Tag: Augustine

The 1412 inventory of the manuscripts of Amelungsborn Abbey

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I reported yesterday on the discovery of two new sermons by St Augustine in a Latin manuscript in a monastery in Poland.  One statement in the press release is also of great interest.  The discoverer, Prof. Christian Tornau, of the University of Würzburg, stated:

“An old catalogue 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 “old catalogue” in question is the inventory of 1412 of the Cistercian Abbey of Amelungsborn. This takes a little locating.

The inventory is listed in a catalogue of surviving medieval inventories, published by Theodor Gottlieb, Ueber mittelalterliche Bibliotheken (1890 – online here).  Amelungsborn is on p.18-19:

The footnote reads:

Im Anniversarienbuch sind 7 Schenkungen von Büchern aufgeführt; dies wird pg. 18 gesagt. – Ferner ist auf einer Seite des Catal. ein Verzeichniss von Büchern mit der Ueberschr.: Hii de Corbeja, (von woher sie nach Dürres Vermuthung  zur Abschr. entlehnt waren).

The anniversary book lists seven donations of books; this is mentioned on page 18. Furthermore, on one page of the catalogue, there is a list of books with the heading: “Hii de Corbeja” (from where, according to Dürre’s presumption, they were borrowed for copying).

The inventory of 1412 is preserved, then, in a manuscript, once in the Ducal Library in Wolfenbüttel, today in the Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv (NLA) where it has the shelfmark “Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv Wolfenbüttel VII. B. 111.”  A monochrome microfilm is online.  Each image is two pages: the catalogue is right at the end, on pages 101-105, i.e. images 54-56.  Here is the start of it:

Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv Wolfenbüttel VII. B. 111, folio 101r, top (image 54)

The inventory has been printed, but those seeking it may find that it can take a bit of time to locate thanks to a pleasant custom in 19th century German scholarship, whereby the author publishes the article twice under the same title in the same year but with different contents.  So it has been here.

The actual article, that contains a transcription of the inventory of 1412, is this:

H. Dürre, “Beiträge zur Geschichte der Cistercienserabtei Amelungsborn”, Programm des herzoglichen Gymnasiums zu Holzminden. Ostern 1876, p. 3-24; esp. 19-24.

This may be downloaded from here, and the inventory starts on page 19 thus:

But the unwary or unlucky researcher will search Google for “Dürre Beiträge zur Geschichte der Cistercienserabtei Amelungsborn” or something of the sort and will be presented with this:

H. Dürre, “Beiträge zur Geschichte der Cistercienserabtei Amelungsborn”, Zeitschrift des Historischen Vereins für Niedersachsen. 1876

In this volume, Dr Dürre’s article is the fourth, begins on p.179, and ends on 212, omitting the transcription of the inventory altogether.  It was only when you start to search for Programm des herzoglichen Gymnasiums zu Holzminden that you will make progress.

Looking at the inventory, the entry for the new sermons is on p.22, line 220 of the printed inventory.

The manuscript:

NLA WO VIII B 111, fol. 103r, column 2, part way down.

So there is the reference explained.

I think we will all be very interested to see the text of Dr Tornau’s discovery in full!

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

Posted on by Roger Pearse

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…?)

Excerpt from the manuscript (in red): “Augustine’s sermons on the fortune teller and the appearance of Samuel.” Source: Pelplin, Diocesan Library, Codex 114 (195), fol. 14r. (Image: Biblioteka Diecezjalna im. Biskupa Jana Bernarda Szlagi w Pelplinie)

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.

Augustine’s “Enarrationes in Psalmos”, on Ps. 97/96:5 in the Vulgate – “terrae” or “terra” once more?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Augustine frequently preached sermons on the psalms until his later years, after 415, when he preferred to dictate treatises.  Indeed he mentions doing so in his letter to Evodius (lett. 169).  The result was a ramshackle mass of psalm-related material.  None of this has reached us independently, but instead it was organised into “decades”, probably by his own secretaries and scriptorium in Hippo, and transmitted in large chunks.  The title “Enarrationes in Psalmos” is not ancient either, but was coined by Erasmus.  This information I draw from the fascinating and illuminating English-language introduction to CSEL 94, part 2 – Enarrationes in Psalmos 61-70, by Hildegund Müller.

Naturally this included a discussion of Psalm 97 (in the Hebrew and KJV) / 96 (LXX and Latin). In the Latin, verse 5 reads:

Montes sicut cera fluxerunt a facie Domini; a facie Domini omnis terrae.

The mountains melted like wax, at the presence of the Lord: at the presence of the Lord of all the earth.

but quite a few versions of the text read:

a facie Domini omnis terra.

and all the earth at his presence.

I talked about this in my last post, which provoked many interesting comments.  It seems that “omnis terrae” reflects the LXX Greek correctly, and indeed the Hebrew original, although the Latin is a translation of the LXX.

Here is the relevant section of Augustine.  The repetition of the verse tells us at once that this is expository preaching.

Montes fluxerunt sicut cera a facie Domini.

Qui sunt montes? Superbi. Omnis altitudo extollens se adversus Deum, factis Christi et Christianorum contremuit, succubuit, et quando dico quod dictum est, Fluxit, melius verbum inveniri non potest. Montes fluxerunt velut cera a facie Domini.

Ubi est altitudo potestatum? ubi duritia infidelium? Montes fluxerunt sicut cera a facie Domini. Ignis eis fuit Dominus, illi ante faciem eius sicut cera fluxerunt; tamdiu duri, donec ignis ille admoveretur. Complanata est omnis altitudo; modo blasphemare Christum non audet: et paganus non in eum credit, non eum tamen blasphemat; etsi nondum factus est vivus lapis, tamen victus est durus mons.

Montes fluxerunt sicut cera a facie Domini, a facie Domini omnis terrae: non Judaeorum tantum, sed et Gentium, sicut dicit Apostolus [Rom. III, 29]; non enim est Judaeorum tantum Deus, sed et Gentium. Dominus ergo universae terrae, Dominus Jesus Christus in Judaea natus, sed non Iudaeae tantum natus: quia et antequam natus omnes fecit; et qui omnes fecit, omnes refecit. A facie Domini omnis terrae.1

9. The mountains melted away like wax from the presence of the Lord.

Who are the mountains? The proud. Every high thing that exalts itself against God [16] shuddered at the deeds wrought by Christ and by Christians, and sank down. If I say this in the same words that the psalm used, it is because no better expression could be found: the mountains melted away like wax from the presence of the Lord.

What has become of those towering authorities? Where now is the rock like obstinacy of the unbelievers? The mountains melted away like wax from the presence of the Lord. The Lord came to them as fire, and they melted in his presence like wax; they were hard only until the fire was applied to them. Every hill has been levelled, and dare not blaspheme Christ nowadays. A pagan may not believe in him, but dare not blaspheme him. Even if such a person has not yet become a living stone, at least the stony mountain he or she once was has been brought low.

The mountains melted away like wax from the presence of the Lord, from the presence of the Lord of all the earth.[17] He is Lord not of the Jews alone, but of the Gentiles too; for God is God not only of Jews but also of Gentiles, as the apostle teaches.[18] As Lord of the whole earth the Lord Jesus Christ was born in Judea, but born not for Judea alone, because even before his birth he made us all, and he who made all has remade all. From the presence of the Lord of all the earth.2

The Latin here is the Migne edition, Patrologia Latina 37, col. 1243.  This reprints the 18th century Maurist edition.  The English is from the New City Press translation, which actually (and correctly) signals the alternative reading and translates it.

The Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 39, pp.1360-1, also has “terrae”.  But this is not a critical edition, but also a descendant of the Maurist edition.

In fact, at this moment, there does not seem to be a critical edition of this portion of the Enarrationes.  Over the last decade,the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (CSEL) series have been producing volumes of a critical edition – the first ever -, as CSEL 93, 94 and 95.  But I could not see that the relevant volume has appeared.  (Why are publishers’ websites so universally dreadful at listing series?)

The biblical text of the Psalms used by Augustine differs significantly from the Vulgate “Gallican” Psalter, or so Müller states (p.32 f.).  This is the Latin translation of the LXX by Jerome, who also made a translation direct from the Hebrew.  The fact is that Augustine was using the Vetus Latina, the Old Latin version of the psalms, familiar to his audience.

The closest parallel text, to that used by Augustine, is found in the Verona Psalter, a bi-lingual Greek and Latin manuscript of the 6th century, in uncials, apparently written in northern Italy.  This has the shelfmark: “Verona, Chapter Library I (1), but sadly it is offline.  More details of this Psalterium Veronensis can be found in R. Weber, Le Psautier romain et les auttres anciens psautiers latins, Rome (1953) p.x-xi.  From this I learn that a transcription was published by J. Bianchini in 1740 in Rome under the title of Vindiciae canonicarum Scripturarum Vulgatae Latinae editionis.  This is online here at the Internet Archive, but – caveat lector – the reader is warned that page 1 is preceded by 456 pages of “introduction”.

Our portion is on p.170 (p.626 of the PDF).  The Greek text, on the left, is given in Roman letters.

And here we see… “terra”.

In the Stuttgart Vulgate (5th ed., p.892), we find “terrae”, but a footnote “terra” in MSS “SKΦc”.  In vol. 2 of Sabatier’s edition of the Old Latin, p.192, he gives a “versio antiqua”, i.e. before Jerome, from a ms., with “terra” and a “Vulgata hodierna”, as Jerome’s translation of the LXX, also “terra”.  Only the version from the Hebrew is “terrae”.

So, is “terra” a Vetus Latina reading, straightened out by St Jerome, but persisting through liturgical usage?  In my state of ignorance, it seems like it might be.

  1. Taken from this site, which professes to offer the Migne text: PL 36, 67-1026; PL 37, 1033-1966; this portion PL 37, col. 1243.[↩]
  2. St Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, volume 4, p.446. Series: The Works of St Augustine. A Translation for the 21st Century, Part III – Books; volume 18: Expositions of the Psalms 73-98. New City Press (2002)[↩]

A translation query in Augustine’s “Treatise against the Jews”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I received today an interesting query about an old post from 2015 in which I give an English translation of Augustine’s Adversus Judaeos.  This involves some looking up, so I thought I would blog about it.

Daniel Boyarin’s “Carnal Israel”  begins with a brief quote from Augustine’s Tractatus adversus Judaeos, (vii, 9)  which reads as follows:

‘Behold Israel according to the flesh’ (1 Cor. 10:18). This we know to be the carnal Israel; but the Jews do not grasp this meaning and as a result the prove themselves indisputably carnal.

You translate these verses differently:

‘Behold Israel according to the flesh,’ we know to be the natural Israel; but the Jews do not grasp this meaning and as a result they prove themselves indisputably natural.

I understand carnal and natural to be similar words, but with very different connotations.

The full title of the book is Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture, and there is a preview here.  I could not discover where Mr. Boyarin got his translation, but it appears at the very start of his book and he needs the meaning of “carnal” here.

The words that I reproduced in  my post are those of the Fathers of the Church series translator, p.402-3.  I modified this only to remove “thee” and “thou” in a couple of places.  Here it is, with a bit of context.

We know, of course, the spiritual Israel about which the Apostle says: ‘And whoever follows this rule, peace and mercy upon them, even upon the Israel of God.’ The Israel, however, about which the Apostle says: ‘Behold Israel according to the flesh,’ we know to be the natural Israel; but the Jews do not grasp this meaning and as a result they prove themselves indisputably natural.

The first place to start is with the Latin, which is online here.  The translation has altered the chapter divisions (drat them), but indicated the Patrologia Latina division, which is chapter 9.

Novimus quidem Israel spiritualem, de quo dicit Apostolus, Et quicumque hanc regulam sequuntur, pax super illos et misericordia, et super Israel Dei (Galal. vi, 16): istum autem Israel scimus esse carnalem, de quo idem dicit, Videte Israel secundum carnem (I Cor. x, 18). Sed ista isti non capiunt, et eo se ipsos carnales esse convincunt.

The next place to look is at the bible text referenced, in the Latin.  This is online here.  Augustine would most likely have used an Old Latin text rather than the Vulgate, but they probably did not differ here.

18 Videte Israel secundum carnem: nonne qui edunt hostias, participes sunt altaris?

18 Behold Israel according to the flesh: are not they, that eat of the sacrifices, partakers of the altar?

We may as well have the Greek also:

18 βλέπετε τὸν Ἰσραὴλ κατὰ σάρκα· [a]οὐχ οἱ ἐσθίοντες τὰς θυσίας κοινωνοὶ τοῦ θυσιαστηρίου εἰσίν;

It’s a little hard to translate that first phrase, especially without paraphrasing.   I was a little surprised to see that modern versions like the NIV, NRSV and even the ESV simply fail to translate κατὰ σάρκα.  The KJV (and of course the Douai) do translate it.  I confess that this omission seems worrying to me.

The passage in 1 Corinthians is talking about idolatry.  If you take part in a heathen sacrifice, you become part of the worship.  As part of this, Paul uses the analogy of an ordinary observant non-Christian Jew, sacrificing at the temple, who becomes part of that worship.  So the sense is about Jew versus Christian here.

Based on this, I can respond to the original query.  Both “natural” and “carnal” have the same meaning here – ordinary, worldly, not someone who has become a Christian and lives by the Holy Spirit and obeys His commandments.  But in our age of pornography, I think “carnal” today has gained a meaning which is not intended here, of worldly vices and indulgence.

So I can see why the 1950s translator decided to avoid it, to avoid that conclusion.  It may also be that in 1950s America it was difficult to use in print a word that might seem anti-semitic.

A quotation from Augustine: “God doesn’t love you as you are; he hates you as you are.”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A tweet this evening:

God doesn’t love you as you are; he hates you as you are.

~Augustine

“You must be born again.”

But is it from Augustine?

In fact it is taken from M. C. Hollingworth, “Grace, confession, and the Pilgrim City: the political significance of St.Augustine of Hippo’s creation narratives”, Durham University thesis (2008), vol. 2, p.225, n.22, which is online here, but I will quote because such things vanish:

22 … Cf. Serm., IX, 9: ‘[God] doesn’t love you as you are, He hates you as you are. That’s why He is sorry for you, because He hates you as you are, and wants to make you as you are not yet., This thinking is presumably the background to Augustine’s exegesis of Matthew 7: 3-5, which features in a number of places in his writings.

Dr H. tells us that this is his own translation.

But of course we all want to check!  Augustine is a voluminous writer, so something just called “Sermons” tends to make the heart sink.  The bibliographical information refers to the Città Nuova collected edition of his works (contents here), to which nobody has access.  (I wonder whether Italians have collections of PDFs of these things?  I bet they do!)

Fortunately “Sermones” is listed in the Clavis Patrum Latinorum, as item 284, referencing the Patrologia Latina vols. 38 and 39.  And so when we look at the PL38, column 82, we find sermon 9, chapter 8, and the words:

Placeat tibi Deus qualis est, ama qualis est: non te ipse amat qualis es, sed odit te qualis es.

Which is our source.  The Latin for the whole sermon is online at The Latin LIbrary here.

Rather to my surprise, I find that I have on disk a copy of the English translation of this sermon, made by the “New City Press”, as part of their series, The Works of Saint Augustine: A translation for the 21st Century.  This volume has the title: Sermons, (1-19) on the Old Testament. Volume III/1. It was translated from the Italian edition above by Edmund Hill, OP, and appeared in 1990.  The sermon is entitled “Discourse on the ten strings of the harp”, preached in 420.  The division of the chapters presumably also from the Citta Nuova edition, and disagrees with the PL text.  Here is a chunk of it, talking about “Put off the old man and put on the new man”.  Page 267:

Such people are often tripped by thoughts like this, and they say to themselves, “If it were possible to do this, God would not be threatening us, he would not say all those things through the prophets to discourage people, but he would have come to be indulgent to everybody and pardon everybody, and after he came he wouldn’t send anyone to hell.” Now because he is unjust he wants to make God unjust too. God wants to make you like him, and you are trying to make God like you. Be satisfied with God as he is, not as you would like him to be. You are all twisted, and you want God to be like what you are, not like what he is. But if you are satisfied with him as he is, then you will correct yourself and align your heart along that straight rule from which you are now all warped and twisted. Be satisfied with God as he is, love him as he is.

He doesn’t love you as you are, he hates you as you are. That’s why he is sorry for you, because he hates you as you are, and wants to make you as you are not yet. Let him make you, I said, the sort of person you are not yet. What he did not promise you, you know, is to make you what he is. Oh yes, you shall be what he is, after a fashion, that is to say, an imitator of God like an image, but not the kind of image that the son is. After all there are different kinds of images even among men. A man’s son bears the image of his father, and is what his father is, because he is a man like his father. But your image in a mirror is not what you are. Your image is in your son in one way, in quite a different way in the mirror. Your image is in your son by way of equality of nature, but in the mirror how far it is from your nature! And yet it is a kind of image of you, though not like the one in your son which is identical in nature.

So the quotation is indeed authentic.

Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram imperfectus liber (The Literal Interpretation of Genesis: Unfinished Book) – online in English

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Dr Isabella Image has kindly written to me and offered to make available her translation of Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram imperfectus liber (The Literal Interpretation of Genesis: Unfinished Book = CPL 268).  Dr Image has worked on several academic translations, so it is very nice indeed to have this one made available.  She has also kindly made the result public domain, so please circulate it freely.  Here it is:

The footnote and formatting is my responsibility tho.

I have also added the files to Archive.org here.

A very literal translation already exists on the web here, at Google sites.  The Patrologia Latina text may be found online here, and indeed also Italian and Spanish versions.

Dr Image adds:

You’ll want to know my credentials: my classics BA & MPhil were at Cambridge and my patristics DPhil was at Oxford. I’ve published Augustine translations before (with Walsh & Collard) and also my doctorate (on Hilary of Poitiers).

It is very good news indeed to have this.  Thank you!

UPDATE 16 Sept 2023: Four different works by Augustine are listed in the Clavis Patrum Latinorum.  These are CPL 265, De Genesi contra Manichaeos; CPL 266, De Genesi ad litterarum l. xii; CPL 267, De Genesis ad litteram l. xii. Capitula; and this work, CPL 268, De Genesi ad litteram imperfectus liber which he abandoned.  He wrote still other works on the Hexameron and the Heptateuch.

A number of English translations exist of all of these confusingly-named works.

  • St Augustine, On Genesis, tr. John E. Rotelle, in: The Works of St Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, part 1, vol. 13, New City Press (2006), ISBN 1-56548-175-5 and 1-56548-201-8.  This contains CPL 265, 266 and 268.
  • St Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, tr. John Hammond Taylor, in: Ancient Christian Writers 41 (1982), 2 vols, ISBN: 0-8091-0326-5 and ISBN: 0-8091-0327-3.  This contains CPL 266 only.
  • St Augustine, On Genesis: Two Books on Genesis Against the Manichees and On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis, an unfinished book, tr. Roland J. Teske, in: Fathers of the Church 84 (1991).  This contains CPL 265 and 268.  ISBN 0-8132-0084-9 and 0-8132-0088-7 (pbk).

Augustine, De divinatione daemonum / On the divination of demons – now online in English

Posted on by Roger Pearse

How is it that demons are able to predict the future, and so support the pagan practices of oracles, soothsaying, and the like?  This question bothered some of those around St Augustine, and he wrote a short treatise to answer it, De divinatione demonum (CPL 306).

It is very well worth reading.  But there is no freely available translation accessible online.  Today I heard from Mattias Gassman, who prepared his own translation of it while a British Academy post-doctoral fellow.  He has kindly made it available here, and also on his own new and interesting blog, Multa Legenda (https://multalegenda.wordpress.com/).  Here are the files:

Dr G. modestly adds that:

…the translation aims rather at literalism than style, though some concessions to ease of reading are inevitable. The target audience are people who want to know what Augustine said, and might be able at least to consult the Latin, even if they cannot really read it.

But it is a very decent bit of work.  Thank you very much!

Augustine’s “De ordine” and his comment on prostitution

Posted on by Roger Pearse

One of the earliest works of St Augustine is a work that he wrote in 386 AD at a country villa while preparing for baptism.  It is one of a number of works that he wrote at that time.  Augustine had just abandoned his job as a teacher of philosophy, but the milieu is still that of late philosophy.

The work is De ordine, “On Order”, which Robert P. Russell, the first translator, revised to a more meaningful “Divine Providence and the Problem of Evil”.1  The work is concerned with explaining how God controls everything that happens in the world, even the bad things, although he is not responsible for them.  Given in dialogue form, it records a discussion between Augustine and his friends and a couple of students.

In De ordine book 2, chapter 4, we read the following statement:

TRYGETIUS: … Indeed, the entire life of the unwise, although it is by no means consistent and by no means well regulated by themselves, is, nevertheless, necessarily included in the order of things by Divine Providence. And, certain places having been arranged, so to speak, by that ineffable and eternal law, it is by no means permitted to be where it ought not to be. Thus it happens that whoever narrow-mindedly considers this life [the life of the “unwise”] by itself alone is repelled by its enormous foulness, and turns away in sheer disgust. But, if he raises the eyes of the mind and broadens his field of vision and surveys all things as a whole, then he will find nothing unarranged, unclassed, or unassigned to its own place.’

AUGUSTINE: … Now, you were looking for just one or two illustrations for that opinion of yours. To me there already occur countless illustrations which bring me to complete agreement.

What more hideous than a hangman? What more cruel and ferocious than his character? Yet he holds a necessary post in the very midst of laws, and he is incorporated into the order of a well-regulated state; himself criminal in character, he is nevertheless, by others’ arrangement, the penalty of evildoers.

What can be mentioned more sordid, more bereft of decency, or more full of turpitude than prostitutes, procurers, and the other pests of that sort? Remove prostitutes from human affairs, and you will unsettle everything because of lusts; place them in the position of matrons, and you will dishonor these latter by disgrace and ignominy. This class of people is, therefore, by its own mode of life most unchaste in its morals; by the law of order, it is most vile in social condition.

And is it not true that in the bodies of animals there are certain members which you could not bear to look at, if you should view them by themselves alone? But the order of nature has designed that because they are needful they shall not be lacking, and because they are uncomely they shall not be prominent. And these ugly members, by keeping their proper places, have provided a better position for the more comely ones.2

(Paragraphing mine).  The argument is fundamentally one in which Augustine is trying to explain how God controls evil and makes a use of it, assigning it a role in our broken society, but does not endorse it or take responsibility for it.  The examples are incidental.  Augustine was not describing how a society should be, but how his society was.  The social order of the Western Roman Empire was pagan to the end.

Unfortunately this idea, that prostitution and pimping were a necessary evil, like the hangman, was picked up by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa theologica, 2a 2ae, q. 10. a; 11. c, who used it to illustrate the idea that human legislators may at times permit certain evils for the purpose of avoiding greater ones.  This led to the awful institution of legalised brothels in Catholic countries, the abuse of women for profit, even in Rome itself.3

As the Fathers of the Church editor is keen to point out, Augustine spoke rather more clearly in Contra Faustum Manichaeum, book 22, chapter 61 (Latin here, English here):

Consulta quippe aeterna lex illa, quae ordinem naturalem conservari iubet, pertubari vetat, non nisi propagationis causa statuit hominis concubitum fieri, et hoc non nisi socialiter ordinato connubio, quod non pervertat vinculum pacis: et ideo prostitutio feminarum, non ad substituendam prolem, sed ad satiandam libidinem propositarum, divina atque aeterna lege damnatur.

Obviously by that eternal law, which commands that the natural order be conserved, and forbids it to be disturbed, human sex is not established to happen unless for the cause of propagation, and this not unless a marriage has taken place, so that the bond of peace is not overthrown/corrupted: and likewise the prostitution of women who offer themselves, not for the begetting of offspring but for the sating of lust, is condemned by the divine and eternal law.

The “bond of peace” is of course the institution of marriage.  Certainly this indicates that Augustine reaffirms that prostitution is wrong.

It is remarkable what men will do to justify an evil, if they stand to profit by it.  Indeed only this week I came across someone campaigning to “legalise prostitution”.  Prostitution is legal; it is pimping that is not, so the campaign is to permit the legal trade in women to resume.  I pointed out that prostitution was awful; and he had the cheek to ask me sneerily, “Why is prostitution awful”.  Those willing to commit some obvious evil are seldom ashamed to lie about it as well.

Curiously the second half of the NPNF translation is wrong at this point, reading:

Undoubtedly, by the eternal law, which requires the preservation of natural order, and forbids the transgression of it, conjugal intercourse should take place only for the procreation of children, and after the celebration of marriage, so as to maintain the bond of peace. Therefore, the prostitution of women, merely for the gratification of sinful passion, is condemned by the divine and eternal law.

What happened to “non ad substituendam prolem”, one wonders.

  1. ”Writings of Saint Augustine volume 1″, in: Fathers of the Church 5 (1948), p.229-334[↩]
  2. Key passage p.287-8.[↩]
  3. See for another example, Michael M. Hammer, “Prostitution in Urban Brothels in Late Medieval Austria”, online here.  It seems to  be a paper from this 2017 seminar “Forgotten Women from a Forgotten Region: Prostitutes and Female Slaves in Central and Eastern Europe in the Long Middle Ages” here.[↩]

A false quotation of Augustine against the Jews

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A correspondent wrote to me some time back, asking:

I’m currently translating John Gray’s booklet ‘Seven types of atheism’ into Dutch. On p. 17 Gray cites this line from Augustine’s ‘Pamflet against the Jews’: ‘The true image of the Hebrew is Judas Iscariot, who sells the Lord for silver. The Jews can never understand scripture, and forever bear the guilt of the death of Christ.’ I cannot find this line in your translation. What could be the matter here?

The gentleman is not the only one to wonder.  Anti-Christian quotations of the fathers are nearly always misquotations or frauds, as I discovered long ago when I reviewed a book of them.

Arie W. Zweip, Christ, the Spirit and the Community of God: Essays on the Acts of the Apostles,  Mohr Siebeck, 2010, wanders off his theme and into a discussion of anti-semitism.  But on page 90, he is obliged to add a note:

5. An Intermezzo: Fake Quotes

At this point I must make a brief but significant detour. Not infrequently Jerome’s and Augustine’s names are mentioned on the internet as outspoken propagators of Christian anti-Semitism. On a number of websites Jerome is quoted as having said that the Jews are “Judaic serpents of whom Judas was the model”, and also: “They (the Jews) are serpents, haters of all men. Their image is Judas. Their psalms and prayers are but the braying of donkeys”.

However, when I checked the quotations against the original, I could not trace their provenance. Virtually all authors quote these words without mentioning the exact source. There is a passage in Jerome’s commentary on Amos that comes close to it (“iudaeorum quoque oratio et psalmi, quos in synagogis canunt, et haereticorum composita laudatio tumultus est domino, et ut ita dicam, grunnitus suis et clamor asinorum, quorum magis cantibus israelis opera comparantur”),54 but the very references to serpents and to Judas are conspicuously absent. In his Verus Israel, Marcel Simon does quote the words of Jerome with a source reference, but he refers to Migne’s Patrologia Latina 26:1224, which is clearly wrong. It seems that we have here a clear example of a “fake quotation” that is running a life of its own.

I suspect the same is true of two anti-Semitic quotations not seldom attributed to Augustine that I was unable to trace: “The true image of the Hebrew is Judas Iscariot, who sells the Lord for silver. The Jew can never understand the scriptures and forever will bear the guilt for the death of Jesus’, and “Judaism, since Christ, is a corruption; indeed Judas is the image of the Jewish people: their understanding of Scripture is carnal; they bear the guilt for the death of the Savior, for through their fathers they have killed Christ. The Jews held Him; the Jews insulted Him; the Jews bound Him; they crowned Him with thorns; they scourged Him; they hanged Him upon a tree”. All this is not to say that Jerome and Augustine did not articulate anti-Semitic sentiments (they clearly did) nor to deny that they may have said things to that effect, but such allegations need to be corroborated by meticulous research and sound evidence, especially so in cases with such wide-ranging implications.

54. Jerome, Commentariorum in Amos; CCSL 76:2, LLT 589.

My own search revealed no source.  No doubt there is one, at some remote remove.  It may perhaps turn out to be someone’s summary of what they felt Augustine intended.

Augustine, Homily 229F and Matthew 27:25

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve made a bit of an effort today to finish off my series on references to Matthew 27:25 in patristic literature.  One of these references can be found in one of Augustine’s sermons, number 229F (which was one of those discovered by G. Morin in the 1930’s).

Today I was able to access the New City Press translation of all of Augustine’s sermons, in 11 very smart-looking volumes, and I thought that, as it is short, I’d just give this sermon complete.  Here it is.  I have omitted the footnotes, however.

    *    *    *    *

SERMON 229F
PREACHED ON THE MONDAY AFTER EASTER
Date: after 418

We have believed in the resurrection of Christ, though we never saw it, on hearing the writings of those who didn’t believe, even when they saw.

1. Some people saw the resurrection of the Lord, others did not believe it when told about it; and they were chided by the Lord, now present among them, because they had not believed those who saw it and brought them the news. What a stupendous favor done to the nations, and to those born long afterward! What has God granted those who now fill the churches of Christ? The holy apostles had gone round with the Lord, heard the word of truth from his mouth, seen him raise the dead; and they didn’t believe that the Lord had risen. We though, born long afterward, have never seen his bodily presence, never heard a word from the mouth of his flesh, never observed with these eyes any miracle performed by him; and yet we have come to believe, on hearing what was written by those who at the time refused to believe. They didn’t believe a most recent event when news of it was brought them; they wrote something for us to read, we heard it, and we believe.

That the Lord Jesus, though, declined to appear to the Jews is because he did not judge them worthy to see the Lord Christ after the resurrection; he showed himself to his own people, not to strangers. And while his own people were preaching, strangers came to believe;4 and those who had been strangers became his own. I mean, many of those, as you can read in the Acts of the Apostles; many of those who crucified the Lord, who defiled themselves by shedding his blood; many of those who said, His blood be upon us and upon our children (Mt 27:25), later on came to believe the apostles bringing them the good news of the resurrection. His blood was indeed upon them, but it was to wash them, not to destroy them; well, upon some to destroy them, upon others to cleanse them; upon those to be destroyed, injustice; upon those to be cleansed, in mercy.

And now too, do all have faith? Just as at that time some of the Jews themselves believed, others did not, so too now with the nations; some have come to believe, others don’t believe. Not everyone has faith (2 Thes 3:2). Those who do have faith, though, believe by God’s grace; they mustn’t pride themselves on it. It’s a gift from God. Is the reason God chose us, do you suppose, that we were good? He didn’t choose good people, but people he wished to make good. We were all in the shadow of death, we were all being held, bundled together in the lump of sin coming from Adam. With the root infected, what sort of fruit could be born of the tree of the human race? But the one who would heal the infection came without infection, and the one who came to clean up sins came without sin.

How Jacob, in his wrestling with the angel, prefigured both the Jews who believed in Christ and those who rejected him.

2. Don’t concentrate on the Jews who are now chaff, that is, who derive from the threshing floor that was threshed then. I mean, if we were to think a bit, my brothers and sisters, from the Jews came the prophets, from the Jews the patriarchs, from the Jews the apostles, from the Jews the virgin Mary who gave birth to Christ, from the Jews later on came Paul as a believer, and so many thousands baptized on one day, from the Jews innumerable Churches of Christians. But all that grain is now stored in the granary; with the chaff the devil will be having his fun.

Believing Jews and unbelieving Jews. Where were they first condemned? In the first of them, in the father of all of them, Jacob himself, who was also called Israel. Jacob: “Supplanter” or “Heel”; Israel: “Seeing God.” When he returned from Mesopotamia with his children, an angel wrestled with him, representing Christ; and while he wrestled, though he surpassed him in strength, he still seemed to succumb to him, and Jacob to prevail. In the same sort of way the Lord Christ too succumbed to the Jews; they prevailed when they killed him.

He was overcome by superior strength; precisely when he was overcome, that was when he overcame for us. What’s that—when he was overcome was when he overcame for us? Because when he suffered, he shed the blood with which he redeemed us.

So then, that’s what’s written: Jacob prevailed over him. And yet Jacob himself, who was wrestling, acknowledged the mystery involved. A man, wrestling with an angel, prevailed over him; and when he said, Let me go, the one who had prevailed said, I am not letting you go, unless you bless me. O grand and splendid mystery! Overcome, he blesses, just as having suffered, he sets free; that is when the blessing was completed. What are you called? he said to him. He replied, Jacob. You shall not be called Jacob, he said, but you shall be called Israel (Gen 32:25-29). The imposition of such a great name is a great blessing. “Israel,” as I said, means “Seeing God”; one man’s name, everyone’s reward. Everyone’s; but provided they believe and are blessed, both Jews and Greeks. Greeks, you see, is what the apostle calls all nationalities, the reason being that the Greek language has such prestige among the nations. Glory, he says, and honor—they are the apostle’s words—glory and honor and peace to everyone doing good, to Jew first and Greek; wrath and indignation, trouble and distress on every soul doing evil, to Jews first and Greeks (Rom 2:10.9). Good for good Jews, bad for bad ones; good for good Gentiles, bad for bad ones.

If you have come to believe in Christ, recognize yourself as blessed; if you have denied Christ, recognize yourself as lame.

3. The Jews shouldn’t pat themselves on the back, and say, “There you are, Jacob all the same is our father; he prevailed over the angel and was blessed by the angel.”

We, though, reply, “People of Israel, look at yourself there. Israel isn’t what you are, it’s what you’re called, but aren’t; the name’s all wrong in you, the crime remains in you.”

But he says to me, “Look, my father is Jacob, my father is Israel. There’s the name; where’s the crime?”

“Read the story, discover yourself in it there. You see, it’s written there, And he touched Jacob on the breadth of his thigh, and it withered, and he began to limp (Gen 32:26). Jacob, one man, both blessed and lame. Blessed in whom, and lame in whom? If you have come to believe in Christ, recognize yourself as blessed. If you have denied Christ, recognize yourself as lame; it means, you see, that you are one of those about whom the prophet says, They have limped off from their paths (Ps 18:45).

Where were the holy women from, to whom the Lord first showed himself as he rose again? From the Jews, weren’t they? Where were the apostles from, who even if they didn’t believe the women when they first brought them the news, nonetheless heard Jesus himself later on, and acknowledged his rebuke, and adhered to his teaching? From the Jews, weren’t they? There’s Israel for you, blessed. But limping in many, blessed only in few; that, you see, is the breadth of the thigh—the majority of his race. It didn’t simply say, “He touched his thigh,” but the breadth of his thigh. Where you have the breadth of the thigh, you undoubtedly have the majority of the race. And what’s so surprising about that? I acknowledge the few grains, and I’m astonished at the heap of chaff? But I see what is due for the granary, and what for the flames. And now, let them listen; they’re still alive; let them correct their limping, let them come to the blessing.