Saint Augustine of Hippo

But, however great that vanity and ambition were at the time, they were, in Augustine, only the lesser wound. His heart was far more sick than his mind. His soul, empty of God, lacking nourishment, aspired to something that could satisfy it; but this unknown something that he lacked, Augustine did not know where to find. An indefinable restlessness tormented him. Consumed by vague desires, without objects and without limits, he had reached that perilous moment which usually precedes great falls and which too often heralds them. "I was not yet in love," he says, "but I was in love with love, and, devoured by this desire, I sought an object for my passion. I wandered through the city to find it, and the paths where I did not expect traps were hateful to me." He adds these words of admirable depth: "My heart was failing, empty of You, O my God; and yet it was not that hunger that I was starving for. The interior and incorruptible food that my soul lacked did not inspire any appetite in me. I was disgusted by it, not by satiety, but by indigence. And my soul, sick, covered with ulcers, falling from starvation, threw itself miserably out of itself, and begged from the creature something that could soothe its wounds. I wanted to love, to be loved, and with an affection that was without reserve." Augustine was poor, unknown, lost in a big city; but he was young, pleasant, elegant, distinguished. How then, to his misfortune, could he not have fallen sooner or later into the nets where he so desired to be caught?

The spectacles, into which, upon his arrival in Carthage, Augustine threw himself with the passion he had always had for this pleasure, finished pushing him into the abyss. With his vivid imagination, with that exquisite sensitivity that made him weep at the reading of a beautiful verse, at the account of a sacrifice inspired by love, the theater had an irresistible charm for him. "The spectacles captivated me," he says, "filled as they were with the images of my misery and the fuel for my flame." Upon leaving, he was so full of all these beauties, so moved by all these sacrifices, that he sought only an opportunity to give birth to them in someone's heart to receive the same pleasures and offer the same devotions that he had seen so well depicted.

The sad fall did not wait. "I fell," he says, "into those nets where I so desired to be caught. O my God, with what bitterness your goodness seasoned that honey! I loved; I was loved; and, plunging into a network of painful joys, I knew the burning jealousies, the suspicions, the fears, the angers, and the storms of love." Who was this unhappy young girl who, forgetting God for Augustine as Augustine forgot God for her, captivated such a heart for fifteen years; who followed him by land and by sea, to Thagaste, to Carthage, to Rome, to Milan; who only left him in tears at the moment he was converting, and, she too, to convert, to throw herself into a monastery, and to finally give herself entirely to God? We do not know. Augustine, with a reserve full of delicacy, hid her name. She passes like a veiled figure in this history. It is probable that, as long as it was possible, Augustine hid this name, with even more care, from his pious mother, as well as the bond with which he had just chained his life, and which no prayer of Saint Monica and no tears could have decided him to break. Soon, however, he had to confess the painful secret to her; for, in 372, Augustine had a son, this brilliant Adeodatus, whom later, in the days of his repentance, he dared no longer name but the son of his sin: but then, in the days o Adéodat Natural son of Saint Augustine. f his passion, in the first thrill of his sad happiness, he called him God-given, Adeodatus. "Such was then my life, O my God," cries Saint Augustine, "if that can be called a life!"

Augustine was then realizing, or rather exceeding, all the hopes that his brilliant adolescence had given rise to. The brilliance that had accompanied his literary studies was nothing compared to the success that crowned his philosophical studies. One began to glimpse that his main gift would be neither his eloquence, which was nevertheless admirable, nor his sensitivity, which was exquisite, nor even his wit, so pleasant, so brilliant, and so fine. Above all these qualities, which had appeared first, he was to have a sovereign gift that would eclipse everything; and precisely, in 372, this gift had just revealed itself with marvelous brilliance. Here is how:

When he was still occupied with literary studies, Augustine had several times heard his rhetoric teacher speak of Aristotle's Categories as a book of such depth that one could only understand it with the help of the most skillful masters and by means of figures traced on the sand, to make the metaphysical obscurities of things perceptible to the eyes. Impatient to know what he estimated to be so extraordinary, and not having the courage to wait for the time when it would be explained to him, he opened this book and began to study it alone. To his great astonishment, he found no difficulty in it. He wandered at his ease in the midst of these arduous problems, and when later he followed the public explanations of them, one could teach him nothing but what he had perfectly understood alone. He read in the same way, without being helped by anyone, all the books of dialectic, geometry, music, arithmetic; he found difficulties nowhere, or rather he only began to notice the difficulties when he sought to explain them to others; for then he was astonished at the trouble the most intelligent people had in understanding him; there was only a very small number of minds, even among the most excellent, who could follow him, and even then from afar. Although he was only nineteen, it was evident that one day he would have the eagle's eye and that intrepidity of gaze for which no light is too dazzling, and that broad and powerful wingbeat for which no summit is too high.

At the same time that Augustine's genius appeared, his soul, his character, his heart, finished revealing themselves. The rebellions and whims of his childhood had fallen away. They had given place to the most charming gentleness. Augustine was increasingly reserved and modest; he feared noise and brilliance; he avoided the foolish gatherings of his fellow students; he loved dignity; he felt honor keenly; he attached himself forever to those who did him good. And just as he had a master quality in his mind, he had a sovereign gift in his heart: it was an inexhaustible source of the deepest tenderness.

One also began to see what his features, his physiognomy, his exterior would be, and what form the precious vase would have where this great mind would dwell. His stature was not high, and was not to exceed average heights; his temperament was frail, delicate, nervous, as happens usually in elite souls, according to the remark of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus; he had fine and transparent skin; a gaze that was penetrating, but gentle, rested, bathed in sensitivity and tenderness. His weak voice, his delicate throat, his chest not very broad and very inflammable, indicated that he was made more for contemplating than for speaking, or at least for persuading than for dominating; for the intimate, affectionate, persuasive speech that is said in a circle of chosen friends, than for the outbursts of great eloquence in tumultuous assemblies. The whole of his person was finally of the most perfect elegance and the rarest distinction.

Under this beautiful envelope, one saw the horrible ravages of evil; a wound that was growing every day, a conscience, an eternal soul that was going to perish. This sight covered everything else with a veil of mourning. With virtue, faith itself had declined in the soul of Augustine. From the heart, where they were born, where they are always born, the darkness began to rise into his mind; and one could predict that after having abandoned virtue, Augustine would deny the faith; or rather there was nothing left to predict. From the first abyss, he had already rolled into the second, and the loss of faith had followed closely the disappearance of morals. "Alas!" he says, "what use was it to me then, that promptness and vivacity of mind with which I penetrated all the sciences and cleared up alone, without the help of anyone, so many obscure and difficult books, since I had fallen into such horrible excesses and into such shameful indifference for the things of piety? And the little ones and the simple, who had a slower mind, were they not happier, since they did not go astray like me, and that, remaining in the nest of the holy Church, they awaited there in peace the coming of their wings?"

Augustine shared the home of a friend, Romanianus of Thagaste, who, after the death of his father, became his support. At nineteen, Augustine read a work by Cicero entitled Hortensius, which we no longer have today. It was an exhortation to philosophy; he was deeply touched by it. He felt seized by a violent contempt for riches and honors, and by an ardent love for wisdom. Something, however, cooled his enthusiasm for the works of Cicero and other pagan authors, it was the absence of the name of Jesus Christ, which he had sucked with his mother's milk, which had remained at the bottom of his heart despite the storms of youth, and without which the most beautiful treatises of philosophy seemed incomplete to him and lost their charms. He therefore began to read the Holy Scriptures; but this style displeased his mind, which was enamored of the pompous eloquence of Cicero and swollen with pride. Some time later, he met some Manichaeans: these impostors, seeing him eager for the truth, boasted of making him know the nature of things; they told him that there was no mystery, that reason accounted for everything when it knew how to free itself from faith; they painted the Catholics to him as slaves to the authority of the Church, and thereby incapable of any science. H Manichéens A sect whose books were burned by Gelasius. e fell into this trap and remained there for nine years. He found among the heretics what one finds among the unbelievers of all times, many subtleties, no demonstration: they did not explain to him the great problems that interest humanity the most, such as the origin of evil, the solution of which is found only in the teaching of the Catholic Church.

Augustine caused several Catholics to fall with him into the Manichaean error, among others Alypius, his friend, and Romanianus, his benefactor. However, he never took part with the initiates and the priests in the horrible practices of these heretics; he always remained a simple auditor.

In 375, having completed his studies, Augustine returned to Tagaste and taught grammar and rhetoric there with success. He stayed with Romanianus, for his mother, seeing that he persisted in heresy, had forbidden him her home. She did not, however, abandon this dear son: she constantly offered prayers and alms for his conversion. Nevertheless, Augustine was to remain in error for a long time yet. From nineteen to twenty-eight, his life was devoted by turns to the defense of Manichaeism and the teaching of literature. The grief caused by the loss of a friend did not allow him to remain any longer in the places that reminded him of him. He went to Carthage, where he taught rhetoric with great brilliance: we find among his students Licentius, son of Romanianus, and Alypius. Having won a poetry prize, which was proclaimed in the theater, he was crowned by the proconsul of Carthage, Vindicianus. He was a famous physician who became Augustine's friend and delivered him from his passion for judicial astrology.

In 380 or 381, Augustine wrote a treatise on what is beautiful and fitting in each thing, and this work, which he dedicated to the orator Hierius, has not reached us. However, he did not find among the Manichaeans the knowledge they had promised him; to every question that was somewhat difficult which he put to them, they referred him to Faustus, one of their bishops and the oracle of the party. In 383, Faustus having come to Carthage, Augustine found in him only an ignorant man who spoke well. It is true, on the other hand, that the Catholic Church in Africa possessed at that time no learned and distinguished mind that could convince Augustine. Desiring to find greater light and more docile students than at Carthage, he resolved to go to Rome. His mother, having learned of this, would not leave him, either to prevent him from leaving or to go with him. One day, when she had accompanied him to the seashore, he pretended to board a ship only to prolong his farewells to a friend and stay with him until the signal for departure. He persuaded his mother to spend the night on the shore in a chapel dedicated to Saint Cyprian; the ship departed while she was praying there. When she realized the loss she had just suffered, she was overwhelmed with grief.

Some days after his arrival in Rome, he was attacked by a dangerous illness; he recovered through the care of his friend Alypius, who had followed him, and through the prayers of his holy mother, who, although absent, accompanied him in heart. As soon as he saw himself in health, he taught rhetoric in the Greek school of Saint-Marie. But the Roman students did not please him any less than those of Carthage: they were not turbulent, but ungrateful; on the day when it was time to give the professor the price of his lessons, they deserted the school. This procedure was the reason he did not hesitate to accept the chair in Milan, which Symmachus, prefect of Rome, offered him. He arrived there in the month of October, in the year 385, and he was received there with great joy by all the inhabitants: the emperor himself, who was Valentinian the Younger, showed much satisfaction at his arrival. Augustine responded to the high hopes that had been conceived of him, and he soon acquired in Milan that great reputation which followed him everywhere.

He was hardly there long before he made saint Ambroise Archbishop of Milan who prophesied the episcopate of Gaudentius. the acquaintance of Saint Ambrose, whose name was so famous. He was received by him with fatherly kindness. Often he went to hear his preaching, not to profit from his doctrine, but to judge his eloquence. He found in his language less grace than in that of Faustus the Manichaean, but more solidity in his reasoning. He began to see that Catholicism could be reasonably defended; thus, he fell into a state where he was neither orthodox nor Manichaean, but floating between truth and falsehood.

However, as the light gradually grew in his soul, he resolved to place himself in the rank of catechumens. Monica found him in this suspension of mind when she arrived in Milan, where the desire for the salvation of this dear son brought her from Africa, without considering the length, the perils, and the inconveniences of such a long journey. She was soon known and esteemed by Saint Ambrose. She placed herself under his guidance; and, as he reproved her because, following the custom of Africa, she brought food to the tombs of the martyrs, she abstained from it, showing that her devotion was true because it was obedient. She did not miss any of his sermons. Augustine also frequented them, as we have just said. Part of the veil that hid the truth from him fell; he realized that until then he had only felt horror for the Catholic religion because he took for it the phantom he had formed of it.

If Augustine's heart had been pure, the fire of faith and divine love would have burst forth promptly; but for fifteen years he had borne the yoke of a guilty liaison. He had put his whole soul into it. What he had so desired as a young man, he had found; and if the length and perils of a six-hundred-league journey had not stopped Augustine's mother, they had no more made Adeodatus's mother hesitate. She had come to join Augustine in Rome; she had accompanied him to Milan; they lived together; Adeodatus grew up beside them, uniting them and gladdening them with his precocious genius. How to escape such a position? And as long as these bonds were not broken, how to arrive at faith, at holy baptism, at penance, at the Holy Eucharist, at the full and perfect Christian life?

There was then with Augustine a young man whom we shall learn to know more intimately. His name was Alypius; he was the best and dearest of his friends. He had become friends with Augustine in Africa, had seen him again in Rome, and, unable to live without him, had joined him in Milan. Augustine had drawn him into all his errors, and he still adhered to them; but he was a young man of a rare inclination for virtue. He had barely had in his youth some fleeting weakness, from which he had detached himself with contempt and remorse; and he had lived ever since in perfect continence. He constantly urged Augustine to do as he did; he praised to him with enthusiasm the joys of this austere, elevated, entirely spiritual life, compensated for the sacrifices that chastity demands by a peace, a freedom, and a strength that can only be found in the solitary contemplation of truth. Unfortunately, Augustine was too ill to savor these counsels. This union, whose yoke he had borne for fifteen years, seemed so necessary to him that life without it would have seemed to him a misery and a death. "I could never have lived deprived of the affection of her whom I loved," he says; "and as I was ignorant of the strength with which God clothes the chaste soul, I felt myself incapable of this solitude. You would have given me this grace, O my God," he continues, "if I had struck your ears with the groans of my heart, and if I had, by a living faith, placed all my anxieties in your hands."

But, alas! he hardly thought of it. "Enchanted by the criminal sweetness of pleasure, and unable to bear that one should touch my wounds, I dragged," he says humbly, "my chain after me, trembling that one might come to break it. I pushed away everything that one could say to me in favor of virtue, like a hand that wanted to take from me a slavery that I loved."

There was obviously for such a situation, for such a deep sickness of heart, only one possible remedy. Since Augustine could not live in the austere solitude of chastity, it was necessary to have this union that he needed blessed by God. Saint Monica thought of it constantly; she prayed ardently for this purpose, and, persuaded that, the day when Augustine would know only the holy and legitimate affections of marriage, the last difficulties of his mind would vanish, she pushed toward God the greatest cries of her heart.

the simplest thing would have been for Augustine to marry the mother of Adeodatus. But, without one being able to say why, it seems that the thing was not possible; for when one knows what Augustine suffered in separating from her when it had to be done, it is evident that the laws, or the customs, or circumstances that we do not know, brought insurmountable obstacles to this union. Being able neither to marry the mother of Adeodatus nor to send her away, that was the cruel state of Augustine at that time. Under all these hesitations, in all these anguishes, behind all these postponements, there was a deeper, more intimate, more painful question: the great question of virtue, the eternal question of the heart. Who feels these things better, and who suffers more from them than a mother? And nevertheless, there was no room for hesitation. Since these guilty bonds could not be transfigured, they had to be broken; and the only way to make Augustine bear this wound was to offer him the prospect of some noble union truly worthy of him.

Saint Monica probably had recourse to the advice and high influence of Saint Ambrose to help her in such a difficult work; above all, she prayed with ardor; "she pushed toward heaven," says Saint Augustine, "strong clamors, to conjure God to enlighten him in such an important and perilous moment." And finally, after having searched with care and prayed for a long time, she had the happiness of meeting, in a Christian family, a young girl who seemed to her to unite all the qualities that a Saint can desire in the one to whom she is going to entrust the sick soul of her son. She spoke of it to Augustine, urged him strongly; and the latter, overwhelmed, feeling that he had to resign himself to the sacrifice, daring neither to grant it nor to refuse it, let his mother act. The request was therefore presented by Saint Monica, and it was accepted: only, as the young girl had barely left adolescence, it was agreed that the marriage would only take place in two years. Perhaps also this delay seemed necessary to the two families to give Augustine's position time to be regularized and ennobled. Be that as it may, as Augustine could not remain under the eye of her who was promised to him, in a position so false and which would have become so indelicate, the separation was pressed, and the sacrifice was consummated.

Saint Augustine has said only one word about this separation; but what a word! "I let myself be torn from her who shared my life; and as my soul adhered deeply to her soul, it was torn and broken, and my heart shed blood from it." And further on he adds: "The wound that this separation caused me would not heal, and for a long time it caused me the most stinging pains."

As for the mother of Adeodatus, one easily imagines what her groans and tears were; but history says nothing of them. What one knows at least, what one likes to learn, is that this woman who, for fifteen years, had disputed with God for the heart of Augustine, touched at last by grace, and, at the moment when the affections of the earth abandoned her, turning quickly toward heaven, went to hide herself in a monastery, and used the rest of her life there to weep, to purify herself, to ask pardon of God for having chained such a heart and for having delayed by fifteen years the triumph that this great genius was preparing for the Church. "She was better than I," says Saint Augustine, "and she made her sacrifice with a courage and a generosity that I did not have the strength to imitate."

At that moment in Augustine's life, there was a ray of peace, like a clearing between two storms. The bonds were broken, the sacrifice was made. Like a ship that rights itself as soon as it is relieved of a weight, Augustine's soul regained its natural elevation. His mother beamed with happiness at his side. His friends devoted themselves with ardor to the study of philosophy. Every day, some compatriot of Augustine arrived from Africa, happy to find his young master or old friend in Milan:

Romanianus, for example, whom endless lawsuits had brought to this city, and who, always faithful to the son of Patricius and Monica, had brought him, with the same delicacy as before, the resources of his great fortune; Alypius, whom we already know, and who, having recently settled near Augustine, was to be such a sweet consolation and such a tender companion to him; Nebridius, who had left Carthage and his father's vast estate, and his house, and even his mother, to devote himself to the study of philosophy. Younger than Augustine, drifting like him, seeking the truth without finding it, and groaning over his doubts; of a deep and penetrating mind, he had a special place in Augustine's heart. A few others, about seven or eight, mostly from Africa, also gathered around him, devoted to the same studies. They cultivated letters; they discussed the most beautiful questions of God and the soul.

By reading the books of Plato, Augustine had glimpsed the entirely spiritual nature of God and the existence of His Word; he had seen neither the love nor the humiliations of the incarnate Word. He had risen to the idea of an invisible, glorious God, separated from every creature; he had even glimpsed, through the dazzle of the divine nature, something of that divine nature itself: a light coming forth from a light and equal to it; great intuitions, no doubt; so great, indeed, that one wonders if the human genius could have arrived there, and if it is not rather, through the beautiful soul of Plato, a faithfully recaptured echo of ancient traditions. But a poor God, a humiliated God, a God lowered to man and for man; a God loving man even to passion, even to madness, even to suffering, even to dying for man; this is what neither Plato, nor Socrates, nor Cicero, nor Virgil ever suspected. Such things could only be conceived in the heart that was capable of realizing them. It was therefore necessary that one greater than Plato should come to Augustine's aid, one who was at once greater and holier, in order to raise his mind and, above all, his heart to such astonishing mysteries.

Guided invisibly by the merciful hand that was bringing him back from so far away, Augustine then opened the Epistles of Saint Paul; but he did so only with trembling, after singular agitations and resistances, as if he had a premonition of the sacrifices that this reading was finally going to wring from him. "I felt myself keenly urged," he said, "to turn my eyes toward that holy religion which had been so deeply imprinted in my heart when I was a child. But I hesitated; I could not decide; yet it drew me in spite of myself. Finally, cruelly uncertain, willing, not willing, I seized with a sort of agitation and feverish anxiety the book of the Epistles of Saint Paul."

From the very first lines, Augustine was seized with admiration. He who had just been so moved by the reading of Plato experienced here a commotion of which he had no idea. "Oh! if you knew," he wrote to Romanianus, "what light suddenly appeared to me! I would have liked, not only to show it to you, who had so long desired to see this unknown thing, but even to your enemy, to that bitter enemy who pursues you before the courts to take your property. And certainly, if he saw it as I see it, he would leave everything: gardens, houses, banquets, everything that seduces him, and, a pious and gentle lover, he would fly, enraptured, toward this beauty."

This was, moreover, only Augustine's first glance; the second was otherwise profound. He saw a great mystery unfold before him that he did not yet know; that Plato was ignorant of, and that is why he had not been able to teach him the path of virtue; that the Manichaeans had tried to solve through the doctrine of the two principles, but in vain; and that Saint Paul alone showed him in a dazzling light. He saw that man is no longer in the state in which God had formed him; that he had been created holy, innocent, filled with light and intelligence, made to see the majesty of God and already seeing it; but that man could not sustain so much glory without falling into presumption; that he wanted to make himself the center of everything and independent of God; that he had been abandoned, blinded, driven far from God, and in such a state of corruption that sin dwells in him; that there is in him a miserable, odious creature, enemy of the truth, incapable of virtue, having a taste for evil; "the man of sin," as Saint Paul says, "the old man," as he also says; strange expressions, of profound sadness, but of sublime hope; for they indicate that this is not the whole of man, and that there is a new one. And this is what Augustine soon learned by continuing his reading. He saw, on the same pages, that to overcome this man, this odious mixture of pride, concupiscence, and revolt, the Word was made flesh; that He lived in humility, in obedience, and in sacrifice, that He annihilated Himself to the point of becoming man, in order to heal the man who wants to exalt himself to God. The whole mystery of the Incarnation and Redemption was unveiled to his eyes, and plunged him into admiration. He felt that he had crossed all spaces; that he was no longer in the region of human conceptions; that he was touching that sublime point where man vanishes and where God appears; and he knelt down, dazzled and moved.

"Ah!" he said with tender astonishment, "what a difference there is between the books of the philosophers and those of the envoys of God! What is found to be good in the former, one finds in the latter, and one finds there in addition the knowledge of your grace, O my God, so that he who knows you, not only does not boast, but is healed, and strengthened, and finally arrives at you."

"What do they know, moreover, these great philosophers, of this law of sin incarnate in our members, which fights against the law of the mind and drags us captive into evil? What do they know above all of the grace of Jesus Christ, the innocent victim, whose blood has erased the sentence of our condemnation? On all this, their books are silent."

"There, one learns neither the secret of Christian piety, nor the tears of confession, nor the sacrifice of a contrite and humbled heart, and even less the grace of that precious chalice which contains the price of our redemption."

"One does not hear these canticles there: O my soul, submit yourself to God, for He is your God, your Savior, your defender. Supported by Him, what would you fear? There does not resound this sweet call: Come to me, all you who are burdened, and I will give you rest. They are ignorant, these scholars, that the Word, having descended to earth, is meek and humble of heart. Divine mysteries, which you have hidden, O my God, from the learned and the wise, but which you have revealed to the little ones and the humble."

These are the truths that penetrated Augustine's soul while he was reading the one who calls himself "the least of the Apostles," and the sight of so many wonders cast him into admiration.

"Oh!" he said, closing the book, "how different it is to perceive from afar, from the top of a wild rock, the City of Peace, without being able, whatever effort one makes, to find a path to get there; or else to find this path, and on this path a guide who directs you and defends you against the brigandage of those who would like to stop you."

Thus, Augustine was in possession of that blessed light for which he had sighed for so long, and which his mother had solicited for him with so many tears. He had pierced all the veils, and now that he had arrived at God and at Our Lord Jesus Christ, His divine Son, who died for love of us, it seems there was only one thing left to do: to rise, run to his mother, and say to her: Do not weep, I am a Christian.

But Augustine was not yet there. This vivid flash of light had pierced the clouds rather than dispelled them. There remained in Augustine a host of false, inaccurate, and incomplete ideas, which he had drawn from the books of the Manichaeans, and of which he had difficulty ridding himself: the last shadows that were slowly fading away.

He would have made them vanish if he had had the courage to kneel, to strike his breast, to confess his faults, and to prepare himself to receive the sacraments of purification and the Holy Eucharist; for there comes a moment, in these great searches for truth, when the soul can only merit seeing fully through an act of humility and abandonment to God. One must risk even sacrifice for Him if one wishes for the last shadows to vanish. God sets His favors at this price.

Augustine felt this vaguely; but he was afraid. He wanted to see more clearly before kneeling, whereas one must kneel to see more clearly; and, in the meantime, he multiplied his studies, his readings, and his mental efforts to increase within himself the light of which he had received the first fruits.

However, the cries of Augustine's conscience had grown. It pressed him more sharply than ever. It began to murmur in his ears those words, which were never to cease resounding in the depths of his heart, and which would soon resound there like thunder: "You have claimed until now that the uncertainty of the truth was the only reason preventing you from fulfilling your duty. Well! Everything is certain now. The truth shines before your eyes. Why do you not surrender?" — "I heard," says Saint Augustine, "but I played the deaf man. I refused to advance, but without now seeking any excuse. All the reasons I could have brought forward were refuted in advance. There remained only a mute fear: the fear of seeing the course of those long and sad habits stopped, which nevertheless had led me to such a desperate state."

For a long time, indeed, Augustine had not had the courage to believe; now he believed, but he did not have the courage to practice. The obscurities of faith had at first stopped him; it was now the necessities of virtue that frightened him. "Thus, always floating and not wanting to be fixed, consulting incessantly, and fearing to be enlightened; always a disciple and admirer of Saint Ambrose, and always agitated by the uncertainties of a heart that fled the truth, he dragged his chain, fearing to be delivered from it: he still proposed doubts to prolong his passions; he still wanted to be enlightened, because he feared being so too much: and, more a slave to his passion than to his errors, he rejected the truth that showed itself to him only because he looked upon it as a victorious hand that had finally come to break the bonds he still loved." — "I had found a pearl," he would exclaim eloquently, "and now that I had to sell my goods, that is to say, make sacrifices to buy it, I did not have the courage."

Agitated, indecisive, pressed by his mother, harassed by his conscience, Augustine finally resolved to go and consult a holy priest named Simplicianus, whose beautiful life had long since struck him.

He was one of those venerable old men such as one constantly encounters in the bosom of the Ca Simplicien Priest who guided Augustine toward conversion in Milan. tholic Church, who, having passed from a chaste youth to an even chaster mature age, and blessed by God with a green old age, present to men, who bow when meeting them, a venerable image of peace and serenity in virtue. Young people troubled by the storms of passion love to approach these tranquil snows and to calm themselves beside them.

Augustine therefore came to confide to Simplicianus the troubles of his life and the secret weaknesses that now held him back, no longer in the presence of light, but in the presence of virtue.

The good old man received him with a sweet smile, listened without astonishment to the account of his wanderings, and congratulated him that, instead of opening those atheistic and materialistic books that degrade the soul, he had attached himself to the study of Plato and Socrates, who elevate the mind and the heart. Simplicianus, like all old priests, had known men well. He was intimately linked, not only with Saint Ambrose, whom he had directed in his youth and to whom he had even given holy baptism, but with a great number of Roman philosophers, poets, and rhetoricians, and in particular with Victorinus, the very one who had translated the works of Plato, which Augustine was studying at that moment. Like all old men, too, Simplicianus loved to tell stories, and, skillful at handling minds, he knew how to cleverly hide a lesson in a story.

Seeing then beside him this young man of such a great mind, of such a noble character, already illuminated by grace, but who still hesitated to surrender to it, he took advantage with finesse of the name of Victorinus, which the latter had just pronounced; and after saying that he had once known this eloquent man in Rome, wanting to show Augustine indirectly the path of courage and Christian honor, he told him the story in approximately these terms:

"Victorinus had distinguished himself in the same career that Augustine was following. A professor of eloquence, he had seen at the foot of his chair not only all the Roman youth, but a host of senators; he had translated, explained, and enriched with luminous commentaries the most beautiful books of ancient philosophy, and by dint of eloquence he had obtained, a rare honor in any time, a statue in the Forum. When he had thus exhausted the study of all the masterpieces of the human mind, the idea came to him to open the Holy Scriptures; he read them with attention, then he said to Simplicianus, but in secret and in intimacy, as to a friend: 'Do you know that I am now a Christian?' — 'I will not believe it,' replied Simplicianus, 'until I see you in the church of Christ.' And Victorinus said, laughing and with irony: 'Is it then the walls that make the Christian?' At heart, he was afraid of displeasing his friends, and he feared that from these heights of human and all-powerful greatness, from these cedars of Lebanon that God had not yet broken, overwhelming enmities would roll upon him.

"In the meantime, he continued to read; he prayed much, and, drawing more deeply from the Holy Scriptures, he felt courage and strength born within him. A day came when he was more afraid of being disavowed by Jesus Christ than mocked and despised by his friends, and, trembling to betray the truth, he went to Simplicianus and said to him: 'Let us go to the church, for I want to be a Christian.' Rome was filled with astonishment, and the Church thrilled with joy. When the moment arrived to make his profession of faith in the presence of all the faithful, it was proposed to Victorinus to recite it in private, as is done for persons whom a public solemnity intimidates. But he refused energetically, and he climbed courageously onto the ambo. As soon as he appeared there, his name, spread from row to row by those who knew him, raised a murmur of joy in the assembly. And the contained voice of general gladness said in a low voice: 'Victorinus! Victorinus!' The desire to hear him having promptly restored silence, he pronounced the Creed with an admirable faith, and all the faithful who were there, consoled by such courage, would have liked to put him in their hearts. Their joy and their love were like two hands with which they placed him there indeed.

"Since then," continued Simplicianus, giving each of his words a more penetrating accent, "since then this illustrious old man made it his glory to become a child in the school of Jesus Christ. He let himself be humbly suckled by the holy Church, and he placed with joy under the ignominious yoke of the cross a head that had worn so many crowns. Julian the Apostate having shortly after forbidden Christians to teach letters, he closed his eloquent lips, and crowned his life with the most beautiful and the most painful of all sacrifices."

This example, so well chosen, and which suited Augustine's position so perfectly, moved him to his very core. He left enthusiastic, reproaching himself for his weakness, indignant at his cowardice, and he returned to his house, where his mother was waiting for him in prayer, decided to finish it this time and to imitate Victorinus. "O my God," he cried in a sort of transport, "come to my aid! Act, Lord, do; awaken me, recall me; inflame and ravish; be flame and sweetness; let us love, let us run."

But, alas! this chain that Augustine had been dragging for so many years was heavier than he had at first imagined. As soon as he laid his hand upon it, he felt incapable of breaking it. He did not say: No. He did not have the courage to say: Yes. "This series of corruptions and disorders," he says, "like so many rings linked one into the other, formed a chain that riveted me in the hardest slavery. I indeed had a will to serve God with a high and chaste love, and to enjoy Him alone; but this new will, which was only just being born, was not capable of overcoming the other, which had been strengthened by a long habit of evil. Thus I had two wills: one old, and the other new; one carnal, and the other spiritual; and these two wills fought within me, and this combat tore my soul."

In the meantime, he tried to calm his conscience, and when the latter cried to him that he must decide, he knew only how to answer it like a sleepy and lazy man: "Presently, leave me a little; just one more little moment." But this "presently" never came, and this "little moment" lasted forever.

In the meantime, an old friend of Augustine, named Alypius, came to visit him. Both were from Africa, where they had once known each other intimately. Only, while Augustine had followed, in error and in the forgetfulness of God, the long and sad road that we have tried to describe, Alypius had remained a fervent Christian, and he lived in Milan, where he had, at the emperor's court, one of the first military employments. Saint Monica had been happy to find him again in Italy, and to introduce into the society of Augustine, of Alypius, of Nebridius, of all these young people floating in the faith, a soul so well tempered, that neither war nor the court had been able to make it hesitate for an instant.

That day, while chatting with Augustine and Alypius, Alypius noticed a book on a game table. He opened it mechanically, as happens when one is busy chatting; he thought he would find a Cicero or a Quintilian. It was the Epistles of Saint Paul. A little surprised, he looked at Augustine, smiling; and the latter having confessed to him that for some time he had been reading the Holy Scripture with the greatest attention and the greatest charm, the conversation took on a completely Christian turn of its own.

Alypius had traveled a great deal. He knew Gaul, Spain, Italy, Africa, Egypt, and he knew them as a Christian; that is to say, everywhere he had studied the wonders that the true faith operated in the Catholic Church. He told him of the conversion of some great men of the court of Maximus, through the reading of the life of Saint Anthony, and then taught him the wonderful exercises of penance of this great anchorite, and of an innumerable multitude of monks who lived under his Rules. This account touched him so powerfully that he resolved to embrace the same way of life and to withdraw completely from the world. But, as his bad habits were very strong, a strange combat took place within him between the spirit and the flesh; and the demon, seeing himself on the point of losing this great prey, employed all his artifices and all his forces to keep it for himself.

He describes himself this state of pain to which he was reduced: "The enemy," he says, "held my will bound with the rope he had woven to drag me; for the bad will had produced bad desires, and these desires not having been stifled, the evil had passed into custom, and the custom finally, for lack of having resisted it, had become a hard necessity. The chain of my misfortune was composed of these rings, and held me in a narrow captivity; this new will, which I felt to serve You, O my God, and which was beginning to form in my heart, was not strong enough to supplant the first, which, by an inveterate habit, having made itself the most powerful and the mistress, had more force against me and led me where I did not want to go. But as I was always attached to the earth, I always refused to follow You when You called me, and I had no less apprehension of seeing myself untied from these bonds than faithful persons have of joy not to see themselves engaged in them. I went gently, burdened with this weight of the century, as if I had been at rest, and the thoughts I had of changing my life resembled the drowsiness of those who sleep and who want to wake up, but who, by the heaviness of sleep, fall back on the other side and continue to sleep." — "Being," he says elsewhere, "in this sickness, I accused myself of cowardice, and, rolling in the chain that I was dragging, to try to break the little that remained of it, and which was still strong enough to hold me, I said to myself: Come, let us do it now, let it be all at this hour. Immediately I set myself to it and I did it halfway, but without being able to finish. I no longer returned to the past things, but I stayed very close to them, and I breathed a little. I returned another time, with new strength, I arrived almost there and I touched it; although in fact, by my weakness, I did neither one nor the other. The custom of evil had more force over me than the desire for the good that I wanted to embrace. And the closer the time of my correction approached, the more I feared its arrival, because the vanities of my youth, and the delights that I had tasted, pulled me as if by the robe, said to me with a tender air: What, Augustine, do you want to leave us then? Will it be necessary that, henceforth, we are no longer with you, and everything that you loved, with such passion, be forbidden to you forever? I listened to them from afar, no longer myself, but the lesser part of myself; for, no longer daring to address me, by open war, they only followed me on the track and murmured to make me turn my eyes to their side. They did not fail to trouble me by their importunities, because I was beginning to rid myself of them. I did not want to go where they called me, because, on the path that I saw before me, and through which I feared to pass, I discovered from afar the holy majesty of continence with a rosy face and a ravishing gravity, which, flattering me in my fear with a sweetness full of modesty, invited me to come boldly to her. She showed me an innumerable multitude of girls, of young men, of chaste widows and of continent women whose purity was not sterile, but fertile and mother of true joys; and, mocking me, she said to me with an agreeable look: Can you not do what all these people have done so generously? Do you think that they executed it by themselves and without the help of the grace of God? It is in Him and by Him that they have been able to do everything they have done and everything they do. Do not lean then anymore on your own strength, but throw yourself courageously, and without deliberating anymore, into the arms of your God, He will receive you and will save you. I blushed with shame to hear still the voice of my foolish pasts, and, as I remained dreamy and pensive, she said to me: Close your ears to all these dirty and dishonest thoughts, and mortify the members that excite them in you. The pleasures that they represent to you do not approach those that one tastes in the law of the Lord. That is the combat that was taking place in my heart, of myself against myself."

These are the very terms with which this holy Doctor explains the difficulties he had in giving himself entirely to God: but finally, Providence, which had destined him to be one day the shining light of the Church, took him by the hand and pulled him from the mire where he was. It was in an extraordinary way that he exposes in these terms: "After I had condensed thus, by a deep meditation, and put before my eyes the whole extent of my misery, I felt rising in my heart a frightful storm charged with a rain of tears. To let it burst entirely, I rose and moved away from Alypius. I needed solitude to weep more at my ease; I therefore withdrew quite far and aside, so as not to be bothered, even by such a dear presence. Alypius understood it; for I do not know what word had escaped me with a sound of voice heavy with tears. I went to throw myself on the ground under a fig tree, and not being able to hold back my tears anymore, they came out of my eyes like a torrent. And I spoke to You, if not in these terms, at least in this sense: Oh! how long, Lord, how long will You be irritated? Do not keep memory of my past iniquities. For I felt that they still held me. And that is what made me add with sobs: How long? how long? Tomorrow! tomorrow! Why not at the instant? why not on the hour finish with my shame?

"And all of a sudden, while I was speaking in this way, and while I was weeping in all the bitterness of a broken heart, I hear coming from the neighboring house like a voice of a child or a young girl, who was singing and repeating these words: 'Take, read! take, read!'

"I stopped suddenly, changing my face," continues Saint Augustine, "and I began to search with the greatest attention if the children, in some of their games, made use of a similar refrain. But I did not remember ever having heard it. Then, compressing the course of my tears, sure that it was a voice from heaven that ordered me to open the book of the holy apostle Paul, I ran to the place where Alypius was sitting, and where I had left the book. I take it, I open it, and my eyes fall on these words, which I read in a low voice: Do not live in feasts, in debaucheries, in pleasures and impurities, in jealousies and disputes; but clothe yourselves with Jesus Christ, and do not seek anymore to satisfy your flesh, according to the pleasures of your sensuality. I did not want to read anymore, and also what was the need? for these lines were barely finished, when there spread in my heart like a calm light that dissipated forever all the darkness of my soul.

"Then, having left in the book the trace of my finger or I do not know what other mark, I closed it, and, with a tranquil face, I declared everything to Alypius. He, for his part, discovered to me what was happening in his soul, and which I was ignorant of. He desired to see what I had read. I showed it to him; and, reading further than me, he gathers these words that I had not noticed: Assist the weak in faith; which he takes for himself. And, fortified by this warning, more prompt to return to the faith, because of the purity of his morals, he joins me, and we run to my mother."

The conversion of Alypius, who, out of friendship for Augustine, had strayed from the faith without leading an immoral life, greatly increased his happiness. Both of them went to find Monica and told her everything that had happened. What joy this pious mother felt when she learned that not only had her son resolved to live according to the precepts of the Gospel, but that he also wished to follow its counsels and practice its most rigorous instructions.

To prepare for baptism, he resolved to withdraw from the world; but, as there were only twenty days left until the vacation, he waited for this time out of prudence and modesty, so as not to leave his chair of rhetoric with a flourish. As soon as this term had expired, he retired to Cassiacum, to a country house offered to him by Verecundus, a citizen of Milan, and took with him Saint Monica, his son Adeodatus or Dieudonné, Navigius, and Alypius. It was in this retreat that he composed, although still a catechumen, the books against the Academicians, who professed to doubt everything, the books on Order, on the Blessed Life, on the Immortality of the Soul, and the Soliloquies, two colloquies and loving conversations that his soul had with God, where he tasted such pure delights and received such abundant consolations that one would have to experience them oneself to speak of them. He was tormented there for several days by such a cruel toothache that, wishing to implore the prayers of his friends and being unable to speak to them, he was forced to write his intention on wax tablets; his friends had no sooner bent their knees to pray than he felt relieved and saw himself delivered from this torment in a short time. He wrote to Saint Ambrose to ask him to indicate which book of Scripture he should read to prepare himself for the grace of baptism. The holy Bishop advised him to begin with the prophet Isaiah, who speaks more openly than the others of the vocation of the Gentiles and the mysteries of Christianity. But Augustine, having read the first chapter and not understanding it to his satisfaction, postponed this reading until he was better versed in the study of the holy letters.

Finally, five months had passed, and the happy day on which he was to receive holy Baptism arrived. He went to Milan, accompanied by Evodius, Alypius, Trigetius, his son Dieudonné, Pontitianus, Simplicianus, Faustinus, Valerius, Candotus, Justus, and Paulinus, all his friends or relatives who were to be baptized with him. Saint Ambrose felt an unspeakable joy to see this elite troop, of which Saint Augustine was the leader, whom he was about to acquire for the Church and of whom he was to be the father in spirit. He baptized them all with his own hand in the presence of an immense crowd on the eve of Easter in the year 387, in the night of April 24 to 25. The common tradition is that Saint Ambrose, in this ceremony, having sung the first words of the famous Canticle (the Te Deum) which the Church uses to render thanks to God, Saint Augustine answered him, and they continued it alternately until the end, as the Holy Spirit inspired them. Besides the white robe he received from Saint Ambrose, according to the custom of the Church, as a sign of the purity and innocence conferred in holy Baptism, he also received a black habit (whether it was at the same time or only eight days later), to show that he was embracing the rigors of religious life and that he wished to expiate, through the fire of penance, the stains from which he had just been washed by the salutary waters of grace. The blessed Simplicianus, who shared with Saint Ambrose the glory of Augustine's conversion, gave him a leather belt to distinguish him from the other hermits.

One cannot express the joy that all the faithful felt at this conversion. He had been regarded until then as another Saul, a persecutor of the Church; for his spirit and his science had made him so formidable that it is even said that Saint Ambrose had added to the public Litanies, which were sung in his time and of which some authors claim to have seen copies: A logica Augustini, libera nos, Domine; "Lord, deliver us from the logic of Augustine"; but, as he was seen to have become another Paul, a defender of the Church, one heard from all sides thanksgivings to God for having made such a wonderful doctor out of such a great sinner. Monica, that mother once so desolate, finally seeing this son of her tears and her sorrow in the bosom of the Catholic religion, humble, Monique Mother of Saint Augustine, whose prayers obtained his conversion. devout, chaste, religious, and from a furious lion become as gentle as a lamb, Monica gave a thousand blessings to heaven and thanked the mercy of God with all her heart for having finally answered her prayers.

Augustine, having received Baptism, stripped himself of all earthly ambition; the desire for honors and the ambition to appear, which had been his passions, touched him no more. He thought only of leading a life in accordance with the rules of the Gospel. Thinking that he would do so more peacefully in Africa than in Italy, he resolved to return there as soon as possible. He therefore left Milan, with the blessing of Saint Ambrose and Saint Simplicianus, accompanied by his holy mother, his brother Navigius, his son Dieudonné, his faithful Alypius, Evodius, Anastasius, Vitalis the poor, and several others who wished to imitate his way of life, and went to Civita-Vecchia. This city was called Cencelle, because one hundred halls had been built there where audiences were given and where all the affairs of the province were judged. Among the ruins of its buildings, one could see several hermits who lived alone, far from the tumult of the world and the company of men. When they learned of the merit of Augustine, they gave him the best possible welcome: he stayed with them for some time to meditate in this pious company on the mysteries of religion. It is in this place, according to some authors, that he began the books on the Trinity, to which he himself admits having put his hand in his youth; but he was forced to interrupt them following a famous apparition. Walking one day on the seashore, while ruminating on some thoughts he had on this subject, he saw a child who, wanting to drain the sea, was trying to enclose all its waters in a small hole he had made on the shore. Augustine, surprised by this design, gently pointed out the impossibility of it. "Know," the child replied, "that I will succeed sooner than you in understanding, by the lights of your mind, the mystery of the most holy Trinity." Augustine, instructed by this prodigy of the difficulty of his enterprise, did not press for its execution; but he contented himself, to leave an eternal monument of his devotion to this adorable mystery, with founding a hermitage in the same place which the religious of his Order now possess. One sees on the door a sign where the meaning of these words has been engraved in Latin: "Passerby, whoever you are, revere the hermitage and the chapel where Augustine, that shining light of the Church, began his work on the Trinity and where he interrupted it, by the advice and oracle of a child sent from heaven to the shore; he finally finished it in Africa, in his old age." From Civita-Vecchia he went to Rome, to wait there for a favorable time to set sail. During his stay, he composed the Dialogue of the Soul, a book on the morals of the Church, to make its holiness known, and another: On the Morals of the Manichaeans, to confound their arrogance which was unbearable to him. The rigor of winter having passed, he went to Ostia; there, while he was preparing for navigation, after having been consoled by that admirable vision of the divine essence, which he reports in chapter x of book ix of his *Confessions*, he had the sorrow of seeing Saint Monica die, as we have said in her life, on May 4.

He rendered the last duties and the honors of burial to this great Saint who was doubly his mother. He had the holy sacrifice of the mass celebrated for her intention, just as she had expressly recommended to him before her death. He then embarked with his companions to set sail for Africa, finally arrived happily at Carthage, where the rumor of his holiness had already spread, and stayed with Innocent, the lieutenant of the governor of the country; he cured him, through his prayers, of a leg ailment, where gangrene had set in, to the point that the doctors had decided to amputate the limb to save the patient's life. From Carthage, he came to Tagaste, where his first care was to sell all his goods, to distribute a part to the poor, and to use the other to build, in a desert near the city, a small monastery to retire there with his first companions and with those who, since then, would join him to lead a religious life. It was in this place that the Son of God appeared to him and gave him, from his own mouth, the name of Great: for, as he was occupied there with works of mercy, and mainly with hospitality, receiving the poor, giving them food, and washing their feet, Jesus Christ presented himself to him under the appearance of a poor man in such a languishing state that the holy Doctor, being touched by it, led him into his cell, treated him as best he could, washed his feet, and kissed them; after which the poor man said to him: Magne pater Augustine, gaude, quia Filium Dei hodie in carne videre et tangere meruisti: "Great Augustine, rejoice, because today you have deserved to see and touch the Son of God in his flesh." Then he disappeared, leaving this heavenly man all enraptured by the favor he had just received. It is believed that it was also in this monastery that this holy practice began, among the religious, of greeting one another with these two words: Deo gratias. Hence the reason why Saint Augustine justifies it against the heretics who mocked it.

"Are you then so stupid," he said to them, "as not to know what Deo gratias means? One only utters these words to thank God for some benefit received from His goodness. Now, is it not a signal favor for religious to live together united in Jesus Christ, to have but one heart and one soul for His service, to walk surely in the path of salvation, to perform the same duties, to aspire to the same goal, and to occupy themselves with the same exercises? Is it not just that those who have been called to such great happiness should render thanks to God whenever they find the occasion?" And because the Donatists, called Circumcellions, greeted Christians by saying to them: Deo laudes, praises to God, although they did so only to draw them into their errors, massacring without pity those who would not embrace them; he reproached them for their perfidy by showing them the difference between their salvation and that of the religious: Vos nostrum Deo Gratias ridetis; Deo laudes vestrum plorant homines, etc.: "You turn our form of greeting into mockery, and everyone laments yours, which is but a deceptive pretext you use to cover the malice of your intentions. You come to us with the praises of God on your lips and the dagger in your hand; you invite us to praise Him while you blaspheme Him by your works. Your praises make men weep and are as abominable before God as our thanksgivings are pleasing to Him." Finally, it was at this time that he composed the treatise entitled: On the Teacher, and two books on Genesis, against the Manichaeans, with several other works, and that he put the finishing touches to the books on Music.

Whatever care he took to live hidden in this hermitage, where he spent three years, his holiness, his doctrine, and his reputation made him sufficiently known throughout Africa. He was consulted from all sides like an oracle on the difficulties one had, and he answered them on the spot with such marvelous clarity that the most obscure matters became very clear through the lights of his mind. He had such an aversion for honors and dignities that he would not go to cities he knew to be destitute of a pastor, for fear that he might be obliged to accept some charge in the Church. He looked upon holding the first rank and being elevated to high offices more as a disgrace or a punishment than as a favor. The prelacies of the Church seemed to him like reefs against which it was easy to be shipwrecked; and the miters, whose brilliance is now so highly regarded, seemed to him like crowns of thorns that caused much more pain and trouble than ornament to the heads that wore them. But this same humility of Augustine was a deep foundation upon which was to be built the glory that was prepared for him and toward which Providence was leading him without his thinking of it.

There was in Hippo (which is now the city of Bône), a great lord, very rich and God-fearing, a friend of Saint Augustine, whom he passionately desired to see and hear speak of the truths of the Go Hippone City where Possidius took refuge and where Saint Augustine died. spel, of which he knew he had once been the most formidable enemy; he was even quite ready to renounce the world and give all his goods to the Church, if this great man approved of this design when he had communicated it to him. Saint Augustine, who sought only the occasion to win souls to Jesus Christ and to lead them to high perfection, no sooner learned of this good disposition of his friend than he went to Hippo. Valerius, a Greek by nation, who was its bishop, did what he could to oblige him to stay, in order to attach him to the service of his Church; but having noticed that he was resolved to return to his monaster y as s Valère Bishop of Hippo who ordained Augustine as a priest. oon as he had satisfied his friend, he assembled the people, and, after having represented to them the need he had of a learned man to work in his diocese for the salvation of souls, he exhorted them to cast their eyes upon the one whom holiness, doctrine, and zeal made capable of this employment. At the same time, the people, as if by divine inspiration, went to find Augustine, seized him, and, crying loudly that God had sent him to Hippo to be their pastor, presented him to Valerius to be ordained priest: which was executed despite his tears and the reasons his humility led him to allege for not being raised to the priestly dignity.

The first thing Augustine did when he saw himself a priest was to ask the bishop for a place to build a monastery similar to that of Tagaste: which Valerius granted him, giving him a garden that adjoined his church. As soon as it was built, it was immediately filled with persons who embraced his institute, and whom he also had ordained priests, in order to employ themselves like him in the instruction of the faithful and the administration of the Sacraments. It was then that he composed his Rule, having previously been content to govern his disciples by word of mouth and by the example of his virtues. This establishment was a seminary where one took apostolic workers to labor in the Lord's vineyard, and where one found men of extraordinary merit who were dispersed into various countries of Africa to govern Churches. Possidius writes that he knew ten whom Saint Augustine had given to be bishops in various places: of this number were Alypius and Evodius.

Saint Augustine, having thus formed a community of apostolic men, received from Valerius the order to preach and to distribute publicly to the faithful the bread of the word of God. He excused himself at first, relying on two reasons: the first, that, according to an ancient custom of Africa, condemned nevertheless by Saint Jerome, but from which no one had yet dispensed himself, it was not permitted for priests to preach in the presence of their bishops; the second, that he did not yet believe himself learned enough to discharge this ministry worthily; having been able to obtain nothing, he asked at least for a delay of a few months, in order to prepare himself by the study of the holy Scriptures, by prayer, and by penance. The letter he wrote to Valerius on this subject is admirable and deserves to be read by all those who are obliged to announce the word of God. He represents the ease with which one can discharge it when one is content to do so superficially; but he shows, at the same time, the perils to which one exposes oneself, the difficulties that must be overcome, the qualities one must have, and the preparations one must bring to do it worthily. Then, making an application of all these things to himself, he conjures Valerius to help him with his prayers and to grant him at least the time he had asked for to consult God and apply himself to study. How this modesty of Augustine condemns those preachers who, believing themselves capable of everything, expose themselves rashly to this divine ministry! He had already brought to light several excellent works against heretics and philosophers, for the defense of religion; he had composed various treatises of piety, where the faithful found solid food to nourish their soul, and yet he dared not undertake to preach the Gospel. This function seemed to him formidable and above his strength, and, to hear his excuses, one would take him for some illiterate man.

Not at all versed in the study of the holy Scriptures, and who had never learned anything of the theology of Christians. It was necessary, however, that his humility yield to the authority of his bishop, who, being a Greek by nation, and not having a familiar use of the Latin language, was very glad that a man of Augustine's merit should supply his defect. Since then, the primate of Carthage, no longer fearing to fail after such a great example, introduced into his Church the preaching of priests in the presence of their bishop.

The preachings of Augustine had immense success. One could not resist the force of his doctrine and his reasoning. Even those who listened to him only to criticize him found themselves insensibly persuaded of the truths he preached to them: although his science always appeared eminent, it was nevertheless without ostentation; he was cured of that disease which inflates the mind and of which he had once been possessed. He preferred to excite the tears of his listeners than to attract their applause; to satisfy the necessity of the simple than the greed of the curious; to instruct than to appear; to give others the luminous fire of truth than to take for himself the fumes of vanity. He raised or lowered his style according to the dignity of the matters he treated and the reach of those he taught; the learned found science there, the orators eloquence and erudition: his words were, for sinners asleep in the habits of evil, claps of thunder that awakened them; for the proud, bolts of lightning that shattered their pride; for the voluptuous, an antidote that disgusted them with their debaucheries; for the ambitious, weapons that overturned their designs. Finally, everyone found there what was necessary for his own sanctification.

While he was occupied in preaching the word of God, a national Council of Africa was assembled at Hippo, where he was called to give his opinion on several difficulties that were proposed there. He did so with such doctrine that it was resolved to hold to what he had said. The reputation that Augustine had acquired in this assembly gave Valerius reason to fear that he might be taken from his Church to be made a bishop; that is why, in order to keep him in his diocese, he wrote to Aurelius, primate of Carthage, to pray him, given his old age and weakness, to give him to him as coadjutor during his life, and as successor after his death. Aurelius consented with joy; but Augustine resisted strongly, preferring to obey than to command, and to ensure his salvation in a mediocre state than to risk it in a brilliant condition. It was necessary, however, to submit to the will of God, which was manifested to him by that of his superiors, and to suffer that Megalius, bishop of Calama and primate of Numidia, and Valerius himself, should confer upon him the episcopal character, to the great contentment of the clergy and of all the people, while he alone was overwhelmed with sadness to see himself charged with a burden he did not believe himself capable of bearing: he said, later, that he had never better recognized that God was indignant against him and wanted to punish him for the sins of his past life than when He had raised him to the episcopate.

After his consecration, he remained for some time with his religious at the monastery of the Garden; but, seeing by experience that he could not, with the strict regular observance of the cloister, reconcile the audiences that, in his capacity as bishop, he was obliged to grant to a continual crowd of people who visited him, he wanted to have in the episcopal house a community of clerics who lived like him, and in which he could render to strangers the charitable offices of Martha, without losing the quietude and tranquility of Mary. To compose it, he worked to reform the ecclesiastics of his Church, obliging them to live according to the discipline of the Apostles, from which they had relaxed; and, because he also gave them Rules, they were called Canons Regular.

The new dignity of Augustine changed nothing in his conduct. He always appeared the same in all his actions; placed as bishop between God and men, he did not fail to honor the one by his sacrifices and his piety, and to edify the others by his good examples: thus rendering to God and to Caesar what belonged to both. The bishopric of Hippo had more than forty thousand crowns of income: however, one did not see Augustine more richly dressed, nor more magnificently accompanied than before. He never wore silk clothes; but his clothing was simple and suitable to the religious poverty he professed. Even his pontifical ornaments were of fabrics of mediocre price. His miter, which is preserved with his pastoral staff at the convent of Valencia, in Spain, where they were transported from Sardinia, so that the inheritance of such a great Father, as Pope Martin V says, might return to his legitimate children, was only of fine linen. He was content with this mediocrity to have enough to provide more largely for the necessities of the poor, for the maintenance of whom he did not even spare the censers, the crosses, and the silver chalices. Although he had no attachment to his relatives, he did not fail to assist them like the other faithful, and to give alms to those among them who were in indigence; he behaved in this with extreme moderation: for he did not pretend to enrich them, but only to help them in their necessity; nor to make their house more splendid, but to pull it from the deepest misery: not judging it reasonable that the goods of the Church, of which God would one day require of him such a rigorous account, should serve to foment the luxury and ambition of his relatives, and that he should employ the blood of Jesus Christ and the patrimony of the poor to make them golden and silver footstools to raise them, enlarge them, and bring them closer to his person. He never wanted to take charge of the key to the treasury of his Church nor of the income of his bishopric; he left the economy and the dispensation to the most upright ecclesiastics of his clergy. He even said one day to his people that he preferred to be maintained by their offerings and their charities than to enjoy such a great income, and that, if they made him a modest pension for his subsistence and that of his officers, he would willingly make a general cession of everything that belonged to him. When he was given some expensive robe, he was ashamed to wear it, and he had it sold, so that the money might be employed for the relief of many. "The Church," he said, "has money only to distribute it, and not to keep it; it is a cruelty unworthy of a father's heart, such as that of a bishop must be, to amass goods while he pushes away the hand of the poor who asks him for alms." When he had completely exhausted himself, and there was nothing left for him to give, he would mount the pulpit and warn the people of his poverty and of his inability to help the needy, so that they might give alms themselves.

He never wanted to buy a house or a farm. He did not receive the inheritances that were bequeathed by testament to the Church to the prejudice of the children, because he could not approve that they should be frustrated of them. However, he did not refuse the other liberalities that were made to him for the relief of the poor; but it was with such disinterestedness that he was always ready to strip himself of them. Someone having transferred to his church the domain of a land, and having put into his hands the act of his donation, some years later, this person repented and begged him to return his contract: the Saint did so very willingly. He nevertheless pointed out to him that his procedure was hardly Christian, and that he should do penance for having repented of having done a good work and for having wanted to take back from God a thing he had given Him without any constraint. This ease of Augustine gave the people occasion to murmur against him, under the pretext that it was doing a wrong to the poor and cooling the devotion of the faithful toward the Church to reject the pious legacies that were left to him by testament; but the holy Bishop, to show the uprightness of his intention, explained himself publicly in a sermon, where, after having discoursed on this subject, he concluded with these words: "Whoever shall disinherit his son to make the Church his heir, let him seek another than Augustine to accept the inheritance; but I pray God that there may be no one who wants to collect his succession." He does not blame those who leave something to the Church to have God prayed for their intention; but those who, by caprice, without any subject and by an indiscreet and in no way tolerable devotion, dispose of all their goods in favor of the Church and disinherit their relatives.

The tableware of his table was of wood, marble, or tin, and not of silver: which he did, not to become richer by this saving, but in order to be more liberal. No exquisite or delicate dishes were served there, but only herbs, roots, and vegetables. When other dishes were brought, it was for the sick or for the strangers who were there. While eating, a holy reading was usually done to serve as food for the mind, at the same time that the body took its own. And because it happens only too often that, during the meal, one lets oneself go to speak ill of one's neighbor, to close the mouth of the slanderers entirely and banish from his house these bloody feasts where the tongue cuts more dangerously than knives, he had had written, in large letters, in the room that served as his refectory, these two Latin verses:

Quicquis amat dictis absentem rodere vitam, Hanc mensam vetitam noverit esse sibi.

"Let him who delights in tearing the reputation of the absent with his slanders know that this table is forbidden to him." He had this rule kept so exactly that some bishops, beginning one day a discourse of mockery where slander was about to enter, our Saint interrupted them, saying to them: "Gentlemen, read these verses: they must be erased, or the subject changed, or else do not take it amiss that I withdraw, and that I leave you to devour among yourselves the prey you hold."

The continence for which, before his conversion, he had had such horror, became the most tender object of his heart. He fled even the appearances of impurity; the mere representation of an unseemly object caused strange alarms in him; the phantoms that strike the imagination during sleep seemed to him furious monsters, from which he incessantly asked God for the grace to be delivered. As he knew by sad experience the fragility of the flesh, he was always on his guard, so as not to give the slightest entry to temptation: he studied his words, he observed his looks, he examined his actions and his steps, so that everything in him breathed purity. When his pastoral duty obliged him to receive the visits of women, or to go visit them, he never spoke to them except in the presence of some other priest.

The more he saw himself by his character raised above others, the more his charity made him accessible to all those who needed his assistance. He was constantly applied to procuring the good of his flock; he received their visits with a fatherly sweetness, answered their requests, heard their complaints, resolved their doubts, pacified their differences, stifled their vengeances; in a word, he brought back by his prudence the most difficult minds, and unraveled, by his great penetration, the most tangled affairs. As he employed himself with indefatigable zeal in these multiple and incessant functions without taking a little breath, he regretted his dear solitude: "I call to witness," he says in one of his works, "Our Lord Jesus Christ, for the love of whom I do it and in whose presence I speak, that if I considered my particular satisfaction, I would much prefer to work manually every day, and have certain hours to devote in rest to prayer and the study of holy Scripture, than to be attached like a slave to listening to the quarrels of others and the affairs of the world, to decide them as a judge, or to arrange them as an arbitrator." His ordinary visits were to widows, to console them in their affliction; to the poor, to provide for their needs, and to the sick, to help them bear their ills patiently or to dispose them for a good death. He rarely made those visits that civility commands rather than charity, and even then he made them so short that they hardly stole any of his time.

He never absented himself from his diocese except for indispensable necessities or those particular to his Church, or common to all Christendom, such as to attend Synods, or to negotiate some important public affair; thus he took charge, with other bishops, of an embassy to the Emperor Honorius, against the Donatists, who were cruelly persecuting the Catholics. He generously rebuked the prelates who stayed too long at the court of princes, pointing out to them that the true honor of a bishop was not to beg, by servile submissions, the favor of the great, but to reside in the places where they have the objects of their zeal, the engagements of their charge, and the souls of whom God will ask them for a very rigorous account.

There remained in Africa several remnants of pagan customs: Augustine undertook to abolish them, and he worked at it with such sweetness, prudence, and zeal that in a short time he purged his diocese of them. It was a custom to have dances on feast days before the door of the churches, and then to have feasts in the cemeteries. He abolished this un-Christian recreation. On certain days of the year all the inhabitants of the city assembled in the public square, where, dividing into two bands, they fought with stones with such brutality that many lost their lives there; he made this cruel entertainment cease, where often fathers killed their children, and children their fathers. A feast was celebrated, on the Thursday of each week, in honor of Jupiter; he cut off this idolatry. Having noticed that the people left the church before the end of the Mass, and murmured against the priest when sometimes he was too long, he inveighed so strongly against this lack of devotion that his exhortations were followed by amendment. He had it decreed that at the consecration of bishops the holy Canons should be read, as is provided in the third council of Carthage, so that, not being ignorant of what they prescribe, nothing contrary should be done in their ordination; he himself had a sensible regret for having been consecrated during the lifetime of Valerius, against a Canon of the council of Nicaea of which he had had no knowledge. Some believe that he introduced into the Church several pious and devout ceremonies, that he composed prayers, the blessing of the paschal candle, and an office for the dead.

As the primary goal of an ecclesiastic's study must be to defend the Church, Augustine employed all the vivacity of his mind and his profound erudition to combat the errors of his time. Manes had so universally spread the venom of his heresy of the two co-eternal natures that, despite all the remedies applied, his errors still persisted. Augustine purged the Church of them, particularly in Africa, through the books he composed against this doctrine, which was as absurd as it was pernicious. He wrote the one he titled: *On the Utility of Faith*, to disabuse one of his friends named Honoratus. Fortunatus, with his painted eloquence, sought to revive this defeated monster. Augustine presented him with a discussion at Hippo, where, in the presence of all the people and the most learned of the province, with notaries writing down every word of the arguments on both sides, after two days of conference, the Manichaean remained silent before the invincible objections of our holy Doctor. Ashamed of having been thus publicly defeated, he left the city and never appeared there again. Felix, who stubbornly maintained the same errors, allowed himself to be persuaded by the force of Augustine's reasoning and abjured, which caused such great consternation among the Manichaeans that no one dared to present himself for discussion anymore. But Augustine finished by his preaching what he could not do through public conferences. Among the conversions he made from the pulpit, that of Firmus is remarkable. He was a rich merchant of Hippo; the Manichaeans had so deceived him that he provided them with large sums of money to spread their sect everywhere. But, having heard Saint Augustine preach against their errors, he abandoned them. Thereafter, renouncing trade, he became a religious of the Order of Saint Augustine, where he led a very holy life for the rest of his days. Some works of Adimantus, who had been a disciple of Manes, having fallen into the hands of our great Doctor, he responded to them and refuted them through the book we have under this title: *Against the Adversary of the Law and the Prophets*.

The greatest enemies that Saint Augustine had to combat during his episcopate were the Donatists. The error Donatistes African schism vigorously opposed by Augustine. of Donatus, their leader, counted nearly four hundred bishops and was very powerful in Africa. These sectarians boasted that they alone composed the *true Church*, and, consequently, that it was necessary to rebaptize all those who were not of their sect. There was among them a faction called the *Circumcellions*, because they roamed incessantly around the cells of the brothers and sought out the faithful on all sides to seduce them. They were so barbaric that they cruelly put to death all those who fell into their hands and who would not renounce the Catholic faith, without making any distinction of sex, age, or condition. They demolished churches, overturned altars, pillaged the goods of priests, drove the orthodox from their homes, mutilated some, threw quicklime with vinegar into the eyes of others, and exercised all sorts of cruelties on those who resisted them. As Saint Augustine was their most formidable adversary, they had conceived an implacable hatred against him. They employed both force and cunning to get rid of him. They published everywhere that he was a ravening wolf and a seducer of souls who had to be done away with, and that whoever performed this deed would render a signal service to the Church and deserve eternal praise. Indeed, they often attempted his life, and, without a particular protection of divine Providence, they would have cruelly put him to death.

It was Augustine's glory to have such monsters to combat. He defeated them continually in his sermons. He showed the impiety and falsehood of their sect, overturned their dogmas with powerful reasoning, and little by little undermined their party. Finally, he dealt them the death blow in that famous conference of Carthage, held under the Emperor Honorius, in the presence of Count Marcellinus, whom that prince had sent as commissioner; for, through the zeal and prudence of our holy Doctor, the Donatists were confounded there, and the unity of the Catholic Church was perfectly established. What prevented the conversion of the perverted bishops was that they had been stripped of their bishoprics, and other bishops had been put in their place. It was therefore necessary to find an accommodation to bring them back to the faith. Saint Augustine, in the book he wrote on what passed between him and Emeritus, bishop of the Donatists, reports what was done for this. The Catholic bishops wrote to Marcellinus to show the desire they had for reunion: if they were defeated in the conference, they would leave their bishoprics without claiming anything more, and, if they remained victorious, although then one could no longer doubt that they were the true pastors, they consented, for the sake of peace and so that one would not see two bishops in the same church, that both sides would renounce their dignity, and that a third would be made to be solely the head. "Why should we have difficulty," they said, "in offering this sacrifice to our Redeemer? What then! He will have descended from heaven into a mortal body so that we might be his members; and we would have trouble descending from our thrones to prevent his members from being torn by a cruel division? We have nothing better regarding ourselves than the quality of faithful Christians obedient to God; let us therefore keep it inviolably. But as for that of bishops, we have it only regarding our peoples, since it is for them that we were made bishops: we must therefore dispose of it, whether to retain it or to quit it, as will be most expedient for the peace of the faithful."

Saint Augustine, a little before this conference of Carthage, had this letter read by Alypius in the presence of three hundred Catholic bishops, and, by his pressing remonstrances, he obliged them all to acquiesce to this sentiment. This began the ruin of the Donatist schism. Some time after the conference, he was present, by order of the Sovereign Pontiff, at another assembly held at Caesarea in Mauretania, where he finished destroying them.

Besides the Manichaeans and the Donatists, he also waged war against the Pelagians. Pelagius, an Englishman by nation, of a restless and stirring spirit but very artful, had spread his pernicious doctrine everywhere, denying that grace was necessary to will Pélagiens Heresy opposed by Boniface I and Saint Augustine. the good and to practice virtue, and maintaining that free will alone, with natural gifts and qualities, was sufficient for both. He had so well disguised his false dogmas that at the Synod of Diospolis he passed for orthodox; but Augustine, having discovered the venom that was hidden underneath, wrote strongly against him and divinely proved the necessity of interior grace to move our will to produce the supernatural acts by which we merit eternal glory. He spent ten whole years answering the writings of this heresiarch: he did it with such admirable eloquence and in such a sublime style that, as in the rest of his works, he far surpasses the other Doctors; it seems that in writing on this matter, he surpassed himself. Saint Jerome, having read what he had written, no longer wished to compose on this subject because, finding it exhausted by Saint Augustine, he admitted that there was nothing to add to it. One can see the treatises that remain to us, where he shows the necessity and efficacy of grace, the ravages of original sin, the corruption of our nature by this sin, and the freedom that man always enjoys in his greatest weakness. He proves all these truths by such formal texts of Scripture and explains them with such clarity and such beautiful thoughts that all those who have since wished to treat this matter solidly have attached themselves to his sentiments and followed his principles, without fear of going astray in such a thorny subject. In the Council of Carthage and of Milevis, he was charged with writing against Pelagius and making known to the faithful what had been decided: and since then, the texts of his writings have served to compose the definitions and Canons that the general and provincial Councils have made on the same matter, and the Sovereign Pontiffs have referred to his doctrine those who would wish to know what is the sentiment of the Church regarding divine grace.

It is true that Cassian, author of the Conferences, and Faustus, bishop of Riez in Provence (*Semi-Pelagians*), found fault with what he had written regarding the necessity of grace for all sorts of salutary actions and composed some works against him, where they tried to give some softening to his doctrine; Saint Hilary even and Saint Prosper, his most zealous disciples, begged him to explain himself, because many, interpreting his sentiments badly, took from there occasion to abandon themselves to idleness or despair. But he made the truth triumph again against these remnants of Pelagianism, through the books *On the Predestination of the Saints* and *On the Gift of Perseverance*: after having justified his sentiments by reasoning drawn from the Holy Scripture and the works of Saint Cyprian, Saint Ambrose, and Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, he says: "I know certainly that no one can, without erring, dispute against this doctrine that we teach and that we defend by the authority of the Holy Scriptures." Then he adds: "Let him who will hear these truths render thanks to God, but let him who will not understand them pray to the interior Doctor of souls to pull back the curtain that hides these mysteries from him, and to lift the film from his eyes that prevents him from seeing them, so that he does not remain longer in error." These words show, given the great modesty of our holy Doctor, that he was very persuaded that he was defending the side of truth. Indeed, after his death, Pope Saint Celestine, writing to the bishops of France, gives this illustrious testimony of him: "We have always held the blessed Augustine in our communion, for his life and for his merits: one has never had the least suspicion, neither of the purity of his faith nor of the integrity of his morals; on the contrary, we know that all our predecessors have loved and honored him as a most excellent Doctor of the Church."

The defeat of Jovinian further increased the number of Saint Augustine's victories. He was a priest of Venus rather than of Jesus Christ, holding an open school in Rome; he taught there, to the prejudice of religious chastity, that marriage should be preferred to continence; our holy Prelate combated this error. He wrote and preached against it, and, by the force of his doctrine, he overturned the maxims of this false priest and excited the faithful to the love of purity. We will not dwell on Maximin and Felician, Arians; on Parmenian, Cresconius, Gaudentius, and Petilian, Donatists; on Celestius, Julian, bishop of Capua, Pelagians, and finally on several others whom he struck down. So as not to excessively enlarge this history, it suffices to say that all their artifices have served only to erect new trophies to the glory of Augustine; but we cannot omit what he did to finish confounding and destroying idolatry.

When Alaric, king of the Goths and an Arian by religion, seized the city of Rome, which he pillaged and sacked entirely, except for the inhabitants who had taken refuge in the church of Saint Peter, the pagans cast these misfortunes upon the Christians, publishing that, since they had ceased to worship the gods of the empire, they had been overwhelmed by all sorts of calamities. But our incomparable Doctor, unable to suffer that one should make this unjust reproach to the Church of Jesus Christ, immediately undertook its defense to justify it from this calumny. He composed for this purpose the twenty-two books of the City of God, which he dedicated to the tribune Marcellinus: he shows there, with as much eloquence as solidity, that these great calamities had only happened because of the worship of false gods, that the temple of Saint Peter had been respected by the barbarians, and that the Christian religion had been able to soften them a littl Cité de Dieu An apology for Christianity in the face of the decline of the Roman Empire. e.

Such was the life of the great Augustine until the age of seventy-two; seeing himself then more exhausted by the labors he had suffered than burdened by old age, he thought only of preparing for death through the contemplation of heavenly things, to which his soul aspired with inconceivable ardor. To have more leisure for this, he asked the clergy and the people to accept, as his coadjutor and successor, the priest Eradius, whose piety and learning were as well known to them as to him. He then spent the four years he still lived in continuous transports of a very pure love for God, without, however, ceasing to preach to his people and to answer those who consulted him.

Some time before the death of our Saint, Count Boniface, who governed Africa in the name of Rome, having been embroiled by Aetius with the Empress Placidia, took revenge by calling upon the Vandals of Spain. Saint Augustine wrote to him to dissuade him from this treason. The Count did not defer to his salutary advice. Eighty thousand barbarians rushed upon Africa, and through sacrilege, arson, theft, and pillage, sparing neither sacred nor profane things, they ruined the whole country in a short time; what was most deplorable is that after massacring the bishops, priests, and religious, they brought back the heresy of the Arians, which our Saint had banished. With a heart torn by grief at the sight of the misfortunes of his homeland, our Saint remained in the midst of his people, whom he tried to relieve and console. When the flock suffers, the good shepherd must not depart. Soon the Vandals besieged the city of Hippo. It was in these circumstances that Saint Augustine composed the beautiful prayer which begins with these words: *Ante oculos tuos, Domine, culpas nostras ferimus*, which is found at the end of the Diurnals, and which Cardinal Seripando, who had taken it from an ancient manuscript, distributed at the Council of Trent, where he was the Pope's legate.

In the end, consumed by sadness and unable to bear more, he said to the bishops: "My brothers and my fathers, let us pray together so that these misfortunes may cease, or that God may take me from this world." Some time later, he took to his bed, seized by a violent fever caused by the sorrow that flooded his soul, and soon it was seen with dread that he was going to die. This heart, so tender and so strong, then took on a quality of even greater affection and tenderness. He used his last strength to dictate, for the bishops of Africa, an admirable letter in which he urged them not to abandon their people, to give them the example of resignation and patience, to suffer and to die with them and for them. This was his last writing, and like the swan song; and it was worthy of this great heart to have, on the edge of his tomb, such a cry of love.

Meanwhile, the people of Hippo learned that Augustine was going to die. Immediately his house was besieged. The faithful wanted to see their bishop one last time. The sick crowded around his bed. Mothers brought their children for him to bless. Moved by these testimonies of affection, the dying man offered his prayers to God with his tears. A father having asked him to lay his hands on the head of his child and heal him: "If I had the power to heal," said the gentle old man with a smile, "I would begin with myself." Nevertheless, the father insisting, he placed his hand on the child's head, who was healed.

But already Augustine no longer held to the earth. He was escaping the embraces of his people. Carried away by the love of God that consumed him, and at the same time held back by the memory of his sins, which forty years of expiation had not been able to make him forget, he used his last hours to complete the purification of his soul. He had had the Penitential Psalms written on large strips of cloth and placed against the wall, and from his bed, in the last days of his suffering, he read these verses with abundant and continuous tears. "And so that," says Possidius, "no one would interrupt him in this supreme meditation, about ten days before his death, he conjured us not to let anyone enter his room, except at the hour of the doctors' visit. We obeyed him religiously, and these last ten days, this great man spent in absolute silence, alone with God, and in a singular mixture of repentance and love."

Finally, the last hour approaching, all the bishops gathered one last time around his bed; and, amidst their embraces and sighs, the soul of the holy old man flew into the bosom of God, on August 28, 430. It had been seventy-six years since Monica had brought him into the world, forty-three years since she had converted him with her tears, and forty-two since she had been waiting for him in heaven.

"Saint Augustine made no will," says Possidius, "because, having made himself poor for Jesus Christ, he had nothing left to give"; he nevertheless left two great treasures to the Church, the Works he had composed and the Orders he had instituted. God showed, by a singular protection, how dear his books must have been to Him: for the Arian Vandals, having, about a year after his death, taken and sacked the city of Hippo, could never set fire to his library, although, not unaware of how contrary he had been to them, they made efforts to do so, because the angels, as Baronius reports, prevented them from causing the Church this loss which would have been irreparable. As for the religious Orders he founded, and which are divided into more than sixty different Congregations of both sexes, one can say that they are immense treasures from which the Church has at all times drawn powerful help.

He is represented: 1st with a church in his hand, to show that, by his pen, he defended it much better than cities are defended with the sword; 2nd holding a flaming heart in his hand, with several frightened and dying heretics at his feet. — He is also seen represented with Saint Monica on the seashore. Saint Augustine is seated in the foreground. He is a young man of about thirty. His face is pale, fine, still a little sad; his eyes are black, deep, and full of the most beautiful fire; his pensive mouth is closed. Short hair, cut in a round shape around the head, reveals a broad forehead upon which a ray of light falls. With his left hand he presses his mother's hands.

[APPENDIX: CULT AND RELICS. — HIS WRITINGS.]

His body was buried in Hippo, in the church of Saint Stephen, which he had built. In 498, the Vandals threatening his tomb, his holy relics were piously carried to Sardinia by exiled African bishops, and deposited in Cagliari, in the basilica of Saint Saturninus, and in an urn or sepulcher of white marble that still exists.

Two centuries later, this precious treasure fell into the power of the Saracens with the island of Sardinia. Luitprand, King of the Lombards, redeemed it and had it transported to Pavia on the 5th of the Ides of October 722; it was deposited in the triple underground of the basilica of Saint Peter in Ciel d'Oro. Its guardianship was entrusted, until Pope Innocent III, to the disciples of Saint Benedict. At that time they were Pavie City in Italy, seat of the saint's bishopric and place where his relics are preserved. replaced by the Canons Regular, to whom were added, in 1326, the Hermits of Saint Augustine.

One visits with admiration, in this church, the Ark, a marble monument raised by the Hermits of Saint Augustine towards the middle of the 14th century. The statue of the Saint in pontifical vestments, lying and dead, his head resting on a pillow, is the most beautiful of the Ark and even of the era. The remains of Augustine remained buried with the most signal honors in the basilica of Saint Peter in Ciel d'Oro, in Pavia, until 1693, the time when they were discovered and again exposed to the veneration of the faithful. The church of this abbey having been changed into a hospital, the precious reliquary that contained his bones was transported to the cathedral. The authenticity of these relics was confirmed by Benedict XIII in 1728.

The relics and the monument of Saint Augustine, guarded formerly by the Canons Regular whom Emperor Joseph II suppressed in 1781, and by the Augustinians whom the revolutionaries of Italy abolished in 1799, were transported from the church of Saint Peter to the cathedral, where they are still venerated. This monument is placed in a side chapel, on the epistle side. The front is in the form of an altar, and mass is celebrated there.

Pope Gregory XVI having, in 1837, erected an episcopal see in Algiers, the first bishop, Mgr Dupuch, wanted to obtain for his diocese relics of Saint Augustine. He addressed a request to the bishop of Pavia which was favorably received. A notable portion of the bones of the holy Doctor was given to Mgr Dupuch, who, charged with this precious deposit, went to Toulon to return to Algeria. There, he embarked with Mgr Donnet, Archbishop of Bordeaux, and the bishops of Châlons, Marseille, Digne, Valence, and Nevers, on October 25, 1842, and the holy relics were carried solemnly from the old cathedral of Toulon to the ship.

After a happy navigation which lasted three days, the ship entered the roadstead of Rône, where there was a solemn office. On Sunday, October 20, the same prelates transferred the relics to the place where Hippo once was, and deposited them in a monument raised to the memory of the holy Doctor and adorned with his statue.

It is not reported that Saint Augustine performed other miracles during his life than having delivered those possessed by the force of his prayers and tears, and having restored health to a sick person by the imposition of his hands; but a fairly large number are told that were performed at his tomb, and which can be seen in his life, composed by the Rev. Fr. Simplicien de Saint-Martin, a religious of his Order. One will find there a prodigious thing concerning the heart of Saint Augustine.

This author, based on the faith of other historians of his Institute, writes that Saint Sigisbert, a bishop in Germany, asking God with fervor that it might please Him to give him some relic of this great Doctor, for whom he had a singular devotion, the guardian angel of the same Saint appeared to him and, presenting him with a crystal vase in which there was a heart, said these words: "After the death of the blessed Augustine, bishop of Hippo, I took his heart by the command of God and have preserved it from corruption until now; here I bring it to you, so that you may render to it the veneration that is due to it."

Sigisbert, delighted to have received from heaven such a rich treasure, assembled the people to render solemn thanks to God, and by a wonder as surprising as it was glorious to the love with which this man of fire had burned during his mortal life, at these words of the Te Deum: *Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus*, his heart began to stir, as if it had still been animated by the flames of charity and the great zeal he had shown for the glory of the most holy Trinity. What is even more admirable is that this same prodigy was renewed every year in the sight of everyone, on the day of the Holy Trinity, when this precious heart being placed on the altar, the high mass was sung; this is perhaps one of the reasons why the Popes have permitted the religious of his Order to sing, on the day of his feast, the preface of the Holy Trinity. It is also said that not a single heretic could enter the church with impunity while his heart was exposed there.

It was customary to have other small hearts touched to this holy heart, which were kept as relics: the illustrious Augustine of Jesus a Castro, primate of the Indies, provided us with an authentic proof of this, when, by commission of Gregory XIII, visiting the monastery of Munich, in Bavaria, he found, among the holy relics, a small silver reliquary, in which was an iron heart surrounded by a circle of gold with this inscription on a parchment: *Cor admotum vero cordi sancti Augustini; ferrum propter nimiam ejus constantiam et aureum propter inflammatam ejus charitatem*: "Heart which has been applied to the true heart of Saint Augustine; it is of iron to show his great constancy; it is surrounded by gold to signify the ardor of his charity."

The first volume of the Works of the holy Doctor, from the Benedictine edition, contains the works he wrote in his youth and before he was a priest: 1st The two Books of Retractations; 2nd the thirteen Books of his Confessions; 3rd the three Books against the Academicians, in 386; 4th the Book of the Happy Life, the same year; 5th the two Books of Order, the same year; 6th the Soliloquies, so called because Saint Augustine converses with his soul in them, were written in 387. — One finds in the Appendix, to volume VI of the Works of Saint Augustine, another book of Soliloquies, which is supposed, as well as the book of Meditations. These two works are modern, and drawn from the true Soliloquies and the Confessions of the holy Doctor, from the writings of Saint Victor, etc. One must say the same of the Manual; it is a collection of thoughts of Saint Augustine, Saint Anselm, etc.; 7th the Book of the Immortality of the Soul is from the year 388; it is a supplement to the Soliloquies. The Saint composed it in Milan, shortly after his Baptism; 8th on the Quantity or Greatness of the Soul, towards the beginning of the year 388; 9th six Books of Music, finished in 389; 10th the Book of the Master, composed around the same time; 11th the three Books of Free Will, begun in 388, and finished in 395; 12th the two Books of Genesis against the Manichaeans, around the year 389; 13th the two Books of the Morals of the Catholic Church and of the Manichaeans, around 388; 14th the Book of True Religion, written around the year 390; 15th the Rule for the Servants of God; 16th the Book of Grammar, the Principles of Dialectics, the ten Categories, the Principles of Rhetoric, the Fragment of the rule given to the Clerics, the second Rule, the Book of Eremitic Life, are supposed works.

The second volume contains the letters of the holy Doctor, which are two hundred and seventy in number, and arranged in chronological order. There are a large number that are true treatises. — The Appendix to volume II contains: 1st sixteen Letters of Saint Augustine to Boniface, and of Boniface to Saint Augustine, all of which are supposed; the Letter of Pelagius to Demetrias; 3rd one must also regard as supposed the letters of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem to Saint Augustine, and of Saint Augustine to Saint Cyril, on the Praises of Saint Jerome, as well as the Dispute of the holy bishop of Hippo with Poscentius.

The third volume is divided into two parts, the first of which contains: 1st The four Books of Christian Doctrine, begun around the year 397, and finished in 426; the Imperfect Book on Genesis explained according to the letter, in 393; 3rd the twelve Books on Genesis explained according to the letter, begun in 401, and finished in 415; 4th the seven Books of Locutions, or ways of speaking, on the first seven Books of Scripture, around the year 419; 5th the seven Books of Questions on the Heptateuch, in 419; 6th the Notes on Job, around the year 400; 7th the Mirror, drawn from Scripture, around the year 427.

The Appendix to the first part of volume III contains: 1st three Books of the Wonders of Scripture; 2nd the Opusculum of the Blessings of the patriarch Jacob; 3rd Questions of the Old and New Testament; 4th a Commentary on the Apocalypse: these four works are supposed. — One finds in the second part of the Appendix of the same volume: 1st the four Books of the Harmony of the Evangelists, around the year 400. The goal of the author is to show that there is nothing in the four Evangelists that does not agree; 2nd the two Books of the Sermon on the Mount; 3rd the two Books of Questions on the Gospels, around the year 400; 4th the Book of seventeen Questions on Saint Matthew. Several scholars doubt that this work is by Saint Augustine; 5th the one hundred and twenty-four Treatises on Saint John, around the year 416; 6th the ten Treatises on the Epistle of Saint John, around the same year; 7th the Explanation of some places of the Epistle to the Romans, around the year 394; 8th the beginning of the Explanation of the Epistle to the Romans, around the same year; 9th the Explanation of the Epistle to the Galatians, around the same year.

The fourth volume contains the Explanations on the Psalms, in the form of discourses, which were finished in 415.

The fifth volume contains the sermons of Saint Augustine, divided into five classes: 1st the Sermons on various places of the Old and New Testament, numbering one hundred and eighty-three; 2nd eighty-eight Sermons of the Time, which are on the great feasts of the year; 3rd sixty-nine Sermons of the Saints or on the feasts of the Saints; 4th twenty-three Sermons on various subjects; 5th thirty-one Sermons that are doubted to be by Saint Augustine. — The sermons attributed to Saint Augustine, and contained in the Appendix, are three hundred and seventeen in number, and divided into four classes. They bear the same titles as the previous ones. Some sermons that had until then been attributed to Saint Augustine are restored to Saint Caesarius of Arles, Saint Ambrose, Saint Maximus, etc.

The sixth volume contains the dogmatic works of the holy Doctor on various points of morality and discipline: 1st the eighty-three Questions, in 388. Saint Augustine answers several difficulties on different subjects there; 2nd the two Books of various questions to Simplicianus; 3rd the Book of eight questions to Dulcitius, in 422 or 425. It is a response to difficulties that had been proposed to the Saint, in 421, by Dulcitius, a tribune in Africa; 4th the Book of the Belief in things that are not seen, in 399; 5th the Book of Faith and the Creed, in 393; 6th the Book of Faith and Works, in 413; 7th the Enchiridion to Laurentius, or the Book of Faith, Experience, and Charity, around the year 421; 8th the Book of the Christian Combat, around the year 396; 9th the Book of the Manner of instructing the ignorant, around the year 400; 10th the Book of Continence, around the year 395; 11th the Book of the Good of Marriage, around the year 401; 12th the Book of Holy Virginity, around the same year; 13th on the Advantage of Widowhood, around the year 414; 14th on Adulterous Marriages, around the year 419; 15th the Book of Lying, around the year 425; 16th the Book against Lying, to Consentius, around the year 420; 17th on the Work of Monks, around the year 400; 18th the Book of the Predictions of Demons, around the years 406, 411; 19th the Book of Care for the Dead, around the year 421; 20th the Book of Patience, around the year 428; 21st on the Creed to the Catechumens; 22nd three other Sermons on the Creed, which the latest editors of Saint Augustine doubt are by this holy Doctor; 23rd the Discourse on Christian Discipline, where it is proven that the whole law is reduced to the love of God and neighbor; 24th the Sermon of the new Canticle to the Catechumens, which is doubted to be by Saint Augustine; 25th the Discourses of the fourth feria do not pass for authentic either; 26th one must say the same of the Discourses on the Flood, and on the Persecution of the Barbarians; 27th the Discourse on the utility of Fasting; the title explains the subject sufficiently; 28th the Discourse on the ruin of Rome.

One finds in the appendix, to volume VI, a large number of works supposed to be by Saint Augustine: 1st the Book of twenty-one Sentences or Questions. It is a poor recapitulation of different places in the works of Saint Augustine; 2nd the Book of sixty-five Questions, a work done in much the same taste as the previous one, but with more method; 3rd the Book of Faith to Peter. It is by Saint Fulgentius; 4th the Book of the Spirit and the Soul, which is believed to be by Alcher, a monk of Clairvaux. It is a collection of passages from different Fathers of the Church; 5th the Book of Friendship, which is an abridgment of the treatise on the same matter, by Aelred, abbot of Rievaulx, in England; 6th the Book of the Substance of Love, which is commonly attributed to Hugh of Saint-Victor; 7th the Book of the Love of God, which also appears to be by the monk Alcher; 8th the Soliloquies, of which we have spoken elsewhere, as well as the Meditations and the Manual; 9th the Book of Contrition of the heart, drawn in large part from Saint Anselm; 10th the Mirror, which appears to be by Alcuin; 11th the Mirror of the Sinner, drawn from Saint Odo, abbot of Cluny, and especially from Hugh of Saint-Victor; 12th the Book of the three Habitations: namely, of the kingdom of God, of the world, and of hell; 13th the Ladder of Paradise, which is by Guigo the Carthusian; 14th the Book of the Knowledge of the True Life, which has for author Honorius of Autun; 15th the Book of Christian Life, a work by an Englishman named Fastidius; 16th the Book of Exhortation or Salutary Teachings, has for author Paulinus, patriarch of Aquileia; 17th the Book of the twelve Ages of the century, cited by Jonas of Orleans; 18th the Treatise on the seven Vices, and the seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, which is by Hugh of Saint-Victor. It has been suppressed in the new edition of Saint Augustine; 19th the Book of the Combat of Vices and Virtues, which the Benedictines give to Ambrose Autpert, monk of Saint-Vincent on the Volturno, near Benevento; 20th the Book of Sobriety and Chastity; 21st the Book of True and False Penance; 22nd the Book of the Antichrist, attributed to Alcuin; 23rd the Poustier, which it is said Saint Augustine composed for his mother. It is a prayer drawn from the psalms; 24th the explanation of the canticle *Magnificat* is only a poor extract of that of Hugh of Saint-Victor; 25th the Book of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, which appears to be by an author of the 12th century; 26th the Book of the Visitation of the Infirm, which is not very ancient; 27th the two Discourses on the Consolation of the Dead, which are perhaps drawn from Saint John Chrysostom; 28th the Treatise on the Rectitude of Catholic Conduct, drawn in large part from the sermons of Saint Caesarius of Arles; 29th the Discourse on the Creed, which is a tissue of passages from Rufinus, Saint Gregory, Saint Caesarius, etc. — Follow several other small treatises which deserve little attention, because they have nothing remarkable.

The seventh volume contains the twenty-two Books of the City of God. — This work was begun in 413 and finished in 426.

One finds in the appendix, to the VIIth volume, the pieces that relate to the discovery of the relics of Saint Stephen: 1st the Letter of Avitus, a Spanish priest, to Balconius, bishop of Braga, in Portugal, concerning the relics of the holy Martyr. Avitus joined to this letter a Latin translation of the account that Lucian had given of the discovery of this precious treasure; 2nd the Account of the discovery of the body of Saint Stephen, made by Lucian. This Lucian was a priest of Jerusalem, and pastor of a place called Capbargamala, where the relics of the holy Martyr rested; 3rd the Letter of Anastasius the Librarian, to Landulfus, bishop of Capua, where he indicates to him that he had translated into Latin the history of the translation of the relics of Saint Stephen, from Jerusalem to Constantinople. This piece is supposed; 4th Letter of Severus, bishop of the Island of Minorca, to the whole Church, on the miracles that occurred on this island, by the relics of Saint Stephen. It was written in 418, and there is no doubt that it is authentic; 5th the two Books of the Miracles of Saint Stephen, which are attributed to Evodius, bishop of Uzalis.

The eighth volume contains the polemical writings of the holy Doctor: 1st the Treatise on Heresies, addressed to Quodvultdeus, deacon of Carthage; 2nd the Treatise against the Jews. This work is sometimes titled: Discourse on the Incarnation of the Lord; 3rd on the Utility of Faith, in 391; 4th the Book of the two Souls, the same year; 5th the Acts against Fortunatus the Manichaean, in 392; 6th the Book against Adimantus, in 394; 7th the Book against the Letter of the Foundation, around the year 397; 8th the Disputes against Faustus the Manichaean, divided into thirty-three books, around the year 400; 9th the two Books of the Acts with Felix the Manichaean, in 404; 10th the Book of the nature of good against the Manichaeans; 11th the Book against the Letter of Secundinus the Manichaean, around the year 405; 12th the two Books against the Adversary of the Law and the Prophets, in 420; 13th the Book against the Priscillianists and the Origenists, around the year 415; 14th the Book against the Discourse of the Arians, around the year 418; 15th the Conference with Maximinus, an Arian bishop, and the three books against the same heretic, were written in 428; 16th the fifteen Books of the Trinity, were begun in 405 and finished in 416. — The supposed works, contained in the appendix, are: 1st the Treatise against the five Heresies; 2nd the Book of the Creed, against the Jews, the pagans, and the Arians; 3rd the Book of the Dispute of the Church and the Synagogue, which is by a jurist; 4th the Book of Faith against the Manichaeans, attributed in the manuscripts to Honoratus of Uzalis; 5th the Warning on the manner of receiving the Manichaeans; 6th the Book of the Trinity against Felicianus, which is by Vigilius of Thapsus; 7th the Questions of the Trinity and Genesis, drawn from Alcuin; 8th the two Books of the Incarnation of the Word to Januarius, drawn from the Latin version of the Principles of Origen, by Rufinus; 9th the Book of the Trinity and the Unity of God; 10th the Book of the Essence of the Divinity, to Optatus; 12th the Book of Ecclesiastical Dogmas, which is known to be by Gennadius of Marseille.

The ninth volume contains the polemical works against the Donatists, in the following order: 1st the Abecedarian Psalm against the Donatists, towards the end of the year 393; 2nd the three Books against the Letter of Parmenianus, around the year 400; 3rd the seven Books of Baptism against the Donatists, around the same time; 4th the three Books against Petilianus, around the year 400; 5th the Epistle to the Catholics against the Donatists or the Treatise on the Unity of the Church, in 402; 6th the four Books against the Donatist Cresconius, a grammarian by profession, in 406; 7th the Book of the Unity of Baptism, against Petilianus and Constantius, which appears to have been written around the year 411; 8th the Abridgment of the Conference against the Donatists, in 412; 9th the Book to the Donatists after the Conference of Carthage, in 413; 10th Discourse to the people of the Church of Caesarea, pronounced in the presence of Emeritus, bishop of the party of Donatus; 11th Discourse on what happened with Emeritus, a Donatist, in 413, or in 418 according to others; 12th the two Books against Gaudentius, a Donatist, in 420. — One finds in the appendix to this volume: 1st the Book against Fulgentius the Donatist; it is supposed: 2nd various Documents relating to the History of the Donatists, and which contribute much to the understanding of the works that Saint Augustine wrote against these heretics.

The tenth volume contains: 1st the three Books of the merits and Remission of sins, or of the Baptism of children, in 412; 2nd the Book of the Spirit and the Letter, in 413; 3rd the Book of Nature and Grace, in 415; 4th the Book of the Perfection of justice, around the year 415; 5th the Book of the Acts of Pelagius, around the year 417; 6th the two Books of the Grace of Jesus Christ and Original Sin, written in 418, after the Pelagians and their errors had been condemned by several Councils and by Pope Zosimus; 7th the two Books of Marriage and Concupiscence, to Count Valerius, in 419; 8th the four Books of the Soul and its Origin, around the year 420; 9th the four Books to Boniface against the Pelagians, around the year 420; 10th the six Books against Julian, around the year 423; 11th the Book of Grace and Free Will, in 426 or 427; 12th the Book of Correction and Grace, the same year; 13th the Books of the Predestination of the Saints and the Gift of Perseverance; 14th the Imperfect Work against Julian, around the year 428. — The supposed works that the appendix of this tenth volume contains are: 1st the Hypomnesticon or the Hypnosis, in six books: it is an abridgment of the reasons proper to combat Pelagianism, whose author is unknown; 2nd on Predestination and Grace, a book which appears to be by some semi-Pelagian; 3rd the Book of the Predestination of God, which is unworthy of Saint Augustine; 4th Response to the objections of Vincent; they are by Saint Prosper. — Then come several important pieces concerning the history of Pelagianism.

The eleventh volume contains the life of Saint Augustine, a general table of his works, and one of the subjects contained in each. This life is hardly more than a Latin translation of the one that Tillemont had made in French, but which had not yet been printed. — The edition of the works of the holy Doctor, the most exact and the most complete that we have, is without contradiction that of the Benedictines. It is in 11 vol. in-folio, the first two of which appeared in Paris in 1679, and the last in 1700. — From 1839 to 1845, three editions were made in Paris: by M. Mellier, under the direction of M. the abbot Caillan, in 43 vol. in-8°; by M. the abbot Migne, in 16 vol. large in-8° in two columns; by MM. Grome, in 22 installments, same format.

We have contented ourselves with giving the title of these works. One will be able to see reasoned analyses of them in the French Translation of the Complete Works of Saint Augustine, 17 vol. large in-8° jesus in two columns, Célestins printing house, in Bar-le-Duc.

We have used, to complete Father Giry, the History of Saint Augustine, by M. Poujonat; the History of his relics, by M. Bocard, honorary canon of Algiers; and the History of Saint Monica, by M. the abbot Bougand, vicar general of Orleans.