He openly
favoured
Donatism, which was the most numerous and
influential party.
influential party.
Bertrand - Saint Augustin
A deep peace
settles upon farmland and meadow country, only broken by a watch-dog's bark
now and then. . . .
But it matters not which spot is chosen in the surroundings of Hippo to
place Augustin's monastery, the view will be equally beautiful. From all
parts of the plain, mounded by heaps of ruins, the sea can be seen--a wide
bay circled in soft bland curves, like at Naples. All around, an arena of
mountains--the green ravines of the Edough and its wooded slopes. Along the
surbased roads rise the great sonorous pines, and through them wanders the
æolian complaint of the sea-winds. Blue of the sea, blue of the sky, noble
foliage of Italy's ancient groves--it is one of Lamartine's landscapes
under a more burning sun. The gaiety of the mornings there is a physical
luxury for heart and eyes, when the new-born light laughs upon the painted
cupolas of the houses, and dark blue veils float between the walls, glaring
white, of the steep streets.
Among the olives and orange-trees of Hippo, Augustin must have seen happy
days pass by, as at Thagaste. The rule he had given the convent, which he
himself obeyed like any one else, was neither too slack nor too strict--in
a word, such as it should be for men who have lived in the culture of
letters and works of the mind. There was no affectation of excessive
austerity. Augustin and his monks wore very simple clothes and shoes, but
suitable for a bishop and his clerks. Like laymen, they wore the byrrhus,
a garment with a hood, which seems very like the ancestor of the Arab
burnous. To keep an even line between daintiness and negligence in costume,
to have no exaggeration in anything, is what Augustin aimed at. The poet
Rutilius Numatianus, who about that time was attacking the sordid and
culture-hating monks with sombre irony, would have had a chance to admire
a restraint and decorum in the Hippo monastery which recalled what was
best in the manners of the ancient world. At table, a like moderation.
Vegetables were generally provided, and sometimes meat when any one
was sick, or guests arrived. They drank a little wine, contrary to the
regulations of St. Jerome, who condemned wine as a drink for devils. When
a monk infringed the rule, his share of the wine was stopped.
Through some remains of fastidious habits in Augustin, or perhaps because
he had nothing else, the table service he used himself was silver. On the
other hand, the pots and dishes were of earthenware, or wood, or common
alabaster. Augustin, who was very temperate in eating and drinking, seemed
at table to pay attention only to what was being read or talked about.
He cared very little what he ate, provided the food was not a stimulant
to lubricity. He used to say to those Christians who paraded a Pharisaic
severity: "It is the pure heart which makes pure food. " Then, with his
constant desire for charity, he prohibited all spiteful gossip in the
conversation in the refectory. In those times of religious struggle, the
clerics ferociously blackened each other's characters. Augustin caused to
have written on the walls a distich, which ran thus:
"He who takes pleasure in slandering the life of the absent,
Should know he is unworthy to sit at this table. "
"One day," says Possidius, "some of his intimate friends, even other
bishops, having forgotten this sentence, he reproached them warmly, and
very much perturbed, he cried out that he was going to remove those verses
from the refectory, or rise from table and withdraw to his cell. I was
present with many others when this happened. "
It was not only slanderous talk or interior dissensions which troubled
Augustin's peace of mind. He combined the duties of priest, of a head of
a convent, and of an apostle. He had to preach, instruct the catechumens,
battle against the disaffected. The town of Hippo was very unruly, full
of heretics, schismatics, pagans. Those of the party of Donatus were
triumphant, driving the Catholics from their churches and lands. When
Augustin came into the country, Catholicism was very low. And then the
ineradicable Manichees continued to recruit proselytes. He never stopped
writing tracts, disputing against them, overwhelming them under the close
logic of his arguments. At the request of the Donatists themselves, he had
an argument with one of their priests, a certain Fortunatus, in the baths
of Sossius at Hippo. He reduced this man to silence and to flight. Not in
the least discouraged were the Manichees: they sent another priest.
If the enemies of the Church shewed themselves stubborn, Augustin's own
congregation were singularly turbulent, hard to manage. The weakness of old
Valerius must have allowed a good many abuses to creep into the community.
Ere long the priest of Hippo had a foretaste of the difficulties which
awaited him as bishop.
Following the example of Ambrose, he undertook to abolish the custom
of feasts in the basilicas and on the tombs of the martyrs. This was a
survival of paganism, of which the festivals included gluttonous eating and
orgies. At every solemnity, and they were frequent, the pagans ate in the
courts and under the porticoes around the temples. In Africa, above all,
these public repasts gave an opportunity for repugnant scenes of stuffing
and drunkenness. As a rule, the African is very sober; but when he does let
himself go he is terrible. This is quite easily seen to-day, in the great
Muslem feasts, when the rich distribute broken bits of meat to the poor of
their district. As soon as these people, used to drink water and to eat a
little boiled rice, have tasted meat, or drunk only one cup of wine, there
is no holding them: there are fights, stabbing matches, a general brawl
in the hovels. Just picture this popular debauch in full blast in the
cemeteries and the courts of the basilicas, and it will be understood why
Augustin did his best to put an end to such scandals.
For this purpose, he joined hands first of all with his bishop, Valerius,
and then with the Primate of Carthage, Aurelius, who shall be henceforth
his firmest support in his struggle against the schismatics.
During Lent, the subject fitting in naturally with the season, he
spoke against these pagan orgies; and this gave rise to a good deal of
discontent, outside. Easter went by without trouble. But the day after the
Ascension, the people of Hippo were used to celebrate what they called "the
Joy-day," by a traditional good feed and drink. The day before, which was
the religious festival, Augustin intrepidly spoke against "the Joy-day. "
They interrupted the preacher. Some of them shouted that as much was done
at Rome in St. Peter's basilica. At Carthage, they danced round the tomb of
St. Cyprian. To the shrilling of flutes, amid the dull blows of the gongs,
mimes gave themselves up to obscene contortions, while the spectators
sang to the clapping of their hands. . . . Augustin knew all about that.
He declared that these abominations might have been tolerated in former
times so as not to discourage the pagans from becoming converts; but that
henceforth the people, altogether Christian, should give them up. In the
end, he spoke with such touching eloquence that the audience burst into
tears. He believed he had won.
The next day it was all to do over again. Agitators had worked among the
crowd to such an extent that a riot was feared. Nevertheless, Augustin,
preceded by his bishop, entered the basilica at the hour of service. At the
same moment the Donatists were banqueting in their church, which was quite
near. Through the walls of their own church the Catholics heard the noise
of this carouse. It required the coadjutor's most urgent remonstrances to
keep them from imitating their neighbours. The last murmurs died down, and
the ceremony ended with the singing of the sacred hymns.
Augustin had carried the position. But the conflict had got to the point
that he had to threaten the people with his resignation, and, as he wrote
to Alypius, "to shake out on them the dust from his clothes. " All this
promised very ill for the future. He who already considered the priesthood
as a trial, saw with terror the bishopric drawing near.
THE FIFTH PART
THE APOSTLE OF PEACE AND OF CATHOLIC UNITY
Dic eis ista, ut plorent . . . et sic eos rape tecum ad Deum: quia de
spiritu ejus haec dicis eis, si dicis ardens igne caritatis.
"Tell them this, O my soul, that they may weep . . . and thus carry them
up with thyself to God; because by His Spirit thou sayest these things,
if Thou speakest burning with the flame of charity. "
_Confessions_, IV, 12.
I
THE BISHOP OF HIPPO
In his monastery, Augustin was still spied upon by the neighbouring
Churches, who wanted him for their bishop. They would capture him on the
first opportunity. The old Valerius, fearing his priest would be taken
unawares, urged him to hide himself. But he knew by the very case of
Augustin, forced into the priesthood in spite of himself, that the greatest
precautions are useless against those determined to gain their ends by any
means. It would be safest to anticipate the danger.
He determined therefore to share the bishopric with Augustin, to have him
consecrated during his own lifetime, and to indicate him as his successor.
This was against the African usage, and what was more, against the Canons
of the Council of Nice--though it is true that Valerius, like Augustin
himself, was unaware of this latter point. But surely the rule could be
waived in view of the exceptional merits of the priest of Hippo. The old
bishop began by sounding Aurelius, the Primate of Carthage, and when he was
satisfied as to the agreement and support of this high personage, he took
the opportunity of a religious solemnity to make known his intentions to
the people.
Some of the neighbouring bishops--Megalius, Bishop of Guelma and Primate of
Numidia, among them--being gathered at Hippo to consecrate a new bishop,
Valerius announced publicly in the basilica that he wished Augustin to be
consecrated at the same ceremony. This had been the wish of his people
for a long time. Really, in demanding this honour for his priest, the old
bishop did no more than follow the wish of the public. Immediately, his
words were received with cheers. The faithful with loud shouts demanded
Augustin's consecration.
Megalius alone objected. He even made himself the voice of certain
calumnies, so as to have the candidate put aside as unworthy. There is
nothing astonishing in such an attitude. This Megalius was old (he died a
short time after), and, like all old men, he took the gloomiest view of
innovations. Already, in the face of settled custom, had Valerius granted
Augustin the right to preach in his presence. And see now, by a new
sinking, he was attempting to place two bishops at once in the see of
Hippo! Whatever this young priest's talents might be, enough, had been
done for him--a recent convert into the bargain, and, what was still more
serious, a refugee from the Manicheans. What was not related about the
abominations committed in the mysteries of those people? Just how far had
Augustin dipped into them? They snarled against him everywhere at Hippo,
and at Carthage too, where he had compromised himself by his excessive
zeal; Catholics and Donatists alike gossiped. Megalius, a punctilious
defender of discipline and the hierarchy, no doubt gathered up these
malevolent rumours with pleasure. He used them as an excuse for making
Augustin mark time, so to speak. Commonplace people always feel a secret
delight in humiliating to the common rule those whom they can feel are
beings of a different quality from themselves.
One of the slanders set abroad about Valerius' priest, Megalius seems to
have believed. He allowed himself to be persuaded that Augustin had given
a philtre to a woman, one of his penitents, whom he wished to possess. It
was then the fashion among the pious to exchange _eulogies_, or bits of
holy bread, to signify a spiritual communion. Augustin was said to have
mixed certain magic potions with some of these breads and offered them
hypocritically to the woman he was in love with. This accusation started a
big scandal, and the remembrance of it persisted long, because five or six
years later the Donatist Petilian was still repeating it.
Augustin cleared himself victoriously. Megalius avowed his mistake. He did
better: not only did he apologize to him he had slandered, but he solemnly
asked forgiveness from his fellow-bishops for having misled them upon false
rumours. It is probable that some time during the inquiry he had got to
know Valerius' coadjutor better. Augustin's charm, taken with the austerity
of his life, acted upon the vexed old man and altered his views. Be that
so or not, it was at any rate by Megalius, Bishop of Guelma and Primate of
Numidia, that Augustin was consecrated Bishop of Hippo.
He was in consternation over his rise. He has said it again and again. We
may take his word for it. Yet the honours and advantages of the episcopate
were then so considerable that his enemies were able to describe him as an
ambitious man. Nothing could agree less with his character. In his heart,
Augustin only wished to live in quiet. Since his retreat at Cassicium,
fortune he had given up, as well as literary glory. His sole wish was to
live in pondering the divine truths, and to draw nearer to God. _Videte et
gustate quam mitis sit Dominus_--"O taste and see that the Lord is good. "
This perhaps, of the whole Bible, is the verse he liked best, which
answered best to the close desire of his soul; and he quotes it oftenest
in his sermons. Then, to study the Holy Writings, scan the least syllables
of them, since all truth lies there--well, a whole life is not too much
for such labour as that! And to do it, one should sever all ties with the
world, take refuge forbiddingly in the cloister.
But this sincere Christian analysed himself too skilfully not to perceive
that he had a dangerous tendency to isolation. He took too much pleasure
in cutting himself off from the society of mankind to enshroud himself
in study and meditation. He who acknowledged a secret tendency to the
Epicurean indolence--was he going to live a life of the dilettante and the
self-indulgent under cover of holiness? Alone could action save him from
selfishness. Others doubtless fulfilled the laws of charity in praying,
in mortifying themselves for their brethren. But when, like him, a man
has exceptional faculties of persuasion and eloquence, such vigour in
dialectics, such widespread culture, such power to bring to naught the
wrong--would it not be insulting to God to let such gifts lie idle, and a
serious failure in charity to deprive his brethren of the support of such
an engine?
Besides that, he well knew that no man draws near to truth without a
purified heart. Might not his passions, which were so violent, begin to
torment him again after this respite with greater frenzy than before his
conversion? Against that, too, action was the main antidote. In the duties
of the bishopric he saw a means of asceticism--a kind of courageous
purification. He would load himself of his own will with so many anxieties
and so much work that he would have no time left to listen to the insidious
voice of his "old friends. " Could he manage to silence them at once?
This unheard-of grace--would it be granted to him? Or would not rather
the struggle continue in the depths of his conscience? What comes out as
certain is that those terrible passions which turned his youth upside down,
nevermore play any part in his life. From the moment he fell on his knees
under the fig-tree at Milan, his sinful heart is a dead heart. He has been
freed from almost all the weaknesses of the old nature, not only from its
vices and carnal affections, but from its most pardonable lapses--save,
perhaps, some old sediment of intellectual and literary vanity.
His books, at the first glance, shew us him no more save as the doctor, and
already the saint. What is seen at once is an entirely bare intelligence,
an entirely pure heart, fired only by the divine love. And yet the
affectionate and tender heart which his had been, always warms his
discussions and his most abstract exegesis. It does not take long to feel
the heat of them, the power of pouring forth emotion. Augustin takes no
heed of that. Of himself he no longer thinks; he no longer belongs to
himself. If he has accepted the episcopate, it is so as to give himself
altogether to the Church, to be all things to all men. He is the man-word,
the man-pen, the sounding-board of the truth. He becomes the man of the
miserable crowds which the Saviour covered with His pity. He is theirs, to
convince them and cure them of their errors. He is a machine which works
without ever stopping for the greater glory of Christ. Bishop, pastor,
leader of souls--he has no desire for anything else.
But it was a heavy labour for this intellectual, who till then had lived
only among books and ideas. The day after his consecration, he must have
regarded it with more terror than ever. During his nights of insomnia, or
at the recreation hour in the monastery garden, he thought over it with
great distress. His eyes wide open in the darkness of his cell, he sought
to define a theory upon the nature and origin of the soul; or else, at the
fall of day, he saw between the olive branches "the sea put on fluctuating
shades like veils of a thousand colours, sometimes green, a green of
infinite tints; sometimes purple; blue sometimes. . . . " And his soul, easily
stirred to poetry, at once arose from these material splendours to the
invisible region of ideas. Then, immediately, he caught himself up: it
was not a question of all that! He said to himself that he was henceforth
the bishop Augustin, that he had charge of souls, that he must work for
the needs of his flock. He would have to struggle in a combat without a
moment's respite. Thereupon he arranged his plans of attack and defence.
With a single glance he gauged the huge work before him.
A crushing work, truly! He was Bishop of Hippo, but a bishop almost without
a flock, in comparison with the rival community of Donatists. The bishop of
the dissentients, Proculeianus, boasted that he was the true representative
of orthodoxy, and as he had on his side the advantage of numbers, he
certainly cut a much greater figure in the town than the successor of
Valerius, with all his knowledge and all his eloquence. The schismatics'
church, as we have seen, was quite near the Catholic church. Their noise
interfered with Augustin's sermons. Possibly the situation had become
slightly better in Hippo since the edict of Theodosius. But it was not so
long ago that those of the Donatist party had the upper hand. A little
before the arrival of the new bishop, the Donatist clergy forbade their
faithful to bake bread for Catholics. A fanatical baker had even refused a
Catholic deacon who was his landlord. These schismatics believed themselves
strong enough to put those who did not belong to them under interdict.
The rout of Catholicism appeared to be an accomplished fact from one end to
the other of Africa. Quite recently a mere fraction of the Donatist party
had been able to send three hundred and ten bishops to the Council of
Bagai, who were to judge the recalcitrants of their own sect. Among these
bishops, the terrible Optatus of Thimgad became marked on account of his
bloody zeal, rambling round Numidia and even the Proconsulate at the head
of armed bands, burning farms and villas, rebaptizing the Catholics by main
force, spreading terror on all sides.
Augustin knew all this, and when he sought help from the local authorities
he was obliged to acknowledge sadly that there was no support to be
expected from Count Gildo, who had tyrannized over Carthage and Africa for
nearly ten years. This Gildo was a native, a Moor, to whom the ministers of
the young Valentinian II had thought it a good stroke of policy to confide
the government of the province. Knowing the weakness of the Empire, the
Moor only thought of cutting out for himself an independent principality
in Africa.
He openly favoured Donatism, which was the most numerous and
influential party. The Bishop of Thimgad, Optatus, swore only by him,
regarding him as his master and his "god. " In consequence, he was called
"the Gildonian. "
Against such enemies, the Imperial authority could only act irregularly.
Augustin was well aware of it. He knew that the Western Empire was in a
critical position. Theodosius had just died, in the midst of war with the
usurper Eugenius. The Barbarians, who made up the greater part of the Roman
armies, shewed themselves more and more threatening. Alaric, entrenched
in the Peloponnesus, was getting ready to invade Italy. However, the
all-powerful minister of the young Honorius, the half-Barbarian Stilicho,
did his best to conciliate the Catholics, and assured them that he would
continue the protection they had had from Theodosius, Augustin therefore
turned to the central power. It alone could bring about a little order in
the provinces--and then, besides, the new emperors were firmly attached
to the defence of Catholicism. The Catholic Bishop of Hippo did his
best, accordingly, to keep on good terms with the representatives of the
Metropolitan Government--the proconsuls; the proprætors; the counts;
and the tribunes, or the secretaries, sent by the Emperor as Government
commissioners.
There was no suspicion of flattery in his attitude, no idolatry of power.
At Milan, Augustin had been near enough to the Court to know what the
Imperial functionaries were worth. Now, he simply adapted himself as well
as he could to the needs of the moment. And with all that, he could have
wished in the depths of his heart that this power were stronger, so as to
give the Church more effective support. This cultured man, brought up in
the respect of the Roman majesty, was by instinct a faithful servant of
the Cæsars. A man who held to authority and tradition, he maintained that
obedience is due to princes: "There is a general agreement," he said,
"of human society to obey its Kings. " In one of his sermons he compares
thought, which commands the body, to the Emperor seated upon his throne,
and from the depths of his palace dictating orders which set the whole
Empire moving--a purely ideal image of the sovereign of that time, but one
which pleased his Latin imagination. Alas! Augustin had no illusions about
the effect of Imperial edicts; he knew too well how little they were
regarded, especially in Africa.
So he could hardly count upon Government support for the defence of
Catholic unity and peace. He found he must trust to himself; and all
his strength was in his intelligence, in his charity, in his deeply
compassionate soul. Most earnestly did he wish that Catholicism might be a
religion of love, open to all the nations of the earth, even as its Divine
Founder Himself had wished. A glowing and dominating intelligence, charity
which never tired--those were Augustin's arms. And they were enough. These
qualities gave him an overwhelming superiority over all the men of his
time. Among them, pagans or Christians, he looks like a colossus. From what
a height he crushes, not only the professors who had been his colleagues,
such as Nectarius of Guelma or Maximus of Madaura, but the most celebrated
writers of his time--Symmachus, for instance, and Ammianus Marcellinus.
After reading a treatise of Augustin's, one is astounded by the
intellectual meagreness of these last pagans. The narrowness of their
mind and platitude of thought is a thing that leaves one aghast. Even the
illustrious Apuleius, who belonged to the golden age of African literature,
the author of _The Doctrine of Plato_, praises philosophy and the Supreme
Being in terms which recall the professions of faith of the chemist and
druggist, Homais, in _Madame Bovary_.
Nor among those who surrounded Augustin, his fellow-bishops, was there one
fit to be compared with him, even at a distance. Except perhaps Nebridius,
his dearest friends, Alypius, Severus, or Evodius, are merely disciples,
not to say servants of his thought. Aurelius, Primate of Carthage, an
energetic administrator, a firm and upright character, if he is not on
Augustin's level, is at any rate capable of understanding and supporting
him. The others are decent men, like that Samsucius, Bishop of Tours, very
nearly illiterate, but full of good sense and experience, and on this
ground consulted respectfully by his colleague of Hippo. Or else they are
plotters, given to debauch, engaged in business, like Paulus, Bishop of
Cataqua, who became involved in risky speculations, swindled the revenue,
and by his expensive way of life ruined his diocese. Others, on the
Donatist side, are mere swashbucklers, half-brigands, half-fanatics, like
the Gildonian Optatus, Bishop of Thimgad, a manifestation in advance of
the Mussulman _marabout_ who preached the holy war against the Catholics,
raiding, killing, burning, converting by sabre blows and bludgeoning.
Amid these insignificant or violent men, Augustin will endeavour to realize
to the full the admirable type of bishop, at once spiritual father,
protector, and support of his people. He had promised himself to sacrifice
no whit of his ideal of Christian perfection. As bishop, he will remain a
monk, as he did during his priesthood. Beside the monastery established in
Valerius' garden, where it is impossible to receive properly his guests and
visitors, he will start another in the episcopal residence. He will conform
to the monastic rule as far as his duties allow. He will pray, study the
Scriptures, define dogmas, refute heresies. At the same time, he means to
neglect nothing of his material work. He has mouths to feed, property to
look after, law-cases to examine. He will labour at all that. For this
mystic and theorist it means a never-ceasing immolation.
First, to give the poor their daily bread. Like all the communities of that
time, Hippo maintained a population of beggars. Often enough, the diocesan
cash-box was empty. Augustin was obliged to hold out the hand, to deliver
from the height of his pulpit pathetic appeals for charity. Then, there are
hospitals to be built for the sick, a lodging-house for poor wanderers.
The bishop started these institutions in houses bequeathed to the church
of Hippo. For reasons of economy, he thought better not to build. That
would overload his budget. Next came the greatest of all his cares--the
administration of Church property. To increase this property, he stipulated
that his clergy should give up all they possessed in favour of the
community, thus giving the faithful an example of voluntary poverty.
He also accepted gifts from private persons. But he also often refused
these--for example, the bequest of a father or mother, who, in a moment of
anger, disinherited their children. He did not wish to profit by the bad
feelings of parents to plunder orphans. On another side, he objected to
engage the Church in suits at law with the exchequer upon receiving certain
heritages. When a business man at Hippo left to the diocese his share of
profits in the service of boats for carrying Government stores, Augustin
came to the conclusion that it would be better to refuse. In case of
shipwreck, they would be obliged to make good the lost corn to the
Treasury, or else to put the captain and surviving sailors to the torture
to prove that the crew was not responsible for the loss of the ship.
Augustin would not hear tell of it.
"Is it fit," he said, "that a bishop should be a shipowner? . . . A bishop
a torturer? Oh, no; that does not agree at all with a servant of Jesus
Christ. "
The people of Hippo did not share his views. They blamed Augustin's
scruples. They accused him of compromising the interests of the Church. One
day he had to explain himself from the pulpit:
"Well I know, my brothers, that you often say between yourselves: 'Why do
not people give anything to the Church of Hippo? Why do not the dying make
it their heir? The reason is that Bishop Augustin is too easy; he gives all
back to the children; he keeps nothing! ' I acknowledge it, I only accept
gifts which are good and pious. Whoever disinherits his son to make the
Church his heir, let him find somebody willing to accept his gifts. It is
not I who will do it, and by God's grace, I hope it will not be anybody. . . .
Yes, I have refused many legacies, but I have also accepted many. Need I
name them to you? I will give only one instance. I accepted the heritage of
Julian. Why? Because he died without children. . . . "
The listeners thought that their bishop really put too fine a point on
things.
They further reproached him with not knowing how to attract and flatter the
rich benefactors. Augustin would not allow, either, that they had any right
to force a passing stranger to receive the priesthood and consequently to
give up his goods to the poor. All this really was very wise, not only
according to the spirit of the Gospel, but according to human prudence.
If Augustin, for the sake of the good fame of his Church, did not wish to
incur the accusation of grasping and avarice, he dreaded nothing so much
as a law-case. To accept lightly the gifts and legacies offered was to lay
himself open to expensive pettifogging. Far better to refuse than to lose
both his money and reputation. So were reconciled, in this man of prayer
and meditation, practical good sense with the high disinterestedness of the
Christian teaching.
The bishop was disinterested; his people were covetous. The people of those
times wished the Church to grow rich, because they were the first to profit
by its riches. Now these riches were principally in houses and land. The
diocese of Hippo had to deal with many houses and immense _fundi_, upon
which lived an entire population of artisans and freed-men, agricultural
labourers, and even art-workers--smelters, embroiderers, chisellers on
metals. Upon the Church lands, these small people were protected from taxes
and the extortions of the revenue officers, and no doubt they found the
episcopal government more fatherly and mild than the civil.
Augustin, who had made a vow of poverty and given his heritage to the poor,
became by a cruel irony a great landowner as soon as he was elected Bishop
of Hippo. Doubtless he had stewards under him to look after the property
of the diocese. This did not save him from going into details of management
and supervising his agents. He heard the complaints, not only of his
own tenants, but also of those who belonged to other estates and were
victimized by dishonest bailiffs. Anyhow, we have a thousand signs to shew
that no detail of country life was unfamiliar to him.
On horseback or muleback, he rode for miles through the country about
Hippo to visit his vineyards and olivets. He examined, found out things,
questioned the workmen, went into the presses and the mills. He knew the
grape good to eat, and the grape to make wine with. He pointed out where
the ensilage pits had been dug in too marshy land, which endangered the
young corn. As a capable landowner he was abreast of the law, careful
about the terms of contracts. He knew the formulas employed for sales or
benefactions. He saw to it that charcoal was buried around the landmarks in
the fields, so that if the post disappeared, its place could be found. And
as he was a poet, he gathered on his course a whole booty of rural images
which later on went to brighten his sermons. He made ingenious comparisons
with the citron-tree, "which is seen to give flowers and fruits all the
year if it be watered constantly," or else with the goat "who gets upon her
two hind legs to crop the bitter leaves of the wild olive. "
These journeys in the open air, however tiring they might be, were after
all a rest for his overworked brain. But there was one among his episcopal
duties which wearied him to disgust. Every day he had to listen to parties
in dispute and give judgment. Following recent Imperial legislation, the
bishop became judge in civil cases--a tiresome and endless work in a
country where tricky quibbling raged with obstinate fury. The litigants
pursued Augustin, overran his house, like those fellahs in dirty burnous
who block our law-courts with their rags. In the _secretarium_ of the
basilica, or under the portico of the court leading to the church, Augustin
sat like a Mussulman cadi in the court of the mosque.
The emperors had only regulated an old custom of apostolic times in placing
the Christians under the jurisdiction of their bishop. In accordance with
St. Paul's advice, the priests did their utmost to settle differences among
the faithful. Later, when their number had considerably increased, the
Government adopted a system not unlike the "Capitulations" in countries
under the Ottoman suzerainty. Lawsuits between clerics and laymen could not
be equitably judged by civil servants, who were often pagans. Moreover, the
parties based their claims on theological principles or religious laws that
the arbitrator generally knew nothing about. In these conditions, it was
natural enough that the Imperial authority should say to the disputants,
"Fight it out among yourselves".
And it happened, just at the moment when Augustin began to fill the see of
Hippo, that Theodosius broadened still more the judicial prerogatives of
the bishops. The unhappy judge was overwhelmed with law-cases. Every day he
sat till the hour of his meal, and sometimes the whole day when he fasted.
To those who accused him of laziness, he answered:
"I can declare on my soul that if it were question of my own convenience, I
should like much better to work at some manual labour at certain hours of
the day, as the rule is in well-governed monasteries, and have the rest of
the time free to read or pray or meditate upon the Holy Scripture, instead
of being troubled with all the complications and dull talk of lawsuits. "
The rascality of the litigants made him indignant. From the pulpit he gave
them advice full of Christian wisdom, but which could not have been much
relished. A suit at law, according to him, was a loss of time and a cause
of sorrow. It would be better to let the opponent have the money, than to
lose time and be filled with uneasiness. Nor was this, added the preacher
in all good faith, to encourage injustice; for the robber would be robbed
in his turn by a greater robber than himself.
These reasons seemed only moderately convincing. The pettifoggers did not
get discouraged. On the contrary, they infested the bishop with their
pleas. As soon as he appeared, they rushed up to him in a mob, surrounded
him, kissed his hand and his shoulder, protesting their respect and
obedience, urging him, constraining him to busy himself about their
affairs. Augustin yielded. But the next day in a vehement sermon he cried
out to them:
_Discedite a me, maligni! _--"Go far from me, ye wicked ones, and let me
study in peace the commandments of my God! "
II
WHAT WAS HEARD IN THE BASILICA OF PEACE
Let us try to see Augustin in his pulpit and in his episcopal city.
We cannot do much more than reconstruct them by analogy. Royal Hippo is
utterly gone. Bona, which has taken its place, is about a mile and a half
away, and the fragments which have been dug out of the soil of the dead
city are very inadequate. But Africa is full of Christian ruins, and
chiefly of basilicas. Rome has nothing equal to offer. And that is easily
understood. The Roman basilicas, always living, have been changed in the
course of centuries, and have put on, time after time, the garb forced upon
them by the fashion. Those of Africa have remained just as they were--at
least in their principal lines--on the morrow of the Arab invasion, as
Augustin's eyes had seen them. They are ruins, no doubt, and some very
mutilated, but ruins of which no restoration has altered the plan or
changed the features.
As the traces of Hippo and its church are swept away or deeply buried, we
are obliged, in order to get some approximate idea, to turn towards another
African town which has suffered less from time and devastation. Theveste
with its basilica, the best preserved, the finest and largest in all
Africa, can restore to us a little of the look and colour and atmosphere of
Hippo in those final years of the fourth century.
Ancient Theveste was much larger than the present town, the French Tebessa.
This, even reduced to the perimeter of the Byzantine fortress built under
Justinian, still surprises the traveller by its singularly original aspect.
Amid the wide plains of alfa-grass which surround it, with its quadrangular
enclosure, its roads on the projection of the walls behind the battlements,
its squat turrets, it has a look as archaic, as strange, as our own
Aigues-Mortes amid its marshy fen. Nothing can be more rich and joyous to
the eye than the rust which covers its ruins--a complete gilding that one
would say had been laid on by the hand of man.
It has a little temple which is a wonder and has been compared to the
ancient Roman temple--the _Maison Carrée_--at Nîmes. But how much warmer,
more living are the stones! The shafts of the columns, and the pilasters of
the peristyle, barked by time, seem as scaly and full of sap as the trunks
of palm-trees. The carved acanthus-leaves in the capitals of the pillars
droop like bunches of palms reddened by the summer.
Quite near, at the end of a narrow street, lined with modern and squalid
hovels, the triumphal arch of Septimus Severus and of Caracalla extends its
luminous bow; and high above the heavy mass of architecture, resting upon
slim aerial little columns, a buoyant _ædiculus_ shines like a coral
tabernacle or a coffer of yellow ivory.
All about, forms in long draperies are huddled. The Numidian burnous has
the whiteness of the toga. It has also the same graceful folds. At the
sight of them you suddenly feel yourself to be in a strange land--carried
back very far across the centuries. No sooner is the vision of antiquity
outlined than it grows firm. Down below there, a horseman, clad in white,
is framed with his white horse in the moulded cincture of a door. He
passes, and upon the white wall of the near tower his shadow rests a
moment, like a bas-relief upon the marble of a frieze.
Beyond the Byzantine enclosure, the basilica, with its minor buildings,
forms another town almost as large as the present Theveste, and also closed
in by a belt of towers and ramparts. One is immediately struck by the
opulent colour of the stones--rose, grown pale and thinner in the sun; and
next, by the solid workmanship and the structural finish. The stones, as
in the Greek temples, are placed on top of one another in regular layers:
the whole holds together by the weight of the blocks and the polish of the
surfaces.
The proportions are on a large scale. There was no grudging for the
buildings, or the materials, or the land. In front of the basilica is a
wide rectangular court bordered with terraces; a portico at the far end;
and in the middle four large fountains to water the walk. A flagged avenue,
closed by two gateways, divides this court from the basilica, properly so
called, which is reached by a staircase between two columns. The staircase
leads to the _atrium_ decorated by a Corinthian portico. In the centre
is the font for purifications, a huge monolithic bason in the shape of a
four-leaved clover. Three doors give entrance from the _atrium_ to the
basilica, which is divided by rows of green marble columns into three
aisles. The galleries spread out along the side aisles. The floor was in
mosaic. In the apse, behind the altar, stood the bishop's throne.
Around the main building clustered a great number of others: a baptistry;
many chapels (one vaulted in the shape of a three-leaved clover) dedicated,
probably, to local martyrs; a graveyard; a convent with its cells, and its
windows narrow as loop-holes; stables, sheds, and barns. Sheltered within
its walls and towers, amid its gardens and outbuildings, the basilica of
Theveste thus early resembled one of our great monasteries of the Middle
Age, and also in certain ways the great mosques of Islam--the one at
Cordova, or that at Damascus, with their vestibules surrounded by arcades,
their basons for purification, and their walks bordered with orange-trees.
The faithful and the pilgrims were at home there. They might spend the day
stretched upon the flags of the porticoes, in loafing or sleeping in the
blue shade of the columns and the cool of the fountains. In the full sense
of the word, the church was the House of God, open to all.
Very likely the basilicas at Hippo had neither the size nor the splendour
of this one. Nor were there very many. At the time Augustin was ordained
priest, that is to say, when the Donatists had still a majority in the
town, it seems clear that the orthodox community owned but one single
church, the _Basilica major_, or Basilica of Peace. Its very name proves
this. With the schismatics, "Peace" was the official name for Catholicism.
"Basilica of Peace" meant simply "Catholic Basilica. " Was not this as
much as to say that the others belonged to the dissenters?
settles upon farmland and meadow country, only broken by a watch-dog's bark
now and then. . . .
But it matters not which spot is chosen in the surroundings of Hippo to
place Augustin's monastery, the view will be equally beautiful. From all
parts of the plain, mounded by heaps of ruins, the sea can be seen--a wide
bay circled in soft bland curves, like at Naples. All around, an arena of
mountains--the green ravines of the Edough and its wooded slopes. Along the
surbased roads rise the great sonorous pines, and through them wanders the
æolian complaint of the sea-winds. Blue of the sea, blue of the sky, noble
foliage of Italy's ancient groves--it is one of Lamartine's landscapes
under a more burning sun. The gaiety of the mornings there is a physical
luxury for heart and eyes, when the new-born light laughs upon the painted
cupolas of the houses, and dark blue veils float between the walls, glaring
white, of the steep streets.
Among the olives and orange-trees of Hippo, Augustin must have seen happy
days pass by, as at Thagaste. The rule he had given the convent, which he
himself obeyed like any one else, was neither too slack nor too strict--in
a word, such as it should be for men who have lived in the culture of
letters and works of the mind. There was no affectation of excessive
austerity. Augustin and his monks wore very simple clothes and shoes, but
suitable for a bishop and his clerks. Like laymen, they wore the byrrhus,
a garment with a hood, which seems very like the ancestor of the Arab
burnous. To keep an even line between daintiness and negligence in costume,
to have no exaggeration in anything, is what Augustin aimed at. The poet
Rutilius Numatianus, who about that time was attacking the sordid and
culture-hating monks with sombre irony, would have had a chance to admire
a restraint and decorum in the Hippo monastery which recalled what was
best in the manners of the ancient world. At table, a like moderation.
Vegetables were generally provided, and sometimes meat when any one
was sick, or guests arrived. They drank a little wine, contrary to the
regulations of St. Jerome, who condemned wine as a drink for devils. When
a monk infringed the rule, his share of the wine was stopped.
Through some remains of fastidious habits in Augustin, or perhaps because
he had nothing else, the table service he used himself was silver. On the
other hand, the pots and dishes were of earthenware, or wood, or common
alabaster. Augustin, who was very temperate in eating and drinking, seemed
at table to pay attention only to what was being read or talked about.
He cared very little what he ate, provided the food was not a stimulant
to lubricity. He used to say to those Christians who paraded a Pharisaic
severity: "It is the pure heart which makes pure food. " Then, with his
constant desire for charity, he prohibited all spiteful gossip in the
conversation in the refectory. In those times of religious struggle, the
clerics ferociously blackened each other's characters. Augustin caused to
have written on the walls a distich, which ran thus:
"He who takes pleasure in slandering the life of the absent,
Should know he is unworthy to sit at this table. "
"One day," says Possidius, "some of his intimate friends, even other
bishops, having forgotten this sentence, he reproached them warmly, and
very much perturbed, he cried out that he was going to remove those verses
from the refectory, or rise from table and withdraw to his cell. I was
present with many others when this happened. "
It was not only slanderous talk or interior dissensions which troubled
Augustin's peace of mind. He combined the duties of priest, of a head of
a convent, and of an apostle. He had to preach, instruct the catechumens,
battle against the disaffected. The town of Hippo was very unruly, full
of heretics, schismatics, pagans. Those of the party of Donatus were
triumphant, driving the Catholics from their churches and lands. When
Augustin came into the country, Catholicism was very low. And then the
ineradicable Manichees continued to recruit proselytes. He never stopped
writing tracts, disputing against them, overwhelming them under the close
logic of his arguments. At the request of the Donatists themselves, he had
an argument with one of their priests, a certain Fortunatus, in the baths
of Sossius at Hippo. He reduced this man to silence and to flight. Not in
the least discouraged were the Manichees: they sent another priest.
If the enemies of the Church shewed themselves stubborn, Augustin's own
congregation were singularly turbulent, hard to manage. The weakness of old
Valerius must have allowed a good many abuses to creep into the community.
Ere long the priest of Hippo had a foretaste of the difficulties which
awaited him as bishop.
Following the example of Ambrose, he undertook to abolish the custom
of feasts in the basilicas and on the tombs of the martyrs. This was a
survival of paganism, of which the festivals included gluttonous eating and
orgies. At every solemnity, and they were frequent, the pagans ate in the
courts and under the porticoes around the temples. In Africa, above all,
these public repasts gave an opportunity for repugnant scenes of stuffing
and drunkenness. As a rule, the African is very sober; but when he does let
himself go he is terrible. This is quite easily seen to-day, in the great
Muslem feasts, when the rich distribute broken bits of meat to the poor of
their district. As soon as these people, used to drink water and to eat a
little boiled rice, have tasted meat, or drunk only one cup of wine, there
is no holding them: there are fights, stabbing matches, a general brawl
in the hovels. Just picture this popular debauch in full blast in the
cemeteries and the courts of the basilicas, and it will be understood why
Augustin did his best to put an end to such scandals.
For this purpose, he joined hands first of all with his bishop, Valerius,
and then with the Primate of Carthage, Aurelius, who shall be henceforth
his firmest support in his struggle against the schismatics.
During Lent, the subject fitting in naturally with the season, he
spoke against these pagan orgies; and this gave rise to a good deal of
discontent, outside. Easter went by without trouble. But the day after the
Ascension, the people of Hippo were used to celebrate what they called "the
Joy-day," by a traditional good feed and drink. The day before, which was
the religious festival, Augustin intrepidly spoke against "the Joy-day. "
They interrupted the preacher. Some of them shouted that as much was done
at Rome in St. Peter's basilica. At Carthage, they danced round the tomb of
St. Cyprian. To the shrilling of flutes, amid the dull blows of the gongs,
mimes gave themselves up to obscene contortions, while the spectators
sang to the clapping of their hands. . . . Augustin knew all about that.
He declared that these abominations might have been tolerated in former
times so as not to discourage the pagans from becoming converts; but that
henceforth the people, altogether Christian, should give them up. In the
end, he spoke with such touching eloquence that the audience burst into
tears. He believed he had won.
The next day it was all to do over again. Agitators had worked among the
crowd to such an extent that a riot was feared. Nevertheless, Augustin,
preceded by his bishop, entered the basilica at the hour of service. At the
same moment the Donatists were banqueting in their church, which was quite
near. Through the walls of their own church the Catholics heard the noise
of this carouse. It required the coadjutor's most urgent remonstrances to
keep them from imitating their neighbours. The last murmurs died down, and
the ceremony ended with the singing of the sacred hymns.
Augustin had carried the position. But the conflict had got to the point
that he had to threaten the people with his resignation, and, as he wrote
to Alypius, "to shake out on them the dust from his clothes. " All this
promised very ill for the future. He who already considered the priesthood
as a trial, saw with terror the bishopric drawing near.
THE FIFTH PART
THE APOSTLE OF PEACE AND OF CATHOLIC UNITY
Dic eis ista, ut plorent . . . et sic eos rape tecum ad Deum: quia de
spiritu ejus haec dicis eis, si dicis ardens igne caritatis.
"Tell them this, O my soul, that they may weep . . . and thus carry them
up with thyself to God; because by His Spirit thou sayest these things,
if Thou speakest burning with the flame of charity. "
_Confessions_, IV, 12.
I
THE BISHOP OF HIPPO
In his monastery, Augustin was still spied upon by the neighbouring
Churches, who wanted him for their bishop. They would capture him on the
first opportunity. The old Valerius, fearing his priest would be taken
unawares, urged him to hide himself. But he knew by the very case of
Augustin, forced into the priesthood in spite of himself, that the greatest
precautions are useless against those determined to gain their ends by any
means. It would be safest to anticipate the danger.
He determined therefore to share the bishopric with Augustin, to have him
consecrated during his own lifetime, and to indicate him as his successor.
This was against the African usage, and what was more, against the Canons
of the Council of Nice--though it is true that Valerius, like Augustin
himself, was unaware of this latter point. But surely the rule could be
waived in view of the exceptional merits of the priest of Hippo. The old
bishop began by sounding Aurelius, the Primate of Carthage, and when he was
satisfied as to the agreement and support of this high personage, he took
the opportunity of a religious solemnity to make known his intentions to
the people.
Some of the neighbouring bishops--Megalius, Bishop of Guelma and Primate of
Numidia, among them--being gathered at Hippo to consecrate a new bishop,
Valerius announced publicly in the basilica that he wished Augustin to be
consecrated at the same ceremony. This had been the wish of his people
for a long time. Really, in demanding this honour for his priest, the old
bishop did no more than follow the wish of the public. Immediately, his
words were received with cheers. The faithful with loud shouts demanded
Augustin's consecration.
Megalius alone objected. He even made himself the voice of certain
calumnies, so as to have the candidate put aside as unworthy. There is
nothing astonishing in such an attitude. This Megalius was old (he died a
short time after), and, like all old men, he took the gloomiest view of
innovations. Already, in the face of settled custom, had Valerius granted
Augustin the right to preach in his presence. And see now, by a new
sinking, he was attempting to place two bishops at once in the see of
Hippo! Whatever this young priest's talents might be, enough, had been
done for him--a recent convert into the bargain, and, what was still more
serious, a refugee from the Manicheans. What was not related about the
abominations committed in the mysteries of those people? Just how far had
Augustin dipped into them? They snarled against him everywhere at Hippo,
and at Carthage too, where he had compromised himself by his excessive
zeal; Catholics and Donatists alike gossiped. Megalius, a punctilious
defender of discipline and the hierarchy, no doubt gathered up these
malevolent rumours with pleasure. He used them as an excuse for making
Augustin mark time, so to speak. Commonplace people always feel a secret
delight in humiliating to the common rule those whom they can feel are
beings of a different quality from themselves.
One of the slanders set abroad about Valerius' priest, Megalius seems to
have believed. He allowed himself to be persuaded that Augustin had given
a philtre to a woman, one of his penitents, whom he wished to possess. It
was then the fashion among the pious to exchange _eulogies_, or bits of
holy bread, to signify a spiritual communion. Augustin was said to have
mixed certain magic potions with some of these breads and offered them
hypocritically to the woman he was in love with. This accusation started a
big scandal, and the remembrance of it persisted long, because five or six
years later the Donatist Petilian was still repeating it.
Augustin cleared himself victoriously. Megalius avowed his mistake. He did
better: not only did he apologize to him he had slandered, but he solemnly
asked forgiveness from his fellow-bishops for having misled them upon false
rumours. It is probable that some time during the inquiry he had got to
know Valerius' coadjutor better. Augustin's charm, taken with the austerity
of his life, acted upon the vexed old man and altered his views. Be that
so or not, it was at any rate by Megalius, Bishop of Guelma and Primate of
Numidia, that Augustin was consecrated Bishop of Hippo.
He was in consternation over his rise. He has said it again and again. We
may take his word for it. Yet the honours and advantages of the episcopate
were then so considerable that his enemies were able to describe him as an
ambitious man. Nothing could agree less with his character. In his heart,
Augustin only wished to live in quiet. Since his retreat at Cassicium,
fortune he had given up, as well as literary glory. His sole wish was to
live in pondering the divine truths, and to draw nearer to God. _Videte et
gustate quam mitis sit Dominus_--"O taste and see that the Lord is good. "
This perhaps, of the whole Bible, is the verse he liked best, which
answered best to the close desire of his soul; and he quotes it oftenest
in his sermons. Then, to study the Holy Writings, scan the least syllables
of them, since all truth lies there--well, a whole life is not too much
for such labour as that! And to do it, one should sever all ties with the
world, take refuge forbiddingly in the cloister.
But this sincere Christian analysed himself too skilfully not to perceive
that he had a dangerous tendency to isolation. He took too much pleasure
in cutting himself off from the society of mankind to enshroud himself
in study and meditation. He who acknowledged a secret tendency to the
Epicurean indolence--was he going to live a life of the dilettante and the
self-indulgent under cover of holiness? Alone could action save him from
selfishness. Others doubtless fulfilled the laws of charity in praying,
in mortifying themselves for their brethren. But when, like him, a man
has exceptional faculties of persuasion and eloquence, such vigour in
dialectics, such widespread culture, such power to bring to naught the
wrong--would it not be insulting to God to let such gifts lie idle, and a
serious failure in charity to deprive his brethren of the support of such
an engine?
Besides that, he well knew that no man draws near to truth without a
purified heart. Might not his passions, which were so violent, begin to
torment him again after this respite with greater frenzy than before his
conversion? Against that, too, action was the main antidote. In the duties
of the bishopric he saw a means of asceticism--a kind of courageous
purification. He would load himself of his own will with so many anxieties
and so much work that he would have no time left to listen to the insidious
voice of his "old friends. " Could he manage to silence them at once?
This unheard-of grace--would it be granted to him? Or would not rather
the struggle continue in the depths of his conscience? What comes out as
certain is that those terrible passions which turned his youth upside down,
nevermore play any part in his life. From the moment he fell on his knees
under the fig-tree at Milan, his sinful heart is a dead heart. He has been
freed from almost all the weaknesses of the old nature, not only from its
vices and carnal affections, but from its most pardonable lapses--save,
perhaps, some old sediment of intellectual and literary vanity.
His books, at the first glance, shew us him no more save as the doctor, and
already the saint. What is seen at once is an entirely bare intelligence,
an entirely pure heart, fired only by the divine love. And yet the
affectionate and tender heart which his had been, always warms his
discussions and his most abstract exegesis. It does not take long to feel
the heat of them, the power of pouring forth emotion. Augustin takes no
heed of that. Of himself he no longer thinks; he no longer belongs to
himself. If he has accepted the episcopate, it is so as to give himself
altogether to the Church, to be all things to all men. He is the man-word,
the man-pen, the sounding-board of the truth. He becomes the man of the
miserable crowds which the Saviour covered with His pity. He is theirs, to
convince them and cure them of their errors. He is a machine which works
without ever stopping for the greater glory of Christ. Bishop, pastor,
leader of souls--he has no desire for anything else.
But it was a heavy labour for this intellectual, who till then had lived
only among books and ideas. The day after his consecration, he must have
regarded it with more terror than ever. During his nights of insomnia, or
at the recreation hour in the monastery garden, he thought over it with
great distress. His eyes wide open in the darkness of his cell, he sought
to define a theory upon the nature and origin of the soul; or else, at the
fall of day, he saw between the olive branches "the sea put on fluctuating
shades like veils of a thousand colours, sometimes green, a green of
infinite tints; sometimes purple; blue sometimes. . . . " And his soul, easily
stirred to poetry, at once arose from these material splendours to the
invisible region of ideas. Then, immediately, he caught himself up: it
was not a question of all that! He said to himself that he was henceforth
the bishop Augustin, that he had charge of souls, that he must work for
the needs of his flock. He would have to struggle in a combat without a
moment's respite. Thereupon he arranged his plans of attack and defence.
With a single glance he gauged the huge work before him.
A crushing work, truly! He was Bishop of Hippo, but a bishop almost without
a flock, in comparison with the rival community of Donatists. The bishop of
the dissentients, Proculeianus, boasted that he was the true representative
of orthodoxy, and as he had on his side the advantage of numbers, he
certainly cut a much greater figure in the town than the successor of
Valerius, with all his knowledge and all his eloquence. The schismatics'
church, as we have seen, was quite near the Catholic church. Their noise
interfered with Augustin's sermons. Possibly the situation had become
slightly better in Hippo since the edict of Theodosius. But it was not so
long ago that those of the Donatist party had the upper hand. A little
before the arrival of the new bishop, the Donatist clergy forbade their
faithful to bake bread for Catholics. A fanatical baker had even refused a
Catholic deacon who was his landlord. These schismatics believed themselves
strong enough to put those who did not belong to them under interdict.
The rout of Catholicism appeared to be an accomplished fact from one end to
the other of Africa. Quite recently a mere fraction of the Donatist party
had been able to send three hundred and ten bishops to the Council of
Bagai, who were to judge the recalcitrants of their own sect. Among these
bishops, the terrible Optatus of Thimgad became marked on account of his
bloody zeal, rambling round Numidia and even the Proconsulate at the head
of armed bands, burning farms and villas, rebaptizing the Catholics by main
force, spreading terror on all sides.
Augustin knew all this, and when he sought help from the local authorities
he was obliged to acknowledge sadly that there was no support to be
expected from Count Gildo, who had tyrannized over Carthage and Africa for
nearly ten years. This Gildo was a native, a Moor, to whom the ministers of
the young Valentinian II had thought it a good stroke of policy to confide
the government of the province. Knowing the weakness of the Empire, the
Moor only thought of cutting out for himself an independent principality
in Africa.
He openly favoured Donatism, which was the most numerous and
influential party. The Bishop of Thimgad, Optatus, swore only by him,
regarding him as his master and his "god. " In consequence, he was called
"the Gildonian. "
Against such enemies, the Imperial authority could only act irregularly.
Augustin was well aware of it. He knew that the Western Empire was in a
critical position. Theodosius had just died, in the midst of war with the
usurper Eugenius. The Barbarians, who made up the greater part of the Roman
armies, shewed themselves more and more threatening. Alaric, entrenched
in the Peloponnesus, was getting ready to invade Italy. However, the
all-powerful minister of the young Honorius, the half-Barbarian Stilicho,
did his best to conciliate the Catholics, and assured them that he would
continue the protection they had had from Theodosius, Augustin therefore
turned to the central power. It alone could bring about a little order in
the provinces--and then, besides, the new emperors were firmly attached
to the defence of Catholicism. The Catholic Bishop of Hippo did his
best, accordingly, to keep on good terms with the representatives of the
Metropolitan Government--the proconsuls; the proprætors; the counts;
and the tribunes, or the secretaries, sent by the Emperor as Government
commissioners.
There was no suspicion of flattery in his attitude, no idolatry of power.
At Milan, Augustin had been near enough to the Court to know what the
Imperial functionaries were worth. Now, he simply adapted himself as well
as he could to the needs of the moment. And with all that, he could have
wished in the depths of his heart that this power were stronger, so as to
give the Church more effective support. This cultured man, brought up in
the respect of the Roman majesty, was by instinct a faithful servant of
the Cæsars. A man who held to authority and tradition, he maintained that
obedience is due to princes: "There is a general agreement," he said,
"of human society to obey its Kings. " In one of his sermons he compares
thought, which commands the body, to the Emperor seated upon his throne,
and from the depths of his palace dictating orders which set the whole
Empire moving--a purely ideal image of the sovereign of that time, but one
which pleased his Latin imagination. Alas! Augustin had no illusions about
the effect of Imperial edicts; he knew too well how little they were
regarded, especially in Africa.
So he could hardly count upon Government support for the defence of
Catholic unity and peace. He found he must trust to himself; and all
his strength was in his intelligence, in his charity, in his deeply
compassionate soul. Most earnestly did he wish that Catholicism might be a
religion of love, open to all the nations of the earth, even as its Divine
Founder Himself had wished. A glowing and dominating intelligence, charity
which never tired--those were Augustin's arms. And they were enough. These
qualities gave him an overwhelming superiority over all the men of his
time. Among them, pagans or Christians, he looks like a colossus. From what
a height he crushes, not only the professors who had been his colleagues,
such as Nectarius of Guelma or Maximus of Madaura, but the most celebrated
writers of his time--Symmachus, for instance, and Ammianus Marcellinus.
After reading a treatise of Augustin's, one is astounded by the
intellectual meagreness of these last pagans. The narrowness of their
mind and platitude of thought is a thing that leaves one aghast. Even the
illustrious Apuleius, who belonged to the golden age of African literature,
the author of _The Doctrine of Plato_, praises philosophy and the Supreme
Being in terms which recall the professions of faith of the chemist and
druggist, Homais, in _Madame Bovary_.
Nor among those who surrounded Augustin, his fellow-bishops, was there one
fit to be compared with him, even at a distance. Except perhaps Nebridius,
his dearest friends, Alypius, Severus, or Evodius, are merely disciples,
not to say servants of his thought. Aurelius, Primate of Carthage, an
energetic administrator, a firm and upright character, if he is not on
Augustin's level, is at any rate capable of understanding and supporting
him. The others are decent men, like that Samsucius, Bishop of Tours, very
nearly illiterate, but full of good sense and experience, and on this
ground consulted respectfully by his colleague of Hippo. Or else they are
plotters, given to debauch, engaged in business, like Paulus, Bishop of
Cataqua, who became involved in risky speculations, swindled the revenue,
and by his expensive way of life ruined his diocese. Others, on the
Donatist side, are mere swashbucklers, half-brigands, half-fanatics, like
the Gildonian Optatus, Bishop of Thimgad, a manifestation in advance of
the Mussulman _marabout_ who preached the holy war against the Catholics,
raiding, killing, burning, converting by sabre blows and bludgeoning.
Amid these insignificant or violent men, Augustin will endeavour to realize
to the full the admirable type of bishop, at once spiritual father,
protector, and support of his people. He had promised himself to sacrifice
no whit of his ideal of Christian perfection. As bishop, he will remain a
monk, as he did during his priesthood. Beside the monastery established in
Valerius' garden, where it is impossible to receive properly his guests and
visitors, he will start another in the episcopal residence. He will conform
to the monastic rule as far as his duties allow. He will pray, study the
Scriptures, define dogmas, refute heresies. At the same time, he means to
neglect nothing of his material work. He has mouths to feed, property to
look after, law-cases to examine. He will labour at all that. For this
mystic and theorist it means a never-ceasing immolation.
First, to give the poor their daily bread. Like all the communities of that
time, Hippo maintained a population of beggars. Often enough, the diocesan
cash-box was empty. Augustin was obliged to hold out the hand, to deliver
from the height of his pulpit pathetic appeals for charity. Then, there are
hospitals to be built for the sick, a lodging-house for poor wanderers.
The bishop started these institutions in houses bequeathed to the church
of Hippo. For reasons of economy, he thought better not to build. That
would overload his budget. Next came the greatest of all his cares--the
administration of Church property. To increase this property, he stipulated
that his clergy should give up all they possessed in favour of the
community, thus giving the faithful an example of voluntary poverty.
He also accepted gifts from private persons. But he also often refused
these--for example, the bequest of a father or mother, who, in a moment of
anger, disinherited their children. He did not wish to profit by the bad
feelings of parents to plunder orphans. On another side, he objected to
engage the Church in suits at law with the exchequer upon receiving certain
heritages. When a business man at Hippo left to the diocese his share of
profits in the service of boats for carrying Government stores, Augustin
came to the conclusion that it would be better to refuse. In case of
shipwreck, they would be obliged to make good the lost corn to the
Treasury, or else to put the captain and surviving sailors to the torture
to prove that the crew was not responsible for the loss of the ship.
Augustin would not hear tell of it.
"Is it fit," he said, "that a bishop should be a shipowner? . . . A bishop
a torturer? Oh, no; that does not agree at all with a servant of Jesus
Christ. "
The people of Hippo did not share his views. They blamed Augustin's
scruples. They accused him of compromising the interests of the Church. One
day he had to explain himself from the pulpit:
"Well I know, my brothers, that you often say between yourselves: 'Why do
not people give anything to the Church of Hippo? Why do not the dying make
it their heir? The reason is that Bishop Augustin is too easy; he gives all
back to the children; he keeps nothing! ' I acknowledge it, I only accept
gifts which are good and pious. Whoever disinherits his son to make the
Church his heir, let him find somebody willing to accept his gifts. It is
not I who will do it, and by God's grace, I hope it will not be anybody. . . .
Yes, I have refused many legacies, but I have also accepted many. Need I
name them to you? I will give only one instance. I accepted the heritage of
Julian. Why? Because he died without children. . . . "
The listeners thought that their bishop really put too fine a point on
things.
They further reproached him with not knowing how to attract and flatter the
rich benefactors. Augustin would not allow, either, that they had any right
to force a passing stranger to receive the priesthood and consequently to
give up his goods to the poor. All this really was very wise, not only
according to the spirit of the Gospel, but according to human prudence.
If Augustin, for the sake of the good fame of his Church, did not wish to
incur the accusation of grasping and avarice, he dreaded nothing so much
as a law-case. To accept lightly the gifts and legacies offered was to lay
himself open to expensive pettifogging. Far better to refuse than to lose
both his money and reputation. So were reconciled, in this man of prayer
and meditation, practical good sense with the high disinterestedness of the
Christian teaching.
The bishop was disinterested; his people were covetous. The people of those
times wished the Church to grow rich, because they were the first to profit
by its riches. Now these riches were principally in houses and land. The
diocese of Hippo had to deal with many houses and immense _fundi_, upon
which lived an entire population of artisans and freed-men, agricultural
labourers, and even art-workers--smelters, embroiderers, chisellers on
metals. Upon the Church lands, these small people were protected from taxes
and the extortions of the revenue officers, and no doubt they found the
episcopal government more fatherly and mild than the civil.
Augustin, who had made a vow of poverty and given his heritage to the poor,
became by a cruel irony a great landowner as soon as he was elected Bishop
of Hippo. Doubtless he had stewards under him to look after the property
of the diocese. This did not save him from going into details of management
and supervising his agents. He heard the complaints, not only of his
own tenants, but also of those who belonged to other estates and were
victimized by dishonest bailiffs. Anyhow, we have a thousand signs to shew
that no detail of country life was unfamiliar to him.
On horseback or muleback, he rode for miles through the country about
Hippo to visit his vineyards and olivets. He examined, found out things,
questioned the workmen, went into the presses and the mills. He knew the
grape good to eat, and the grape to make wine with. He pointed out where
the ensilage pits had been dug in too marshy land, which endangered the
young corn. As a capable landowner he was abreast of the law, careful
about the terms of contracts. He knew the formulas employed for sales or
benefactions. He saw to it that charcoal was buried around the landmarks in
the fields, so that if the post disappeared, its place could be found. And
as he was a poet, he gathered on his course a whole booty of rural images
which later on went to brighten his sermons. He made ingenious comparisons
with the citron-tree, "which is seen to give flowers and fruits all the
year if it be watered constantly," or else with the goat "who gets upon her
two hind legs to crop the bitter leaves of the wild olive. "
These journeys in the open air, however tiring they might be, were after
all a rest for his overworked brain. But there was one among his episcopal
duties which wearied him to disgust. Every day he had to listen to parties
in dispute and give judgment. Following recent Imperial legislation, the
bishop became judge in civil cases--a tiresome and endless work in a
country where tricky quibbling raged with obstinate fury. The litigants
pursued Augustin, overran his house, like those fellahs in dirty burnous
who block our law-courts with their rags. In the _secretarium_ of the
basilica, or under the portico of the court leading to the church, Augustin
sat like a Mussulman cadi in the court of the mosque.
The emperors had only regulated an old custom of apostolic times in placing
the Christians under the jurisdiction of their bishop. In accordance with
St. Paul's advice, the priests did their utmost to settle differences among
the faithful. Later, when their number had considerably increased, the
Government adopted a system not unlike the "Capitulations" in countries
under the Ottoman suzerainty. Lawsuits between clerics and laymen could not
be equitably judged by civil servants, who were often pagans. Moreover, the
parties based their claims on theological principles or religious laws that
the arbitrator generally knew nothing about. In these conditions, it was
natural enough that the Imperial authority should say to the disputants,
"Fight it out among yourselves".
And it happened, just at the moment when Augustin began to fill the see of
Hippo, that Theodosius broadened still more the judicial prerogatives of
the bishops. The unhappy judge was overwhelmed with law-cases. Every day he
sat till the hour of his meal, and sometimes the whole day when he fasted.
To those who accused him of laziness, he answered:
"I can declare on my soul that if it were question of my own convenience, I
should like much better to work at some manual labour at certain hours of
the day, as the rule is in well-governed monasteries, and have the rest of
the time free to read or pray or meditate upon the Holy Scripture, instead
of being troubled with all the complications and dull talk of lawsuits. "
The rascality of the litigants made him indignant. From the pulpit he gave
them advice full of Christian wisdom, but which could not have been much
relished. A suit at law, according to him, was a loss of time and a cause
of sorrow. It would be better to let the opponent have the money, than to
lose time and be filled with uneasiness. Nor was this, added the preacher
in all good faith, to encourage injustice; for the robber would be robbed
in his turn by a greater robber than himself.
These reasons seemed only moderately convincing. The pettifoggers did not
get discouraged. On the contrary, they infested the bishop with their
pleas. As soon as he appeared, they rushed up to him in a mob, surrounded
him, kissed his hand and his shoulder, protesting their respect and
obedience, urging him, constraining him to busy himself about their
affairs. Augustin yielded. But the next day in a vehement sermon he cried
out to them:
_Discedite a me, maligni! _--"Go far from me, ye wicked ones, and let me
study in peace the commandments of my God! "
II
WHAT WAS HEARD IN THE BASILICA OF PEACE
Let us try to see Augustin in his pulpit and in his episcopal city.
We cannot do much more than reconstruct them by analogy. Royal Hippo is
utterly gone. Bona, which has taken its place, is about a mile and a half
away, and the fragments which have been dug out of the soil of the dead
city are very inadequate. But Africa is full of Christian ruins, and
chiefly of basilicas. Rome has nothing equal to offer. And that is easily
understood. The Roman basilicas, always living, have been changed in the
course of centuries, and have put on, time after time, the garb forced upon
them by the fashion. Those of Africa have remained just as they were--at
least in their principal lines--on the morrow of the Arab invasion, as
Augustin's eyes had seen them. They are ruins, no doubt, and some very
mutilated, but ruins of which no restoration has altered the plan or
changed the features.
As the traces of Hippo and its church are swept away or deeply buried, we
are obliged, in order to get some approximate idea, to turn towards another
African town which has suffered less from time and devastation. Theveste
with its basilica, the best preserved, the finest and largest in all
Africa, can restore to us a little of the look and colour and atmosphere of
Hippo in those final years of the fourth century.
Ancient Theveste was much larger than the present town, the French Tebessa.
This, even reduced to the perimeter of the Byzantine fortress built under
Justinian, still surprises the traveller by its singularly original aspect.
Amid the wide plains of alfa-grass which surround it, with its quadrangular
enclosure, its roads on the projection of the walls behind the battlements,
its squat turrets, it has a look as archaic, as strange, as our own
Aigues-Mortes amid its marshy fen. Nothing can be more rich and joyous to
the eye than the rust which covers its ruins--a complete gilding that one
would say had been laid on by the hand of man.
It has a little temple which is a wonder and has been compared to the
ancient Roman temple--the _Maison Carrée_--at Nîmes. But how much warmer,
more living are the stones! The shafts of the columns, and the pilasters of
the peristyle, barked by time, seem as scaly and full of sap as the trunks
of palm-trees. The carved acanthus-leaves in the capitals of the pillars
droop like bunches of palms reddened by the summer.
Quite near, at the end of a narrow street, lined with modern and squalid
hovels, the triumphal arch of Septimus Severus and of Caracalla extends its
luminous bow; and high above the heavy mass of architecture, resting upon
slim aerial little columns, a buoyant _ædiculus_ shines like a coral
tabernacle or a coffer of yellow ivory.
All about, forms in long draperies are huddled. The Numidian burnous has
the whiteness of the toga. It has also the same graceful folds. At the
sight of them you suddenly feel yourself to be in a strange land--carried
back very far across the centuries. No sooner is the vision of antiquity
outlined than it grows firm. Down below there, a horseman, clad in white,
is framed with his white horse in the moulded cincture of a door. He
passes, and upon the white wall of the near tower his shadow rests a
moment, like a bas-relief upon the marble of a frieze.
Beyond the Byzantine enclosure, the basilica, with its minor buildings,
forms another town almost as large as the present Theveste, and also closed
in by a belt of towers and ramparts. One is immediately struck by the
opulent colour of the stones--rose, grown pale and thinner in the sun; and
next, by the solid workmanship and the structural finish. The stones, as
in the Greek temples, are placed on top of one another in regular layers:
the whole holds together by the weight of the blocks and the polish of the
surfaces.
The proportions are on a large scale. There was no grudging for the
buildings, or the materials, or the land. In front of the basilica is a
wide rectangular court bordered with terraces; a portico at the far end;
and in the middle four large fountains to water the walk. A flagged avenue,
closed by two gateways, divides this court from the basilica, properly so
called, which is reached by a staircase between two columns. The staircase
leads to the _atrium_ decorated by a Corinthian portico. In the centre
is the font for purifications, a huge monolithic bason in the shape of a
four-leaved clover. Three doors give entrance from the _atrium_ to the
basilica, which is divided by rows of green marble columns into three
aisles. The galleries spread out along the side aisles. The floor was in
mosaic. In the apse, behind the altar, stood the bishop's throne.
Around the main building clustered a great number of others: a baptistry;
many chapels (one vaulted in the shape of a three-leaved clover) dedicated,
probably, to local martyrs; a graveyard; a convent with its cells, and its
windows narrow as loop-holes; stables, sheds, and barns. Sheltered within
its walls and towers, amid its gardens and outbuildings, the basilica of
Theveste thus early resembled one of our great monasteries of the Middle
Age, and also in certain ways the great mosques of Islam--the one at
Cordova, or that at Damascus, with their vestibules surrounded by arcades,
their basons for purification, and their walks bordered with orange-trees.
The faithful and the pilgrims were at home there. They might spend the day
stretched upon the flags of the porticoes, in loafing or sleeping in the
blue shade of the columns and the cool of the fountains. In the full sense
of the word, the church was the House of God, open to all.
Very likely the basilicas at Hippo had neither the size nor the splendour
of this one. Nor were there very many. At the time Augustin was ordained
priest, that is to say, when the Donatists had still a majority in the
town, it seems clear that the orthodox community owned but one single
church, the _Basilica major_, or Basilica of Peace. Its very name proves
this. With the schismatics, "Peace" was the official name for Catholicism.
"Basilica of Peace" meant simply "Catholic Basilica. " Was not this as
much as to say that the others belonged to the dissenters?
