Another two sermons of St Augustine discovered: on the Witch of Endor

Excellent news from the University of Würzburg, where a researcher has discovered two unknown sermons by St Augustine in a Latin manuscript in Poland!   The reporting (by Martin Brandstätter) is unusually good:

One day in 2024, the phone rang for Professor Christian Tornau, a Latinist at the University of Würzburg: An employee of the Bad Doberan Monastery Association in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania asked him to decipher a 12th-century manuscript that originally belonged to Bad Doberan Abbey but is now kept in its daughter monastery, Pelplin, in Poland. The manuscript contained six sermons by the Christian Church Father Augustine of Hippo (354-430).

What initially seemed like a routine philological assignment turned into a discovery: “Two of the six sermons are previously undiscovered writings by Augustine,” Professor Tornau rejoiced at the unexpected find. He is currently working with Professor Dorothea Weber and Dr. Clemens Weidmann from the CSEL series (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum) on an edition of the two Latin sermons.  …

The newly discovered sermons deal with the Old Testament story of the Witch of Endor from the First Book of Samuel. “Saul believes himself to be in a hopeless situation shortly before a battle against the Philistines. God does not hear his prayers. He turns to a witch,” explains Tornau. At Saul’s request, she summons the supposed spirit of the deceased prophet Samuel, who foretells his death in battle.

The story raises a theological question: “Why can a necromancer summon the spirit of a prophet? This, in turn, opens up the problem of theodicy: How can an omnipotent God allow this, or is he not truly omnipotent?” the Latinist explained. Theologically, there are two interpretations: Either it must be a case of deception by the witch, or God permitted the summoning to warn Saul of certain death.

The sermons play with these interpretations. “The first sermon was given during the Sunday service and ends with the question of theodicy and its interpretations. Only the second sermon, on the following Wednesday, weighed the options,” Tornau explained. The congregation was thus given a certain degree of freedom to form their own thoughts on the biblical passage.  …

There have already been cases in which supposed writings by Augustine turned out to be forgeries. Therefore, the professor of Latin studies proceeded cautiously: He analyzed the text together with the expert Clemens Weidmann, conducted meticulous research, and organized a summer school in Vienna in the autumn of 2025. Twenty other Latinists attended to discuss and verify the authenticity of the text. In the end, everyone agreed: The sermons are genuine.

Reconstructing the transmission history of the sermons proved challenging. “First of all, the creation of such a manuscript in the 12th century is unusual. A copy from the beginning of the 8th or 9th century would be more typical,” says Latinist Tornau. He therefore considers it very likely that the manuscript is based on an earlier version from the Lower Saxon monastery of Amelungsborn.

“An old catalog from the monastery mentions a text that bears the same headings and has the same sequence of content as our manuscript. It could have served as a model,” the researcher explains. Tornau cannot confirm this assumption with absolute certainty, however, as the entire library holdings of Amelungsborn Monastery were destroyed by fire during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648).

The first edition will address the transmission of the texts and contextualize their content and authenticity. “This isn’t a sensational find like the 30 Augustinian writings discovered in Mainz in 1990. But we are supplementing Augustine’s extensive body of work with two further fascinating texts in a critical edition,” Tornau summarizes. The edition is expected to be published by CSEL at the end of 2026.

The article even includes a legible photograph of the first page of the manuscript, and clearly identifies it – a first, in my experience.  The red title reads, I think: “Sermones Augustini de phitonissa et de resuscitatione samuelis”, (i.e. de pythonissa…?)

The town of Pelplin originated from the monastery, itself populated by monks from Bad Doberan in Mecklenburg, according to Wikipedia.  The Biblioteka Diecezjalna library has a website here, although it does not seem to have any manuscript material online.  There is a website for the “Friends of Bad Doberan monastery,” mentioned in the article, here.  I was unable to locate a publication of the “old catalogue” of Amelungsborn unfortunately.

It’s very good news, and it will be most interesting to see what Augustine had to say on this curious passage of the bible.

Update (16 June 2026): The “old catalogue” of Amelungsborn, mentioned by Dr. Tornau, is discussed in my next post.