Abstracts
Augustiniana 70(2020)
While Augustine’s preaching presents a wealthy amount of discussion on the bodily punishments and afflictions (illnesses, death) due to Adam and Eve’s primal sin, there seems to be one particular theme, in which the bishop of Hippo was not too keen to delve into in his sermones ad populum. This theme was concupiscentia carnis as a divine punishment for the fall, appearing as disobedient bodily movements during sexual intercourse. While the theme is amply present in Augustine’s theological treatises, the article raises the question whether the omission of punitive concupiscence in the sermons is only coincidental or – for some reason – deliberate. The article analyses a small number of sermons that present parallel motifs and images to those appearing in theological treatises that discuss punitive concupiscentia, and demonstrates that while these motifs are sometimes found separately or in varying combinations in Augustine’s sermons, the idea of concupiscentia carnis as a bodily disobedience and a divine punishment for the fall of the primi homines is extremely rare, if not non-existent in the sermons.
key words
Adam and Eve - Punishment - Sex - Concupiscence - Body - Sermons
This essay examines Augustine’s four extant sermons on the Lord’s Prayer, which the Church Father preached to candidates for baptism around 410-412. During this period, Augustine was engaged in a number of projects directed against the Donatists, not least of which included his participation at the conference of Carthage in spring 411. Given his preoccupation with the Donatists at this time, it is not surprising that anti-Donatist themes can be found in a number of his sermons from this period as well, though the Donatists themselves are rarely mentioned explicitly. While his Lenten sermons on the Lord’s Prayer are not normally considered to be anti-Donatist in character, I argue that they are, in fact, framed by a subtle anti-Donatist polemic. Specifically, I maintain that Augustine draws on the logic he finds at work in Rom. 10:13-14 in order to make the claim that the Caecilianists alone fully embody Paul’s vision of catholicity.
key words
Sermones ad populum - Anti-Donatism - Lent - Lord's Prayer - Romans 10:13-14
Augustine’s view on the doctrine of original sin is closely informed by his view on the origin of souls. He held that all people were present in Adam when he sinned and, since in Augustine’s view sin is in the first place a matter of the human soul, the question is the following: how/in what way were all human souls in Adam when he sinned? And how does Augustine’s answer to that question relate to Plotinus’s doctrine of the pretemporal fall of the pre-existent soul? This article argues that the terminology Augustine uses to describe what happens to the soul reflects Plotinus’s doctrine of a pretemporal fall of the pre-existent soul. While Augustine does not teach a pretemporal fall of the soul, he does teach an ontological fall of the entire human race in Adam. Just like in Plotinus’s Neoplatonic anthropology all souls share a common existence in the one Soul, so Augustine holds all human beings to have a common existence in Adam preceding their individual existence. When Adam sinned, all human beings sinned in this common existence with Adam. This renders them all guilty, even before their concrete appearance in history. Since that guilt is common, it is not an alien guilt, but their own.
key words
Augustine - Original Sin - Origin of the souls - Plotinus - Robert J. O'Connell - Ronnie J. Rombs
Among various apparent weaknesses in Augustine’s account of predestination are: that it makes his account of justice, wisdom and mercy unintelligible; that it leads him to be easily misinterpreted as teaching a doctrine of ‘double predestination’; that it demands inadequate interpretations of Scripture; that it suggests God’s behaviour is arbitrary. But although like all thinkers Augustine’s options are limited by the intellectual conditions in which he wrote, yet within his known writings we can recognize that he has the resources to avoid many of his apparent errors and confusions. As in improving his accounts of religious freedom and of ‘holy’ warfare, so with predestination more careful attention to his own ideas about man’s creation in God’s image, together with attention to what is now referred to as the distinction between God’s antecedent and consequent wills, would do a great deal to make his thesis about predestination more ‘edifying’.
key words
Predestination - Baptism - Grace - Image of God - Interpretation of Scripture - Warfare - Persecution
The commentary on Jeremiah is Jerome’s last exegetical commentary, written during the Pelagian controversy and left incomplete due to his death. As already shown by other studies, in this commentary there are several attacks, more or less explicit, against Pelagius and his followers. Also the influence of the Jewish tradition has been attentively analyzed. However, the anti-Origenian character of several passages of Jerome’s exegesis has not yet been taken into consideration by modern research. The strong anti-Origenism of the commentary on Jeremiah will be contextualized in a twofold way: on the one hand, within the polemical struggle between Pelagius and Jerome, charged by Pelagius himself of being a heir of Origen, and, on the other hand, within the increasing interest in the question of the origin of the soul and its link with the doctrine of original sin, as witnessed by Augustine of Hippo. In this way, it will be possible to catch new shades of the Pelagian controversy and better understand some of the triggering causes.
key words
Jerome Stridon - Augustine of Hippo - Pelagius - Pre-existence of the soul - Origenism - Original Sin - Pelagian controversy
Giles of Rome was the most important Augustinian theologian of the later Middle Ages. While Giles has received significant attention by scholars of medieval philosophy, it is surprising that there is still no general interpretation of his theology as such that goes beyond pointing to the emphasis in Giles’s works on a primacy of grace, love, and will based on a Christocentric theology. This article seeks to begin to address that lack by providing a preliminary systematic treatment of Giles’s theology as a whole, drawn from a wider selection of his works than previously. Moreover, as detailed in the appendix, the 'standard' edition for Giles’s Ordinatio on book 1 of the Sentences, the Venice 1521 edition, cannot be relied on and is indeed misleading for interpreting Giles’s own organization of his text, whereby a new structure and system of reference is presented. Thus the article is also intended to call attention to, and indeed makes a plea for, the need for the critical edition of Giles’s works, and particularly his Ordinatio, to continue in order to restore Giles to his rightful, historical place in the late medieval theological tradition.
key words
Giles of Rome - Augustinianism - Scholasticism - Medieval Theology - Sentences - Commentaries
Based on analyses of a number of Augustinian texts (mainly conf. 3,10-11 and c. Faust. 20,9) and a whole range of Manichaean sources, this study seeks to answer the difficult question: Was Augustine acquainted with Mani’s Picture Book? After considering the various options and objections, my answer is in the affirmative: in all likelihood, Augustine knew Mani’s Icon (Picture, Ārdahang). It is in his Confessions (conf. 3,10-11 and perhaps also in what he tells about his ‘lost’ De pulchro et apto in conf. 4,24) that he gives some clues that point in this direction, but understandable only to the initiated. On the basis of the above-mentioned passages in Augustine’s oeuvre, it also seems possible to provide further indications of the likely themes depicted in Mani’s Icon.
key words
Augustine - Manichaeism - Confessiones - Contra Faustum - Mani's Picture book - Manichaean art
This paper explores how in his early 'anti-Pelagian' treatise, De spiritu et littera, Augustine draws together Rom. 5:5; 1 Cor. 4:7; 2 Cor. 3:6; Gal. 5:6; and Phil. 2:13 to articulate his view that human righteousness is a work of God, which incorporates divine and human willing. Augustine’s constellation of these Pauline verses manifests his deepened assimilation of a Pauline theology of grace and gives expression to his refined language about the relationship between faith, grace, love, and the Holy Spirit. His strategic citations of these verses disclose a newfound clarity and precision on the cooperation of the Holy Spirit – through whom we are given to love – and the free exercise of the human will in conversion and in good works. In this way, this novel reading of Spir. et litt. shows how it anticipates what will become even clearer in Augustine’s later works, namely, the close association between faith and love in the grace of the Holy Spirit.
key words
Augustine - Paul - Grace - Holy Spirit - De spiritu et littera
This article presents two new indirect witnesses of Beda Venerabilis’ Collectio ex opusculis sancti Augustini in Epistolas Pauli apostoli (CPL 1360). While it was already known that Bede’s Collectio was used as a source for Florus of Lyon’s Expositio in Epistolas beati Pauli ex operibus sancti Augustini, Hrabanus Maurus’ Enarrationes in Epistolas beati Pauli, the Romans commentary in ms. Paris, BNF Lat. 11574, and Sedulius Scottus’ Collectaneum in apostolum, the present study shows that the Collectio also functioned as a source for the anonymous Pauline commentaries in ms. Avranches, Bibl. Mun. 79 (ed. CCCM 151) and for Hrabanus Maurus’ Homiliae in Euangelia et Epistolas. This conclusion allows us to date the Avranches commentaries more precisely, while a systematic comparison of Bede’s florilegium with the latter commentaries provides us with more insight into the anonymous compiler’s knowledge of some of Augustine’s writings and their circulation in Early Medieval Europe. The last part of the article evaluates recent claims that the Collectio was also known to and used by Claudius of Turin, though, in this case, it is concluded that there is currently not enough evidence to prove such claims.
key words
Beda Venerabilis - Collectio ex opusculis sancti Augustini in Epistolas Pauli apostoli (CPL 1360) - Augsutinian florilegia - Manuscript Avranches - Bibl. Mun. 79 - Hrabanus Maurus - Claudius of Turin
While the reception of Augustine in the Late Middle Ages has attracted increasing scholarly attention in the last years, its fortune in the Italian Quattrocento still needs to be properly researched. This contribution focuses on a particular case of 'Augustinianism' in fifteenth-century Italy, namely two liturgical offices for St. Augustine produced by the Italian humanist Maffeo Vegio (1407-1458) and transmitted under the title De vita et officio beati Augustini. The article provides a detailed analysis and critical edition of these offices. The edition of these texts, extant in three manuscripts, further allows us to approach the genre of the liturgical historiae in the Renaissance, texts which have often been neglected by earlier scholars, despite their central role in the devotional practices of that time.
key words
St. Augustine - Confessiones - Maffeo Vegio - Liturgical offices - OESA
- Timo NISULA, Preaching on the disobedient body : Does Augustine present a theology of punitive concupiscentia carnis in his sermones ad populum? Augustiniana 70(2020)1 : 7-27
While Augustine’s preaching presents a wealthy amount of discussion on the bodily punishments and afflictions (illnesses, death) due to Adam and Eve’s primal sin, there seems to be one particular theme, in which the bishop of Hippo was not too keen to delve into in his sermones ad populum. This theme was concupiscentia carnis as a divine punishment for the fall, appearing as disobedient bodily movements during sexual intercourse. While the theme is amply present in Augustine’s theological treatises, the article raises the question whether the omission of punitive concupiscence in the sermons is only coincidental or – for some reason – deliberate. The article analyses a small number of sermons that present parallel motifs and images to those appearing in theological treatises that discuss punitive concupiscentia, and demonstrates that while these motifs are sometimes found separately or in varying combinations in Augustine’s sermons, the idea of concupiscentia carnis as a bodily disobedience and a divine punishment for the fall of the primi homines is extremely rare, if not non-existent in the sermons.
key words
Adam and Eve - Punishment - Sex - Concupiscence - Body - Sermons
- Michael GLOWASKY, What does it mean to be Catholic? Augustine's appropriation of Pauline logic against the Donatists. Augustiniana 70(2020)1 : 33-47
This essay examines Augustine’s four extant sermons on the Lord’s Prayer, which the Church Father preached to candidates for baptism around 410-412. During this period, Augustine was engaged in a number of projects directed against the Donatists, not least of which included his participation at the conference of Carthage in spring 411. Given his preoccupation with the Donatists at this time, it is not surprising that anti-Donatist themes can be found in a number of his sermons from this period as well, though the Donatists themselves are rarely mentioned explicitly. While his Lenten sermons on the Lord’s Prayer are not normally considered to be anti-Donatist in character, I argue that they are, in fact, framed by a subtle anti-Donatist polemic. Specifically, I maintain that Augustine draws on the logic he finds at work in Rom. 10:13-14 in order to make the claim that the Caecilianists alone fully embody Paul’s vision of catholicity.
key words
Sermones ad populum - Anti-Donatism - Lent - Lord's Prayer - Romans 10:13-14
- Henk TEN BRINKE, "We all were that one man" : Augustine on the origin of souls and our bond with Adam. Augustiniana 70(2020)1 : 49-66
Augustine’s view on the doctrine of original sin is closely informed by his view on the origin of souls. He held that all people were present in Adam when he sinned and, since in Augustine’s view sin is in the first place a matter of the human soul, the question is the following: how/in what way were all human souls in Adam when he sinned? And how does Augustine’s answer to that question relate to Plotinus’s doctrine of the pretemporal fall of the pre-existent soul? This article argues that the terminology Augustine uses to describe what happens to the soul reflects Plotinus’s doctrine of a pretemporal fall of the pre-existent soul. While Augustine does not teach a pretemporal fall of the soul, he does teach an ontological fall of the entire human race in Adam. Just like in Plotinus’s Neoplatonic anthropology all souls share a common existence in the one Soul, so Augustine holds all human beings to have a common existence in Adam preceding their individual existence. When Adam sinned, all human beings sinned in this common existence with Adam. This renders them all guilty, even before their concrete appearance in history. Since that guilt is common, it is not an alien guilt, but their own.
key words
Augustine - Original Sin - Origin of the souls - Plotinus - Robert J. O'Connell - Ronnie J. Rombs
- John RIST, Could Augustine have produced a more edifying account of predestination? Augustiniana 70(2020)1 : 67-89
Among various apparent weaknesses in Augustine’s account of predestination are: that it makes his account of justice, wisdom and mercy unintelligible; that it leads him to be easily misinterpreted as teaching a doctrine of ‘double predestination’; that it demands inadequate interpretations of Scripture; that it suggests God’s behaviour is arbitrary. But although like all thinkers Augustine’s options are limited by the intellectual conditions in which he wrote, yet within his known writings we can recognize that he has the resources to avoid many of his apparent errors and confusions. As in improving his accounts of religious freedom and of ‘holy’ warfare, so with predestination more careful attention to his own ideas about man’s creation in God’s image, together with attention to what is now referred to as the distinction between God’s antecedent and consequent wills, would do a great deal to make his thesis about predestination more ‘edifying’.
key words
Predestination - Baptism - Grace - Image of God - Interpretation of Scripture - Warfare - Persecution
- Giulio MALAVASI, Esegesi anti-origeniane nel Commento a Geremia di Gerolamo. Augustiniana 70(2020)1 : 91-108
The commentary on Jeremiah is Jerome’s last exegetical commentary, written during the Pelagian controversy and left incomplete due to his death. As already shown by other studies, in this commentary there are several attacks, more or less explicit, against Pelagius and his followers. Also the influence of the Jewish tradition has been attentively analyzed. However, the anti-Origenian character of several passages of Jerome’s exegesis has not yet been taken into consideration by modern research. The strong anti-Origenism of the commentary on Jeremiah will be contextualized in a twofold way: on the one hand, within the polemical struggle between Pelagius and Jerome, charged by Pelagius himself of being a heir of Origen, and, on the other hand, within the increasing interest in the question of the origin of the soul and its link with the doctrine of original sin, as witnessed by Augustine of Hippo. In this way, it will be possible to catch new shades of the Pelagian controversy and better understand some of the triggering causes.
key words
Jerome Stridon - Augustine of Hippo - Pelagius - Pre-existence of the soul - Origenism - Original Sin - Pelagian controversy
- Eric Leland SAAK, The theology of Giles of Rome. Augustiniana 70(2020)1 : 109-181
Giles of Rome was the most important Augustinian theologian of the later Middle Ages. While Giles has received significant attention by scholars of medieval philosophy, it is surprising that there is still no general interpretation of his theology as such that goes beyond pointing to the emphasis in Giles’s works on a primacy of grace, love, and will based on a Christocentric theology. This article seeks to begin to address that lack by providing a preliminary systematic treatment of Giles’s theology as a whole, drawn from a wider selection of his works than previously. Moreover, as detailed in the appendix, the 'standard' edition for Giles’s Ordinatio on book 1 of the Sentences, the Venice 1521 edition, cannot be relied on and is indeed misleading for interpreting Giles’s own organization of his text, whereby a new structure and system of reference is presented. Thus the article is also intended to call attention to, and indeed makes a plea for, the need for the critical edition of Giles’s works, and particularly his Ordinatio, to continue in order to restore Giles to his rightful, historical place in the late medieval theological tradition.
key words
Giles of Rome - Augustinianism - Scholasticism - Medieval Theology - Sentences - Commentaries
- Johannes VAN OORT, What did Augustine see? Augustine on Mani's Picture book. Augustiniana 70(2020)2 : 183-202
Based on analyses of a number of Augustinian texts (mainly conf. 3,10-11 and c. Faust. 20,9) and a whole range of Manichaean sources, this study seeks to answer the difficult question: Was Augustine acquainted with Mani’s Picture Book? After considering the various options and objections, my answer is in the affirmative: in all likelihood, Augustine knew Mani’s Icon (Picture, Ārdahang). It is in his Confessions (conf. 3,10-11 and perhaps also in what he tells about his ‘lost’ De pulchro et apto in conf. 4,24) that he gives some clues that point in this direction, but understandable only to the initiated. On the basis of the above-mentioned passages in Augustine’s oeuvre, it also seems possible to provide further indications of the likely themes depicted in Mani’s Icon.
key words
Augustine - Manichaeism - Confessiones - Contra Faustum - Mani's Picture book - Manichaean art
- Alexander H. PIERCE, A Pauline theology of grace and the Spirit's gift of love in Augustine's De spiritu et littera. Augustiniana 70(2020)2 : 227-281
This paper explores how in his early 'anti-Pelagian' treatise, De spiritu et littera, Augustine draws together Rom. 5:5; 1 Cor. 4:7; 2 Cor. 3:6; Gal. 5:6; and Phil. 2:13 to articulate his view that human righteousness is a work of God, which incorporates divine and human willing. Augustine’s constellation of these Pauline verses manifests his deepened assimilation of a Pauline theology of grace and gives expression to his refined language about the relationship between faith, grace, love, and the Holy Spirit. His strategic citations of these verses disclose a newfound clarity and precision on the cooperation of the Holy Spirit – through whom we are given to love – and the free exercise of the human will in conversion and in good works. In this way, this novel reading of Spir. et litt. shows how it anticipates what will become even clearer in Augustine’s later works, namely, the close association between faith and love in the grace of the Holy Spirit.
key words
Augustine - Paul - Grace - Holy Spirit - De spiritu et littera
- Nicolas DE MAEYER, Beda Venerabilis' Augustinian florilegium as a source for early medieval Bible commentaries and homilies. Augustiniana 70(2020)2 : 227-281
This article presents two new indirect witnesses of Beda Venerabilis’ Collectio ex opusculis sancti Augustini in Epistolas Pauli apostoli (CPL 1360). While it was already known that Bede’s Collectio was used as a source for Florus of Lyon’s Expositio in Epistolas beati Pauli ex operibus sancti Augustini, Hrabanus Maurus’ Enarrationes in Epistolas beati Pauli, the Romans commentary in ms. Paris, BNF Lat. 11574, and Sedulius Scottus’ Collectaneum in apostolum, the present study shows that the Collectio also functioned as a source for the anonymous Pauline commentaries in ms. Avranches, Bibl. Mun. 79 (ed. CCCM 151) and for Hrabanus Maurus’ Homiliae in Euangelia et Epistolas. This conclusion allows us to date the Avranches commentaries more precisely, while a systematic comparison of Bede’s florilegium with the latter commentaries provides us with more insight into the anonymous compiler’s knowledge of some of Augustine’s writings and their circulation in Early Medieval Europe. The last part of the article evaluates recent claims that the Collectio was also known to and used by Claudius of Turin, though, in this case, it is concluded that there is currently not enough evidence to prove such claims.
key words
Beda Venerabilis - Collectio ex opusculis sancti Augustini in Epistolas Pauli apostoli (CPL 1360) - Augsutinian florilegia - Manuscript Avranches - Bibl. Mun. 79 - Hrabanus Maurus - Claudius of Turin
- Fabio DELLA SCHIAVA, Due uffici liturgici di Maffeo Vegio per s. Agostino. Augustiniana 70(2020)2 : 283-335
While the reception of Augustine in the Late Middle Ages has attracted increasing scholarly attention in the last years, its fortune in the Italian Quattrocento still needs to be properly researched. This contribution focuses on a particular case of 'Augustinianism' in fifteenth-century Italy, namely two liturgical offices for St. Augustine produced by the Italian humanist Maffeo Vegio (1407-1458) and transmitted under the title De vita et officio beati Augustini. The article provides a detailed analysis and critical edition of these offices. The edition of these texts, extant in three manuscripts, further allows us to approach the genre of the liturgical historiae in the Renaissance, texts which have often been neglected by earlier scholars, despite their central role in the devotional practices of that time.
key words
St. Augustine - Confessiones - Maffeo Vegio - Liturgical offices - OESA
- Book reviews. Augustiniana 70(2020)2 : 337-531
