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
æolian 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."