Abstracts
Augustiniana 67(2017)
Augustine’s Contra academicos was meant to be an introduction to a system of science crowned with philosophy (which was conceived but never realized). Since the accomplishment of this program rested on the solution of the skeptical question of validity of knowledge, Augustine had to be concerned with the Academics’ arguments. Although such a reading suggests itself, the matter is complicated by the paradoxical character of Augustine’s relation to Academic Skepticism, apparent if one compares the suggested purpose with the ambiguous commentaries in the end of his dialogue and in his other later texts. This dissonance ignored in the traditional approach, which is usually referred to as theoretical (or epistemological), and the multilayer structure of the work give ground for doubting whether a philosophical refutation of Skepticism was its true causa scribendi. The critics of the ‘received interpretation’ contrariwise hold that Augustine’s Contra academicos had only practical ends in view and that Augustine’s intention of overcoming Skepticism remained within the limits of a moral claim. In the article, however, it is argued that the cause of writing this work should not be sought in either of the particular aspects but in the totality of Augustine’s philosophical logic, that is, in the universality of his methodology penetrating both theory and practice. The concreteness of his logic enables Augustine not only to achieve an immanent refutation of the Academics but also to reconcile them with the Platonic tradition, which removes the contradiction in his own commentaries in their regard.
key words
Augustine - Contra academicos - Skepticism - the Academics - Self-consciousness - Wise man - True - Certain - Truth-like - Probable - Logico-methodological approach - Neoplatonism
Scholars have long noticed the connections between the two episodes of grief recounted by Augustine in Confessions 4 and 9. What has received less attention is the way that Augustine’s reflections on the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist condition both of those experiences of grief. What is more, in each account of sadness and death, Augustine articulates his treatment of the church’s sacraments in Trinitarian terms. This article thus reads the narratives of grief in Conf. 4 and 9 in light of one of the more neglected books of the work, Conf. 13, a figurative exegesis of Genesis which Isabelle Bochet has shown to have its origins in the baptismal liturgy of the Easter vigil. Conf. 13 depicts the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church. There Augustine describes how, through the sacraments, the Spirit affords Christian believers an anticipatory glimpse of the eschatological vision of creation as a whole. That vision of creation, seen as an expression of God’s goodness and love, sheds important light on Augustine’s understanding of the status of grief in Christian life: grief over the loss of what is rightly loved as God’s good creation – in this case, Augustine’s tears over the loss of his beloved mother, and not just over her sins – can be the source of anticipatory rest, when conformed to the Eucharistic memory of Christ through the love of the Holy Spirit.
key words
Grief - Baptism - Eucharist - Holy Spirit - Christ - Confessions
Adam and Eve play a remarkable role in Augustine’s theology of original sin and the fall. This paper studies the ways in which Augustine preaches to his congregation in sermones ad populum about primi homines and the punishments they received for their rebellion against the divine commandment in the Garden of Eden. I investigate how Augustine describes the fallen humankind, his audience included, as an interconnected unity of Adam and Eve’s family. This unity serves as a basis for the preacher to join his listeners to suffer the punishments of their ancestors in Eden. I suggest that in the sermons both the unity of humankind and the divine punishments derived from the fall are conceived in rather bodily and biological terms. As in his written works, Augustine takes physical death to represent the main form of poena for Adam and Eve’s fall. I will present a series of images and topoi that Augustine uses in preaching about this punishment for his congregation. Some of these images seem to be sermon specific, that is, appearing only in his spoken sermons.
key words
Adam - Original sin - Punishment - Death - Preaching
The article aims to reconstruct the book heritage of the convent of Sant’Agostino di Crema, the parent house of the Observance of Lombardy (founded in 1439), in order to better define the cultural guidelines of the Augustinian Friars in the context of the Congregation of the Lombard Augustinians between the 15th and 16th century. The library, dispersed after the Napoleonic suppression of the convent, is reconstructed on the basis of three main documentary sources: the Liber expensarum fabricae of the convent, the inventory of the volumes stored in the convent at the end of the 16th century compiled by the Sacred Congregation of the Index librorum prohibitorum (contained in the ms. Vat. Lat. 11285) and the inventory of the convent’s manuscripts compiled in the 18th century by the Augustinian scholar Tommaso Verani. The study of the library’s book heritage, compared with that of the other neighbouring Augustinian libraries of the Observation of Lombardy (Milan, Bergamo, Cremona), allows to outline the two fundamental values of the friars’ culture: on the one hand, the Augustinian ratio studiorum, still Medieval, defined by Egidio Romano; on the other hand, the openness towards humanistic culture which represents a typical trend of the Observation of Lombardy, born within the Order with specific intentions of spiritual renewal. In this perspective, the article’s last paragraph deals with the possible relationships between the Augustinian Lombard convents and the secular schools of grammar in the context of Lombard pedagogical humanism.
key words
Observance of Lombardy - Augustinian library - Medieval and Renaissance Augustinian culture - Humanism - Augustinian ratio studiorum
The present paper analyses the 22 testimonies that were given by Capuchins of the Flandro-Belgian Province during the official enquiry of 1644 concerning the scandal that was said to have been caused by the publication of the Augustinus of Cornelius Jansenius (1640). The paper is part of a larger project that aims to give a less biased account of the Jansenist controversy among the Flemish Capuchins than the only one available, viz. the one given by Hildebrand of Hooglede in the 6th volume of his De Kapucijnen in de Nederlanden en het prinsbisdom Luik (1951). Hildebrand’s main thesis was that the Flemish Capuchins never counted Jansenists among their number and that their alleged presence was the invention of the blind fanaticism of anti-Jansenist witch hunters. A close analysis of the 22 testimonies of 1644 shows, however, that most of them gave a judgment about the book’s doctrine that was unanimously in favour of the former bishop of Ypres. Moreover, the positive judgments were given by important members of the order. The analysis thus proves the untenable character of the later anti-Jansenist claim (repeated by Hildebrand) that the Flemish Capuchins first came into contact with the thought of Jansenius during the 1650s and 1660s. This account of the facts may have been an invention that had to present the doctrine of Jansenius as utterly foreign to Capuchin spirituality. The positive reception of the Augustinus by important members of the Order in the years immediately following the work’s publication clearly challenges this view.
key words
Capuchins - Flandro-Belgian province - Jansenism - 1644 inquest
- Christof MÜLLER & Christian TORNAU, Einführung in den Themen-Halbband Kommunikation und Publikation. Beiträge zur Epistolographie und zum Briefkorpus Augustins. Augustiniana 67(2017)1-2 : 7-15
- Michael ERELER, "Per ... chartulas loquitur" (Aug. ep. 84,1). Augustinus, antike Brieftheorie und die "Methode des Chamaileon". Augustiniana 67(2017)1-2 : 17-29
- Thomas Johann BAUER, Forum und kommunikative Funktionen paulinischer Briefe. Augustiniana 67(2017)1-2 : 31-53
- Raphael SCHWITTER, "Litterae caritatis" oder versteckte Lehrepisteln? Zur Appelfunktion des augustinischen Freundschaftsbriefs. Augustiniana 67(2017)1-2 : 55-72
- Emmanuel BERMON, How is it possible to make one see images in a dream? Letters 8 and 9 from the correspondence between Augustine and Nebridius. Augustiniana 67(2017)1-2 : 73-99
- Andreas E.J. GROTE, Klosterflucht und Klerusniveau. Augustins Epistiula 60 an Aurelius von Karthago - Einführung und ausführlicher Kommentar. Augustiniana 67(2017)1-2 : 101-122
- Volker Henning DRECOLL, Zur Neuedition der Augustinbriefe im Corpus Christianorum. Augustiniana 67(2017)1-2 : 123-143
- Andrey A. TASCHIAN & Alexander A. KREPANITSKIY, On the causa scribendi of Augustine's Contra academicos. Augustiniana 67(2017)3-4 : 145-170
Augustine’s Contra academicos was meant to be an introduction to a system of science crowned with philosophy (which was conceived but never realized). Since the accomplishment of this program rested on the solution of the skeptical question of validity of knowledge, Augustine had to be concerned with the Academics’ arguments. Although such a reading suggests itself, the matter is complicated by the paradoxical character of Augustine’s relation to Academic Skepticism, apparent if one compares the suggested purpose with the ambiguous commentaries in the end of his dialogue and in his other later texts. This dissonance ignored in the traditional approach, which is usually referred to as theoretical (or epistemological), and the multilayer structure of the work give ground for doubting whether a philosophical refutation of Skepticism was its true causa scribendi. The critics of the ‘received interpretation’ contrariwise hold that Augustine’s Contra academicos had only practical ends in view and that Augustine’s intention of overcoming Skepticism remained within the limits of a moral claim. In the article, however, it is argued that the cause of writing this work should not be sought in either of the particular aspects but in the totality of Augustine’s philosophical logic, that is, in the universality of his methodology penetrating both theory and practice. The concreteness of his logic enables Augustine not only to achieve an immanent refutation of the Academics but also to reconcile them with the Platonic tradition, which removes the contradiction in his own commentaries in their regard.
key words
Augustine - Contra academicos - Skepticism - the Academics - Self-consciousness - Wise man - True - Certain - Truth-like - Probable - Logico-methodological approach - Neoplatonism
- Douglas FINN, Resting on tears : The Trinity, the sacraments, and grief in Augustine's Confessions. Augustiniana 67(2017)3-4 : 171-197
Scholars have long noticed the connections between the two episodes of grief recounted by Augustine in Confessions 4 and 9. What has received less attention is the way that Augustine’s reflections on the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist condition both of those experiences of grief. What is more, in each account of sadness and death, Augustine articulates his treatment of the church’s sacraments in Trinitarian terms. This article thus reads the narratives of grief in Conf. 4 and 9 in light of one of the more neglected books of the work, Conf. 13, a figurative exegesis of Genesis which Isabelle Bochet has shown to have its origins in the baptismal liturgy of the Easter vigil. Conf. 13 depicts the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church. There Augustine describes how, through the sacraments, the Spirit affords Christian believers an anticipatory glimpse of the eschatological vision of creation as a whole. That vision of creation, seen as an expression of God’s goodness and love, sheds important light on Augustine’s understanding of the status of grief in Christian life: grief over the loss of what is rightly loved as God’s good creation – in this case, Augustine’s tears over the loss of his beloved mother, and not just over her sins – can be the source of anticipatory rest, when conformed to the Eucharistic memory of Christ through the love of the Holy Spirit.
key words
Grief - Baptism - Eucharist - Holy Spirit - Christ - Confessions
- Timo NISULA, Born to die : Adam and Eve's punishments in Augustine's Sermones ad populum. Augustiniana 67(2017)3-4 : 199-228
Adam and Eve play a remarkable role in Augustine’s theology of original sin and the fall. This paper studies the ways in which Augustine preaches to his congregation in sermones ad populum about primi homines and the punishments they received for their rebellion against the divine commandment in the Garden of Eden. I investigate how Augustine describes the fallen humankind, his audience included, as an interconnected unity of Adam and Eve’s family. This unity serves as a basis for the preacher to join his listeners to suffer the punishments of their ancestors in Eden. I suggest that in the sermons both the unity of humankind and the divine punishments derived from the fall are conceived in rather bodily and biological terms. As in his written works, Augustine takes physical death to represent the main form of poena for Adam and Eve’s fall. I will present a series of images and topoi that Augustine uses in preaching about this punishment for his congregation. Some of these images seem to be sermon specific, that is, appearing only in his spoken sermons.
key words
Adam - Original sin - Punishment - Death - Preaching
- Nicolò PREMI, La biblioteca conventuali di Sant'Agostino di Crema tra XV e XVI secolo. Augustiniana 67(2017)3-4 : 229-251
The article aims to reconstruct the book heritage of the convent of Sant’Agostino di Crema, the parent house of the Observance of Lombardy (founded in 1439), in order to better define the cultural guidelines of the Augustinian Friars in the context of the Congregation of the Lombard Augustinians between the 15th and 16th century. The library, dispersed after the Napoleonic suppression of the convent, is reconstructed on the basis of three main documentary sources: the Liber expensarum fabricae of the convent, the inventory of the volumes stored in the convent at the end of the 16th century compiled by the Sacred Congregation of the Index librorum prohibitorum (contained in the ms. Vat. Lat. 11285) and the inventory of the convent’s manuscripts compiled in the 18th century by the Augustinian scholar Tommaso Verani. The study of the library’s book heritage, compared with that of the other neighbouring Augustinian libraries of the Observation of Lombardy (Milan, Bergamo, Cremona), allows to outline the two fundamental values of the friars’ culture: on the one hand, the Augustinian ratio studiorum, still Medieval, defined by Egidio Romano; on the other hand, the openness towards humanistic culture which represents a typical trend of the Observation of Lombardy, born within the Order with specific intentions of spiritual renewal. In this perspective, the article’s last paragraph deals with the possible relationships between the Augustinian Lombard convents and the secular schools of grammar in the context of Lombard pedagogical humanism.
key words
Observance of Lombardy - Augustinian library - Medieval and Renaissance Augustinian culture - Humanism - Augustinian ratio studiorum
- Gert PARTOENS, Les témoignages des Capucins des Pays-Bas espagnols dans l'enquête sur le scandale causé par l'Augustinus de Jansénius (1644) . Augustiniana 67(2017)3-4 : 253-278
The present paper analyses the 22 testimonies that were given by Capuchins of the Flandro-Belgian Province during the official enquiry of 1644 concerning the scandal that was said to have been caused by the publication of the Augustinus of Cornelius Jansenius (1640). The paper is part of a larger project that aims to give a less biased account of the Jansenist controversy among the Flemish Capuchins than the only one available, viz. the one given by Hildebrand of Hooglede in the 6th volume of his De Kapucijnen in de Nederlanden en het prinsbisdom Luik (1951). Hildebrand’s main thesis was that the Flemish Capuchins never counted Jansenists among their number and that their alleged presence was the invention of the blind fanaticism of anti-Jansenist witch hunters. A close analysis of the 22 testimonies of 1644 shows, however, that most of them gave a judgment about the book’s doctrine that was unanimously in favour of the former bishop of Ypres. Moreover, the positive judgments were given by important members of the order. The analysis thus proves the untenable character of the later anti-Jansenist claim (repeated by Hildebrand) that the Flemish Capuchins first came into contact with the thought of Jansenius during the 1650s and 1660s. This account of the facts may have been an invention that had to present the doctrine of Jansenius as utterly foreign to Capuchin spirituality. The positive reception of the Augustinus by important members of the Order in the years immediately following the work’s publication clearly challenges this view.
key words
Capuchins - Flandro-Belgian province - Jansenism - 1644 inquest
- Book reviews. Augustiniana 67(2017)3-4 : 279-408
