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: _Væ mullum loquentibus_--"Woe unto them of many
words." But calling God to witness, he says to Him: _Væ 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
Cæcilianus, 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. Cæcilianus 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 Cæcilianus 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, Cæcilianus 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 Cæcilianus 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 Cæcilianus 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."