• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Issue 67: St. Augustine: Sinner, Bishop, Saint Augustine & the Battle for Orthodoxy: Did You Know? Misinterpreted for centuries, this painting now sheds light on Augustine and his remarkable life. Elesha Coffman Until the 1950s scholars thought this painting depicted Jerome, as the piece is the third in a series of scenes from Jerome's life. Then one scholar finally connected the painting with an apocryphal letter in which Augustine (purportedly) says he was writing to Jerome when "suddenly an indescribable light, not seen in our times, and hardly to be described in our poor language, entered the cell in which I was. … When I saw this, moved by amazement and admiration, I suddenly lost strength of my limbs." Thus the figure is Augustine; the light at the window is Jerome, who has just died (note the hourglass in the lower right) but whose spirit visits Augustine to warn him against scholarly hubris. Though Augustine and Jerome never met, they kept up a lively, albeit sporadic, correspondence. The war of words began in 394, as each attacked the other's scholarship. But by Jerome's death in 420, they had patched things up and were fighting side-by-side against the Pelagian heresy. In placing Augustine in an idealized sixteenth-century study, the painter, Vittore Carpaccio, has taken liberties of which the saint surely would have disapproved. For one thing, the face is not that of a North African. The portrait likely honors Cardinal John Bessarion, a fifteenth-century scholar and statesman who lamented the fall of Constantinople (1453) as Augustine had lamented the fall of Rome (410). Augustine would have found the astrological equipment in the room offensive. Though he had a passion for astrology in his youth, he forcefully denounced the pursuit in his Christian writings. The bronze statuette of a nude female (on the ledge at left) is also out of place in the study of a once-profligate man who later chose celibacy and would not allow a woman—even his sister—to enter his house. The rear-center of the painting depicts liturgical items a bishop like Augustine would have known well: Scriptures, an incense boat, candlesticks, and a bishop's miter and crozier. Ironically, Augustine never even wanted to be a priest. When Valerius, bishop of Hippo, urged him during a sermon to accept ordination, the congregation literally pushed him to the front of the church. Augustine, feeling God had "laughed him to scorn," wept from the shame of having once mocked the church and its leaders. (The congregation thought he was disappointed at being made a priest rather than a bishop.) The sheet music at Augustine's feet illustrates the saint's lifelong love of song. As he wrote of his baptism: "The tears flowed from me when I heard your hymns and canticles, for the sweet singing of your Church moved me deeply. The music surged in my ears, truth seeped into my heart, and my feelings of devotion overflowed." It's appropriate that the study would be filled with books—94, to be exact. This is the same number of his own works that Augustine catalogued and corrected in his Retractions, written around 426. Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today International/Christian History magazine. Issue 67: St. Augustine: Sinner, Bishop, Saint Augustine & the Battle for Orthodoxy: From the Editor - A Giant- But A Man From the Editor Mark Galli Because Augustine is such a towering figure in Western history, one of our goals for this issue was to describe his "everyday" self. We discovered he was both more extraordinary and more human than the legend we knew. Yes, he was a brilliant theologian whose mind ranged over a vast array of issues (human nature, the Trinity, original sin, the church) with greater depth and dexterity than many of today's theological specialists. Yes, he was a regal bishop who used his ecclesiastical authority to reign in schismatics and refine the teachings of the church—this is the view of Augustine handed down through the art of the ages, as the images in this issue show. But Augustine was also a human being who struggled with common, run-of-the-mill weaknesses: sex, vanity, self-recriminations, a hot temper, and bouts with despair. Though his insights have shaped Western thought for more than 1,500 years, he was a searching, confused, and waffling young man on his way to his conversion: see Robert Payne's article, "The Dark Heart Filled with Light." Though he exercised his authority as bishop in teaching and administering, he was always sensitive to the pastoral dimension of his office: see Bruce Shelley's article, "The Bishop at Work." Though he engaged in philosophical theology, he also tried to answer practical questions that Christians of his day, and ours, face: see our special section "What Would Augustine Say?" This is our second issue on Augustine. The first (issue 15) gives a good overview of his life and legacy. Here we've tried to narrow our focus and give you a greater sense of his complexity as a great thinker, but also as a man. With this issue, I step down as editor of Christian History. I've been connected with the magazine for six years, the last four as editor. The magazine has been a dream job for me. Each quarter I've been allowed to become a minor specialist in one era, person, or event—but then, before I get immersed in minutia, I have been able to move on to another topic! So I envy the staff who remain—Marshall Shelley, Elesha Coffman, Rai Whitlock, and Janine Petry. Everyone around here says my editing will be missed. Perhaps. On the other hand, Christian History has for some time been a team effort, and the fact that most of the team remains insures that the high quality you've come to expect from the magazine will continue. This issue, which was pulled together with relatively little input from me, is a case in point. As for me, I'm moving on from "Christianity Yesterday" (as a friend put it) to Christianity Today, where I have been managing editor since May 1. As I depart, I want to thank the many loyal readers of Christian History who over the years have offered support and encouragement (and the occasional correction). It's another reason why editing Christian History has been a pleasure. Thanks. Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today International/Christian History magazine. Issue 67: St. Augustine: Sinner, Bishop, Saint The Dark Heart Filled With Light Augustine's early years reveal an intense, proud, and sensual man who yearned to know truth. Robert Payne Few writers have captured Augustine's personality as vividly as did Robert Payne in "Augustine: The Sensualist" in The Fathers of the Western Church. Payne (1911-1983) was a distinguished writer whose works included novels and non-fiction, biography and poetry, transaltion, and short stories. Though recent scholarship might nuance some of Payne's interpretations, his overall portrait of Augustine as a man stands. This excerpt, reprinted with permission, takes us from Augustine's youth to his famous conversion. Augustine belongs to our time. The most wanton of the saints, the man with the clearest mind, the most exalted opinion of himself, the subtlest knowledge of himself, he speaks a language we know only too well. He belongs to the times of crisis, when human minds go wheeling after the final purposes. There is no leisure in him: he burns himself up with the fury to know all things, to determine all things. Named for two ruthless emperors, Augustine and Aurelius, he could be ruthless as well. And like the great modern psychological novelists, he is armed with a scalpel and is prepared to knife the soul until it reveals its secrets. Problem child "Augustine was a Numidian, one of those strange people who inhabited the northern coastal plains of Africa, neither black nor European, but descended like the Basques from some earlier race of settlers. He was tall and long limbed, thin chested, with sloping shoulders. He had a long nose, a high forehead, thick lips, and tremendous eyes, and he did not walk so much as take large, loping strides. His skin was a kind of dark bronze; his eyes were black. He was born on Sunday, November 13, 354, in the town of Thagaste in what is now Algeria. It was a pleasant town with high white walls, set among wooded fields. Ilex and pines grew beside the streams, lions roamed in the forests, and boar, hare, redwing, and quail were to be hunted a stone's throw from the city walls. The town, built by the Romans, had a theater, a forum, baths, long colonnades of marble columns, and a marketplace of some importance. Among the patricians who ruled over the destiny of the town was a certain Patricius, a landowner who possessed a farm and a number of slaves. He seems to have been a stern taskmaster who was never quite reconciled to having Augustine for a son. There were good reasons for this. The child had an ungovernable temper. He lied often, he liked playing more than he liked study, and he was also a thief, on his own confession. Worse still for Patricius, the son possessed a desperate affection for his mother, Monica, and none for his father. Patricius, a stern old member of "the very splendid council of Thagaste," possessing all the privileges of the minor nobility (though not an abundance of wealth), desired above everything that Augustine should become a man of culture.

Load more

  42

Copy Link