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Augustine and His 'City of God'

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Augustine and His 'City of God' CHAPTER TWO AUGUSTINE AND HIS 'CITY OF GOD' A. THE AUTHOR A few essential details of Augustine's life and spiritual development should be presented at this point, for an adequate understanding can only be gained if proper attention is given to the circumstances and the spiritual currents that influenced him. Knowledge of Au­ gustine's milieu and development appears to be particularly in­ dispensable for an inquiry into the possible sources of his doctrine of the two civitates. Of course this account is confined to a few rele­ vant main features1. 1. The man from Africa Augustine2 was born on 13th November 354 in the Numidian provincial town of Thagaste3, present-day Souk-Ahras in Algeria, 1 This biographical sketch is based mainly on: F. van der Meer, Augustinus de zieLzorger. Een studie over de praktiJk van een kerkvader, Utrecht-Brussel1947; Courcelle, Recherches; J.J. O'Meara, The Young Augustine. An Introduction to the Confessions of St. Augustine (1954), London-New York 1980; Marrou, Augustin; A. Sizoo, Augustinus. Leven en werken, Kampen 1957; R. Lorenz, 'Augustin', RGG 1(1957), 738-748; P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo. A biography, London 1967; A. Mandouze, Saint Augustin. L 'aventure de La raison et de La grace, Paris 1968; T.J. van Bavel, Augustinus. Van Liefde en vriendschap, Baarn 1970; E. Feldmann, Der Einfluss des Hortensius und des Manichiiis­ mus auf das Denken des Jungen Augustinus von 373, Munster 1975 (Diss. Mschr.); Schindler, 'Augustin'. 2 It is by no means certain that Aurelius was Augustine's praenomen. It was quite possibly added through the association of his name with that of Aurelius of Car­ thage. See Mandouze, Augustin, 72 n. 2; Schindler, 'Augustin', 646, and particu­ larly A.-M. La Bonnardiere, '«Aurelius Augustinus» ou «Aurelius, Augustinus?»', RBin 91 (1981) 231-237. L. Brix agrees with La Bonnardiere in his notice (REA 28 (1982) 366); P. Petitmengin raises objections and supplies textual evidence in support of the opposite view (REA 29 (1983) 390-391). M.M. Gorman, 'Aurelius Augustinus: The Testimony of the Oldest Manuscripts of Saint Augustine's Works' ,jTS 35 (1984) 475-480 sides with Petitmengin and points out that A. was referred to in the earliest mss. of his writings as Aurelius Augustinus; J .-P. Bouhot, however, contradicts this opinion (REA 31 (1985) 339). 3 A description ofThagaste at the time of A. is given, for example, in O. Perler (en collaboration avec J.-L. Maier), Les voyages de saint Augustin, Paris 1969, 119-125. AUGUSTINE AND HIS 'CITY OF GOD' 19 near the Tunesian border. He may have been of Berber extraction. Especially Rene Pottier4 depicted him as a descendant of the origi­ nal inhabitants of the country: a pure-bred Berber, full of hatred towards the Roman Empire5 . There is no solid scientific foundation for this view, however6. William Frend also saw at least some Ber­ ber influence in Augustine: Monnica is a Berber name and the Ber­ ber element appears also in the name of Augustine's son Adeodatus7. John O'Meara, with reference only to Frend, went a step further: Monnica was a descendant of the original inhabitants of the country and probably her husband was to08 . Yet all this does not tell us very much9 . Even if Augustine's mother and perhaps also Patricius were Berbers10 , it is still true that they manifested themselves in a typically Roman fashion. They be­ longed to the Roman cultural elite, had ties with the Catholic Church and spoke Latin. For Augustine Latin was not only the civi­ lized language that moulded his thinking, it was also his mother tonguell . He came into the world as a Roman citizen and that was what he remained. He belongs to the West European cultural sphere. 4 R. Pottier, Saint Augustin Ie Berbere, Paris 1945. 5 Pottier's view is largely based on the sharp criticism in DCD. 6 The tone of the book is more emotional than rational. An example of 'ar­ gumentation' is the assertion on p. 26 that besides Latin A. is supposed to have spoken the Berber language: 'Si nous n'en sommes pas absolument certain-nul part il n'y fait allusion-nous sommes en droit de Ie croire: il n'etait pas hom me a imposer a son clerge ce dont lui-meme n'aurait pas ete capable'. 7 W.H.C. Frend, 'A Note on the Berber Background in the Life of Augustine', JTS 43 (1942) 188-191 (repr. in Religion Popular and Unpopular in the Early Christian Centuries, London 1976, Ch. XIV) and Frend, Donatist Church, esp. 230: ' ... Monni­ ca, a Berber name, perhaps derived from the Libyan deity Mon ... The rather odd name which he gave to his own son, «Adeodatus», is intelligible only with reference to the Berber usage of naming children with a name connected with the worship of Baal-Adeodatus = Iatanbaal'. 8 O'Meara, Young Augustine, 28: 'She was certainly Berber ... But there is no good reason for believing that her husband was not a Berber also' . 9 In Donatist Church, 230, Frend also refers to 'Augustine's tendency to follow Berber traditions and to attribute a nearer relationship to a brother than to a son' . 10 Marrou, Augustin, 11, states: 'Le calcul des probabilites permet d'inferer qu'il etait de pure race berbere'. Sizoo, Augustinus, 20, writes that A.'s family gave the impression of being typically African; earlier he wrote of 'a different race than ours' (7). Mandouze, Augustin, 72 ff., makes no decision. With reference to Patricius, Schindler remarks in 'Augustin', 646: 'Der Sprache und wohl auch der Abstammung nach weder punisch noch berberisch ... '; with reference to Monnica: , ... eher berberischer Abstammung ... ' . 11 Cf. Can! I, 14,23. .
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