my lips recognize the accent of your orators…. Well, all that, which you deem so high, I despise. The knowledge of this world is nothing without the wisdom of Christ.”

Of course, Augustin has paid the price of this all-round knowledge–too far-reaching, perhaps, at certain points. He has often too much paraded his knowledge, his dialectic and oratorical talents. What matters that, if even in this excess he aims solely at the welfare of souls–to edify them and set them aglow with the fire of his charity? At Thagaste, he disputes with his brethren, with his son Adeodatus. He is always the master–he knows it; but what humility he puts into this dangerous part! The conclusion of his book, _The Master_, which he wrote then, is that all the words of him who teaches are useless, if the hidden Master reveal not the truth to him who listens.

So, under his ungainly monk’s habit, he continues his profession of rhetorician. He has come to Thagaste with the intention of retiring from the world and living in God; and here he is disputing, lecturing, writing more than ever. The world pursues him and occupies him even in his retreat. He says to himself that down there at Rome, at Carthage, at Hippo, there are men speaking in the forums or in the basilicas, whispering in secret meetings, seducing poor souls defenceless against error. These impostors must be immediately unmasked, confounded, reduced to silence. With all his heart Augustin throws himself into this work at which he excels. Above all, he attacks his old friends the Manichees…. He wrote many tracts against them. From the animosity he put into these, may be judged to what extent Manicheeism filled his thoughts, and also the progress of the sect in Africa.

This campaign was even the cause of a complete change in his way of writing. With the object of reaching the plainest sort of people, he began to employ the popular language, not recoiling before a solecism, when the solecism appeared to him indispensable to explain his thought. This must have been a cruel mortification for him. In his very latest writings he made a point of shewing that no elegance of language was unknown to him. But his real originality is not in that. When he writes the fine style, his period is heavy, entangled, often obscure. On the other hand, nothing is more lively, clear and coloured, and, as we say to-day, more direct, than the familiar language of his sermons and certain of his treatises. This language he has really created. He wanted to clarify, comment, give details, and he felt how awkward classical Latin is to decompose ideas and render shades. And so, in a popular Latin, already very close to the Romance languages, he has thrown out the plan of analytical prose, the instrument of thought of the modern West.

Not only did he battle against the heretics, but his restless friendship continually scaled the walls of his cell to fly to the absent ones dear to his heart. He feels that he must expand to his friends, and make them sharers in his meditations: this nervous man, in poor health, spends a part of his nights meditating. The argument he has hit upon in last night’s insomnia–his friends must be told that! He heaps his letters on them. He writes to Nebridius, to Romanianus, to Paulinus of Nola; to people unknown and celebrated, in Africa, Italy, Spain, and Palestine. A time will come when his letters will be real encyclicals, read throughout Christendom. He writes so much that he is often short of paper. He has not tablets enough to put down his notes. He asks Romanianus to give him some. His beautiful tablets, the ivory ones, are used up; he has used the last one for a ceremonial letter, and he asks his friend’s pardon for writing to him on a wretched bit of vellum.

Besides all that, he interests himself in the affairs of his fellow-townsmen. Augustin is a personage at Thagaste. The good folk of the free-town are well aware that he is eloquent, that he has a far-reaching acquaintance, and that he has great influence in high quarters. They ask for his protection and his interference. It is even possible that they obliged him to defend them in the courts. They were proud of their Augustin. And as they were afraid that some neighbouring town might steal away their great man, they kept a guard round his house. They prevented him from shewing himself too much in the neighbourhood. Augustin himself agreed with this, and lived retired as far as he could, for he was afraid they would make him a bishop or priest in spite of himself. In those days that was a danger incurred by all Christians who were rich or had talent. The rich gave their goods to the poor when they took orders. The men of talent defended the interests of the community, or attracted opulent benefactors. And because of all these reasons, the needy or badly managed churches stalked as a prey the celebrated Augustin.

In spite of this supervision, this unremitting rush of business, the work of all kinds which he undertook, he experienced at Thagaste a peace which he was never to find again. One might say that he pauses and gathers together all his strength before the great exhausting labour of his apostolate. In this Numidian country, so verdant and cool, where a thousand memories of childhood encompassed him, where he was not able to take a step without encountering the ever-living image of his mother, he soared towards God with more confidence. He who sought in the things of sense ladder-rungs whereby to mount to spiritual realities, still turned kindly eyes on the natural scene. From the windows of his room he saw the forest pines rounding their heads, like little crystal goblets with stems slim and thin. His scarred chest breathed in deliriously the resinous breath of the fine trees. He listened like a musician to the orchestra of birds. The changing scenes of country life always attracted him. It is now that he wrote: “Tell me, does not the nightingale seem to you to modulate her voice delightfully? Is not her song, so harmonious, so suave, so well attuned to the season, the very voice of the spring?…”

IV

AUGUSTIN A PRIEST

This halt did not last long. Soon was going to begin for Augustin the time of tribulation, that of his struggles and apostolic journeys.

And first, he must mourn his son Adeodatus, that young man who seemed destined to such great things. It is indeed most probable that the young monk died at Thagaste during the three years that his father spent there. Augustin was deeply grieved; but, as in the case of his mother’s death, he mastered his sorrow by all the force of his Christian hope. No doubt he loved his son as much as he was proud of him. It will be remembered what words he used to speak of this youthful genius, whose precocity frightened him. Little by little his grief quietened down, and in its place came a mild resignation. Some years later he will write about Adeodatus: “Lord, early didst Thou cut off his life from this earth, but I remember him without a shadow of misgiving. My remembrance is not mixed with any fear for his boyhood, or the youth he was, or the man he would have been.” No fear! What a difference between this and the habitual feelings of the Jansenists, who believed themselves his disciples! While Augustin thinks of his son’s death with a calm and grave joy which he can scarce hide, those of Port Royal could only think in trembling of the judgment of God. Their faith did not much resemble the luminous and confident faith of Augustin. For him, salvation is the conquest of joy.

At Thagaste he lived in joy. Every morning in awaking before the forest pines, glistening with the dews of the morning, he might well say with a full heart: “My God, give me the grace to live here under the shades of Thy peace, while awaiting that of Thy Paradise.” But the Christians continued to watch him. It was to the interest of a number of people that this light should not be hid under a bushel. Perhaps a snare was deliberately laid for him. At any rate, he was imprudent enough to come out of his retreat and travel to Hippo. He thought he might be safe there, because, as the town had a bishop already, they would not have any excuse to get him consecrated in spite of himself.

An inhabitant of Hippo, a clerk of the Imperial Ministry of the Interior, begged his spiritual assistance. Doubts, he maintained, still delayed him on the way to an entire conversion. Augustin alone could help him to get clear of them. So Augustin, counting already on a new recruit for the Thagaste monastery, went over there at the request of this official.

Now, if there was a bishop at Hippo (a certain Valerius), priests were lacking. Furthermore, Valerius was getting on in years. Originally Greek, he knew Latin badly, and not a word of Punic–a great hindrance for him in his duties of judge, administrator, and catechist. The knowledge of the two languages was indispensable to an ecclesiastic in such a country, where the majority of the rural population spoke only the old Carthaginian idiom. All this proves to us that Catholicism was in bad shape in the diocese of Hippo. Not only was there a lack of priests, but the bishop was a foreigner, little familiar with African customs. There was a general demand for a native to take his place–one young, active, and well enough furnished with learning to hold his own against the heretics and the schismatics of the party of Donatus, and also sufficiently able to watch over the interests of the Church at Hippo, and above all, to make it prosperous. Let us not forget that at this time, in the eyes of a crowd of poor wretches, Christianity was first and foremost the religion which gave out bread. Even in those early days, the Church did its best to solve the eternal social question.

While Augustin was at Hippo, Valerius preached a sermon in the basilica in which, precisely, he deplored this lack of priests the community suffered from. Mingled with the congregation, Augustin listened, sure that he would be unrecognized. But the secret of his presence had leaked out. People pointed to him while the bishop was preaching. The next thing was that some furious enthusiasts seized hold of him and dragged him to the foot of the episcopal chair, yelling:

“Augustin a priest! Augustin a priest!”

Such were the democratic ways of the Church in those days. The inconveniences are plain enough. What is certain is, that if Augustin had resisted, he might have lost his life, and that the bishop would have provoked a riot in refusing him the priesthood. In Africa, religious passions are not to be trifled with, especially when they are exasperated by questions of profit or politics. In his heart, the bishop was delighted with this brutal capture which gained him the distinction of such a well-known fellow-worker. There and then he ordained the Thagaste monk. And so, as Augustin’s pupil, Possidius, the future Bishop of Guelma, puts it, “This shining lamp, which sought the darkness of solitude, was placed upon the lamp-stand…” Augustin, who saw the finger of God in this adventure, submitted to the popular will. Nevertheless, he was in despair, and he wept at the change they were forcing on him. Then, some of those present, mistaking the significance of his tears, said to console him:

“Yes, you are right. The priesthood is not good enough for your merits. But you may be certain that you will be our bishop.”

Augustin well knew all that the crowd meant by that, and what it expected of its bishop. He who only thought of leaving the world, grew frightened at the practical cares he would have to take over. And the spiritual side of his jurisdiction frightened him no less. To speak of God! Proclaim the word of God! He deemed himself unworthy of so high a privilege. He was so ill-prepared! To remedy this fault of preparation, as well as he could, he desired that he might be given a little leisure till the following Easter. In a letter addressed to Valerius, and no doubt intended to be made public, he humbly set forth the reasons why he asked for delay. They were so apposite and so creditable, that very likely the bishop yielded. The new priest received permission to retire to a country house near Hippo. His flock, who did not feel at all sure of their shepherd, would not have let him go too far off.

He took up his duties as soon as possible. Little by little he became, to all intents, the coadjutor of the bishop, who charged him with the preaching and the baptism of catechumens. These were the two most important among the episcopal prerogatives. The bishops made a point of doing these things themselves. Certain colleagues of Valerius even grew scandalized that he should allow a simple priest to preach before him in his own church. But soon other bishops, struck by the advantages of this innovation, followed the example of Valerius, and allowed their clerks to preach even in their presence. The priest of Hippo did not lose his head among so many honours. He felt chiefly the perils of them, and he regarded them as a trial sent by God. “I have been forced into this,” he said, “doubtless in punishment of my sins; for from what other motive can I think that the second place at the helm should be given to me–to me who do not even know how to hold an oar….”

Meanwhile, he had not relinquished his purpose of monastic life. Though a priest, he meant to remain a monk. It was heart-breaking for him to be obliged to leave his monastery at Thagaste. He spoke of his regret to Valerius, who, perceiving the usefulness of a convent as a seminary for future priests, gave him an orchard belonging to the church of Hippo, that he might found a new community there. So was established the monastery which was going to supply a great number of clerks and bishops to all the African provinces.

Among the ruins of Hippo, that old Roman and Phoenician city, they search for the place where Augustin’s monastery stood, without much hope of ever finding it. Some have thought to locate it upon that hill where the water brought from the near mountains by an aqueduct used to pour into immense reservoirs, and where to-day rises a new basilica which attracts all eyes out at sea. Behind the basilica is a convent where the Little Sisters of the Poor lodge about a hundred old people. So is maintained among the African Mussulmans the remembrance of the grand Christian _marabout_. One might possibly wish to see there a building more in the pure and quiet taste of antiquity. But after all, the piety of the intention is enough. This hospital serves admirably to call up the memory of the illustrious bishop who was charity itself. As for the basilica, Africa has done all she can to make it worthy of him. She has given her most precious marbles, and one of her fairest landscapes as a frame.

It is chiefly in the evening, in the closing dusk, that this landscape reveals all its special charm and its finer values. The roseate glow of the setting sun throws into sharp relief the black profile of the mountains, which command the Seybouse valley. Under the mustering shadows, the pallid river winds slowly to the sea. The gulf, stretching limitless, shines like a slab of salt strangely bespangled. In this atmosphere without mists, the sharp outlines of the coast, the dense movelessness of the aspect, has an indescribable effect. It is like a hitherto unknown and virginal revelation of the earth. Then the stars bloom out, with a flame, an hallucinating palpability. Charles’s Wain, burning low on the gorges of the Edough, seems like a golden waggon rolling through the fields of Heaven. A deep peace settles upon farmland and meadow country, only broken by a watch-dog’s bark now and then….

But it matters not which spot is chosen in the surroundings of Hippo to place Augustin’s monastery, the view will be equally beautiful. From all parts of the plain, mounded by heaps of ruins, the sea can be seen–a wide bay circled in soft bland curves, like at Naples. All around, an arena of mountains–the green ravines of the Edough and its wooded slopes. Along the surbased roads rise the great sonorous pines, and through them wanders the aeolian complaint of the sea-winds. Blue of the sea, blue of the sky, noble foliage of Italy’s ancient groves–it is one of Lamartine’s landscapes under a more burning sun. The gaiety of the mornings there is a physical luxury for heart and eyes, when the new-born light laughs upon the painted cupolas of the houses, and dark blue veils float between the walls, glaring white, of the steep streets.

Among the olives and orange-trees of Hippo, Augustin must have seen happy days pass by, as at Thagaste. The rule he had given the convent, which he himself obeyed like any one else, was neither too slack nor too strict–in a word, such as it should be for men who have lived in the culture of letters and works of the mind. There was no affectation of excessive austerity. Augustin and his monks wore very simple clothes and shoes, but suitable for a bishop and his clerks. Like laymen, they wore the byrrhus, a garment with a hood, which seems very like the ancestor of the Arab burnous. To keep an even line between daintiness and negligence in costume, to have no exaggeration in anything, is what Augustin aimed at. The poet Rutilius Numatianus, who about that time was attacking the sordid and culture-hating monks with sombre irony, would have had a chance to admire a restraint and decorum in the Hippo monastery which recalled what was best in the manners of the ancient world. At table, a like moderation. Vegetables were generally provided, and sometimes meat when any one was sick, or guests arrived. They drank a little wine, contrary to the regulations of St. Jerome, who condemned wine as a drink for devils. When a monk infringed the rule, his share of the wine was stopped.

Through some remains of fastidious habits in Augustin, or perhaps because he had nothing else, the table service he used himself was silver. On the other hand, the pots and dishes were of earthenware, or wood, or common alabaster. Augustin, who was very temperate in eating and drinking, seemed at table to pay attention only to what was being read or talked about. He cared very little what he ate, provided the food was not a stimulant to lubricity. He used to say to those Christians who paraded a Pharisaic severity: “It is the pure heart which makes pure food.” Then, with his constant desire for charity, he prohibited all spiteful gossip in the conversation in the refectory. In those times of religious struggle, the clerics ferociously blackened each other’s characters. Augustin caused to have written on the walls a distich, which ran thus:

“He who takes pleasure in slandering the life of the absent, Should know he is unworthy to sit at this table.”

“One day,” says Possidius, “some of his intimate friends, even other bishops, having forgotten this sentence, he reproached them warmly, and very much perturbed, he cried out that he was going to remove those verses from the refectory, or rise from table and withdraw to his cell. I was present with many others when this happened.”

It was not only slanderous talk or interior dissensions which troubled Augustin’s peace of mind. He combined the duties of priest, of a head of a convent, and of an apostle. He had to preach, instruct the catechumens, battle against the disaffected. The town of Hippo was very unruly, full of heretics, schismatics, pagans. Those of the party of Donatus were triumphant, driving the Catholics from their churches and lands. When Augustin came into the country, Catholicism was very low. And then the ineradicable Manichees continued to recruit proselytes. He never stopped writing tracts, disputing against them, overwhelming them under the close logic of his arguments. At the request of the Donatists themselves, he had an argument with one of their priests, a certain Fortunatus, in the baths of Sossius at Hippo. He reduced this man to silence and to flight. Not in the least discouraged were the Manichees: they sent another priest.

If the enemies of the Church shewed themselves stubborn, Augustin’s own congregation were singularly turbulent, hard to manage. The weakness of old Valerius must have allowed a good many abuses to creep into the community. Ere long the priest of Hippo had a foretaste of the difficulties which awaited him as bishop.

Following the example of Ambrose, he undertook to abolish the custom of feasts in the basilicas and on the tombs of the martyrs. This was a survival of paganism, of which the festivals included gluttonous eating and orgies. At every solemnity, and they were frequent, the pagans ate in the courts and under the porticoes around the temples. In Africa, above all, these public repasts gave an opportunity for repugnant scenes of stuffing and drunkenness. As a rule, the African is very sober; but when he does let himself go he is terrible. This is quite easily seen to-day, in the great Muslem feasts, when the rich distribute broken bits of meat to the poor of their district. As soon as these people, used to drink water and to eat a little boiled rice, have tasted meat, or drunk only one cup of wine, there is no holding them: there are fights, stabbing matches, a general brawl in the hovels. Just picture this popular debauch in full blast in the cemeteries and the courts of the basilicas, and it will be understood why Augustin did his best to put an end to such scandals.

For this purpose, he joined hands first of all with his bishop, Valerius, and then with the Primate of Carthage, Aurelius, who shall be henceforth his firmest support in his struggle against the schismatics.

During Lent, the subject fitting in naturally with the season, he spoke against these pagan orgies; and this gave rise to a good deal of discontent, outside. Easter went by without trouble. But the day after the Ascension, the people of Hippo were used to celebrate what they called “the Joy-day,” by a traditional good feed and drink. The day before, which was the religious festival, Augustin intrepidly spoke against “the Joy-day.” They interrupted the preacher. Some of them shouted that as much was done at Rome in St. Peter’s basilica. At Carthage, they danced round the tomb of St. Cyprian. To the shrilling of flutes, amid the dull blows of the gongs, mimes gave themselves up to obscene contortions, while the spectators sang to the clapping of their hands…. Augustin knew all about that. He declared that these abominations might have been tolerated in former times so as not to discourage the pagans from becoming converts; but that henceforth the people, altogether Christian, should give them up. In the end, he spoke with such touching eloquence that the audience burst into tears. He believed he had won.

The next day it was all to do over again. Agitators had worked among the crowd to such an extent that a riot was feared. Nevertheless, Augustin, preceded by his bishop, entered the basilica at the hour of service. At the same moment the Donatists were banqueting in their church, which was quite near. Through the walls of their own church the Catholics heard the noise of this carouse. It required the coadjutor’s most urgent remonstrances to keep them from imitating their neighbours. The last murmurs died down, and the ceremony ended with the singing of the sacred hymns.

Augustin had carried the position. But the conflict had got to the point that he had to threaten the people with his resignation, and, as he wrote to Alypius, “to shake out on them the dust from his clothes.” All this promised very ill for the future. He who already considered the priesthood as a trial, saw with terror the bishopric drawing near.

THE FIFTH PART

THE APOSTLE OF PEACE AND OF CATHOLIC UNITY

Dic eis ista, ut plorent … et sic eos rape tecum ad Deum: quia de spiritu ejus haec dicis eis, si dicis ardens igne caritatis.

“Tell them this, O my soul, that they may weep … and thus carry them up with thyself to God; because by His Spirit thou sayest these things, if Thou speakest burning with the flame of charity.”

_Confessions_, IV, 12.

I

THE BISHOP OF HIPPO

In his monastery, Augustin was still spied upon by the neighbouring Churches, who wanted him for their bishop. They would capture him on the first opportunity. The old Valerius, fearing his priest would be taken unawares, urged him to hide himself. But he knew by the very case of Augustin, forced into the priesthood in spite of himself, that the greatest precautions are useless against those determined to gain their ends by any means. It would be safest to anticipate the danger.

He determined therefore to share the bishopric with Augustin, to have him consecrated during his own lifetime, and to indicate him as his successor. This was against the African usage, and what was more, against the Canons of the Council of Nice–though it is true that Valerius, like Augustin himself, was unaware of this latter point. But surely the rule could be waived in view of the exceptional merits of the priest of Hippo. The old bishop began by sounding Aurelius, the Primate of Carthage, and when he was satisfied as to the agreement and support of this high personage, he took the opportunity of a religious solemnity to make known his intentions to the people.

Some of the neighbouring bishops–Megalius, Bishop of Guelma and Primate of Numidia, among them–being gathered at Hippo to consecrate a new bishop, Valerius announced publicly in the basilica that he wished Augustin to be consecrated at the same ceremony. This had been the wish of his people for a long time. Really, in demanding this honour for his priest, the old bishop did no more than follow the wish of the public. Immediately, his words were received with cheers. The faithful with loud shouts demanded Augustin’s consecration.

Megalius alone objected. He even made himself the voice of certain calumnies, so as to have the candidate put aside as unworthy. There is nothing astonishing in such an attitude. This Megalius was old (he died a short time after), and, like all old men, he took the gloomiest view of innovations. Already, in the face of settled custom, had Valerius granted Augustin the right to preach in his presence. And see now, by a new sinking, he was attempting to place two bishops at once in the see of Hippo! Whatever this young priest’s talents might be, enough, had been done for him–a recent convert into the bargain, and, what was still more serious, a refugee from the Manicheans. What was not related about the abominations committed in the mysteries of those people? Just how far had Augustin dipped into them? They snarled against him everywhere at Hippo, and at Carthage too, where he had compromised himself by his excessive zeal; Catholics and Donatists alike gossiped. Megalius, a punctilious defender of discipline and the hierarchy, no doubt gathered up these malevolent rumours with pleasure. He used them as an excuse for making Augustin mark time, so to speak. Commonplace people always feel a secret delight in humiliating to the common rule those whom they can feel are beings of a different quality from themselves.

One of the slanders set abroad about Valerius’ priest, Megalius seems to have believed. He allowed himself to be persuaded that Augustin had given a philtre to a woman, one of his penitents, whom he wished to possess. It was then the fashion among the pious to exchange _eulogies_, or bits of holy bread, to signify a spiritual communion. Augustin was said to have mixed certain magic potions with some of these breads and offered them hypocritically to the woman he was in love with. This accusation started a big scandal, and the remembrance of it persisted long, because five or six years later the Donatist Petilian was still repeating it.

Augustin cleared himself victoriously. Megalius avowed his mistake. He did better: not only did he apologize to him he had slandered, but he solemnly asked forgiveness from his fellow-bishops for having misled them upon false rumours. It is probable that some time during the inquiry he had got to know Valerius’ coadjutor better. Augustin’s charm, taken with the austerity of his life, acted upon the vexed old man and altered his views. Be that so or not, it was at any rate by Megalius, Bishop of Guelma and Primate of Numidia, that Augustin was consecrated Bishop of Hippo.

He was in consternation over his rise. He has said it again and again. We may take his word for it. Yet the honours and advantages of the episcopate were then so considerable that his enemies were able to describe him as an ambitious man. Nothing could agree less with his character. In his heart, Augustin only wished to live in quiet. Since his retreat at Cassicium, fortune he had given up, as well as literary glory. His sole wish was to live in pondering the divine truths, and to draw nearer to God. _Videte et gustate quam mitis sit Dominus_–“O taste and see that the Lord is good.” This perhaps, of the whole Bible, is the verse he liked best, which answered best to the close desire of his soul; and he quotes it oftenest in his sermons. Then, to study the Holy Writings, scan the least syllables of them, since all truth lies there–well, a whole life is not too much for such labour as that! And to do it, one should sever all ties with the world, take refuge forbiddingly in the cloister.

But this sincere Christian analysed himself too skilfully not to perceive that he had a dangerous tendency to isolation. He took too much pleasure in cutting himself off from the society of mankind to enshroud himself in study and meditation. He who acknowledged a secret tendency to the Epicurean indolence–was he going to live a life of the dilettante and the self-indulgent under cover of holiness? Alone could action save him from selfishness. Others doubtless fulfilled the laws of charity in praying, in mortifying themselves for their brethren. But when, like him, a man has exceptional faculties of persuasion and eloquence, such vigour in dialectics, such widespread culture, such power to bring to naught the wrong–would it not be insulting to God to let such gifts lie idle, and a serious failure in charity to deprive his brethren of the support of such an engine?

Besides that, he well knew that no man draws near to truth without a purified heart. Might not his passions, which were so violent, begin to torment him again after this respite with greater frenzy than before his conversion? Against that, too, action was the main antidote. In the duties of the bishopric he saw a means of asceticism–a kind of courageous purification. He would load himself of his own will with so many anxieties and so much work that he would have no time left to listen to the insidious voice of his “old friends.” Could he manage to silence them at once? This unheard-of grace–would it be granted to him? Or would not rather the struggle continue in the depths of his conscience? What comes out as certain is that those terrible passions which turned his youth upside down, nevermore play any part in his life. From the moment he fell on his knees under the fig-tree at Milan, his sinful heart is a dead heart. He has been freed from almost all the weaknesses of the old nature, not only from its vices and carnal affections, but from its most pardonable lapses–save, perhaps, some old sediment of intellectual and literary vanity.

His books, at the first glance, shew us him no more save as the doctor, and already the saint. What is seen at once is an entirely bare intelligence, an entirely pure heart, fired only by the divine love. And yet the affectionate and tender heart which his had been, always warms his discussions and his most abstract exegesis. It does not take long to feel the heat of them, the power of pouring forth emotion. Augustin takes no heed of that. Of himself he no longer thinks; he no longer belongs to himself. If he has accepted the episcopate, it is so as to give himself altogether to the Church, to be all things to all men. He is the man-word, the man-pen, the sounding-board of the truth. He becomes the man of the miserable crowds which the Saviour covered with His pity. He is theirs, to convince them and cure them of their errors. He is a machine which works without ever stopping for the greater glory of Christ. Bishop, pastor, leader of souls–he has no desire for anything else.

But it was a heavy labour for this intellectual, who till then had lived only among books and ideas. The day after his consecration, he must have regarded it with more terror than ever. During his nights of insomnia, or at the recreation hour in the monastery garden, he thought over it with great distress. His eyes wide open in the darkness of his cell, he sought to define a theory upon the nature and origin of the soul; or else, at the fall of day, he saw between the olive branches “the sea put on fluctuating shades like veils of a thousand colours, sometimes green, a green of infinite tints; sometimes purple; blue sometimes….” And his soul, easily stirred to poetry, at once arose from these material splendours to the invisible region of ideas. Then, immediately, he caught himself up: it was not a question of all that! He said to himself that he was henceforth the bishop Augustin, that he had charge of souls, that he must work for the needs of his flock. He would have to struggle in a combat without a moment’s respite. Thereupon he arranged his plans of attack and defence. With a single glance he gauged the huge work before him.

A crushing work, truly! He was Bishop of Hippo, but a bishop almost without a flock, in comparison with the rival community of Donatists. The bishop of the dissentients, Proculeianus, boasted that he was the true representative of orthodoxy, and as he had on his side the advantage of numbers, he certainly cut a much greater figure in the town than the successor of Valerius, with all his knowledge and all his eloquence. The schismatics’ church, as we have seen, was quite near the Catholic church. Their noise interfered with Augustin’s sermons. Possibly the situation had become slightly better in Hippo since the edict of Theodosius. But it was not so long ago that those of the Donatist party had the upper hand. A little before the arrival of the new bishop, the Donatist clergy forbade their faithful to bake bread for Catholics. A fanatical baker had even refused a Catholic deacon who was his landlord. These schismatics believed themselves strong enough to put those who did not belong to them under interdict.

The rout of Catholicism appeared to be an accomplished fact from one end to the other of Africa. Quite recently a mere fraction of the Donatist party had been able to send three hundred and ten bishops to the Council of Bagai, who were to judge the recalcitrants of their own sect. Among these bishops, the terrible Optatus of Thimgad became marked on account of his bloody zeal, rambling round Numidia and even the Proconsulate at the head of armed bands, burning farms and villas, rebaptizing the Catholics by main force, spreading terror on all sides.

Augustin knew all this, and when he sought help from the local authorities he was obliged to acknowledge sadly that there was no support to be expected from Count Gildo, who had tyrannized over Carthage and Africa for nearly ten years. This Gildo was a native, a Moor, to whom the ministers of the young Valentinian II had thought it a good stroke of policy to confide the government of the province. Knowing the weakness of the Empire, the Moor only thought of cutting out for himself an independent principality in Africa. He openly favoured Donatism, which was the most numerous and influential party. The Bishop of Thimgad, Optatus, swore only by him, regarding him as his master and his “god.” In consequence, he was called “the Gildonian.”

Against such enemies, the Imperial authority could only act irregularly. Augustin was well aware of it. He knew that the Western Empire was in a critical position. Theodosius had just died, in the midst of war with the usurper Eugenius. The Barbarians, who made up the greater part of the Roman armies, shewed themselves more and more threatening. Alaric, entrenched in the Peloponnesus, was getting ready to invade Italy. However, the all-powerful minister of the young Honorius, the half-Barbarian Stilicho, did his best to conciliate the Catholics, and assured them that he would continue the protection they had had from Theodosius, Augustin therefore turned to the central power. It alone could bring about a little order in the provinces–and then, besides, the new emperors were firmly attached to the defence of Catholicism. The Catholic Bishop of Hippo did his best, accordingly, to keep on good terms with the representatives of the Metropolitan Government–the proconsuls; the propraetors; the counts; and the tribunes, or the secretaries, sent by the Emperor as Government commissioners.

There was no suspicion of flattery in his attitude, no idolatry of power. At Milan, Augustin had been near enough to the Court to know what the Imperial functionaries were worth. Now, he simply adapted himself as well as he could to the needs of the moment. And with all that, he could have wished in the depths of his heart that this power were stronger, so as to give the Church more effective support. This cultured man, brought up in the respect of the Roman majesty, was by instinct a faithful servant of the Caesars. A man who held to authority and tradition, he maintained that obedience is due to princes: “There is a general agreement,” he said, “of human society to obey its Kings.” In one of his sermons he compares thought, which commands the body, to the Emperor seated upon his throne, and from the depths of his palace dictating orders which set the whole Empire moving–a purely ideal image of the sovereign of that time, but one which pleased his Latin imagination. Alas! Augustin had no illusions about the effect of Imperial edicts; he knew too well how little they were regarded, especially in Africa.

So he could hardly count upon Government support for the defence of Catholic unity and peace. He found he must trust to himself; and all his strength was in his intelligence, in his charity, in his deeply compassionate soul. Most earnestly did he wish that Catholicism might be a religion of love, open to all the nations of the earth, even as its Divine Founder Himself had wished. A glowing and dominating intelligence, charity which never tired–those were Augustin’s arms. And they were enough. These qualities gave him an overwhelming superiority over all the men of his time. Among them, pagans or Christians, he looks like a colossus. From what a height he crushes, not only the professors who had been his colleagues, such as Nectarius of Guelma or Maximus of Madaura, but the most celebrated writers of his time–Symmachus, for instance, and Ammianus Marcellinus. After reading a treatise of Augustin’s, one is astounded by the intellectual meagreness of these last pagans. The narrowness of their mind and platitude of thought is a thing that leaves one aghast. Even the illustrious Apuleius, who belonged to the golden age of African literature, the author of _The Doctrine of Plato_, praises philosophy and the Supreme Being in terms which recall the professions of faith of the chemist and druggist, Homais, in _Madame Bovary_.

Nor among those who surrounded Augustin, his fellow-bishops, was there one fit to be compared with him, even at a distance. Except perhaps Nebridius, his dearest friends, Alypius, Severus, or Evodius, are merely disciples, not to say servants of his thought. Aurelius, Primate of Carthage, an energetic administrator, a firm and upright character, if he is not on Augustin’s level, is at any rate capable of understanding and supporting him. The others are decent men, like that Samsucius, Bishop of Tours, very nearly illiterate, but full of good sense and experience, and on this ground consulted respectfully by his colleague of Hippo. Or else they are plotters, given to debauch, engaged in business, like Paulus, Bishop of Cataqua, who became involved in risky speculations, swindled the revenue, and by his expensive way of life ruined his diocese. Others, on the Donatist side, are mere swashbucklers, half-brigands, half-fanatics, like the Gildonian Optatus, Bishop of Thimgad, a manifestation in advance of the Mussulman _marabout_ who preached the holy war against the Catholics, raiding, killing, burning, converting by sabre blows and bludgeoning.

Amid these insignificant or violent men, Augustin will endeavour to realize to the full the admirable type of bishop, at once spiritual father, protector, and support of his people. He had promised himself to sacrifice no whit of his ideal of Christian perfection. As bishop, he will remain a monk, as he did during his priesthood. Beside the monastery established in Valerius’ garden, where it is impossible to receive properly his guests and visitors, he will start another in the episcopal residence. He will conform to the monastic rule as far as his duties allow. He will pray, study the Scriptures, define dogmas, refute heresies. At the same time, he means to neglect nothing of his material work. He has mouths to feed, property to look after, law-cases to examine. He will labour at all that. For this mystic and theorist it means a never-ceasing immolation.

First, to give the poor their daily bread. Like all the communities of that time, Hippo maintained a population of beggars. Often enough, the diocesan cash-box was empty. Augustin was obliged to hold out the hand, to deliver from the height of his pulpit pathetic appeals for charity. Then, there are hospitals to be built for the sick, a lodging-house for poor wanderers. The bishop started these institutions in houses bequeathed to the church of Hippo. For reasons of economy, he thought better not to build. That would overload his budget. Next came the greatest of all his cares–the administration of Church property. To increase this property, he stipulated that his clergy should give up all they possessed in favour of the community, thus giving the faithful an example of voluntary poverty. He also accepted gifts from private persons. But he also often refused these–for example, the bequest of a father or mother, who, in a moment of anger, disinherited their children. He did not wish to profit by the bad feelings of parents to plunder orphans. On another side, he objected to engage the Church in suits at law with the exchequer upon receiving certain heritages. When a business man at Hippo left to the diocese his share of profits in the service of boats for carrying Government stores, Augustin came to the conclusion that it would be better to refuse. In case of shipwreck, they would be obliged to make good the lost corn to the Treasury, or else to put the captain and surviving sailors to the torture to prove that the crew was not responsible for the loss of the ship. Augustin would not hear tell of it.

“Is it fit,” he said, “that a bishop should be a shipowner?… A bishop a torturer? Oh, no; that does not agree at all with a servant of Jesus Christ.”

The people of Hippo did not share his views. They blamed Augustin’s scruples. They accused him of compromising the interests of the Church. One day he had to explain himself from the pulpit:

“Well I know, my brothers, that you often say between yourselves: ‘Why do not people give anything to the Church of Hippo? Why do not the dying make it their heir? The reason is that Bishop Augustin is too easy; he gives all back to the children; he keeps nothing!’ I acknowledge it, I only accept gifts which are good and pious. Whoever disinherits his son to make the Church his heir, let him find somebody willing to accept his gifts. It is not I who will do it, and by God’s grace, I hope it will not be anybody…. Yes, I have refused many legacies, but I have also accepted many. Need I name them to you? I will give only one instance. I accepted the heritage of Julian. Why? Because he died without children….”

The listeners thought that their bishop really put too fine a point on things.

They further reproached him with not knowing how to attract and flatter the rich benefactors. Augustin would not allow, either, that they had any right to force a passing stranger to receive the priesthood and consequently to give up his goods to the poor. All this really was very wise, not only according to the spirit of the Gospel, but according to human prudence. If Augustin, for the sake of the good fame of his Church, did not wish to incur the accusation of grasping and avarice, he dreaded nothing so much as a law-case. To accept lightly the gifts and legacies offered was to lay himself open to expensive pettifogging. Far better to refuse than to lose both his money and reputation. So were reconciled, in this man of prayer and meditation, practical good sense with the high disinterestedness of the Christian teaching.

The bishop was disinterested; his people were covetous. The people of those times wished the Church to grow rich, because they were the first to profit by its riches. Now these riches were principally in houses and land. The diocese of Hippo had to deal with many houses and immense _fundi_, upon which lived an entire population of artisans and freed-men, agricultural labourers, and even art-workers–smelters, embroiderers, chisellers on metals. Upon the Church lands, these small people were protected from taxes and the extortions of the revenue officers, and no doubt they found the episcopal government more fatherly and mild than the civil.

Augustin, who had made a vow of poverty and given his heritage to the poor, became by a cruel irony a great landowner as soon as he was elected Bishop of Hippo. Doubtless he had stewards under him to look after the property of the diocese. This did not save him from going into details of management and supervising his agents. He heard the complaints, not only of his own tenants, but also of those who belonged to other estates and were victimized by dishonest bailiffs. Anyhow, we have a thousand signs to shew that no detail of country life was unfamiliar to him.

On horseback or muleback, he rode for miles through the country about Hippo to visit his vineyards and olivets. He examined, found out things, questioned the workmen, went into the presses and the mills. He knew the grape good to eat, and the grape to make wine with. He pointed out where the ensilage pits had been dug in too marshy land, which endangered the young corn. As a capable landowner he was abreast of the law, careful about the terms of contracts. He knew the formulas employed for sales or benefactions. He saw to it that charcoal was buried around the landmarks in the fields, so that if the post disappeared, its place could be found. And as he was a poet, he gathered on his course a whole booty of rural images which later on went to brighten his sermons. He made ingenious comparisons with the citron-tree, “which is seen to give flowers and fruits all the year if it be watered constantly,” or else with the goat “who gets upon her two hind legs to crop the bitter leaves of the wild olive.”

These journeys in the open air, however tiring they might be, were after all a rest for his overworked brain. But there was one among his episcopal duties which wearied him to disgust. Every day he had to listen to parties in dispute and give judgment. Following recent Imperial legislation, the bishop became judge in civil cases–a tiresome and endless work in a country where tricky quibbling raged with obstinate fury. The litigants pursued Augustin, overran his house, like those fellahs in dirty burnous who block our law-courts with their rags. In the _secretarium_ of the basilica, or under the portico of the court leading to the church, Augustin sat like a Mussulman cadi in the court of the mosque.

The emperors had only regulated an old custom of apostolic times in placing the Christians under the jurisdiction of their bishop. In accordance with St. Paul’s advice, the priests did their utmost to settle differences among the faithful. Later, when their number had considerably increased, the Government adopted a system not unlike the “Capitulations” in countries under the Ottoman suzerainty. Lawsuits between clerics and laymen could not be equitably judged by civil servants, who were often pagans. Moreover, the parties based their claims on theological principles or religious laws that the arbitrator generally knew nothing about. In these conditions, it was natural enough that the Imperial authority should say to the disputants, “Fight it out among yourselves”.

And it happened, just at the moment when Augustin began to fill the see of Hippo, that Theodosius broadened still more the judicial prerogatives of the bishops. The unhappy judge was overwhelmed with law-cases. Every day he sat till the hour of his meal, and sometimes the whole day when he fasted. To those who accused him of laziness, he answered:

“I can declare on my soul that if it were question of my own convenience, I should like much better to work at some manual labour at certain hours of the day, as the rule is in well-governed monasteries, and have the rest of the time free to read or pray or meditate upon the Holy Scripture, instead of being troubled with all the complications and dull talk of lawsuits.”

The rascality of the litigants made him indignant. From the pulpit he gave them advice full of Christian wisdom, but which could not have been much relished. A suit at law, according to him, was a loss of time and a cause of sorrow. It would be better to let the opponent have the money, than to lose time and be filled with uneasiness. Nor was this, added the preacher in all good faith, to encourage injustice; for the robber would be robbed in his turn by a greater robber than himself.

These reasons seemed only moderately convincing. The pettifoggers did not get discouraged. On the contrary, they infested the bishop with their pleas. As soon as he appeared, they rushed up to him in a mob, surrounded him, kissed his hand and his shoulder, protesting their respect and obedience, urging him, constraining him to busy himself about their affairs. Augustin yielded. But the next day in a vehement sermon he cried out to them:

_Discedite a me, maligni!_–“Go far from me, ye wicked ones, and let me study in peace the commandments of my God!”

II

WHAT WAS HEARD IN THE BASILICA OF PEACE

Let us try to see Augustin in his pulpit and in his episcopal city.

We cannot do much more than reconstruct them by analogy. Royal Hippo is utterly gone. Bona, which has taken its place, is about a mile and a half away, and the fragments which have been dug out of the soil of the dead city are very inadequate. But Africa is full of Christian ruins, and chiefly of basilicas. Rome has nothing equal to offer. And that is easily understood. The Roman basilicas, always living, have been changed in the course of centuries, and have put on, time after time, the garb forced upon them by the fashion. Those of Africa have remained just as they were–at least in their principal lines–on the morrow of the Arab invasion, as Augustin’s eyes had seen them. They are ruins, no doubt, and some very mutilated, but ruins of which no restoration has altered the plan or changed the features.

As the traces of Hippo and its church are swept away or deeply buried, we are obliged, in order to get some approximate idea, to turn towards another African town which has suffered less from time and devastation. Theveste with its basilica, the best preserved, the finest and largest in all Africa, can restore to us a little of the look and colour and atmosphere of Hippo in those final years of the fourth century.

Ancient Theveste was much larger than the present town, the French Tebessa. This, even reduced to the perimeter of the Byzantine fortress built under Justinian, still surprises the traveller by its singularly original aspect. Amid the wide plains of alfa-grass which surround it, with its quadrangular enclosure, its roads on the projection of the walls behind the battlements, its squat turrets, it has a look as archaic, as strange, as our own Aigues-Mortes amid its marshy fen. Nothing can be more rich and joyous to the eye than the rust which covers its ruins–a complete gilding that one would say had been laid on by the hand of man.

It has a little temple which is a wonder and has been compared to the ancient Roman temple–the _Maison Carree_–at Nimes. But how much warmer, more living are the stones! The shafts of the columns, and the pilasters of the peristyle, barked by time, seem as scaly and full of sap as the trunks of palm-trees. The carved acanthus-leaves in the capitals of the pillars droop like bunches of palms reddened by the summer.

Quite near, at the end of a narrow street, lined with modern and squalid hovels, the triumphal arch of Septimus Severus and of Caracalla extends its luminous bow; and high above the heavy mass of architecture, resting upon slim aerial little columns, a buoyant _aediculus_ shines like a coral tabernacle or a coffer of yellow ivory.

All about, forms in long draperies are huddled. The Numidian burnous has the whiteness of the toga. It has also the same graceful folds. At the sight of them you suddenly feel yourself to be in a strange land–carried back very far across the centuries. No sooner is the vision of antiquity outlined than it grows firm. Down below there, a horseman, clad in white, is framed with his white horse in the moulded cincture of a door. He passes, and upon the white wall of the near tower his shadow rests a moment, like a bas-relief upon the marble of a frieze.

Beyond the Byzantine enclosure, the basilica, with its minor buildings, forms another town almost as large as the present Theveste, and also closed in by a belt of towers and ramparts. One is immediately struck by the opulent colour of the stones–rose, grown pale and thinner in the sun; and next, by the solid workmanship and the structural finish. The stones, as in the Greek temples, are placed on top of one another in regular layers: the whole holds together by the weight of the blocks and the polish of the surfaces.

The proportions are on a large scale. There was no grudging for the buildings, or the materials, or the land. In front of the basilica is a wide rectangular court bordered with terraces; a portico at the far end; and in the middle four large fountains to water the walk. A flagged avenue, closed by two gateways, divides this court from the basilica, properly so called, which is reached by a staircase between two columns. The staircase leads to the _atrium_ decorated by a Corinthian portico. In the centre is the font for purifications, a huge monolithic bason in the shape of a four-leaved clover. Three doors give entrance from the _atrium_ to the basilica, which is divided by rows of green marble columns into three aisles. The galleries spread out along the side aisles. The floor was in mosaic. In the apse, behind the altar, stood the bishop’s throne.

Around the main building clustered a great number of others: a baptistry; many chapels (one vaulted in the shape of a three-leaved clover) dedicated, probably, to local martyrs; a graveyard; a convent with its cells, and its windows narrow as loop-holes; stables, sheds, and barns. Sheltered within its walls and towers, amid its gardens and outbuildings, the basilica of Theveste thus early resembled one of our great monasteries of the Middle Age, and also in certain ways the great mosques of Islam–the one at Cordova, or that at Damascus, with their vestibules surrounded by arcades, their basons for purification, and their walks bordered with orange-trees. The faithful and the pilgrims were at home there. They might spend the day stretched upon the flags of the porticoes, in loafing or sleeping in the blue shade of the columns and the cool of the fountains. In the full sense of the word, the church was the House of God, open to all.

Very likely the basilicas at Hippo had neither the size nor the splendour of this one. Nor were there very many. At the time Augustin was ordained priest, that is to say, when the Donatists had still a majority in the town, it seems clear that the orthodox community owned but one single church, the _Basilica major_, or Basilica of Peace. Its very name proves this. With the schismatics, “Peace” was the official name for Catholicism. “Basilica of Peace” meant simply “Catholic Basilica.” Was not this as much as to say that the others belonged to the dissenters? Doubtless they restored later on, after the promulgations of Honorius, the Leontian Basilica, founded by Leontius, Bishop of Hippo, and a martyr. A third was built by Augustin during his episcopate–the Basilica of the Eight Martyrs of the White Mace.

It was in the Major, or Cathedral, that Augustin generally preached. To preach was not only a duty, but one of the privileges of a bishop. As has been said, the bishop alone had the right to preach in his church. This arose from the fact that the African dioceses, although comparatively widespread, had scarcely more people than one of our large parishes to-day. The position of a bishop was like that of one of our parish priests. There were almost as many as there were villages, and they were counted by hundreds.

However that may be, preaching, the real apostolic ministry, was an exhausting task. Augustin preached almost every day, and often many times a day–rough work for a man with such a fragile chest. Thus it often happened that, to save his voice, he had to ask his audience to keep still. He spoke without study, in a language very near the language of the common people. Stenographers took down his sermons as he improvised them: hence those repetitions and lengthinesses which astonish the reader who does not know the reason for them. There is no plan evident in these addresses. Sometimes the speaker has not enough time to develop his thought. Then he puts off the continuation till the next day. Sometimes he comes with a subject all prepared, and then treats of another, in obedience to a sudden inspiration which has come to him with a verse of Scripture he has just read. Other times, he comments many passages in succession, without the least care for unity or composition.

Let us listen to him in this Basilica of Peace, where during thirty-five years he never failed to announce the Word of God…. The chant of the Psalms has just died away. At the far end of the apse, Augustin rises from his throne with its back to the wall, his pale face distinct against the golden hue of the mosaic. From that place, as from the height of a pulpit, he commands the congregation, looking at them above the altar, which is a plain wooden table placed at the end of the great aisle.

The congregation is standing, the men on one side, the women on the other. On the other side of the balustrade which separates them from the crowd, are the widows and consecrated virgins, wrapped in their veils black or purple. Some matrons, rather overdressed, lean forward in the front rank of the galleries. Their cheeks are painted, their eyelashes and eyebrows blackened, their ears and necks overloaded with jewels. Augustin has noticed them; after a while he will read them a lesson. This audience is all alive with sympathy and curiosity before he begins. With all its faith and all its passion it collaborates with the orator. It is turbulent also. It expresses its opinions and emotions with perfect freedom. The democratic customs of those African Churches surprise us to-day. People made a noise as at the theatre or the circus. They applauded; they interrupted the preacher. Certain among them disputed what was said, quoting passages from the Bible.

Augustin is thus in perpetual communication with his audience. Nobody has done less soaring than he. He keeps his eye on the facial expressions and the attitudes of his public. He talks to them familiarly. When his sermon is a little lengthy, he wants to know if his listeners are getting tired–he has kept them standing so long! The time of the morning meal draws near. Bellies are fasting, stomachs wax impatient. Then says he to them with loving good-fellowship:

“Go, my very dear brothers and sisters, go and restore your strength–I do not mean that of your minds, for I see well that they are tireless, but the strength of your bodies which are the servants of your souls. Go then and restore your bodies so that they may do their work well, and when they are restored, come back here and take your spiritual food.”

Upon certain days, a blast of the sirocco has passed over the town. The faithful, crowded in the aisles, are stifling, covered with sweat. The preacher himself, who is very much worked up, has his face dripping, and his clothes are all wet. By this he perceives that once more he has been extremely long. He excuses himself modestly. Or again, he jokes like a rough apostle who is not repelled by the odour of a lot of human-kind gathered together.

“Oh, what a smell!” says he. “I must have been speaking a long while to-day.”

These good-natured ways won the hearts of the simple folk who listened to him. He is aware of the charm he exerts on them, and of the sympathy they give him back in gratitude for his charity.

“You have loved to come and hear me, my brothers,” he said to them. “But whom have you loved? If it is me–ah, even that is good, my brothers, for I want to be loved by you, if I do not want to be loved for myself. As for me, I love you in Christ. And you too, do you love me in Him. Let our love for one another moan together up to God–and that is the moaning of the Dove spoken of in the Scripture….”

Although he preaches from the height of his episcopal throne, he is anxious that his hearers should regard him, Christianly, as their equal. So he seems as little of the bishop as possible.

“All Christians are servants of the same master…. I have been in the place where you are–you, my brothers, who listen to me. And now, if I give the spiritual bread from the height of this chair to the servants of the Master of us all–well, it is but a few years since I received this spiritual food with them in a lower place. A bishop, I speak to laymen, but I know to how many future bishops I speak….”

So he puts himself on an equal footing with his audience by the brotherly accent in his words. It is not Christendom, the Universal Church, or I know not what abstract listener he addresses, but the Africans, the people of Hippo, the parishioners of the Basilica of Peace. He knows the allusions, the comparisons drawn from local customs, which are likely to impress their minds. The day of the festival of St. Crispina, a martyr of those parts, after he had developed his subject at very great length, he asked pardon in these terms:

“Let us think, brothers, that I have invited you to celebrate the birthday of the blessed Crispina, and that I have kept up the feast a little too long. Well, might not the same thing happen if some soldier were to ask you to dinner and obliged you to drink more than is wise? Let me do as much for the Word of God, with which you should be drunk and surfeited.”

Marriages, as well as birthday feasts, supplied the orator with vivid allegories. Thus he says that when a marriage feast is made in a house, organs play upon the threshold, and musicians and dancers begin to sing and to act their songs. And yet how poor are these earthly enjoyments which pass away so soon!… “In the House of God, the feast has no end.”

Continually, through the commentaries on the Psalms, like comparisons rise to the surface–parables suited to stir the imagination of Africans. A thousand details borrowed from local habits and daily life enliven the exegesis of the Bishop of Hippo. The mules and horses that buck when one is trying to cure them, are his symbol for the recalcitrant Donatists. The little donkeys, obstinate and cunning, that trot in the narrow lanes of Algerian _casbahs_, appear here and there in his sermons. The gnats bite in them. The unendurable flies plaster themselves in buzzing patches on the tables and walls. Then there are the illnesses and drugs of that country: the ophthalmias and collyrium. What else? The tarentulas that run along the beams on the ceiling; the hares that scurry without warning between the horses’ feet on the great Numidian plains. Elsewhere, he reminds his audience of those men who wear an earring as a talisman; of the dealings between traders and sailors–a comparison which would go home to this seafaring people.

The events of the time, the little happenings of the moment, glide into his sermons. At the same time as the service in church to-day, there is going to be horse-racing at the circus, and fights of wild beasts or gladiators at the arena. In consequence, there will not be many people in the Basilica. “So much the better,” says Augustin. “My lungs will get some rest.” Another time, it is advertised through the town that most sensational attractions will be offered at the theatre–there will be a scene representing the open sea. The preacher laughs at those who have deserted the church to go and see this illusion: “They will have,” says he, “the sea on the stage; but we, brothers–ah, we shall have our port in Jesus Christ.” This Saturday, while he is preaching, some Jewish women set themselves to dance and sing on the terraces of the near houses, by way of celebrating the Sabbath. In the basilica, the bashing of the crotolos can be heard, and the thuds of the tambourines. “They would do better,” says Augustin, “to work and spin their wool.”

He dwells upon the catastrophes which were then convulsing the Roman world. The news of them spread with wonderful rapidity. Alaric’s Barbarians have taken Rome and put it to fire and sword. At Jerusalem has been an earthquake, and the bishop John organizes a subscription for the sufferers throughout Christendom. At Constantinople, globes of fire have been seen in the sky. The _Serapeum_ of Alexandria has just been destroyed in a riot….

All these things follow each other in lively pictures, without any apparent order, throughout Augustin’s sermons. It is not he who divides his discourse into three parts, and refrains from passing to the second till he has learnedly expounded the first. Whether he comments upon the Psalms or the Gospels, his sermons are no more than explanations of the Scriptures which he interprets, sometimes in a literal sense, and sometimes in an allegoric. Let us acknowledge it–his allegoric discourses repel us by their extreme subtilty, sometimes by their bad taste; and when he confines himself to the letter of the text, he stumbles among small points of grammar which weary the attention. We follow him no longer. We think his audience was very obliging to listen so long–and on their feet–to these endless dissertations…. And then, suddenly, a great lyrical and oratorical outburst which carries us away–a wind which blows from the high mountains, and in the wink of an eye sweeps away like dust all those fine-spun reasonings.

He is fond of certain commonplaces, and also of certain books of the Bible–for instance, _The Song of Songs_ and the Gospel of St. John, the one satisfying in him the intellectual, and the other the mystic of love. He confronts the verse of the Psalm: “Before the morning star have I begotten thee,” with the sublime opening of the Fourth Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word.” He lingers upon the beauty of Christ: _Speciosus forma prae filiis hominum_, “Thou art fairer than the children of men.” This is why he is always repeating with the Psalmist: “Thy face, Lord, have I sought”–_Quaesivi vultum tuum, Domine._ And the orator, carried away by enthusiasm, adds: “Magnificent saying! Nothing more divine could be said. Those feel it who truly love.” Another of his favourite subjects is the kindness of God: _Videte et gustate quam mitis sit Dominus_–“O taste and see that the Lord is good.” Naught can equal the pleasure of this contemplation, of this life in God. Augustin conceives it as a musician who has fathomed the secret of numbers. “Let your life,” he said, “be one prolonged song…. We do not sing only with the voice and lips when we intone a canticle, but in us is an inward singing, because there is also in us Some One who listens….”

To live this rhythmic and divine life we must get free of ourselves, give ourselves up utterly in a great outburst of charity.

“Why,” he cries–“Oh, why do you hesitate to give yourselves lest you should lose yourselves? It is rather by not giving yourselves that you lose yourselves. Charity herself speaks to you by the mouth of Wisdom and upholds you against the terror which fills you at the sound of those words: ‘Give yourself.’ If some one wanted to sell you a piece of land, he would say to you: ‘Give me your gold.’ And for something else, he would say: ‘Give me your silver, give me your money.’ Listen to what Charity says to you by the mouth of Wisdom: ‘My son, give me thy heart.’ ‘Give me,’ quoth she. Give what? ‘My son, give me thy heart.’… Thy heart was not happy when it was governed by thee, and was thine, for it turned this way and that way after gawds, after impure and dangerous loves. ‘Tis from there thy heart must be drawn. Whither lift it up? Where to place it? ‘Give me thy heart,’ says Wisdom, ‘let it be mine, and it will belong to thee for always.'”

After the chant of love, the chant of the Resurrection. _Cantate mihi canticum novum_–“Sing to me a new song!” Augustin repeats these words over and over again. “We wish to rise from the dead,” cry souls craving for eternity. And the Church answers: “Verily, I say unto you, that you shall rise from the dead. Resurrection of bodies, resurrection of souls, ye shall be altogether reborn.” Augustin has explained no dogma more passionately. None was more pleasing to the faithful of those times. Ceaselessly they begged to be strengthened in the conviction of immortality and of meeting again brotherlike in God.

With what intrepid delight it rose–this song of the Resurrection in those clear African basilicas swimming in light, with all their brilliant ornamentation of mosaics and marbles of a thousand colours! And what artless and confident language those symbolic figures spoke which peopled their walls–the lambs browsing among clusters of asphodels, the doves, the green trees of Paradise. As in the Gospel parables, the birds of the field and farmyard, the fruits of the earth, figured the Christian truths and virtues. Their purified forms accompanied man in his ascension towards God. Around the mystic chrisms, circled garlands of oranges and pears and pomegranates. Cocks, ducks, partridges, flamingoes, sought their pasture in the Paradisal fields painted upon the walls of churches and cemeteries.

Those young basilicas were truly the temples of the Resurrection, where all the creatures of the Ark saved from the waters had found their refuge. Never more in the centuries to follow shall humanity know this frank joy at having triumphed over death–this youth of hope.

III

THE BISHOP’S BURTHEN

Augustin is not only the most human of all the saints, he is also one of the most amiable in all the senses of that hackneyed word–amiable according to the world, amiable according to Christ.

To be convinced of this, he should be observed in his dealings with his hearers, with his correspondents, even with those he attacks–with the bitterest enemies of the faith. Preaching, the administration of property, and sitting in judgment were but a part of that episcopal burthen, _Sarcina episcopatus_, under which he so often groaned. He had furthermore to catechize, baptize, direct consciences, guard the faithful against error, and dispute with all those who threatened Catholicism. Augustin was a light of the Church. He knew it.

Doing his best, with admirable conscientiousness and charity he undertook these tasks. God knows what it must have cost this Intellectual to fulfil precisely all the duties of his ministry, down to the humblest. What he would have liked, above all, was to pass his life in studying the Scriptures and meditating on the dogmas–not from a love of trifling with theories, but because he believed such knowledge necessary to whoever gave forth the Word of God. Most of the priests of that age arrived at the priesthood without any previous study. They had to improvise, as quick as they could, a complete education in religious subjects. We are left astounded before the huge labour which Augustin must have given to acquire his. Before long he even dominated the whole exegetical and theological knowledge of his time. In his zeal for divine letters, he knew sleep no more.

And yet he did not neglect any of his tasks. Like the least of our parish priests, he prepared the neophytes for the Sacraments. He was an incomparable catechist, so clear-sighted and scrupulous that his instructions may still be taken as models by the catechists of to-day. Neither did he, as an aristocrat of the intelligence, only trouble himself with persons of culture, and leave to his deacons the care of God’s common people. All had a right to his lessons, the simple peasants as well as the rich and scholarly. One day, a farmer he was teaching walked off and left him there in the middle of his discourse. The poor man, who had fasted, and now listened to his bishop standing, was faint from hunger and felt his legs tremble under him. He thought it better to run away than to fall down exhausted at the feet of the learned preacher.

With his knowledge of men, Augustin carefully studied the kind of people his catechumens were, and adapted his instructions to the character of each. If they were city folk, Carthaginians, used to spending their time in theatres and taverns, drunken and lazy, he took a different tone with them from what he used with rustics who had never left their native _gourbi_. If he were dealing with fashionable people who had a taste for literature, he did not fail to exalt the beauties of the Scripture, although, he would say, they had there a very trifling attraction compared to the truths contained in it. Of all the catechumens, the hardest to deal with, the most fearsome in his eyes, were the professors–the rhetoricians and the grammarians. These men are bloated with vanity, puffed up with intellectual pride. Augustin knew something about that. It will be necessary to rouse them violently, and before anything else, to exhort them to humility of mind.

The good saint goes further. Not only is he anxious about the souls, but also about the bodies of his listeners. Are they comfortable for listening? As soon as they feel tired they must not hesitate to sit down, as is the usage in the basilicas beyond seas.

“Would not our arrogance be unbearable,” he asked, “if we forbade men who are our brothers to sit down in our presence, and, much more, men whom we ought to try with all possible care to make our brothers?…”

If they are seen to yawn, “then things ought to be said to them to awaken their attention, or to scatter the sad thoughts which may have come into their minds.” The catechist should shew, now a serene joy–the joy of certainty; now a gaiety which charms people into belief; “and always that light-heartedness we should have in teaching.” Even if we ourselves are sad from this reason or that, let us remember that Jesus Christ died for those who are listening to us. Is not the thought of bringing Him disciples enough to make us joyful?

Bishop Augustin set the example for his priests. It is not enough to have prepared the conversion of his catechumens with the subtlety of the psychologist, and such perfect Christian charity; but he accompanies them to the very end, and charges them once more before the baptismal piscina.

How he is changed! One thinks of the boon-fellow of Romanianus and of Manlius Theodorus, of the young man who followed the hunts at Thagaste, and who held forth on literature and philosophy in a select company before the beautiful horizons of the lake of Como. Here he is now with peasants, slaves, sailors, and traders. And he takes pleasure in their society. It is his flock. He ought to love it with all his soul in Jesus Christ. What an effort and what a victory upon himself an attitude so strange reveals to us! For really this liking for mean people was not natural to him. He must have put an heroic will-power into it, helped by Grace.

A like sinking of his preferences is evident in the director of consciences he became. Here he was obliged to give himself more thoroughly. He was at the mercy of the souls who questioned him, who consulted him as their physician. He spends his time in advising them, and exercises a never-failing supervision of their morals. It is an almost discouraging enterprise to bend these hardened pagans–above all, these Africans–to Christian discipline. Augustin is continually reproaching their drunkenness, gluttony, and lust. The populace were not the only ones to get drunk and over-eat themselves. The rich at their feasts literally stuffed till they choked. The Bishop of Hippo never lets a chance go by to recall them to sobriety.

Oftener still, he recalls them to chastity. He writes long letters on this subject which are actual treatises. The morals of the age and country are fully disclosed in them. Husbands are found loudly claiming a right to free love for themselves, while they force their wives to conjugal fidelity. The adultery they allow themselves, they punish with death in their wives. They make an abusive practice of divorce. Upon the most futile reasons, they send the wife the _libellus repudii_–the bill repudiating the marriage–as the various peoples of Islam do still. This society in a state of transition was always creating cases of conscience for strict Christians. For example: If a man cast off his wife under pretext of adultery, might he marry again? Augustin held that no marriage can be dissolved as long as both parties are living. But may not this prohibition provoke husbands to kill their adulterous wives, so as to be free to take a new wife? Another problem: A catechumen divorced under the pagan law and since remarried, presents himself for baptism. Is he not an adulterer in the eyes of the Church? A man who lives with a woman and does not hide it, who even declares his firm intention of continuing to live with his concubine–can he be admitted to baptism? Augustin has to answer all these questions, and go into the very smallest details of casuistry.

Is it forbidden to eat the meats consecrated to idols, even when a man or woman is dying of hunger? May one enter into agreements with native camel-drivers and carriers who swear by their gods to keep the bargain? May a lie be told in certain conditions?–say, so as to get among heretics in pretending to be one of themselves, and thus be able to spy on them and denounce them? May adultery be practised with a woman who promises in exchange to point out heretics?… The Bishop of Hippo severely condemns all these devious or shameful ways, all these compromises which are contrary to the pure moral teaching of the Gospel. But he does this without affecting intolerance and rigidity, and with a reminder that the evil of sin lies altogether in the intention, and in the consent of the will. In a word, one must tolerate and put up with what one is powerless to hinder.

Other questions, which it is quite impossible to repeat here, give us a strange idea of the corruption of pagan morals. Augustin had all he could do to maintain the Christian rule in such surroundings, where the Christians themselves were more or less tainted with paganism. But if this troop of sinners and backsliders was hard to drive, the devout were perhaps harder. There were the _continents_–the widowers and widows who had made a vow of chastity and found this vow heavy; the consecrated virgins who lived in too worldly a fashion; the nuns who rebelled against their spiritual director or their superior; the monks, either former slaves who did not want to do another stroke of work, or charlatans who played upon public credulity in selling talismans and miraculous ointments. Then, the married women who refused themselves to their husbands; and those who gave away their goods to the poor without their husbands’ consent; and also the proud virgins and widows who despised and condemned marriage.

Then came the crowd of pious souls who questioned Augustin on points of dogma, who wanted to know all, to clear up everything; those who thought they should be able here below to see God face to face, to know how we shall arise, and who asked if the angels had bodies…. Augustin complains that they are annoying, when he has so many other things to trouble him, and that they take him from his studies. But he tries charitably to satisfy them all.

Besides all this, he was obliged to keep up a correspondence with a great number of people. In addition to his friends and fellow-bishops, he wrote to unknown people and foreigners; to men in high place and to lowly people; to the proconsuls, the counts and the vicars of Africa; to the very mighty Olympius, Master of the Household to the Emperor Honorius; or again, “to the Right Honourable Lady Maxima,” “to the Illustrious Ladies Proba and Juliana,” “to the Very Holy Lady Albina”–women who belonged either to the provincial nobility, or to the highest aristocracy of Rome. To whom did he not write?…

And what is admirable in these letters is that he does not answer negligently to get rid of a tiresome duty. Almost all of them are full of substantial teaching, long thought over. Many were intended to be published–they are practically charges. And yet, however grave the tone of them may be, the cultivated man of the world he had been may be traced. His correspondents, after the fashion of the time, overwhelm the bishop with the most fulsome praises. These he accepts, with much ceremony indeed, but he does accept them as evidence of the charity of his brethren. Ingenuously, he does his best to return them. Let us not grow over-scandalized because our men of letters of to-day have debased the value of complimentary language by squandering and exaggerating it. The most austere cotemporaries of Augustin, and Augustin himself, outdid them by a long way in the art and in the abuse of compliments.

Paulinus of Nola, always beflowered and elegant, wrote to Augustin: “Your letters are a luminous collyrium spread over the eyes of my mind.” Augustin, who remonstrated with him upon the scarcity of his own letters, replies in language which our own _Precieuses_ would not have disowned: “What! You allow me to pass two summers–and two African summers!–in such thirst?… Would to God that you would allow enter to the opulent banquet of your book, the long fast from your writings which you have put me upon during all a year! If this banquet be not ready, I shall not give over my complaints, unless, indeed, that in the time between, you send me something to keep up my strength.” A certain Audax, who begged the honour of a special letter from the great man, calls him “the oracle of the Law”; protests that the whole world celebrates and admires him; and finally, at the end of his arguments, conjures him in verse to “Let fall upon me the dew of thy divine word.” Augustin, with modesty and benignity, returns his compliments, but not without slipping into his reply a touch of banter: “Allow me to point out to you that your fifth line has seven feet. Has your ear betrayed you, or did you want to find out if I was still capable of judging these things?”… Truly, he is always capable of judging these things, nor is he sorry to have it known. A young Greek named Dioscorus, who is passing through Carthage, questions him upon the philosophy of Cicero. Augustin exclaims at any one daring to interrupt a bishop about such trifles. Then, little by little, he grows milder, and carried away by his old passion, he ends by sending the young man quite a dissertation on this good subject.

Those are among his innocent whimsicalities. Then, alongside of letters either too literary, or erudite, or profound, there are others which are simply exquisite, such as the one he wrote to a young Carthage girl called Sapida. She had embroidered a tunic for her brother. He was dead, and she asked Augustin kindly to wear this tunic, telling him that if he would do this, it would be a great comfort for her in her grief. The bishop consented very willingly. “I accept this garment,” he said to her, “and I have begun to wear it before writing to you….” Then gently he pities her sorrow, and persuades her to resignation and hope.

“We should not rebuke people for weeping over the dead who are dear to them…. When we think of them, and through habit we look for them still around us, then the heart breaks, and the tears fall like the blood of our broken heart….”

At the end, in magnificent words, he chants the hymn of the Resurrection:

“My daughter, your brother lives in his soul, if in his body he sleeps. Does not the sleeper wake? God, who has received his soul, will put it again in the body He has taken from him, not to destroy it–oh, no, but some day to give it to him back.”

* * * * *

This correspondence, voluminous as it is, is nothing beside his numberless treatises in dogma and polemic. These were the work of his life, and it is by these posterity has known him. The theologian and the disputer ended by hiding the man in Augustin. To-day, the man perhaps interests us more. And this is a mistake. He himself would not have allowed for a moment that his _Confessions_ should be preferred to his treatises on Grace. To study, to comment the Scriptures, to draw more exact definitions from the dogmas–he saw no higher employment for his mind, or obligation more important for a bishop. To believe so as to understand, to understand the better to believe–it is a ceaseless movement of the intelligence which goes from faith to God and from God to faith. He throws himself into this great labour without a shade of any attempt to make literature, with a complete sinking of his tastes and his personal opinions, and in it he entirely forgets himself.

One single time he has thought of himself, and it is precisely in the _Confessions_, the spirit of which modern people understand so ill, and where they try to find something quite different from what the author intended. He composed them just after he was raised to the bishopric, to defend himself against the calumnies spread about his conduct. It seems as if he wanted to say to his detractors: “You believe me guilty. Well, I am so, and more perhaps than you think, but not in the way you think.” A great religious idea alters this personal defence. It is less a confession, or an excuse for his faults, in the present sense of the word, than a continual glorification of the divine mercy. It is less the shame of his sins he confesses, than the glory of God.

After that, he never thought again of anything but Truth and the Church, and the enemies of Truth and the Church: the Manichees, the Arians, the Pelagians–the Donatists, above all. He lets no error go by without refuting it, no libel without an answer. He is always on the breach. He might well be compared, in much of his writings, to one of our fighting journalists. He put into this generally thankless business a wonderful vigour and dialectical subtlety. Always and everywhere he had to have the last word. He brought eloquence to it, yet more charity–sometimes even wit. And lastly, he had a patience which nothing could dishearten. He repeats the same things a hundred times over. These tiresome repetitions, into which he was driven by the obstinacy of his opponents, caused him real pain. Every time it became necessary, he took up again the endless demonstration without letting himself grow tired. The moment it became a question of the Truth, Augustin could not see that he had any right to keep quiet.

In Africa and elsewhere they made fun of what they called his craze for scribbling. He himself, in his _Retractations_, is startled by the number of his works. He turns over the Scripture saying which the Donatists amusingly opposed to him: _Vae mullum loquentibus_–“Woe unto them of many words.” But calling God to witness, he says to Him: _Vae tacentibus de te_–“Woe unto those who keep silent upon Thee.” In the eyes of Augustin, the conditions were such that silence would have been cowardly. And elsewhere he adds: “They may believe me or not as they will, but I like much better to read than to write books….”

In any case, his modesty was evident. “I am myself,” he acknowledges, “almost always dissatisfied with what I say.” To the heretics he declares, with a glance back at his own errors, “I know by experience how easy it is to be wrong.” When there is some doubt in questions of dogma, he does not force his explanations, but suggests them to his readers. How much intellectual humility is in that prayer which ends his great work on the Trinity: “Lord my God, one Trinity, if in these books I have said anything which comes from Thee, may Thou and Thy chosen receive it. But if it is from me it comes, may Thou and Thine forgive me.”

And again, how much tolerance and charity in those counsels to the faithful of his diocese who, having been formerly persecuted by the Donatists, now burned to get their revenge:

“It is the voice of your bishop, my brothers, sounding in your ears. He implores you, all of you who are in this church, to keep yourselves from insulting those who are outside, but rather to pray that they may enter with you into communion.”

Elsewhere, he reminds his priests that they must preach at the Jews in a spirit of friendliness and loving-kindness, without troubling to know if they listen with gratitude or indignation. “We ought not,” said he, “to bear ourselves proudly against these broken branches of Christ’s tree.”…

This charity and moderation took nothing from the firmness of his character. This he proved in a startling way in the discussion he had with St. Jerome over a passage In the Epistle to the Galatians, and upon the new translation, of the Bible which Jerome had undertaken. The solitary of Bethlehem saw a “feint” on the part of St. Paul in the disputed passage: Augustin said, a “lie.” What, then, would become of evangelic truth if in such a place the Apostle had lied? And would not this be a means of authorizing all the exegetical fantasies of heresiarchs, who already rejected as altered or forged all verses of the holy books which conflicted with their own doctrines?…

As to the new translation of the Bible, it would bring about trouble in the African churches, where they were accustomed to the ancient version of the Septuagint. The mistranslations, pointed out by Jerome in the old version, would upset the faithful and lead them to suspect that the entire Scripture was false. In this double matter, Augustin defended at once orthodoxy and tradition from very praiseworthy reasons of prudence.

Jerome retorted in a most aggressive and offensive tone. He flatly accused the Bishop of Hippo of being jealous of him and of wishing to cut out a reputation for learning at his expense. In front of his younger and more supple adversary, he took on the air of an old wrestler who was still capable of knocking out any one who had the audacity to attack him. He hurled at Augustin this phrase heavy with menaces: “The tired ox stands firmer than ever on his four legs.”

For all that, Augustin stuck to his opinion, and he confined himself to replying gently: “In anything I say, I am not only always ready to receive your observations upon what you find wounding and contrary to your feelings, but I even ask your advice as earnestly as I can.”…

IV

AGAINST “THE ROARING LIONS”

One day (this was soon after he became bishop) Augustin went to visit a Catholic farmer in the suburbs of Hippo, whose daughter had been lessoned by the Donatists, and had just enrolled herself among their consecrated virgins. The father at first had shouted at the deserter, and flogged her unmercifully by way of improving her state of mind. Augustin, when he heard of the affair, condemned the farmer’s brutality and declared that he would never receive the girl back into the community unless she came of her own free will. He then went out to the place to try and settle the matter. On the way, as he was crossing an estate which belonged to a Catholic matron, he fell in with a priest of the Donatist Church at Hippo. The priest at once began to insult him and his companions, and yelled:

“Down with the traitors! Down with the persecutors!”

And he vomited out abominations against the matron herself who owned the land. As much from prudence as from Christian charity, Augustin did not answer. He even prevented those with him from falling upon the insulter.

Incidents of this kind happened almost every day. About the same time, the Donatists of Hippo made a great noise over the rebaptizing of another apostate from the Catholic community. This was a good-for-nothing loafer who beat his old mother, and the bishop severely rebuked his monstrous conduct.

“Well, as you talk in that tone of voice,” said the loafer, “I’m going to be a Donatist.”

Through bravado, he continued to ill-treat the poor old woman, and to make the worst kind of threats. He roared in savage fury:

“Yes, I’ll become a Donatist, and I’ll have your blood.”

And the young ruffian did really go over to the Donatist party. In accordance with the custom among the heretics, he was solemnly rebaptized in their basilica, and he exhibited himself on the platform clad in the white robe of the purified. People in Hippo were much shocked. Augustin, full of indignation, addressed his protests to Proculeianus, the Donatist bishop. “What! is this man, all bloody with a murder in his conscience, to walk about for eight days in white robes as a model of innocence and purity?” But Proculeianus did not condescend to reply.

These cynical proceedings were trifling compared to the vexations which the Donatists daily inflicted on their opponents. Not only did they tamper with Augustin’s people, but the country dwellers of the Catholic Church were continually interfered with on their lands, pillaged, ravaged, and burned out by mobs of fanatical brigands who organized a rule of terror from one end of Numidia to the other. Supported in secret by the Donatists, they called themselves “the Athletes of Christ.” The Catholics had given them the contemptuous name of “Circoncelliones,” or prowlers around cellars, because they generally plundered cellars and grain-houses. Troops of fanaticized and hysterical women rambled round with them, scouring the country like your true bacchantes, clawing the unfortunate wretches who fell into their hands, burning farms and harvests, broaching barrels of wine and oil, and crowning these exploits by orgies with “the Athletes of Christ.” When they saw a haystack blazing in the fields, the country-folk were panic-stricken–the “Circoncelliones” were not far off. Soon they appeared, brandishing their clubs and bellowing their war cry: _Deo laudes!_–“Praise be to God.” “Your shout,” said Augustin to them, “is more dreaded by our people than the roaring of lions.”

Something had to be done to quell these furious monsters, and to resist the encroachments and forcible acts of the heretics. These, by way of frightening the Catholic bishops, told them roundly:

“We don’t want any of your disputes, and we are going to rebaptize just as it suits us. We are going to lay snares for your sheep and to rend them like wolves. As for you, if you are good shepherds, keep quiet!”

Augustin was not a man to keep quiet, nor yet to spend his strength in small local quarrels. He saw big; he did not imprison himself within the limits of his diocese. He knew that Numidia and a good part of Africa were in the hands of the Donatists; that they had a rival primate to the Catholic primate at Carthage; that they had even sent a Pope of their community to Rome. In a word, they were in the majority. Everywhere a dissenting Church rose above the orthodox Church, when it did not succeed in stifling it altogether. At all costs the progress of this sect must be stopped. In Augustin’s eyes there was no more urgent work. For him and his flock it was a question of insuring their lives, since they were attacked even in their fields and houses. From the moment he first came to Hippo, as a simple priest, he had thrown himself intrepidly into this struggle. He never ceased till Donatism was conquered and trampled underfoot. To establish peace and Catholic unity everywhere was the great labour of his episcopate.

Who, then, were these terrible Donatists whom we have been continually striking against since the beginning of this history?

It would soon be a century since they had been disturbing and desolating Africa. Just after the great persecution of Diocletian, the sect was born, and it increased with amazing rapidity. During this persecution, evidence had not been wanting of the moral slackness in the African Church. A large number of lay people apostatized, and a good number of bishops and priests handed over to the pagan authorities, besides the devotional objects, the Scriptures and the muniments of their communities. In Numidia, and especially at Constantine, scandalous scenes took place. The cowardice of the clergy was lamentable. Public opinion branded with the names of _traditors_, or traitors, those who had weakened and given over the sacred books to the pagans.

The danger once over, the Numidians, whose behaviour had been so little brilliant, determined to redeem themselves by audacity, and to prove with superb impudence that they had been braver than the others. So they set themselves to shout _traditor_ against whoever displeased them, and particularly against those of Carthage and the Proconsulate. At bottom it was the old rivalry between the two Africas, East and West.

Under the reign of Constantine a peace had been patched up, when it fell out that a new Bishop of Carthage had to be elected, and the Archdeacon Caecilianus, whose name was put forward, was accused of preventing the faithful from visiting the martyrs in their prisons. The zealots contended that in collusion with his bishop, Mensurius, he had given up the Holy Scriptures to the Roman authorities to be burned. The election promised to be stormy. The supporters of the Archdeacon, who feared the hostility of the Numidian bishops, did not wait for their arrival. They hurried things over. Caecilianus was elected and consecrated by three bishops of the district, of whom one was a certain Felix of Abthugni.

At once the opposite clan, backed up by the Numidians, objected. At their head was a wealthy Spanish woman named Lucilla, an unbalanced devotee, who, it seemed, always carried about her person a bone of a martyr, and a doubtful one at that. She would ostentatiously kiss her relic before receiving the Eucharist. The Archdeacon Caecilianus forbade this devotion as superstitious, and thus made a relentless enemy of the fanatical Spaniard. All the former accusations were renewed against him, and it was added that Felix of Abthugni, who had consecrated him, was a _traditor_. Hence the election was void, by the single fact of the unworthiness of the consecrating bishops. Lucilla, having bribed a section of the bishops assembled in council, Caecilianus was deposed, and the deacon Majorinus elected in his room. He himself was soon after succeeded by Donatus, an active, clever, and energetic man, who organized resistance so ably, and who represented so well the spirit of the sect, that he left it his name. Henceforth, Donatism enters into history.

But Caecilianus had on his side the bishops overseas and the Imperial Government. The Pope of Rome and the Emperor recognized him as legitimately elected. Besides that, he cleared himself of all the grievances urged against him. Finally, an inquiry, conducted by laymen, proved that Felix of Abthugni was not a _traditor_. The Donatists appealed to Constantine, then to two Councils convoked successively at Rome and Arles. Everywhere they were condemned. Moreover, the Council of Arles declared that the character of him who confers the Sacraments has no influence whatever on their validity. Thus, baptism and ordination, even conferred by a _traditor_, were canonically sound.

This decision was regarded as an abominable heresy by the Donatists. As a matter of fact, there was an old African tradition, accepted by St. Cyprian himself, that an unworthy priest could not administer the Sacraments. The local prejudice would not yield: all were rebaptized who had been baptized by the Catholics–that is to say, by the supporters of the _traditors_.

The theological question was complicated with a question of property which was all but insoluble. Since the Donatist bishops were resolved to separate from the Catholic communion, did they mean to give up, with their title, their basilicas and the property belonging to their churches? Supposing that they themselves were disinterested, they had behind them the crowd of clients and land-tillers who got their living out of the Church, and dwelt on Church property. Never would these people allow a rival party to alter the direction of the charities, to plant themselves in their fields and their _gourbis_, to expel them from their cemeteries and basilicas. Other reasons, still deeper perhaps, induced the Donatists to persevere in the schism. These religious dissensions were agreeable to that old spirit of division which at all times has been the evil genius of Africa. The Africans have always felt the need of segregating themselves from one another in hostile _cofs_. They hate each other from one village to another–for nothing, just, for the pleasure of hating and felling each other to the ground.

At bottom, here is what Donatism really was: It was an extra sharp attack of African individualism. These rebels brought in nothing new in dogma. They would not even have been heretics without their claim to rebaptize. They limited themselves to retain a position gained long ago; to keep their churches and properties, or to seize those of the Catholics upon the pretence that they were themselves the legitimate owners. With that, they affected a respect for tradition, an austerity in morals and discipline, which made them perfect puritans. Yes, they were the pure, the irreconcilables, who alone had not bent before the Roman officials. All this was very pleasing to the discontented and quarrelsome, and caressed the popular instinct in its tendency to particularism.

That is why the sect became, little by little, mistress of almost the whole country. Then it subdivided, crumbled up into little churches which excommunicated each other. In Southern Numidia, the citadels of orthodox Donatism, so to speak, were Thimgad and Bagai. Carthage, with its primate, was the official centre. But in the Byzacena and Tripolitana Regio, there were the Maximianists, and the Rogatists in Mauretania, who had cut themselves off from the Great Church. These divisions of the schism corresponded closely enough to the natural compartments of North Africa. There must be some incompatibility of temper between these various regions. To this day, Algiers prides itself on not thinking like Constantine, which does not think like Bona or like Tunis.

Are we to see in Donatism a nationalist or separatist movement directed against the Roman occupation? That would be to transport quite modern ideas into antiquity. No more in Augustin’s time than in our own was there such a thing as African nationality. But if the sectaries had no least thought of separating from Rome, it is none the less true that they were in rebellion against her representatives, temporal as well as spiritual. Supposing that Rome had yielded to them–an impossible event, of course–that would have meant a surrender to the claims of Africans who wished to be masters of their property as well as of their religious beliefs in their own country. What more could they have wanted? It little mattered to them who was the nominal master, provided that they had the realities of government in their hands. Altogether, Donatism is a regionalist revindication, very strongly characterized. It is a remarkable fact that it was among the indigenous population, ignorant of Latin, that the most of its adherents were recruited.

* * * * *

Such was the position of the Church in Africa when Augustin was named Bishop of Hippo. He judged it at once, with his clear-sightedness, his strong good sense, his broad outlook of a Roman citizen freed from the smallnesses of a local spirit, his Christian idealism which took no heed of the accidents or considerations of worldly prosperity. What! was Catholicism to become an African religion, a restricted sect, wretchedly tied to the letter of tradition, to the exterior practices of worship? To reign in a little corner of the world–did Christ die for that? Never! Christ died for the wide world. The only limits of His Church are the limits of the universe. And besides, in this resolution to exclude, what becomes of the great principle of Charity? It is by charity, above all, that we are Christians. Faith without love is a faith stagnant and dead….

Augustin also foresaw the consequences of spiritual separation; he had them already under his eyes. The Church is the great spring, not only of love, but of intelligence. Once cut away from this reviving spring, Donatism would become dry and stunted like a branch stripped from a tree. The deep sense of its dogmas would become impoverished as its works emptied themselves of the spirit of charity. Obstinacy, narrowness, lack of understanding, fanaticism, and cruelty–there you had the inevitable fruits of schism. Augustin knew the rudeness and ignorance of his opponents, even of the most cultivated among them: he might well ask himself in anguish what would become of the African Church deprived of the benefit of Roman culture, isolated from the great intellectual current which united all the churches beyond seas. Finally, he knew his fellow-countrymen; he knew that the Donatists, even victorious, even sole masters of the land, would turn against themselves the fury they now satisfied against the Catholics, and never stop tearing each other in pieces. Here was now nearly a hundred years that they had kept Africa in fire and blood. This meant before very long a return to barbarism. Separated from Catholicism, they would really separate from the Empire and even from civilization. And so it was that in fighting for Catholic unity, Augustin fought for the Empire and for civilization.

Confronted with these barbarians and sectaries, his attitude could not be doubtful for a single moment. He must do his best to bring them back to the Church. It was only a matter of hitting upon the most effectual means.

Preaching, for an orator such as he was, should be an excellent weapon. His eloquence, his dialectic, his profane and sacred learning, gave him an immense superiority over the defenders of the opposite side. He certainly kept in the Church many Catholics who were ready to apostatize. But before the crowd of schismatics, all these high gifts were as good as lost. The people were in no wise anxious to know upon which side truth was to be found. They were Donatists, as they were Numidians or Carthaginians, without knowing why–because everybody about them was. Many might have answered like that grammarian of Constantine, who told the Inquisitors with astute simplicity:

“I am a professor of Roman literature, a teacher of Latin grammar. My father was a decurion at Constantine; my grandfather was a soldier and had served in the guard. Our family is of Moorish blood…. As for me, I am quite ignorant about the origin of the schism: I am just one of the ordinary faithful of the people called Christians. When I was at Carthage, Bishop Secundus came there one day. I heard tell that they found out that Bishop Caecilianus had been ordained irregularly by I don’t know who, and they elected another bishop against him. That’s how the schism began at Carthage. I have no means of knowing much about the origin of the schism, because there has never been more than one church in our city. If there has been a schism here, we know nothing about it.”

When a grammarian talked thus, what could have been the thoughts of agricultural labourers, city workmen, and slaves? They belonged to an estate, or a quarter of a town, where no other faith than theirs had ever been professed. They were Donatists like their employers, like their neighbours, like the other people of the _cof_ to which they had belonged from father to son. The theological side of the question left them absolutely indifferent. If Augustin tried to debate with them, they refused to listen and referred him to their bishops. That was the word of command.

The bishops, on their side, avoided all discussion. Augustin tried in vain to arrange an argument with Proculeianus, his Donatist colleague at Hippo. And if some of them shewed themselves more obliging, the evasions and reticences of the antagonist, and sometimes outside circumstances, made the debate utterly futile. At Thubursicum the audience raised such a noise in the place where Augustin was debating with the bishop Fortunius, that they were no longer able to hear each other. At other times, the meeting sank to an oratorical joust, wherein they tired themselves out passading against words, instead of attacking the matters at issue. Augustin felt that he was losing his time. Besides, the Donatist bishops presented an obstinate front against which everything smashed.

“Leave us in our errors,” they said ironically. “If we are lost in your eyes, why follow us about? We don’t want to be saved.”

And they prohibited their flocks from saluting Catholics, from speaking to them, from going into their churches or into their houses, from sitting down in the midst of them. They laid an interdict on their adversaries. Primanius, the Donatist Primate of Carthage, upon being invited to a conference, answered proudly:

“The sons of the martyrs can have nothing to do with the race of traitors.”

This being the state of the case, no method of pacification was left but written controversy. Augustin shewed himself tireless at it. It was chiefly in these letters and treatises against the Donatists that he was not afraid to repeat himself. He knew that he was dealing with the deaf, and with the deaf who did not want to hear: he was obliged to raise his voice. With admirable self-denial he reiterated the same arguments a hundred times over, a hundred times took up the history of the quarrel from the beginning, spreading such a light over the quibbles and refinings of his contradictors, that it should have brought conviction to the bluntest minds. “No,” he repeated, “Caecilianus was not a _traditor_, nor Felix of Abthugni either who consecrated him bishop. The documents are there to prove this. And even supposing they were, can the fault of a single man be charged to the whole Church?… Then why do you baptize the Catholics under the pretence that their priests are _traditors_ and as such unworthy to administer the Sacraments? It is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and not the virtue of the priest which renders baptism efficacious. If it were otherwise, what was the good of the Redemption? It is the fact that by the voluntary death of Christ, all men have been called to salvation. Salvation is not the privilege of Africans only. Being Catholic, the Church should take in the whole world….”

In the long run, these continual repetitions end by seeming wearisome to modern readers: for us there arises out of all these discussions a dense and intolerable boredom. But let us remember that all this was singularly living for Augustin’s cotemporaries, that these thankless developments were read with passion. And then, too, it was a question of the unity of the Church which involved, as we cannot too often repeat, the interest of the Empire and civilization.

Against so persuasive a power the Donatists opposed a conspiracy of silence. Their bishops forbade the people to read what Augustin wrote. They did more–they concealed their own libels so that it was impossible to reply to them. But Augustin used all his skill to unearth them. He refuted them, and had his refutations recopied and posted on the walls of the