The young professor admired in Bishop Ambrose all the
glory that he was ambitious of, and all that he already believed himself
to be.
glory that he was ambitious of, and all that he already believed himself
to be.
Bertrand - Saint Augustin
Silk was then fashionable, and so
were precious stones, enamels, heavy goldsmiths' work. Rows of rings were
worn on each finger. People took the air in silk robes, held together by
brooches carved in the figures of animals, a parasol in one hand, and a fan
with gold fringes in the other. The costumes and fashions of Constantinople
encroached upon the old Rome and the rest of the Western world.
Immense fortunes, which had gathered in the hands of certain people, either
through inheritance or swindling, enabled them to keep up a senseless
expenditure. Like the American millionaires of to-day, who have their
houses and properties in both hemispheres, these great Roman lords
possessed them in every country in the Empire. Symmachus, who was Prefect
of the City when Augustin was in Rome, had considerable estates not only in
Italy and in Sicily, but even in Mauretania. And yet, in spite of all their
wealth and all the privileges they enjoyed, these rich people were neither
happy nor at ease. At the least suspicion of a despotic power, their lives
and property were threatened. Accusations of magic, of disrespect to
the Cæsar, of plots against the Emperor--any pretext was good to plunder
them. During the preceding reign, that of the pitiless Valentinian, the
Roman nobility had been literally decimated by the executioner. A certain
vice-Prefect, Maximinus, had gained a sinister reputation for cleverness in
the art of manufacturing suspects. By his orders, a basket at the end of a
string was hung out from one of the windows of the Prætorium, into which
denunciations might be cast. The basket was in use day and night.
It is clear that at the time that Augustin settled in Rome this abominable
system was a little moderated. But accusation by detectives was always in
the air. And living in this atmosphere of mistrust, hypocrisy, bribery, and
cruelty--small wonder if the Carthaginian fell into bitter reflections upon
Roman corruption. However impressive from the front, the Empire was not
nice to look at close at hand.
But Augustin was, above all, home-sick. When he strolled tinder the shady
trees of the Janiculum or Sallust's gardens, he already said to himself
what he would repeat later to his listeners at Hippo: "Take an African, put
him in a place cool and green, and he won't stay there. He will feel he
must go away and come back to his blazing desert. " As for himself, he had
something better to regret than a blazing desert. In front of the City of
Gold, stretched out at his feet, and the horizon of the Sabine Hills, he
remembered the feminine softness of the twilights upon the Lake of Tunis,
the enchantment of moonlit nights upon the Gulf of Carthage, and that
astonishing landscape to be discovered from the height of the terrace of
Byrsa, which all the grandeur of the Roman _campagna_ could not make him
forget.
II
THE FINAL DISILLUSION
'The new professor had managed to secure a certain number of pupils whom
he gathered together in his rooms. He could make enough to live at Rome
by himself, if he could not support there the woman and child he had left
behind at Carthage. In this matter of finding work, his host and his
Manichee friends had done him some very good turns. Although forced to
conceal their beliefs since the edict of Theodosius, there were a good many
Manichees in the city. They formed an occult Church, strongly organized,
and its adepts had relations with all classes of Roman society. Possibly
Augustin presented himself as one driven out of Africa by the persecution.
Some compensation would be owing to this young man who had suffered for the
good cause.
It was his friend Alypius, "the brother of his heart," who, having preceded
him to Rome to study law at his parents' wishes, now was the most useful in
helping Augustin to make himself known and find pupils. Himself a Manichee,
converted by Augustin, and a member of one of the leading families in
Thagaste, he had not long to wait for an important appointment in the
Imperial administration. He was assessor to the Treasurer-General, or
"Count of the Italian Bounty Office," and decided fiscal questions. Thanks
to his influence, as well as to his acquaintances among the Manichees, he
was a valuable friend for the new arrival, a friend who could aid him, not
only with his purse, but with advice. Without much capacity for theorizing,
this Alypius was a practical spirit, a straight and essentially honest
soul, whose influence was excellent for his impetuous friend. Of very
chaste habits, he urged Augustin to restraint. And even in abstract
studies, the religious controversies which Augustin dragged him into, his
strong good sense moderated the imaginative dashes, the overmuch subtilty
which sometimes led the other beyond healthy reason.
Unhappily they were both very busy--the judge and the rhetorician--and
although their friendship became still greater during this stay in Rome,
they were not able to see each other as much as they desired. Their
pleasures, too, were perhaps not the same. Augustin did not in the least
care about being chaste, and Alypius had a passion for the amphitheatre--a
passion which his friend disapproved of. Some time earlier, at Carthage,
Augustin had filled him with disgust of the circus. But hardly was Alypius
arrived in Rome, than he became mad about the gladiatorial shows. Some
fellow-students took him to the amphitheatre, almost by force. Thereupon,
he said that he would stay, since they had dragged him there; but he bet
that he would keep his eyes shut all through the fight, and that nothing
could make him open them. He sat down on the benches with those who had
brought him, his eyelids pressed down, refusing to look. Suddenly there was
a roar of shouting, the shout of the crowd hailing the fall of the first
wounded. His lids parted of themselves; he saw the flow of blood. "At the
sight of the blood" says Augustin, "he drank in ruthlessness; no longer
did he turn away, but fixed his gaze, and he became mad--and he knew no
more. . . . He was fascinated by the criminal atrocity of this battle, and
drunk with the pleasure of blood. "
These breathless phrases of the _Confessions_ seem to throb still with the
wild frenzy of the crowd. They convey to us directly the kind of Sadic
excitement which people went to find about the arena. Really, a wholesome
sight for future Christians, for all the souls that the brutality of
pagan customs revolted! The very year that Augustin was at Rome, certain
prisoners of war, Sarmatian soldiers, condemned to kill each other in the
amphitheatre, chose suicide rather than this shameful death. There was in
this something to make him reflect--him and his friends. The fundamental
injustices whereon the ancient world rested--the crushing of the slave
and the conquered, the contempt for human life--these things they touched
with the finger when they looked on at the butcheries in the amphitheatre.
All those whose hearts sickened with disgust and horror before these
slaughter-house scenes, all those who longed for a little more mildness, a
little more justice, were all recruits marked out for the peaceful army of
the Christ.
For Alypius, especially, it was not a bad thing to have known this
blood-drunkenness at first hand: he shall be only the more ashamed when
he falls at the feet of the merciful God. Equally useful was it for him
to have personal experience of the harshness of men's justice; and in the
fulfilment of his duties as a judge to observe its errors and flaws. While
he was a student at Carthage he just escaped being condemned to death upon
a false accusation of theft--the theft of a piece of lead! Already they
were dragging him, if not to the place of capital punishment, at least to
prison, when a chance meeting with a friend of his who was a senator saved
him from the threatening mob. At Rome, while Assessor to the Count of the
Italian Bounty Office, he had to resist an attempt to bribe him, and by
doing so risked losing his appointment, and, no doubt, something worse
too. Official venality and dishonesty were evils so deeply rooted, that
he himself nearly succumbed. He wanted some books copied, and he had the
temptation to get this done at the charge of the Treasury. This peculation
had, in his eyes, a good enough excuse, and it was certain to go
undetected. Nevertheless, when he thought it over he changed his mind, and
virtuously refrained from giving himself a library at the expense of the
State.
Augustin, who relates these anecdotes, draws the same moral from them as
we do, to wit--that for a man who was going to be a bishop and, as such,
administrator and judge, this time spent in the Government service was a
good preparatory school. Most of the other great leaders of this generation
of Christians had also been officials; before ordination, they had been
mixed up in business and politics, and had lived freely the life of their
century. So it was with St. Ambrose, with St. Paulinus of Nola, with
Augustin himself, and Evodius and Alypius, his friends.
And yet, however absorbed in their work the two Africans might be, it
is pretty near certain that intellectual questions took the lead of
all others. This is manifest in Augustin's case at least. He must have
astonished the good Alypius when he got to Rome by acknowledging that he
hardly believed in Manicheeism any longer. And he set forth his doubts
about their masters' cosmogony and physical science, his suspicions
touching the hidden immorality of the sect. As for himself, the
controversies, which were the Manichees' strong point, did not dazzle him
any longer. At Carthage, but lately, he had heard a Catholic, a certain
Helpidius, oppose to them arguments from Scripture, which they were unable
to refute. To make matters worse, the Manichee Bishop of Rome made a bad
impression on him from the very outset. This man, he tells us, was of rough
appearance, without culture or polite manners. Doubtless this unmannerly
peasant, in his reception of the young professor, had not shewn himself
sufficiently alive to his merits, and the professor felt aggrieved.
From then, his keen dialectic and his satirical spirit (Augustin had
formidable powers of ridicule all through his life) were exercised upon
the backs of his fellow-religionists. Provisionally, he had admitted
as indisputable the basic principles of Manicheeism: first of all, the
primordial antagonism of the two substances, the God of Light and the God
of Darkness; then, this other dogma, that particles of that Divine Light,
which had been carried away in a temporary victory of the army of Darkness,
were immersed in certain plants and liquors. Hence, the distinction they
made between clean and unclean food. All those foods were pure which
contained some part of the Divine Light; impure, those which did not. The
purity of food became evident by certain qualities of taste, smell, and
appearance. But now Augustin found a good deal of arbitrariness in these
distinctions, and a good deal of simplicity in the belief that the Divine
Light dwelt in a vegetable. "Are they not ashamed," he said, "to search God
with their palates or with their nose? And if His presence is revealed by
a special brilliancy, by the goodness of the taste or the smell, why allow
that dish and condemn this, which is of equal savour, light, and perfume?
"Yea, why do they look upon the golden melon as come out of God's
treasure-house, and yet will have none of the golden fat of the ham or the
yellow of an egg? Why does the whiteness of lettuce proclaim to them the
Divinity, and the whiteness of cream nothing at all? And why this horror
of meat? For, look you, roast sucking-pig offers us a brilliant colour, an
agreeable smell, and an appetizing taste--sure signs, according to them, of
the Divine Presence. ". . . Once started on this topic, Augustin's vivacity
has no limits. He even drops into jokes which would offend modern
shamefacedness by their Aristophanic breadth.
These arguments, to say the truth, did not shake the foundations of the
doctrine, and if a doctrine must be judged according to its works, the
Manichees might entrench themselves behind their rigid moral rules, and
their conduct. Contrary to the more accommodating Catholicism, they paraded
a puritan intolerance. But Augustin had found out at Carthage that this
austerity was for the most part hypocrisy. At Rome he was thoroughly
enlightened.
The Elect of the religion made a great impression by their fasts and their
abstinence from meat. Now it became clear that these devout personages,
under pious pretexts, literally destroyed themselves by over-eating and
indigestion. They held, in fact, that the chief work of piety consisted in
setting free particles of the Divine Light, imprisoned in matter by the
wiles of the God of Darkness. They being the Pure, they purified matter by
absorbing it into their bodies. The faithful brought them stores of fruit
and vegetables, served them with real feasts, so that by eating these
things they might liberate a little of the Divine Substance. Of course,
they abstained from all flesh, flesh being the dwelling-place of the Dark
God, and also from fermented wine, which they called "the devil's gall. "
But how they made up for it over the rest! Augustin makes great fun of
these people who would think it a sin if they took as a full meal a small
bit of bacon and cabbage, with two or three mouthfuls of undiluted wine,
and yet ordered to be served up, from three o'clock in the afternoon, all
kinds of fruit and vegetables, the most exquisite too, rendered piquant
by spices, the Manichees holding that spices were very full of fiery and
luminous principles. Then, their palates titillating from pepper, they
swallowed large draughts of mulled wine or wine and honey, and the juice
of oranges, lemons, and grapes. And these junketings began over again at
nightfall. They had a preference for certain cakes, and especially for
truffles and mushrooms--vegetables more particularly mystic.
Such a diet put human gluttony to a heavy test. Many a scandal came to
light in the Roman community. The Elect made themselves sick by devouring
the prodigious quantity of good cheer brought to them with a view to
purification. As it was a sacrilege to let any be lost, the unhappy people
forced themselves to get down the lot. There were even victims: children,
gorged with delicacies, died of stuffing. For children, being innocent
things, were deemed to have quite special purifying virtues.
Augustin was beginning to get indignant at all this nonsense. Still, except
for these extravagances, he continued to believe in the asceticism of the
Elect--asceticism of such severity that the main part of the faithful found
it impossible to practise. And see! just at this moment, whom should he
discover very strange things about but Bishop Faustus, that Faustus whom he
had looked for at Carthage as a Messiah. The holy man, while he preached
renunciation, granted himself a good many indulgences: he lay, for one
thing, on feathers, or upon soft goatskin rugs. And these puritans were not
even honest. The Manichee Bishop of Rome, that man of rough manners who had
so offended Augustin, was on the point of being convicted of stealing the
general cash-box. Lastly, there were rumours in the air, accusing the Elect
of giving themselves over to reprehensible practices in their private
meetings. They condemned marriage and child-bearing as works of the devil,
but they authorized fornication, and even, it is said, certain acts against
nature. That, for Augustin, was the final disillusion.
In spite of it, he did not separate openly from the sect. He kept his
rank of _auditor_ in the Manichee Church. What held him to it, were some
plausible considerations on the intellectual side. Manicheeism, with its
distinction of two Principles, accounted conveniently for the problem of
evil and human responsibility. Neither God nor man was answerable for sin
and pain, since it was the other, the Dark Principle, who distributed
them through the world among men. Augustin, who continued to sin,
continued likewise to be very comfortable with such a system of morals and
metaphysics. Besides, he was not one of those convinced, downright minds
who feel the need to quarrel noisily with what they take to be error.
No one has opposed heresies more powerfully, and with a more tireless
patience, than he has. But he always put some consideration into the
business. He knew by experience how easy it is to fall into error, and he
said this charitably to those whom he wished to persuade. There was nothing
about him like St. Jerome.
Personal reasons, moreover, obliged him not to break with his
fellow-religionists who had supported him, nursed him even, on his arrival
at Rome, and who, as we shall see in a moment, might still do him services.
Augustin was not, like his friend Alypius, a practical mind, but he had
tact, and in spite of all the impulsiveness and mettle of his nature,
a certain suppleness which enabled him to manoeuvre without too many
collisions in the midst of the most embarrassing conjunctures. Through
instinctive prudence he prolonged his indecision. Little by little, he who
had formerly flung himself so enthusiastically in pursuit of Truth, glided
into scepticism--the scepticism of the Academics in its usual form.
And at the same time that he lost his taste for speculative thinking, new
annoyances in his profession put the finishing touch on his discouragement.
If the Roman students were less noisy than those of Carthage, they had a
deplorable habit of walking off and leaving their masters unpaid. Augustin
was ere long victimized in this way: he lost his time and his words. As at
Carthage, so at Rome, he had to face the fact that he could not live by his
profession. What was he to do? Would he have to go back home? He had fallen
into despair, when an unforeseen chance turned up for him.
The town council of Milan threw open a professorship of Rhetoric to public
competition. It would be salvation for him if he could get appointed. For
a long time he had wanted a post in the State education. In receipt of a
fixed salary, he would no longer have to worry about beating up a class,
or to guard against the dishonesty of his pupils. He put his name down
immediately among the candidates. But no more in those days than in ours
was simple merit by itself enough. It was necessary to pull strings. His
friends the Manichees undertook to do this for him. They urged his claims
warmly on the Prefect Symmachus, who doubtless presided at the competitive
trials. By an amusing irony of fate, Augustin owed his place to people he
was getting ready to separate from, whom even he was soon going to attack,
and also to a man who was in a way the official enemy of Christianity.
The pagan Symmachus appointing to an important post a future Catholic
bishop--there is matter for surprise in that! But Symmachus, who had been
Proconsul at Carthage, protected the Africans in Rome. Furthermore, it
is likely that the Manichees represented their candidate to him as a man
hostile to Catholics. Now in this year, A. D. 384, the Prefect had just
begun an open struggle with the Catholics. He believed, therefore, that he
made a good choice in appointing Augustin.
So a chain of events, with which his will had hardly anything to do,
was going to draw the young rhetorician to Milan--yes, and how much
farther! --to where he did not want to go, to where the prayers of Monnica
summoned him unceasingly: "Where I am, there shall you be also. " When he
was leaving Rome, he did not much expect that. What he chiefly thought of
was that he had at last won an independent financial position, and that he
was become an official of some importance. He had a flattering evidence
of this at once: It was at the expense of the city of Milan and in the
Imperial carriages that he travelled through Italy to take up his new post.
III
THE MEETING BETWEEN AMBROSE AND AUGUSTIN
Before he left Rome, and during his journey to Milan, Augustin must have
recalled more than once the verses of Terence which his friend Marcianus
had quoted by way of encouragement and advice the night he set sail for
Italy:
"This day which brings to thee another life
Demands that thou another man shalt be. "
He was thirty years old. The time of youthful wilfulness was over. Age,
disappointments, the difficulties of life, had developed his character.
He was now become a man of position, an eminent official, in a very large
city which was the second capital of the Western Empire and the principal
residence of the Court. If he wished to avoid further set-backs in his
career, it behoved him to choose a line of conduct carefully thought out.
And first of all, it was time to get rid of Manicheeism. A Manichee would
have made a scandal in a city where the greatest part of the population
was Christian, and the Court was Catholic, although it did not conceal
its sympathy with Arianism. It was a long time now since Augustin had
been a Manichee in his heart. Accordingly, he was not obliged to feign
in order to re-enter a Church which already included him formally among
its catechumens. Doubtless he was a very lukewarm catechumen, since at
intervals he inclined to scepticism. But he thought it decent to remain,
at least for the time being, in the Catholic body, in which his mother had
brought him up, until the day when some sure light should arise to direct
his path. Now St. Ambrose was at that time the Catholic Bishop of Milan.
Augustin was very eager to gain his goodwill. Ambrose was an undoubted
political power, an important personage, a celebrated orator whose renown
was shed all across the Roman world. He belonged to an illustrious family.
His father had been Prætorian prefect of Gaul. He himself, with the
title of Consul, was governing the provinces of Emilia and Liguria when
the Milanese forced him, much against his will, to become their bishop.
Baptized, ordained priest, and consecrated, one on top of the other, it
was only apparently that he gave up his civil functions. From the height
of his episcopal throne he always personified the highest authority in the
country.
As soon as he arrived at Milan, Augustin hurried to call upon his bishop.
Knowing him as we do, he must have approached Ambrose in a great transport
of enthusiasm. His imagination, too, was kindled. In his thought this was
a man of letters, an orator, a famous writer, almost a fellow-worker, that
he was going to see.
The young professor admired in Bishop Ambrose all the
glory that he was ambitious of, and all that he already believed himself
to be. He fancied, that however great might be the difference in their
positions, he would find himself at once on an equal footing with this high
personage, and would have a familiar talk with him, as he used to have at
Carthage with the Proconsul Vindicianus. He told himself also that Ambrose
was a priest, that is to say, a doctor of souls: he meant to open to him
all his spiritual wretchedness, the anguish of his mind and heart. He
expected consolation from him, if not cure.
Well, he was mistaken. Although in all his writings he speaks of "the holy
Bishop of Milan" with feelings of sincere respect and admiration, he lets
it be understood that his expectations were not realized. If the Manichean
bishop of Rome had offended him by his rough manners, Ambrose disconcerted
him alike by his politeness, his kindliness, and by the reserve,
perhaps involuntarily haughty, of his reception. "He received me," says
Augustin, "like a father, and as a bishop he was pleased enough at my
coming:"--_peregrinationem meam satis episcopaliter dilexit_. This _satis
episcopaliter_ looks very like a sly banter at the expense of the saint. It
is infinitely probable that St. Ambrose received Augustin, not exactly as a
man of no account, but still, as a sheep of his flock, and not as a gifted
orator, and that, in short, he shewed him the same "episcopal" benevolence
as he had from a sense of duty for all his hearers. It is possible too
that Ambrose was on his guard from the outset with this African, appointed
a municipal professor through the good offices of the pagan Symmachus,
his personal enemy. In the opinion of the Italian Catholics, nothing
good came from Carthage: these Carthaginians were generally Manichees
or Donatists--sectaries the more dangerous because they claimed to be
orthodox, and, mingling with the faithful, hypocritically contaminated
them. And then Ambrose, the great lord, the former Governor of Liguria, the
counsellor of the Emperors, may not have quite concealed a certain ironic
commiseration for this "dealer in words," this young rhetorician who was
still puffed up with his own importance.
Be this as it will, it was a lesson in humility that St. Ambrose, without
intending it, gave to Augustin. The lesson was not understood. The rhetoric
professor gathered only one thing from the visit, which was, that the
Bishop of Milan had received him well. And as human vanity immediately
lends vast significance to the least advances of distinguished or powerful
persons, Augustin felt thankful for it. He began to love Ambrose almost as
much as he admired him, and he admired him for reasons altogether worldly.
"Ambrose I counted one of the happy ones of this world, because he was held
in such honour by the great. " The qualification which immediately follows
shews naively enough the sensual Augustin's state of mind at that time:
"Only it seemed to me that celibacy must be a heavy burthen upon him. "
In those years the Bishop of Milan might, indeed, pass for a happy man
in the eyes of the world. He was the friend of the very glorious and
very victorious Theodosius; he had been the adviser of the young Emperor
Gratian, but lately assassinated; and although the Empress Justina, devoted
to the Arians, plotted against him, he had still great influence in the
council of Valentinian II--a little Emperor thirteen years old, whom a
Court of pagans and Arians endeavoured to draw into an anti-Catholic
reaction.
Almost as soon as Augustin arrived in Milan, he was able to see for himself
the great authority and esteem which Ambrose possessed, the occasion being
a dispute which made a great noise.
Two years earlier, Gratian had had the statue and altar of _Victory_
removed from the _Curia_, declaring that this pagan emblem and its
accompaniments no longer served any purpose in an assembly of which the
majority was Christian. By the same stroke, he suppressed the incomes of
the sacerdotal colleges with all their privileges, particularly those of
the Vestals; confiscated for the revenue the sums granted for the exercise
of religion; seized the property of the temples; and forbade the priests
to receive bequests of real estate. This meant the complete separation
of the State and the ancient religion. The pagan minority in the Senate,
with Symmachus, the Prefect, at its head, protested against this edict.
A deputation was sent to Milan to place the pagan grievances before
the Emperor. Gratian refused to receive them. It was thought that his
successor, Valentinian II, being feebler, would be more obliging. A new
senatorial committee presented themselves with a petition drawn up by
Symmachus--a genuine piece of oratory which Ambrose himself admired, or
pretended to admire. This speech made a deep impression when it was read
in the Imperial Council. But Ambrose intervened with all his eloquence.
He demanded that the common law should be applied equally to pagans as to
Christians, and it was he who won the day. _Victory_ was not replaced in
the Roman _Curia_, neither were the goods of the temples returned.
Augustin must have been very much struck by this advantage which
Catholicism had gained. It became clear that henceforth this was to be
the State religion. And he who envied so much the fortunate of the world,
might take note, besides, that the new religion brought, along with the
faith, riches and honours to its adepts. At Rome he had listened to the
disparaging by pagans and his Manichee friends of the popes and their
clergy. They made fun of the fashionable clerics and legacy hunters. It was
related that the Roman Pontiff, servant of the God of the poor, maintained
a gorgeous establishment, and that his table rivalled the Imperial table in
luxury. The prefect Prætextatus, a resolute pagan, said scoffingly to Pope
Damasus: "Make me Bishop of Rome, and I'll become a Christian at once. "
Certainly, commonplace human reasons can neither bring about nor account
for a sincere conversion. Conversion is a divine work. But human reasons,
arranged by a mysterious Will with regard to this work, may at least
prepare a soul for it. Anyhow, it cannot be neglected that Augustin, coming
to Milan full of ambitious plans, there saw Catholicism treated with so
much importance in the person of Ambrose. This religion, which till then he
had despised, now appeared to him as a triumphant religion worth serving.
But though such considerations might attract Augustin's attention, they
took no hold on his conscience. It was well enough for an intriguer about
the Court to get converted from self-interest. As for him, he wanted all or
nothing; the chief good in his eyes was certainty and truth. He scarcely
believed in this any longer, and surely had no hope of finding it among
the Catholics; but still he went to hear Ambrose's sermons. He went in the
first place as a critic of language, with the rather jealous curiosity of
the trained man who watches how another man does it. He wanted to judge
himself if the sacred orator was as good as his reputation. The firm and
substantial eloquence of this former official, this statesman who was more
than anything a man of action, immediately got control of the frivolous
rhetorician. To be sure, he did not find in Ambrose's sermons the
exhilaration or the verbal caress which had captivated him in those of
Faustus the Manichean; but yet they had a persuasive grace which held him.
Augustin heard the bishop with pleasure. Still, if he liked to hear him
talk, he remained contemptuous of the doctrine he preached.
Then, little by little, this doctrine forced itself on his meditations:
he perceived that it was more serious than he had thought hitherto, or,
at least, that it could be defended. Ambrose had started in Italy the
exegetical methods of the Orientals. He discovered in Scripture allegorical
meanings, sometimes edifying, sometimes deep, always satisfying for a
reasonable mind. Augustin, who was inclined to subtilty, much relished
these explanations which, if ingenious, were often forced. The Bible
no longer seemed to him so absurd. Finally, the immoralities which the
Manichees made such a great point of against the Holy Writ, were justified,
according to Ambrose, by historical considerations: what God did not allow
to-day, He allowed formerly by reason of the conditions of existence.
However, though the Bible might be neither absurd nor contrary to morals,
this did not prove that it was true. Augustin found no outlet for his
doubts.
He would have been glad to have Ambrose help him to get rid of them. Many a
time he tried to have a talk with him about these things. But the Bishop of
Milan was so very busy a personage! "I could not ask him," says Augustin,
"what I wanted as I wanted, because the shoals of busy people who consulted
him about their affairs, and to whose infirmities he ministered, came
between me and his ear and lips. And in the few moments when he was not
thus surrounded, he was refreshing either his body with needful food, or
his mind with reading. While he read his eye wandered along the page and
his heart searched out the meaning, but his voice and his tongue were at
rest. Often when we attended (for the door was open to all, and no one was
announced), we saw him reading silently, but never otherwise, and after
sitting for some time without speaking (_for who would presume to trouble
one so occupied? _) we went away again. We divined that, for the little
space of time which was all that he could secure for the refreshment of his
mind, he allowed himself a holiday from the distraction of other people's
business, and did not wish to be interrupted; _and perhaps he was afraid
lest eager listeners should invite him to explain the harder passages of
his author, or to enter upon the discussion of difficult topics_, and
hinder him from perusing as many volumes as he wished. . . . _Of course
the reason that guided a man of such remarkable virtue must have been
good. . . . _"
Nobody could comment more subtly--nor, be it said also, more
maliciously--the attitude of St. Ambrose towards Augustin, than Augustin
himself does it here. At the time he wrote this page, the events he was
relating had happened a long time ago. But he is a Christian, and, in his
turn, he is a bishop: he understands now what he could not understand
then. He feels thoroughly at heart that if Ambrose withdrew himself, it
was because the professor of rhetoric was not in a state of mind to have a
profitable discussion with a believer: he lacked the necessary humility of
heart and intellect. But at the moment, he must have taken things in quite
another way, and have felt rather hurt, not to say more, at the bishop's
apparent indifference.
Just picture a young writer of to-day, pretty well convinced of his value,
but uneasy about his future, coming to ask advice of an older man already
famous--well, Augustin's advances to Ambrose were not unlike that, save
that they had a much more serious character, since it was not a question of
literature, but of the salvation of a soul. At this period, what Augustin
saw in Ambrose, even when he consulted him on sacred matters, was chiefly
the orator, that is to say, a rather older rival. . . . He enters. He is shewn
into the private room of the great man, without being announced, _like any
ordinary person_. The great man does not lay aside his book to greet him,
does not even speak a word to him. . . . What would the official professor of
Rhetoric to the City of Milan think of such a reception? One can make out
clearly enough through the lines of the _Confessions_. He said to himself
that Ambrose, being a bishop, had charge of souls, and he was surprised
that the bishop, no matter how great a lord he might be, made no attempt
whatever to offer him spiritual aid. And as he was still devoid of
Christian charity, no doubt he thought too that Ambrose was conscious
that he had not the ability to wrestle with a dialectician of Augustin's
strength, and that, into the bargain, the prelate was to seek in knowledge
of the Scriptures. And, in truth, Ambrose had been made a bishop so
suddenly that he must have found himself obliged to improvise a hasty
knowledge. Anyhow, Augustin concluded that if he refused to discuss, it was
because he was afraid of being at a disadvantage.
Very surely St. Ambrose had no notion of what the catechumen was thinking.
He soared too high to trouble about miserable stings to self-respect. In
his ministry he was for all alike, and he would have thought it against
Christian equality to shew any special favour to Augustin. If, in the brief
talks he had with the young rhetorician, he was able to gather anything of
his character, he could not have formed a very favourable opinion of it.
The high-strung temperament of the African, these vague yearnings of the
spirit, these sterile melancholies, this continual temporizing before the
faith--all that could only displease Ambrose, the practical Roman, the
official used all his life to command.
However that was, Augustin, in following years, never allowed himself the
least reproach towards Ambrose. On the contrary, everywhere he loads him
with praise, quotes him repeatedly in his treatises, and takes refuge on
his authority. He calls him his "father. " But once, when he is speaking
of the spiritual desolation in which he was plunged at Milan, there does
escape him something like a veiled complaint which appears to be aimed at
Ambrose. After recalling the eagerness with which he sought truth in those
days, he adds: "If any one could have been found then to trouble about
instructing me, he would have had a most willing and docile pupil. "
This phrase, in such marked contrast with so many laudatory passages in
the _Confessions_ about St. Ambrose, seems to be indeed a statement of
the plain truth. If God made use of Ambrose to convert Augustin, it is
nevertheless likely that Ambrose personally did nothing, or very little, to
bring about this conversion.
IV
PLANS OF MARRIAGE
But even as he draws nearer the goal, Augustin would appear, on the
contrary, to get farther away from it. Such are God's secret paces, Who
snatches souls like a thief: He drops on them without warning. Till the
very eve of the day when Christ shall come to take him, Augustin will be
all taken up with the world and the care of making a good figure in it.
Although Ambrose's sermons stimulated him to reflect upon the great
historical reality which Christianity is, he had as yet but dim glimpses
of it. He had given up his superficial unbelief, and yet did not believe
in anything definite. He drifted into a sort of agnosticism compounded of
mental indolence and discouragement. When he scrutinized his conscience to
the depths, the most he could find was a belief in the existence of God and
His providence--quite abstract ideas which he was incapable of enlivening.
But whatever was the use of speculating upon Truth and the Sovereign Good!
The main thing to do was to live.
Now that his future was certain, Augustin endeavoured to arrange his life
with a view to his tranquillity. He had no longer very large ambitions.
What he principally wanted to do was to create for himself a nice little
existence, peaceful and agreeable, one might almost say, middle-class. His
present fortune, although small, was still enough for that, and he was in a
hurry to enjoy it.
Accordingly, he had not been long in Milan ere he sent for his mistress and
his son. He had rented an apartment in a house which gave on a garden. The
owner, who did not live there, allowed him the use of the whole house. A
house, the dream of the sage! And a garden in Virgil's country! Augustin,
the professor, should have been wonderfully happy. His mother soon joined
him. Gradually a whole tribe of Africans came down on him, and took
advantage of his hospitality. Here was his brother, Navigius, his two
cousins, Rusticus and Lastidianus, his friend Alypius, who could not make
up his mind to part from him, and probably Nebridius, another of his
Carthage friends. Nothing could be more in harmony with the customs of the
time. The Rhetorician to the City of Milan had a post which would pass
for superb in the eyes of his poor relations. He was acquainted with very
important people, and had access to the Imperial Court, whence favours and
bounties came. Immediately, the family ran to put themselves under his
protection and be enrolled beneficiaries, to get what they could out of
his new fortune and credit. And then these immigrations of Africans and
Orientals into the northern countries always come about in the same way. It
is enough if one of them gets on there: he becomes immediately the drop of
ink on the blotting-paper.
The most important person in this little African phalanstery was
unquestionably Monnica, who had taken in hand the moral and material
control of the house. She was not very old--not quite fifty-four--but she
wanted to be in her own country. That she should have left it, and faced
the weariness of a long journey over sea and land, she must have had very
serious reasons. The poverty into which she had fallen since the death of
her husband would not be an adequate explanation of her departure from
her native land. She had still some small property at Thagaste; she could
have lived there. The true motives of her departure were of an altogether
different order. First of all, she passionately loved her son, to the point
that she was not able to live away from him. Let us recall Augustin's
touching words: "For she loved to keep me with her, as mothers are wont,
yes, far more than most mothers. " Besides that, she wanted to save him. She
completely believed that this was her work in the world.
Beginning from now, she is no longer the widow of Patricius: she is already
Saint Monnica. Living like a nun, she fasted, prayed, mortified her body.
By long meditating on the Scriptures, she had developed within her the
sense of spiritual realities, so that before long she astonished Augustin
himself. She had visions; perhaps she had trances. As she came over the sea
from Carthage to Ostia, the ship which carried her ran into a wild gale.
The danger became extreme, and the sailors themselves could no longer hide
their fear. But Monnica intrepidly encouraged them. "Never you fear, we
shall arrive in port safe and sound! " God, she declared, had promised her
this.
If, in her Christian life, she knew other minutes more divine, that was
truly the most heroic. Across Augustin's calm narrative, we witness the
scene. This woman lying on the deck among passengers half dead from fatigue
and terror, suddenly flings back her veils, stands up before the maddened
sea, and with a sudden flame gleaming over her pale face, she cries to the
sailors: "What do you fear? We shall get to port. _I am sure of it! _" The
glorious act of faith!
At this solemn moment, when she saw death so near, she had a clear
revelation of her destiny; she knew with absolute certainty that she was
entrusted with a message for her son, and that her son would receive this
message, in spite of all, in spite of the wildness of the sea--aye, in
spite of his own heart.
When this sublime emotion had subsided, it left with her the conviction
that sooner or later Augustin would change his ways. He had lost himself,
he was mistaken about himself. This business of rhetorician was unworthy
of him. The Master of the field had chosen him to be one of the great
reapers in the time of harvest. For a long while Monnica had foreseen the
exceptional place that Augustin was to take in the Church. Why fritter
away his talent and intelligence in selling vain words, when there were
heresies to combat, the Truth to make shine forth, when the Donatists were
capturing the African basilicas from the Catholics? What, in fact, was the
most celebrated rhetorician compared to a bishop--protector of cities,
counsellor of emperors, representative of God on earth? All this might
Augustin be. And he remained stubborn in his error! Prayers and efforts
must be redoubled to draw him from that. It was also for herself that she
struggled, for the dearest of her hopes as a mother. To bear a soul to
Jesus Christ--and a chosen soul who would save in his turn souls without
number--for this only had she lived. And so it was that on the deck, tired
by the rolling of the ship, drenched by the seas that were breaking on
board, and hardly able to stand in the teeth of the wind, she cried out to
the sailors: "What do you fear? We shall get to port. I am sure of it. . . . "
At Milan she was regarded by Bishop Ambrose as a model parishioner. She
never missed his sermons and "hung upon his lips as a fountain of water
springing up to eternal life. " And yet it does not appear that the great
bishop understood the mother any better than he did the son: he had not
the time. For him Monnica was a worthy African woman, perhaps a little odd
in her devotion, and given to many a superstitious practice. Thus, she
continued to carry baskets of bread and wine and pulse to the tombs of the
martyrs, according to the use at Carthage and Thagaste. When, carrying
her basket, she came to the door of one of the Milanese basilicas, the
doorkeeper forbade her to enter, saying that it was against the bishop's
orders, who had solemnly condemned such practices because they smacked
of idolatry. The moment she learned that this custom was prohibited by
Ambrose, Monnica, very much mortified, submitted to take away her basket,
for in her eyes Ambrose was the providential apostle who would lead her son
to salvation. And yet it must have grieved her to give up this old custom
of her country. Save for the fear of displeasing the bishop, she would
have kept it up.
were precious stones, enamels, heavy goldsmiths' work. Rows of rings were
worn on each finger. People took the air in silk robes, held together by
brooches carved in the figures of animals, a parasol in one hand, and a fan
with gold fringes in the other. The costumes and fashions of Constantinople
encroached upon the old Rome and the rest of the Western world.
Immense fortunes, which had gathered in the hands of certain people, either
through inheritance or swindling, enabled them to keep up a senseless
expenditure. Like the American millionaires of to-day, who have their
houses and properties in both hemispheres, these great Roman lords
possessed them in every country in the Empire. Symmachus, who was Prefect
of the City when Augustin was in Rome, had considerable estates not only in
Italy and in Sicily, but even in Mauretania. And yet, in spite of all their
wealth and all the privileges they enjoyed, these rich people were neither
happy nor at ease. At the least suspicion of a despotic power, their lives
and property were threatened. Accusations of magic, of disrespect to
the Cæsar, of plots against the Emperor--any pretext was good to plunder
them. During the preceding reign, that of the pitiless Valentinian, the
Roman nobility had been literally decimated by the executioner. A certain
vice-Prefect, Maximinus, had gained a sinister reputation for cleverness in
the art of manufacturing suspects. By his orders, a basket at the end of a
string was hung out from one of the windows of the Prætorium, into which
denunciations might be cast. The basket was in use day and night.
It is clear that at the time that Augustin settled in Rome this abominable
system was a little moderated. But accusation by detectives was always in
the air. And living in this atmosphere of mistrust, hypocrisy, bribery, and
cruelty--small wonder if the Carthaginian fell into bitter reflections upon
Roman corruption. However impressive from the front, the Empire was not
nice to look at close at hand.
But Augustin was, above all, home-sick. When he strolled tinder the shady
trees of the Janiculum or Sallust's gardens, he already said to himself
what he would repeat later to his listeners at Hippo: "Take an African, put
him in a place cool and green, and he won't stay there. He will feel he
must go away and come back to his blazing desert. " As for himself, he had
something better to regret than a blazing desert. In front of the City of
Gold, stretched out at his feet, and the horizon of the Sabine Hills, he
remembered the feminine softness of the twilights upon the Lake of Tunis,
the enchantment of moonlit nights upon the Gulf of Carthage, and that
astonishing landscape to be discovered from the height of the terrace of
Byrsa, which all the grandeur of the Roman _campagna_ could not make him
forget.
II
THE FINAL DISILLUSION
'The new professor had managed to secure a certain number of pupils whom
he gathered together in his rooms. He could make enough to live at Rome
by himself, if he could not support there the woman and child he had left
behind at Carthage. In this matter of finding work, his host and his
Manichee friends had done him some very good turns. Although forced to
conceal their beliefs since the edict of Theodosius, there were a good many
Manichees in the city. They formed an occult Church, strongly organized,
and its adepts had relations with all classes of Roman society. Possibly
Augustin presented himself as one driven out of Africa by the persecution.
Some compensation would be owing to this young man who had suffered for the
good cause.
It was his friend Alypius, "the brother of his heart," who, having preceded
him to Rome to study law at his parents' wishes, now was the most useful in
helping Augustin to make himself known and find pupils. Himself a Manichee,
converted by Augustin, and a member of one of the leading families in
Thagaste, he had not long to wait for an important appointment in the
Imperial administration. He was assessor to the Treasurer-General, or
"Count of the Italian Bounty Office," and decided fiscal questions. Thanks
to his influence, as well as to his acquaintances among the Manichees, he
was a valuable friend for the new arrival, a friend who could aid him, not
only with his purse, but with advice. Without much capacity for theorizing,
this Alypius was a practical spirit, a straight and essentially honest
soul, whose influence was excellent for his impetuous friend. Of very
chaste habits, he urged Augustin to restraint. And even in abstract
studies, the religious controversies which Augustin dragged him into, his
strong good sense moderated the imaginative dashes, the overmuch subtilty
which sometimes led the other beyond healthy reason.
Unhappily they were both very busy--the judge and the rhetorician--and
although their friendship became still greater during this stay in Rome,
they were not able to see each other as much as they desired. Their
pleasures, too, were perhaps not the same. Augustin did not in the least
care about being chaste, and Alypius had a passion for the amphitheatre--a
passion which his friend disapproved of. Some time earlier, at Carthage,
Augustin had filled him with disgust of the circus. But hardly was Alypius
arrived in Rome, than he became mad about the gladiatorial shows. Some
fellow-students took him to the amphitheatre, almost by force. Thereupon,
he said that he would stay, since they had dragged him there; but he bet
that he would keep his eyes shut all through the fight, and that nothing
could make him open them. He sat down on the benches with those who had
brought him, his eyelids pressed down, refusing to look. Suddenly there was
a roar of shouting, the shout of the crowd hailing the fall of the first
wounded. His lids parted of themselves; he saw the flow of blood. "At the
sight of the blood" says Augustin, "he drank in ruthlessness; no longer
did he turn away, but fixed his gaze, and he became mad--and he knew no
more. . . . He was fascinated by the criminal atrocity of this battle, and
drunk with the pleasure of blood. "
These breathless phrases of the _Confessions_ seem to throb still with the
wild frenzy of the crowd. They convey to us directly the kind of Sadic
excitement which people went to find about the arena. Really, a wholesome
sight for future Christians, for all the souls that the brutality of
pagan customs revolted! The very year that Augustin was at Rome, certain
prisoners of war, Sarmatian soldiers, condemned to kill each other in the
amphitheatre, chose suicide rather than this shameful death. There was in
this something to make him reflect--him and his friends. The fundamental
injustices whereon the ancient world rested--the crushing of the slave
and the conquered, the contempt for human life--these things they touched
with the finger when they looked on at the butcheries in the amphitheatre.
All those whose hearts sickened with disgust and horror before these
slaughter-house scenes, all those who longed for a little more mildness, a
little more justice, were all recruits marked out for the peaceful army of
the Christ.
For Alypius, especially, it was not a bad thing to have known this
blood-drunkenness at first hand: he shall be only the more ashamed when
he falls at the feet of the merciful God. Equally useful was it for him
to have personal experience of the harshness of men's justice; and in the
fulfilment of his duties as a judge to observe its errors and flaws. While
he was a student at Carthage he just escaped being condemned to death upon
a false accusation of theft--the theft of a piece of lead! Already they
were dragging him, if not to the place of capital punishment, at least to
prison, when a chance meeting with a friend of his who was a senator saved
him from the threatening mob. At Rome, while Assessor to the Count of the
Italian Bounty Office, he had to resist an attempt to bribe him, and by
doing so risked losing his appointment, and, no doubt, something worse
too. Official venality and dishonesty were evils so deeply rooted, that
he himself nearly succumbed. He wanted some books copied, and he had the
temptation to get this done at the charge of the Treasury. This peculation
had, in his eyes, a good enough excuse, and it was certain to go
undetected. Nevertheless, when he thought it over he changed his mind, and
virtuously refrained from giving himself a library at the expense of the
State.
Augustin, who relates these anecdotes, draws the same moral from them as
we do, to wit--that for a man who was going to be a bishop and, as such,
administrator and judge, this time spent in the Government service was a
good preparatory school. Most of the other great leaders of this generation
of Christians had also been officials; before ordination, they had been
mixed up in business and politics, and had lived freely the life of their
century. So it was with St. Ambrose, with St. Paulinus of Nola, with
Augustin himself, and Evodius and Alypius, his friends.
And yet, however absorbed in their work the two Africans might be, it
is pretty near certain that intellectual questions took the lead of
all others. This is manifest in Augustin's case at least. He must have
astonished the good Alypius when he got to Rome by acknowledging that he
hardly believed in Manicheeism any longer. And he set forth his doubts
about their masters' cosmogony and physical science, his suspicions
touching the hidden immorality of the sect. As for himself, the
controversies, which were the Manichees' strong point, did not dazzle him
any longer. At Carthage, but lately, he had heard a Catholic, a certain
Helpidius, oppose to them arguments from Scripture, which they were unable
to refute. To make matters worse, the Manichee Bishop of Rome made a bad
impression on him from the very outset. This man, he tells us, was of rough
appearance, without culture or polite manners. Doubtless this unmannerly
peasant, in his reception of the young professor, had not shewn himself
sufficiently alive to his merits, and the professor felt aggrieved.
From then, his keen dialectic and his satirical spirit (Augustin had
formidable powers of ridicule all through his life) were exercised upon
the backs of his fellow-religionists. Provisionally, he had admitted
as indisputable the basic principles of Manicheeism: first of all, the
primordial antagonism of the two substances, the God of Light and the God
of Darkness; then, this other dogma, that particles of that Divine Light,
which had been carried away in a temporary victory of the army of Darkness,
were immersed in certain plants and liquors. Hence, the distinction they
made between clean and unclean food. All those foods were pure which
contained some part of the Divine Light; impure, those which did not. The
purity of food became evident by certain qualities of taste, smell, and
appearance. But now Augustin found a good deal of arbitrariness in these
distinctions, and a good deal of simplicity in the belief that the Divine
Light dwelt in a vegetable. "Are they not ashamed," he said, "to search God
with their palates or with their nose? And if His presence is revealed by
a special brilliancy, by the goodness of the taste or the smell, why allow
that dish and condemn this, which is of equal savour, light, and perfume?
"Yea, why do they look upon the golden melon as come out of God's
treasure-house, and yet will have none of the golden fat of the ham or the
yellow of an egg? Why does the whiteness of lettuce proclaim to them the
Divinity, and the whiteness of cream nothing at all? And why this horror
of meat? For, look you, roast sucking-pig offers us a brilliant colour, an
agreeable smell, and an appetizing taste--sure signs, according to them, of
the Divine Presence. ". . . Once started on this topic, Augustin's vivacity
has no limits. He even drops into jokes which would offend modern
shamefacedness by their Aristophanic breadth.
These arguments, to say the truth, did not shake the foundations of the
doctrine, and if a doctrine must be judged according to its works, the
Manichees might entrench themselves behind their rigid moral rules, and
their conduct. Contrary to the more accommodating Catholicism, they paraded
a puritan intolerance. But Augustin had found out at Carthage that this
austerity was for the most part hypocrisy. At Rome he was thoroughly
enlightened.
The Elect of the religion made a great impression by their fasts and their
abstinence from meat. Now it became clear that these devout personages,
under pious pretexts, literally destroyed themselves by over-eating and
indigestion. They held, in fact, that the chief work of piety consisted in
setting free particles of the Divine Light, imprisoned in matter by the
wiles of the God of Darkness. They being the Pure, they purified matter by
absorbing it into their bodies. The faithful brought them stores of fruit
and vegetables, served them with real feasts, so that by eating these
things they might liberate a little of the Divine Substance. Of course,
they abstained from all flesh, flesh being the dwelling-place of the Dark
God, and also from fermented wine, which they called "the devil's gall. "
But how they made up for it over the rest! Augustin makes great fun of
these people who would think it a sin if they took as a full meal a small
bit of bacon and cabbage, with two or three mouthfuls of undiluted wine,
and yet ordered to be served up, from three o'clock in the afternoon, all
kinds of fruit and vegetables, the most exquisite too, rendered piquant
by spices, the Manichees holding that spices were very full of fiery and
luminous principles. Then, their palates titillating from pepper, they
swallowed large draughts of mulled wine or wine and honey, and the juice
of oranges, lemons, and grapes. And these junketings began over again at
nightfall. They had a preference for certain cakes, and especially for
truffles and mushrooms--vegetables more particularly mystic.
Such a diet put human gluttony to a heavy test. Many a scandal came to
light in the Roman community. The Elect made themselves sick by devouring
the prodigious quantity of good cheer brought to them with a view to
purification. As it was a sacrilege to let any be lost, the unhappy people
forced themselves to get down the lot. There were even victims: children,
gorged with delicacies, died of stuffing. For children, being innocent
things, were deemed to have quite special purifying virtues.
Augustin was beginning to get indignant at all this nonsense. Still, except
for these extravagances, he continued to believe in the asceticism of the
Elect--asceticism of such severity that the main part of the faithful found
it impossible to practise. And see! just at this moment, whom should he
discover very strange things about but Bishop Faustus, that Faustus whom he
had looked for at Carthage as a Messiah. The holy man, while he preached
renunciation, granted himself a good many indulgences: he lay, for one
thing, on feathers, or upon soft goatskin rugs. And these puritans were not
even honest. The Manichee Bishop of Rome, that man of rough manners who had
so offended Augustin, was on the point of being convicted of stealing the
general cash-box. Lastly, there were rumours in the air, accusing the Elect
of giving themselves over to reprehensible practices in their private
meetings. They condemned marriage and child-bearing as works of the devil,
but they authorized fornication, and even, it is said, certain acts against
nature. That, for Augustin, was the final disillusion.
In spite of it, he did not separate openly from the sect. He kept his
rank of _auditor_ in the Manichee Church. What held him to it, were some
plausible considerations on the intellectual side. Manicheeism, with its
distinction of two Principles, accounted conveniently for the problem of
evil and human responsibility. Neither God nor man was answerable for sin
and pain, since it was the other, the Dark Principle, who distributed
them through the world among men. Augustin, who continued to sin,
continued likewise to be very comfortable with such a system of morals and
metaphysics. Besides, he was not one of those convinced, downright minds
who feel the need to quarrel noisily with what they take to be error.
No one has opposed heresies more powerfully, and with a more tireless
patience, than he has. But he always put some consideration into the
business. He knew by experience how easy it is to fall into error, and he
said this charitably to those whom he wished to persuade. There was nothing
about him like St. Jerome.
Personal reasons, moreover, obliged him not to break with his
fellow-religionists who had supported him, nursed him even, on his arrival
at Rome, and who, as we shall see in a moment, might still do him services.
Augustin was not, like his friend Alypius, a practical mind, but he had
tact, and in spite of all the impulsiveness and mettle of his nature,
a certain suppleness which enabled him to manoeuvre without too many
collisions in the midst of the most embarrassing conjunctures. Through
instinctive prudence he prolonged his indecision. Little by little, he who
had formerly flung himself so enthusiastically in pursuit of Truth, glided
into scepticism--the scepticism of the Academics in its usual form.
And at the same time that he lost his taste for speculative thinking, new
annoyances in his profession put the finishing touch on his discouragement.
If the Roman students were less noisy than those of Carthage, they had a
deplorable habit of walking off and leaving their masters unpaid. Augustin
was ere long victimized in this way: he lost his time and his words. As at
Carthage, so at Rome, he had to face the fact that he could not live by his
profession. What was he to do? Would he have to go back home? He had fallen
into despair, when an unforeseen chance turned up for him.
The town council of Milan threw open a professorship of Rhetoric to public
competition. It would be salvation for him if he could get appointed. For
a long time he had wanted a post in the State education. In receipt of a
fixed salary, he would no longer have to worry about beating up a class,
or to guard against the dishonesty of his pupils. He put his name down
immediately among the candidates. But no more in those days than in ours
was simple merit by itself enough. It was necessary to pull strings. His
friends the Manichees undertook to do this for him. They urged his claims
warmly on the Prefect Symmachus, who doubtless presided at the competitive
trials. By an amusing irony of fate, Augustin owed his place to people he
was getting ready to separate from, whom even he was soon going to attack,
and also to a man who was in a way the official enemy of Christianity.
The pagan Symmachus appointing to an important post a future Catholic
bishop--there is matter for surprise in that! But Symmachus, who had been
Proconsul at Carthage, protected the Africans in Rome. Furthermore, it
is likely that the Manichees represented their candidate to him as a man
hostile to Catholics. Now in this year, A. D. 384, the Prefect had just
begun an open struggle with the Catholics. He believed, therefore, that he
made a good choice in appointing Augustin.
So a chain of events, with which his will had hardly anything to do,
was going to draw the young rhetorician to Milan--yes, and how much
farther! --to where he did not want to go, to where the prayers of Monnica
summoned him unceasingly: "Where I am, there shall you be also. " When he
was leaving Rome, he did not much expect that. What he chiefly thought of
was that he had at last won an independent financial position, and that he
was become an official of some importance. He had a flattering evidence
of this at once: It was at the expense of the city of Milan and in the
Imperial carriages that he travelled through Italy to take up his new post.
III
THE MEETING BETWEEN AMBROSE AND AUGUSTIN
Before he left Rome, and during his journey to Milan, Augustin must have
recalled more than once the verses of Terence which his friend Marcianus
had quoted by way of encouragement and advice the night he set sail for
Italy:
"This day which brings to thee another life
Demands that thou another man shalt be. "
He was thirty years old. The time of youthful wilfulness was over. Age,
disappointments, the difficulties of life, had developed his character.
He was now become a man of position, an eminent official, in a very large
city which was the second capital of the Western Empire and the principal
residence of the Court. If he wished to avoid further set-backs in his
career, it behoved him to choose a line of conduct carefully thought out.
And first of all, it was time to get rid of Manicheeism. A Manichee would
have made a scandal in a city where the greatest part of the population
was Christian, and the Court was Catholic, although it did not conceal
its sympathy with Arianism. It was a long time now since Augustin had
been a Manichee in his heart. Accordingly, he was not obliged to feign
in order to re-enter a Church which already included him formally among
its catechumens. Doubtless he was a very lukewarm catechumen, since at
intervals he inclined to scepticism. But he thought it decent to remain,
at least for the time being, in the Catholic body, in which his mother had
brought him up, until the day when some sure light should arise to direct
his path. Now St. Ambrose was at that time the Catholic Bishop of Milan.
Augustin was very eager to gain his goodwill. Ambrose was an undoubted
political power, an important personage, a celebrated orator whose renown
was shed all across the Roman world. He belonged to an illustrious family.
His father had been Prætorian prefect of Gaul. He himself, with the
title of Consul, was governing the provinces of Emilia and Liguria when
the Milanese forced him, much against his will, to become their bishop.
Baptized, ordained priest, and consecrated, one on top of the other, it
was only apparently that he gave up his civil functions. From the height
of his episcopal throne he always personified the highest authority in the
country.
As soon as he arrived at Milan, Augustin hurried to call upon his bishop.
Knowing him as we do, he must have approached Ambrose in a great transport
of enthusiasm. His imagination, too, was kindled. In his thought this was
a man of letters, an orator, a famous writer, almost a fellow-worker, that
he was going to see.
The young professor admired in Bishop Ambrose all the
glory that he was ambitious of, and all that he already believed himself
to be. He fancied, that however great might be the difference in their
positions, he would find himself at once on an equal footing with this high
personage, and would have a familiar talk with him, as he used to have at
Carthage with the Proconsul Vindicianus. He told himself also that Ambrose
was a priest, that is to say, a doctor of souls: he meant to open to him
all his spiritual wretchedness, the anguish of his mind and heart. He
expected consolation from him, if not cure.
Well, he was mistaken. Although in all his writings he speaks of "the holy
Bishop of Milan" with feelings of sincere respect and admiration, he lets
it be understood that his expectations were not realized. If the Manichean
bishop of Rome had offended him by his rough manners, Ambrose disconcerted
him alike by his politeness, his kindliness, and by the reserve,
perhaps involuntarily haughty, of his reception. "He received me," says
Augustin, "like a father, and as a bishop he was pleased enough at my
coming:"--_peregrinationem meam satis episcopaliter dilexit_. This _satis
episcopaliter_ looks very like a sly banter at the expense of the saint. It
is infinitely probable that St. Ambrose received Augustin, not exactly as a
man of no account, but still, as a sheep of his flock, and not as a gifted
orator, and that, in short, he shewed him the same "episcopal" benevolence
as he had from a sense of duty for all his hearers. It is possible too
that Ambrose was on his guard from the outset with this African, appointed
a municipal professor through the good offices of the pagan Symmachus,
his personal enemy. In the opinion of the Italian Catholics, nothing
good came from Carthage: these Carthaginians were generally Manichees
or Donatists--sectaries the more dangerous because they claimed to be
orthodox, and, mingling with the faithful, hypocritically contaminated
them. And then Ambrose, the great lord, the former Governor of Liguria, the
counsellor of the Emperors, may not have quite concealed a certain ironic
commiseration for this "dealer in words," this young rhetorician who was
still puffed up with his own importance.
Be this as it will, it was a lesson in humility that St. Ambrose, without
intending it, gave to Augustin. The lesson was not understood. The rhetoric
professor gathered only one thing from the visit, which was, that the
Bishop of Milan had received him well. And as human vanity immediately
lends vast significance to the least advances of distinguished or powerful
persons, Augustin felt thankful for it. He began to love Ambrose almost as
much as he admired him, and he admired him for reasons altogether worldly.
"Ambrose I counted one of the happy ones of this world, because he was held
in such honour by the great. " The qualification which immediately follows
shews naively enough the sensual Augustin's state of mind at that time:
"Only it seemed to me that celibacy must be a heavy burthen upon him. "
In those years the Bishop of Milan might, indeed, pass for a happy man
in the eyes of the world. He was the friend of the very glorious and
very victorious Theodosius; he had been the adviser of the young Emperor
Gratian, but lately assassinated; and although the Empress Justina, devoted
to the Arians, plotted against him, he had still great influence in the
council of Valentinian II--a little Emperor thirteen years old, whom a
Court of pagans and Arians endeavoured to draw into an anti-Catholic
reaction.
Almost as soon as Augustin arrived in Milan, he was able to see for himself
the great authority and esteem which Ambrose possessed, the occasion being
a dispute which made a great noise.
Two years earlier, Gratian had had the statue and altar of _Victory_
removed from the _Curia_, declaring that this pagan emblem and its
accompaniments no longer served any purpose in an assembly of which the
majority was Christian. By the same stroke, he suppressed the incomes of
the sacerdotal colleges with all their privileges, particularly those of
the Vestals; confiscated for the revenue the sums granted for the exercise
of religion; seized the property of the temples; and forbade the priests
to receive bequests of real estate. This meant the complete separation
of the State and the ancient religion. The pagan minority in the Senate,
with Symmachus, the Prefect, at its head, protested against this edict.
A deputation was sent to Milan to place the pagan grievances before
the Emperor. Gratian refused to receive them. It was thought that his
successor, Valentinian II, being feebler, would be more obliging. A new
senatorial committee presented themselves with a petition drawn up by
Symmachus--a genuine piece of oratory which Ambrose himself admired, or
pretended to admire. This speech made a deep impression when it was read
in the Imperial Council. But Ambrose intervened with all his eloquence.
He demanded that the common law should be applied equally to pagans as to
Christians, and it was he who won the day. _Victory_ was not replaced in
the Roman _Curia_, neither were the goods of the temples returned.
Augustin must have been very much struck by this advantage which
Catholicism had gained. It became clear that henceforth this was to be
the State religion. And he who envied so much the fortunate of the world,
might take note, besides, that the new religion brought, along with the
faith, riches and honours to its adepts. At Rome he had listened to the
disparaging by pagans and his Manichee friends of the popes and their
clergy. They made fun of the fashionable clerics and legacy hunters. It was
related that the Roman Pontiff, servant of the God of the poor, maintained
a gorgeous establishment, and that his table rivalled the Imperial table in
luxury. The prefect Prætextatus, a resolute pagan, said scoffingly to Pope
Damasus: "Make me Bishop of Rome, and I'll become a Christian at once. "
Certainly, commonplace human reasons can neither bring about nor account
for a sincere conversion. Conversion is a divine work. But human reasons,
arranged by a mysterious Will with regard to this work, may at least
prepare a soul for it. Anyhow, it cannot be neglected that Augustin, coming
to Milan full of ambitious plans, there saw Catholicism treated with so
much importance in the person of Ambrose. This religion, which till then he
had despised, now appeared to him as a triumphant religion worth serving.
But though such considerations might attract Augustin's attention, they
took no hold on his conscience. It was well enough for an intriguer about
the Court to get converted from self-interest. As for him, he wanted all or
nothing; the chief good in his eyes was certainty and truth. He scarcely
believed in this any longer, and surely had no hope of finding it among
the Catholics; but still he went to hear Ambrose's sermons. He went in the
first place as a critic of language, with the rather jealous curiosity of
the trained man who watches how another man does it. He wanted to judge
himself if the sacred orator was as good as his reputation. The firm and
substantial eloquence of this former official, this statesman who was more
than anything a man of action, immediately got control of the frivolous
rhetorician. To be sure, he did not find in Ambrose's sermons the
exhilaration or the verbal caress which had captivated him in those of
Faustus the Manichean; but yet they had a persuasive grace which held him.
Augustin heard the bishop with pleasure. Still, if he liked to hear him
talk, he remained contemptuous of the doctrine he preached.
Then, little by little, this doctrine forced itself on his meditations:
he perceived that it was more serious than he had thought hitherto, or,
at least, that it could be defended. Ambrose had started in Italy the
exegetical methods of the Orientals. He discovered in Scripture allegorical
meanings, sometimes edifying, sometimes deep, always satisfying for a
reasonable mind. Augustin, who was inclined to subtilty, much relished
these explanations which, if ingenious, were often forced. The Bible
no longer seemed to him so absurd. Finally, the immoralities which the
Manichees made such a great point of against the Holy Writ, were justified,
according to Ambrose, by historical considerations: what God did not allow
to-day, He allowed formerly by reason of the conditions of existence.
However, though the Bible might be neither absurd nor contrary to morals,
this did not prove that it was true. Augustin found no outlet for his
doubts.
He would have been glad to have Ambrose help him to get rid of them. Many a
time he tried to have a talk with him about these things. But the Bishop of
Milan was so very busy a personage! "I could not ask him," says Augustin,
"what I wanted as I wanted, because the shoals of busy people who consulted
him about their affairs, and to whose infirmities he ministered, came
between me and his ear and lips. And in the few moments when he was not
thus surrounded, he was refreshing either his body with needful food, or
his mind with reading. While he read his eye wandered along the page and
his heart searched out the meaning, but his voice and his tongue were at
rest. Often when we attended (for the door was open to all, and no one was
announced), we saw him reading silently, but never otherwise, and after
sitting for some time without speaking (_for who would presume to trouble
one so occupied? _) we went away again. We divined that, for the little
space of time which was all that he could secure for the refreshment of his
mind, he allowed himself a holiday from the distraction of other people's
business, and did not wish to be interrupted; _and perhaps he was afraid
lest eager listeners should invite him to explain the harder passages of
his author, or to enter upon the discussion of difficult topics_, and
hinder him from perusing as many volumes as he wished. . . . _Of course
the reason that guided a man of such remarkable virtue must have been
good. . . . _"
Nobody could comment more subtly--nor, be it said also, more
maliciously--the attitude of St. Ambrose towards Augustin, than Augustin
himself does it here. At the time he wrote this page, the events he was
relating had happened a long time ago. But he is a Christian, and, in his
turn, he is a bishop: he understands now what he could not understand
then. He feels thoroughly at heart that if Ambrose withdrew himself, it
was because the professor of rhetoric was not in a state of mind to have a
profitable discussion with a believer: he lacked the necessary humility of
heart and intellect. But at the moment, he must have taken things in quite
another way, and have felt rather hurt, not to say more, at the bishop's
apparent indifference.
Just picture a young writer of to-day, pretty well convinced of his value,
but uneasy about his future, coming to ask advice of an older man already
famous--well, Augustin's advances to Ambrose were not unlike that, save
that they had a much more serious character, since it was not a question of
literature, but of the salvation of a soul. At this period, what Augustin
saw in Ambrose, even when he consulted him on sacred matters, was chiefly
the orator, that is to say, a rather older rival. . . . He enters. He is shewn
into the private room of the great man, without being announced, _like any
ordinary person_. The great man does not lay aside his book to greet him,
does not even speak a word to him. . . . What would the official professor of
Rhetoric to the City of Milan think of such a reception? One can make out
clearly enough through the lines of the _Confessions_. He said to himself
that Ambrose, being a bishop, had charge of souls, and he was surprised
that the bishop, no matter how great a lord he might be, made no attempt
whatever to offer him spiritual aid. And as he was still devoid of
Christian charity, no doubt he thought too that Ambrose was conscious
that he had not the ability to wrestle with a dialectician of Augustin's
strength, and that, into the bargain, the prelate was to seek in knowledge
of the Scriptures. And, in truth, Ambrose had been made a bishop so
suddenly that he must have found himself obliged to improvise a hasty
knowledge. Anyhow, Augustin concluded that if he refused to discuss, it was
because he was afraid of being at a disadvantage.
Very surely St. Ambrose had no notion of what the catechumen was thinking.
He soared too high to trouble about miserable stings to self-respect. In
his ministry he was for all alike, and he would have thought it against
Christian equality to shew any special favour to Augustin. If, in the brief
talks he had with the young rhetorician, he was able to gather anything of
his character, he could not have formed a very favourable opinion of it.
The high-strung temperament of the African, these vague yearnings of the
spirit, these sterile melancholies, this continual temporizing before the
faith--all that could only displease Ambrose, the practical Roman, the
official used all his life to command.
However that was, Augustin, in following years, never allowed himself the
least reproach towards Ambrose. On the contrary, everywhere he loads him
with praise, quotes him repeatedly in his treatises, and takes refuge on
his authority. He calls him his "father. " But once, when he is speaking
of the spiritual desolation in which he was plunged at Milan, there does
escape him something like a veiled complaint which appears to be aimed at
Ambrose. After recalling the eagerness with which he sought truth in those
days, he adds: "If any one could have been found then to trouble about
instructing me, he would have had a most willing and docile pupil. "
This phrase, in such marked contrast with so many laudatory passages in
the _Confessions_ about St. Ambrose, seems to be indeed a statement of
the plain truth. If God made use of Ambrose to convert Augustin, it is
nevertheless likely that Ambrose personally did nothing, or very little, to
bring about this conversion.
IV
PLANS OF MARRIAGE
But even as he draws nearer the goal, Augustin would appear, on the
contrary, to get farther away from it. Such are God's secret paces, Who
snatches souls like a thief: He drops on them without warning. Till the
very eve of the day when Christ shall come to take him, Augustin will be
all taken up with the world and the care of making a good figure in it.
Although Ambrose's sermons stimulated him to reflect upon the great
historical reality which Christianity is, he had as yet but dim glimpses
of it. He had given up his superficial unbelief, and yet did not believe
in anything definite. He drifted into a sort of agnosticism compounded of
mental indolence and discouragement. When he scrutinized his conscience to
the depths, the most he could find was a belief in the existence of God and
His providence--quite abstract ideas which he was incapable of enlivening.
But whatever was the use of speculating upon Truth and the Sovereign Good!
The main thing to do was to live.
Now that his future was certain, Augustin endeavoured to arrange his life
with a view to his tranquillity. He had no longer very large ambitions.
What he principally wanted to do was to create for himself a nice little
existence, peaceful and agreeable, one might almost say, middle-class. His
present fortune, although small, was still enough for that, and he was in a
hurry to enjoy it.
Accordingly, he had not been long in Milan ere he sent for his mistress and
his son. He had rented an apartment in a house which gave on a garden. The
owner, who did not live there, allowed him the use of the whole house. A
house, the dream of the sage! And a garden in Virgil's country! Augustin,
the professor, should have been wonderfully happy. His mother soon joined
him. Gradually a whole tribe of Africans came down on him, and took
advantage of his hospitality. Here was his brother, Navigius, his two
cousins, Rusticus and Lastidianus, his friend Alypius, who could not make
up his mind to part from him, and probably Nebridius, another of his
Carthage friends. Nothing could be more in harmony with the customs of the
time. The Rhetorician to the City of Milan had a post which would pass
for superb in the eyes of his poor relations. He was acquainted with very
important people, and had access to the Imperial Court, whence favours and
bounties came. Immediately, the family ran to put themselves under his
protection and be enrolled beneficiaries, to get what they could out of
his new fortune and credit. And then these immigrations of Africans and
Orientals into the northern countries always come about in the same way. It
is enough if one of them gets on there: he becomes immediately the drop of
ink on the blotting-paper.
The most important person in this little African phalanstery was
unquestionably Monnica, who had taken in hand the moral and material
control of the house. She was not very old--not quite fifty-four--but she
wanted to be in her own country. That she should have left it, and faced
the weariness of a long journey over sea and land, she must have had very
serious reasons. The poverty into which she had fallen since the death of
her husband would not be an adequate explanation of her departure from
her native land. She had still some small property at Thagaste; she could
have lived there. The true motives of her departure were of an altogether
different order. First of all, she passionately loved her son, to the point
that she was not able to live away from him. Let us recall Augustin's
touching words: "For she loved to keep me with her, as mothers are wont,
yes, far more than most mothers. " Besides that, she wanted to save him. She
completely believed that this was her work in the world.
Beginning from now, she is no longer the widow of Patricius: she is already
Saint Monnica. Living like a nun, she fasted, prayed, mortified her body.
By long meditating on the Scriptures, she had developed within her the
sense of spiritual realities, so that before long she astonished Augustin
himself. She had visions; perhaps she had trances. As she came over the sea
from Carthage to Ostia, the ship which carried her ran into a wild gale.
The danger became extreme, and the sailors themselves could no longer hide
their fear. But Monnica intrepidly encouraged them. "Never you fear, we
shall arrive in port safe and sound! " God, she declared, had promised her
this.
If, in her Christian life, she knew other minutes more divine, that was
truly the most heroic. Across Augustin's calm narrative, we witness the
scene. This woman lying on the deck among passengers half dead from fatigue
and terror, suddenly flings back her veils, stands up before the maddened
sea, and with a sudden flame gleaming over her pale face, she cries to the
sailors: "What do you fear? We shall get to port. _I am sure of it! _" The
glorious act of faith!
At this solemn moment, when she saw death so near, she had a clear
revelation of her destiny; she knew with absolute certainty that she was
entrusted with a message for her son, and that her son would receive this
message, in spite of all, in spite of the wildness of the sea--aye, in
spite of his own heart.
When this sublime emotion had subsided, it left with her the conviction
that sooner or later Augustin would change his ways. He had lost himself,
he was mistaken about himself. This business of rhetorician was unworthy
of him. The Master of the field had chosen him to be one of the great
reapers in the time of harvest. For a long while Monnica had foreseen the
exceptional place that Augustin was to take in the Church. Why fritter
away his talent and intelligence in selling vain words, when there were
heresies to combat, the Truth to make shine forth, when the Donatists were
capturing the African basilicas from the Catholics? What, in fact, was the
most celebrated rhetorician compared to a bishop--protector of cities,
counsellor of emperors, representative of God on earth? All this might
Augustin be. And he remained stubborn in his error! Prayers and efforts
must be redoubled to draw him from that. It was also for herself that she
struggled, for the dearest of her hopes as a mother. To bear a soul to
Jesus Christ--and a chosen soul who would save in his turn souls without
number--for this only had she lived. And so it was that on the deck, tired
by the rolling of the ship, drenched by the seas that were breaking on
board, and hardly able to stand in the teeth of the wind, she cried out to
the sailors: "What do you fear? We shall get to port. I am sure of it. . . . "
At Milan she was regarded by Bishop Ambrose as a model parishioner. She
never missed his sermons and "hung upon his lips as a fountain of water
springing up to eternal life. " And yet it does not appear that the great
bishop understood the mother any better than he did the son: he had not
the time. For him Monnica was a worthy African woman, perhaps a little odd
in her devotion, and given to many a superstitious practice. Thus, she
continued to carry baskets of bread and wine and pulse to the tombs of the
martyrs, according to the use at Carthage and Thagaste. When, carrying
her basket, she came to the door of one of the Milanese basilicas, the
doorkeeper forbade her to enter, saying that it was against the bishop's
orders, who had solemnly condemned such practices because they smacked
of idolatry. The moment she learned that this custom was prohibited by
Ambrose, Monnica, very much mortified, submitted to take away her basket,
for in her eyes Ambrose was the providential apostle who would lead her son
to salvation. And yet it must have grieved her to give up this old custom
of her country. Save for the fear of displeasing the bishop, she would
have kept it up.
