Chapter 12

1The Kennebec was first explored to this point in 1607.

AUGUSTA,a seaport of the province of Syracuse, Sicily, 19 m. N. of it by rail. Pop. (1901) 16,402. It occupies a part of the former peninsula of Xiphonia, now a small island, connected with the mainland by a bridge. It was founded by the emperor Frederick II. in 1232, and almost entirely destroyed by an earthquake in 1693, after which it was rebuilt. The castle is now a large prison. The fortified port, though unfrequented except as a naval harbour of refuge, is a very fine one. There are considerable saltworks at Augusta. To the south, on the left bank of the Molinello. 1½ m. from its mouth, Sicel tombs and Christian catacombs, and farther up the river a cave village of the early middle ages, have been explored (Notizie degli Scavi, 1902, 411, 631;Römische Quartalschrift, 1902, 205). Whether there was ever a town bearing the name Xiphonia is doubted by E.A. Freeman (Hist. of Sic.i. 583); cf., however, E. Pais,Atakta(Pisa, 1891), 55, who attributes its foundation, under the name of Tauromenion (which it soon lost), to the Zancleans of Hybla (afterwards Megara Hyblaea).

(T. As.)

AUGUSTA BAGIENNORUM,the chief town of the Ligurian tribe of the Bagienni, probably identical with the modern Bene Vagienna, on the upper course of the Tanaro, about 35 m. due south of Turin. The town retained its position as a tribal centre in the reorganization of Augustus, whose name it bears, and was erected on a systematic plan. Considerable remains of public buildings, constructed in concrete faced with small stones with bands of brick at intervals, an amphitheatre with a major axis of 390 ft. and a minor axis of 305 ft., a theatre with a stage 133 ft. in length, and near it the foundations of what was probably a basilica, an open space (no doubt the forum), an aqueduct, baths, &c., have been discovered by recent excavations, and also one of the city gates, flanked by two towers 22 ft. sq.

See G. Assandria and G. Vacchetta inNotizie degli Scavi(1894), 155; (1896), 215; (1897), 441; (1898), 299; (1900), 389; (1901), 413.

(T. As.)

AUGUSTAN HISTORY,the name given to a collection of the biographies of the Roman emperors from Hadrian to Carinus (A.D.117-284). The work professes to have been written during the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine, and is to be regarded as the composition of six authors,—Aelius Spartianus, Julius Capitolinus, Aelius Lampridius, Vulcacius Gallicanus, Trebellius Pollio and Flavius Vopiscus—known as Scriptores Historiae Augustae, writers of Augustan history. It is generally agreed, however, that there is a large number of interpolations in the work, which are referred to the reign of Theodosius; and that the documents inserted in the lives are almost all forgeries. The more advanced school of critics holds that the names of the supposed authors are purely fictitious, as those of some of the authorities which they profess to quote certainly are. The lives, which (with few exceptions) are arranged in chronological order, are distributed as follows:—To Spartianus: the biographies of Hadrian, Aelius Verus, Didius Julianus, Septimius Severus, Pescennius Niger, Caracallus, Geta (?); to Vulcacius Gallicanus: Avidius Cassius; to Capitolinus: Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Verus, Pertinax, Clodius Albinus, the two Maximins, the three Gordians, Maximus and Balbinus, Opilius Macrinus (?); to Lampridius: Commodus, Diadumenus, Elagabalus, Alexander Severus; to Pollio: the two Valerians, the Gallieni, the so-called Thirty Tyrants or Usurpers, Claudius (his lives of Philip, Decius, and Gallus being lost); to Vopiscus: Aurelian, Tacitus, Florian, Probus, the four tyrants (Firmus, Saturninus, Proculus, Bonosus), Carus, Numerian, Carinus.

The importance of the Augustan history as a repertory of information is very considerable, but its literary pretensions are of the humblest order. The writers’ standard was confessedly low. “My purpose,” says Vopiscus, “has been to provide materials for persons more eloquent than I.” Considering the perverted taste of the age, it is perhaps fortunate that the task fell into the hands of no showy declaimer who measured his success by his skill in making surface do duty for substance, but of homely, matter-of-fact scribes, whose sole concern was to record what they knew. Their narrative is unmethodical and inartificial; their style is tame and plebeian; their conception of biography is that of a collection of anecdotes; they haveno notion of arrangement, no measure of proportion, and no criterion of discrimination between the important and the trivial; they are equally destitute of critical and of historical insight, unable to sift the authorities on which they rely, and unsuspicious of the stupendous social revolution comprised within the period which they undertake to describe. Their value, consequently, depends very much on that of the sources to which they happen to have recourse for any given period of history, and on the fidelity of their adherence to these when valuable. Marius Maximus and Aelius Junius Cordus, to whose qualifications they themselves bear no favourable testimony, were their chief authorities for the earlier lives of the series. Marius Maximus, who lived about 165-230, wrote biographies of the emperors, in continuation of those of Suetonius, from Nerva to Elagabalus; Junius Cordus dealt with the less-known emperors, perhaps down to Maximus and Balbinus. The earlier lives, however, contain a substratum of authentic historical fact, which recent critics have supposed to be derived from a lost work by a contemporary writer, described by one of these scholars as “the last great Roman historian.” For the later lives the Scriptores were obliged to resort more largely to public records, and thus preserved matter of the highest importance, rescuing from oblivion many imperial rescripts and senatorial decrees, reports of official proceedings and speeches on public occasions, and a number of interesting and characteristic letters from various emperors. Their incidental allusions sometimes cast vivid though undesigned light on the circumstances of the age, and they have made large contributions to our knowledge of imperial jurisprudence in particular. Even their trivialities have their use; their endless anecdotes respecting the personal habits of the subjects of their biographies, if valueless to the historian, are most acceptable to the archaeologist, and not unimportant to the economist and moralist. Their errors and deficiencies may in part be ascribed to the contemporary neglect of history as a branch of instruction. Education was in the hands of rhetoricians and grammarians; historians were read for their style, not for their matter, and since the days of Tacitus, none had arisen worth a schoolmaster’s notice. We thus find Vopiscus acknowledging that when he began to write the life of Aurelian, he was entirely misinformed respecting the latter’s competitor Firmus, and implying that he would not have ventured on Aurelian himself if he had not had access to the MS. of the emperor’s own diary in the Ulpian library. The writers’ historical estimates are superficial and conventional, but report the verdict of public opinion with substantial accuracy. The only imputation on the integrity of any of them lies against Trebellius Pollio, who, addressing his work to a descendant of Claudius, the successor and probably the assassin of Gallienus, has dwelt upon the latter versatile sovereign’s carelessness and extravagance without acknowledgment of the elastic though fitful energy he so frequently displayed in defence of the empire. The caution of Vopiscus’s references to Diocletian cannot be made a reproach to him.

No biographical particulars are recorded respecting any of these writers. From their acquaintance with Latin and Greek literature they must have been men of letters by profession, and very probably secretaries or librarians to persons of distinction. There seems no reason to accept Gibbon’s contemptuous estimate of their social position. They appear particularly versed in law. Spartianus’s reference to himself as “Diocletian’s own” seems to indicate that he was a domestic in the imperial household. They address their patrons with deference, acknowledging their own deficiencies, and seem painfully conscious of the profession of literature having fallen upon evil days.

Editio princeps (Milan, 1475); Casaubon (1603) showed great critical ability in his notes, but for want of a good MS. left the restoration of the text to Salmasius (1620), whose notes are a most remarkable monument of erudition, combined with acuteness in verbal criticism and general vigour of intellect. Of recent years considerable attention has been devoted by German scholars to theHistory, especially by Peter, whose edition of the text in the Teubner series (2nd ed., 1884) contains (praef. xxxv.-xxxvii.) a bibliography of works on the subject preceding the publication of his own special treatise. The edition by Jordan-Eyssenhardt (1863) should also be mentioned. Amongst the most recent treatises on the subject are: A. Gemoll,Die Scriptores Historiae Augustae(1886); H. Peter,Die Scriptores Historiae Augustae(1892); G. Tropea,Studi sugli Scriptores Historiae Augustae(1899-1903); J.M. Heer,Der historische Wert der Vita Commodi in der Sammlung der Scriptores Historiae Augustae(1901); C. Lécrivain,Études sur l’histoire Auguste(1904); E. Kornemann,Kaiser Hadrian und der letzte grosse Historiker von Rom(1905), according to whom “the last great historian of Rome” is Lollius Urbicus; O. Schulz,Das Kaiserhaus der Antonine und der letzte Historiker Roms(1907). On their style, see C. Paucker,De Latinitate Scriptorum Historiae Augustae(1870); special lexicon by C. Lessing (1901-1906). An English translation is included inThe Lives of the Roman Emperors, by John Bernard (1698). See furtherRome:History(anc.ad fin.), section “Authorities”; M. Schanz,Geschichte der römischen Litteratur, iii. p. 69 (for Marius Maximus and Junius Cordus), iv. p. 47; Teuffel-Schwabe,Hist. of Roman Literature(Eng. tr.), § 392; H. Peter, bibliography from 1893 to 1905 in Bursian’sJahresbericht, cxxix. (1907).

AUGUSTA PRAETORIA SALASSORUM(mod.Aosta,q.v.), an ancient town of Italy in the district of the Salassi, founded by Augustus about 24B.C.on the site of the camp of Varro Murena, who subdued this tribe in 25B.C., and settled with 3000 praetorians. Pliny calls it the last town of Italy on the north-west, and its position at the confluence of two rivers, at the end of the Great and Little St Bernard, gave it considerable military importance, which is vouched for by considerable remains of Roman buildings. The ancient town walls, enclosing a rectangle 793 by 624 yds., are still preserved almost in their entire extent. The walls are 21 ft. high. They are built of concrete faced with small blocks of stone, and at the bottom are nearly 9 ft. thick, and at the top 6 ft. There are towers at the angles of theenceinte, and others at intervals, and two at each of the four gates, making a total of twenty towers altogether. They are roughly 32 ft. square, and project 14 ft. from the wall. The Torre del Pailleron on the south and the Torre del Leproso in the west are especially well preserved. The east and south gates exist (the latter, a double gate with three arches flanked by two towers, is the Porta Praetoria, and is especially fine), while the rectangular arrangement of the streets perpetuates the Roman plan, dividing the town into 16 blocks (insulae). The main road, 32 ft. wide, divides the city into two equal halves, running from east to west, an arrangement which makes it clear that the guarding of the road was the mainraison d’êtreof the city. Some arcades of the amphitheatre (the diameters of which are 282 ft. and 239 ft.), and the south wall of the theatre are also preserved, the latter to a height of over 70 ft., and a market-place some 300 ft. square, surrounded by storehouses on three sides with a temple in the centre, and two on the open (south) side, and thethermae, have been discovered. Outside the town is a handsome triumphal arch in honour of Augustus. About 5 m. to the west is a single-arched Roman bridge, the Pondel, which has a closed passage lighted by windows for foot passengers in winter, and above it an open footpath, both being about 3½ ft. in width. There are considerable remains of the ancient road from Eporedia (mod.Ivrea) to Augusta Praetoria, up the Valle d’ Aosta, which the modern railway follows, notably the Pont St Martin, with a single arch with a span of 116 ft. and a roadway 15 ft. wide, the cutting of Donnaz, and the Roman bridges of Châtillon (Pont St Vincent) and Aosta (Pont de Pierre), &c.

See C. Promis,Le antichità di Aosta(Turin, 1862); E. Bérard inAtti della Società di Archeologia di Torino, iii. 119 seq.;Notizie degli Scavi, passim; A. d’Andrade,Relazione dell’ Ufficio Regionale per la consenazione dei Monumenti del Piemonte e della Liguria(Turin, 1899), 46 seq.

(T. As.)

AUGUSTI, JOHANN CHRISTIAN WILHELM(1772-1841), German theologian, born at Eschenberga, near Gotha, was of Jewish descent, his grandfather having been a converted rabbi. He was educated at the gymnasium at Gotha and the university of Jena. At Jena he studied oriental languages, of which he became professor there in 1803. Subsequently he became ordinary professor of theology (1812), and for a time rector, at Breslau. In 1819 he was transferred to the university of Bonn, where he was made professor primarius. In 1828 he was appointed chief member of the consistorial council at Coblenz. Here he was afterwards made director of the consistory. He died at Coblenz in 1841. Augusti had little sympathy with the modern philosophical interpretations of dogma, and althoughhe took up a position of free criticism with regard to the Biblical narratives, he held fast to the traditional faith. His works on theology (Dogmengeschichte, 1805; 4th ed., 1835) are simple statements of fact; they do not attempt a speculative treatment of their subjects. In 1809 he published in conjunction with W.M.L. de Wette a new translation of the Old Testament. Mention should also be made of hisGrundriss einer historischkritischen Einleitung ins Alte Testament(1806), hisExegetisches Handbuch des Alten Testaments(1797-1800), and his edition ofDie Apokryphen des A. T.(1804). In addition to these, his most important writings are theDenkwürdigkeiten aus der Christlichen Archäologie, 12 vols. (1817-1831), a partially digested mass of materials, and theHandbuch der Christ. Archäologie, 3 vols. (1836-1837), which gives the substance of the larger work in a more compact and systematic form.

AUGUSTINE, SAINT(354-430), one of the four great fathers of the Latin Church. Augustinus—thepraenomenAurelius is used indeed by his disciples Orosius and Prosper, and is found in the oldest Augustine MSS., but is not used by himself, nor in the letters addressed to him—was born at Tagaste, a town of Numidia, now Suk Ahras in Constantine, on the 13th of November 354. His father, Patricius, was a burgess of Tagaste and still a pagan at the time of his son’s birth. His mother, Monica, was not only a Christian, but a woman of the most tender and devoted piety, whose beautiful faith and enthusiasm and patient prayer for both her husband and son (at length crowned with success in both cases) have made her a type of womanly saintliness for all ages. She early instructed her son in the faith and love of Jesus Christ, and for a time he seems to have been impressed by her teaching. Falling ill, he wished to be baptized; but when the danger was past, the rite was deferred and, in spite of his mother’s admonitions and prayers, Augustine grew up without any profession of Christian piety or any devotion to Christian principles.

Inheriting from his father a passionate nature, he formed while still a mere youth an irregular union with a girl, by whom he became the father of a son, whom in a fit of pious emotion he named Adeodatus (“by God given”), and to whom he was passionately attached. In hisConfessionshe afterwards described this period of his life in the blackest colours; for in the light of his conversion he saw behind him only shadows. Yet, whatever his youthful aberrations, Augustine was from the first an earnest student. His father, noticing his early promise, destined him for the brilliant and lucrative career of a rhetorician, for which he spared no expense in training him. Augustine studied at his native town and afterwards at Madaura and Carthage, especially devoting himself to the works of the Latin poets, many traces of his love for which are to be found in his writings. His acquaintance with Greek literature was much more limited, and, indeed, it has been doubted, though without sufficient reason, whether he could use the Greek scriptures in the original. Cicero’sHortensius, which he read in his nineteenth year, first awakened in his mind the spirit of speculation and the impulse towards the knowledge of the truth. But he passed from one phase of thought to another, unable to find satisfaction in any. Manichaeism, that mixed product of Zoroastrian and Christian-gnostic elements, first enthralled him. He became a fervent member of the sect, and was admitted into the class ofauditorsor “hearers.” Manichaeism seemed to him to solve the mysteries of the world, and of his own experiences by which he was perplexed. His insatiable imagination drew congenial food from the fanciful religious world of the Manichaeans, decked out as this was with the luxuriant wealth of Oriental myth. His strongly developed sense of a need of salvation sought satisfaction in the contest of the two principles of Good and Evil, and found peace, at least for the moment, in the conviction that the portions of light present in him would be freed from the darkness in which they were immersed. The ideal of chastity and self-restraint, which promised a foretaste of union with God, amazed him, bound as he was in the fetters of sensuality and for ever shaking at these fetters. But while his moral force was not sufficient for the attainment of this ideal, gradually everything else which Manichaeism seemed to offer him dissolved before his criticism. Increasingly occupied with the exact sciences, he learnt the incompatibility of the Manichaean astrology with the facts. More and more absorbed in the problems of psychology, he realized the insufficiency of dualism, which did not solve the ultimate questions but merely set them back. The Manichaean propaganda seemed to him invertebrate and lacking in force, and a discussion which he had with Faustus, a distinguished Manichaean bishop and controversialist, left him greatly disappointed.

Meanwhile nine years had passed. Augustine, after finishing his studies, had returned to Tagaste, where he became a teacher of grammar. He must have been an excellent master, who knew how to influence the whole personality of his pupils. It was then that Alypius, who in the later stages of Augustine’s life proved a true friend and companion, attached himself to him. He remained in his native town little more than a year, during which time he lived with his mother, who was comforted by the bishop for the estrangement of her son from the Catholic faith (“a son of so many tears cannot be lost”:Confess.III. xii. § 21), comforted also, and above all, by the famous vision, which Augustine thus describes: “She saw herself standing on a certain wooden rule, and a shining youth coming towards her, cheerful and smiling upon her the while she grieved, and was consumed with grief: and when he had inquired of her the causes of her grief and daily tears (for the sake, as is their wont, of teaching, not of learning) and she had made answer that she was bewailing my perdition, he bade her be at ease, and advised her to look and observe, ‘That where she was, there was I also.’ And when she looked there, she saw me standing by her on the same rule” (Confess.III. xi.). Augustine now returned for a second time to Carthage, where he devoted himself zealously to work. Thence, probably in the spring of 383, he migrated to Rome. His Manichaean friends urged him to take this step, which was rendered easier by the licentious lives of the students at Carthage. His stay at Rome may have lasted about a year, no agreeable time for Augustine, since his patrons and friends belonged to just those Manichaean circles with which he had in the meantime entirely lost all intellectual touch. He, therefore, accepted an invitation from Milan, where the people were in search of a teacher of rhetoric.

At Milan the conflict within his mind in search of truth still continued. It was now that he separated himself openly from the Manichaean sect. As a thinker he came entirely under the influence of the New Academy; he professed the Sceptic philosophy, without being able to find in it the final conclusion of wisdom. He was, however, not far from the decision. Two things determined his further development. He became acquainted with the Neo-Platonic philosophy; its monism replaced the dualism, its intellectualized world of ideas the materialism of Manichaeism. Here he found the admonition to seek for truth outside the material world, and from created things he learnt to recognize the invisible God; he attained the certainty that this God is, and is eternal, always the same, subject to change neither in his parts nor in his motions. And while thus Augustine’s metaphysical convictions were being slowly remodelled, he met, in Ambrose, bishop of Milan, a man in whom complete worldly culture and the nobility of a ripe Christian personality were wonderfully united. He heard him preach; but at first it was the orator and not the contents of the sermons that enchained him. He sought an opportunity of conversation with him, but this was not easily found. Ambrose had no leisure for philosophic discussion. He was accessible to all who sought him, but never for a moment free from study or the cares of duty. Augustine, as he himself tells us, used to enter without being announced, as all persons might; but after staying for a while, afraid of interrupting him, he would depart again. He continued, however, to hear Ambrose preach, and gradually the gospel of divine truth and grace was received into his heart. He was busy with his friend Alypius in studying the Pauline epistles; certain words were driven home with irresistible force to his conscience. His struggle of mind became more and more intolerable, the thought of divine purity fighting in his heartwith the love of the world and the flesh. That sensuality was his worst enemy he had long known. The mother of his child had accompanied him to Milan. When he became betrothed he dismissed her; but neither the pain of this parting nor consideration for his not yet marriageable bride prevented him from forming a fresh connexion of the same kind. Meanwhile, the determination to renounce the old life with its pleasures of sense, was ever being forced upon him with more and more distinctness. He then received a visit from a Christian compatriot named Pontitian, who told him about St Anthony and the monachism in Egypt, and also of a monastery near Milan. He was shaken to the depths when he learnt from Pontitian that two young officials, like himself betrothed, had suddenly formed a determination to turn their backs upon the life of the world. He could no longer bear to be inside the house; in terrible excitement he rushed into the garden; and now followed that scene which he himself in theConfessionshas described to us with such graphic realism. He flung himself under a fig tree, burst into a passion of weeping, and poured out his heart to God. Suddenly he seemed to hear a voice bidding him consult the divine oracle: “Take up and read, take up and read.” He left off weeping, rose up, sought the volume where Alypius was sitting, and opening it read in silence the following passage from the Epistle to the Romans (xiii. 13, 14): “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof.” He adds: “I had neither desire nor need to read further. As I finished the sentence, as though the light of peace had been poured into the heart, all the shadows of doubt dispersed. Thus hast Thou converted me to Thee, so as no longer to seek either for wife or other hope of the world, standing fast in that rule of faith in which Thou so many years before hadst revealed me to my mother” (in qua me ante lot annos ei revelaveras: Confess. VIII. xii. § 30).1

The conversion of Augustine, as we have been accustomed to call this event, took place in the late summer of 386, a few weeks before the beginning of the vacation. The determination to give up his post was rendered easier by a chest-trouble which was not without danger, and which for months made him incapable of work. He withdrew with several companions to the country estate of Cassisiacum near Milan, which had been lent him by a friend, and announced himself to the bishop as a candidate for baptism. His religious opinions were still to some extent unformed, and even his habits by no means altogether such as his great change demanded. He mentions, for example, that during this time he broke himself of a habit of profane swearing, and in other ways sought to discipline his character and conduct for the reception of the sacred rite. He received baptism the Easter following, in his thirty-third year, and along with him his son Adeodatus and his friend Alypius were admitted to the Church. Monica, his mother, had rejoined him, and at length rejoiced in the fulfilment of her prayers. She died at Ostia, just as they were about to embark for Africa, her last hours being gladdened by his Christian sympathy. In the account of the conversation which he had with his mother before her end, in the narrative of her death and burial (Confess. IX. x.-xi., §§ 23-28), Augustine’s literary power is displayed at its highest.

The plan of returning home, remained for the present unaccomplished. Augustine stayed for a year in Rome, occupied in literary work, particularly in controversy with Manichaeism. It was not until the autumn of 388 that he returned to Tagaste, probably still accompanied by his son, who, however, must have died shortly afterwards. With some friends, who joined him in devotion, he formed a small religious community, which looked to him as its head. Their mode of life was not formally monastic according to any special rule, but the experience of this time of seclusion was, no doubt, the basis of that monastic system which Augustine afterwards sketched and which derived its name from him (seeAugustinians). As may be imagined, the fame of such a convert in such a position soon spread, and invitations to a more active ecclesiastical life came to him from many quarters. He shrank from the responsibility, but his destiny was not to be avoided. After two and a half years spent in retirement he went to Hippo, to see a Christian friend, who desired to converse with him as to his design of quitting the world and devoting himself to a religious life. The Christian community there being in want of a presbyter and Augustine being present at the meeting, the people unanimously chose him and he was ordained to the presbyterate. A few years afterwards, 395 or 396, he was made coadjutor to the bishop, and finally became bishop of the see.

Henceforth Augustine’s life is filled up with his ecclesiastical labours, and is more marked by the series of his numerous writings and the great controversies in which they engaged him than by anything else. His life was spent in a perpetual strife. During the first half this had been against himself; but even when others stepped into his place, it always seems as though a part of Augustine himself were incarnate in them. Augustine had early distinguished himself as an author. He had written several philosophical treatises, and, as teacher of rhetoric at Carthage, he had composed a workDe pulchro et apto, which is no longer extant. Whenat Cassisiacum he had combated the scepticism of the New Academy (Contra Academicos), had treated of the “blessed life” (De Vita beata), of the significance of evil in the order of the world (De ordine), of the means for the elucidation of spiritual truths (Soliloquia). Shortly before the time of his baptism, he was occupied with the question of the immortality of the soul (De immortalitate animae), and in Rome and at Tagaste he was still engaged with philosophical problems, as is evidenced by the writingsDe quantitate animaeandDe magistro. In all these treatises is apparent the influence of the Neo-Platonic method of thought, which for him, as for so many others, had become the bridge to the Christian. While still in Rome, he began to come to a reckoning with the Manichaeans, and wrote two books on the morals of the Catholic Church and of the Manichaeans (De moribus ecclesiae Catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum libri duo). For many years he pursued this controversy in a long series of writings, of which the most conspicuous is the elaborate reply to his old associate and disputant, Faustus of Mileve (Contra Faustum Manichaeum,A.D.400). It was natural that the Manichaean heresy, which had so long enslaved his own mind, should have first exercised Augustine’s great powers as a theological thinker and controversialist. He was able from his own experience to give force to his arguments for the unity of creation and of the spiritual life, and to strengthen the mind of the Christian Church in its last struggle with that dualistic spirit which had animated and moulded in succession so many forms of thought at variance with Christianity.

But the time was one of almost universal ecclesiastical and intellectual excitement; and so powerful a mental activity as his was naturally drawn forth in all directions. Following his writings against the Manichaeans came those against the Donatists. The controversy was one which strongly interested him, involving as it did the whole question of the constitution of the Church and the idea of catholic order, to which the circumstances of the age gave special prominence. The Donatist controversy sprang out of the Diocletian persecution in the beginning of the century. A party in the Church of Carthage, fired with fanatic zeal on behalf of those who had courted martyrdom by resistance to the imperial mandates, resented deeply the appointment of a bishop of moderate opinions, whose consecration had been performed, they alleged, by atraditor, viz. a bishop who had “delivered” the holy scriptures to the magistrates. They set up, in consequence, a bishop of their own, of the name of Majorinus, succeeded in 315 by Donatus. The party made great pretensions to purity of discipline, and rapidly rose in popular favour, notwithstanding a decision given against them both by the bishop of Rome and by the emperor Cons tan tine. Augustine was strongly moved by the lawlessness of the party and launched forth a series of writings against them, the most important of which survive. Amongst these are “Seven Books on Baptism” (De baptismo contra Donatistas,c.A.D.400) and a lengthy answer, in three books, to Petilian, bishop of Cirta, who was the most eminent theologian amongst the Donatist divines. At a later period, about 417, Augustine wrote a treatise concerningthe correction of the Donatists (De correctione Donatistarum) “for the sake of those,” he says in hisRetractations, “who were not willing that the Donatists should be subjected to the correction of the imperial laws.” In these writings, while vigorously maintaining the validity of the Church as it then stood in the Roman world, and the necessity for moderation in the exercise of church discipline, Augustine yet gave currency, in his zeal against the Donatists, to certain maxims as to the duty of the civil power to control schism, which were of evil omen, and have been productive of much disaster in the history of Christianity.

The third controversy in which Augustine engaged was the most important, and the most intimately associated with his distinctive greatness as a theologian. As may be supposed, owing to the conflicts through which he had passed, the bishop of Hippo was intensely interested in what may be called the anthropological aspect of the great Christian idea of redemption. He had himself been brought out of darkness into “marvellous light,” only by entering into the depths of his own soul, and finding, after many struggles, that there was no power but divine grace, as revealed in the life and death of the Son of God, which could bring rest to human weariness, or pardon and peace for human guilt. He had found human nature in his own case too weak and sinful to find any good for itself. In God alone he had found good. This deep sense of human sinfulness coloured all his theology, and gave to it at once its depth—its profound and sympathetic adaptation to all who feel the reality of sin—and that tinge of darkness and exaggeration which has as surely repelled others. When the expression “Augustinism” is used, it points especially to those opinions of the great teacher which were evoked in the Pelagian controversy, to which he devoted the most mature and powerful period of his life. His opponents in this controversy were Pelagius, from whom it derives its name, and Coelestius and Julianus, pupils of the former. Nothing is certainly known as to the home of Pelagius. Augustine calls him Brito, and so do Marius Mercator and Orosius. Jerome points to his Scottish descent, in such terms, however, as to leave it uncertain whether he was a native of Scotland or of Ireland. He was a man of blameless character, devoted to the reformation of society, full of that confidence in the natural impulses of humanity which often accompanies philanthropic enthusiasm. About the year 400 he came, no longer a young man, to Rome, where he lived for more than a decade, and soon made himself conspicuous by his activity and by his opinions. His pupil Coelestius, a lawyer of unknown origin, developed the views of his master with a more outspoken logic, and, while travelling with Pelagius in Africa, in the year 411, was at length arraigned before the bishop of Carthage for the following, amongst other heretical opinions:—(1) that Adam’s sin was purely personal, and affected none but himself; (2) that each man, consequently, is born with powers as incorrupt as those of Adam, and only falls into sin under the force of temptation and evil example; (3) that children who die in infancy, being untainted by sin, are saved without baptism. Views such as these were obviously in conflict with the whole course of Augustine’s experience, as well as with his interpretation of the catholic doctrine of the Church. And when his attention was drawn to them by the trial and excommunication of Coelestius, he undertook their refutation, first of all in three books on the punishment and forgiveness of sins and the baptism of infants (De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo parvulorum), addressed to his friend Marcellinus, in which he vindicated the necessity of baptism of infants because of original sin and the grace of God by which we are justified (Retract.ii. 23). This was in 412. In the same year he addressed a further treatise to the same Marcellinus onThe Spirit and the Letter(De spiritu et littera). Three years later he composed the treatises onNature and Grace(De natura et gratia) and the relation of the human to the divine righteousness (De perfectione iustitiae hominis). The controversy was continued during many years in no fewer than fifteen treatises. Upon no subject did Augustine bestow more of his intellectual strength, and in relation to no other have his views so deeply and permanently affected the course of Christian thought. Even those who most usually agree with his theological standpoint will hardly deny that, while he did much in these writings to vindicate divine truth and to expound the true relations of the divine and human, he also, here as elsewhere, was hurried into extreme expressions as to the absoluteness of divine grace and the extent of human corruption. Like his great disciple in a later age—Luther—Augustine was prone to emphasize the side of truth which he had most realized in his own experience, and, in contradistinction to the Pelagian exaltation of human nature, to depreciate its capabilities beyond measure.

In addition to these controversial writings, which mark the great epochs of Augustine’s life and ecclesiastical activity after his settlement as a bishop at Hippo, he was the author of other works, some of them better known and even more important. His great work, the most elaborate, and in some respects the most significant, that came from his pen, isThe City of God(De civitate Dei). It is designed as a great apologetic treatise in vindication of Christianity and the Christian Church,—the latter conceived as rising in the form of a new civic order on the crumbling ruins of the Roman empire,—but it is also, perhaps, the earliest contribution to the philosophy of history, as it is a repertory throughout of his cherished theological opinions. This work and hisConfessionsare, probably, those by which he is best known, the one as the highest expression of his thought, and the other as the best monument of his living piety and Christian experience.The City of Godwas begun in 413, and continued to be issued in its several portions for a period of thirteen years, or till 426. TheConfessionswere written shortly after he became a bishop, about 397, and give a vivid sketch of his early career. To the devout utterances and aspirations of a great soul they add the charm of personal disclosure, and have never ceased to excite admiration in all spirits of kindred piety. Something of this charm also belongs to theRetractations, that remarkable work in which Augustine, in 427, towards the end of his life, held as it were a review of his literary activity, in order to improve what was erroneous and to make clear what was doubtful in it. His systematic treatise onThe Trinity(De Trinitate) which extends to fifteen books and occupied him for nearly thirty years, must not be passed over. This important work, unlike most of his dogmatic writings, was not provoked by any special controversial emergency, but grew up silently during this long period in the author’s mind. This has given it something more of completeness and organic arrangement than is usual with Augustine, if it has also led him into the prolonged discussion of various analogies, more curious than apt in their bearing on the doctrine which he expounds. Brief and concise is the presentation of the Catholic doctrine in the compendium, which, about 421, he wrote at the request of a Roman layman named Laurentius (Encheiridion, sive de fide spe et caritate). In spite of its title, the compendious work on Christian doctrine (De doctrina Christiana), begun as early as 393, but only finished in 426, does not belong to the dogmatic writings. It is a sort of Biblical hermeneutic, in which homiletic questions are also dealt with. His catechetical principles Augustine developed in the charming writingDe catechizandis rudibus(c.400). A large number of tractates are devoted to moral and theological problems (Contra mendacium,c.420;De bono conjugali, 401, &c.). A widespread influence was exercised by the treatiseDe opere monachorum(c.400), in which, on the ground of Holy Scripture, manual work was demanded of monks. Of less importance than the remaining works are the numerous exegetical writings, among which the commentary on the Gospel of St John deserves a special mention. These have a value owing to Augustine’s appreciation of the deeper spiritual meaning of scripture, but hardly for their exegetical qualities. HisLettersare full of interest owing to the light they throw on many questions in the ecclesiastical history of the time, and owing to his relations with such contemporary theologians as Jerome. They have, however, neither the liveliness nor the varied interest of the letters of Jerome himself. As a preacher Augustine wasof great importance. We still possess almost four hundred sermons which may be ascribed to him with certainty. Many others only pass under his celebrated name.

The closing years of the great bishop were full of sorrow. The Vandals, who had been gradually enclosing the Roman empire, appeared before the gates of Hippo, and laid siege to it. Augustine was ill with his last illness, and could only pray for his fellow-citizens. He passed away during the siege, on the 28th of August 430, at the age of seventy-five, and thus was spared the indignity of seeing the city in the hands of the enemy.

The character of Augustine, both as a man and as a theologian, has been briefly indicated in the course of our sketch. None can deny the greatness of Augustine’s soul—his enthusiasm, his unceasing search after truth, his affectionate disposition, his ardour, his self-devotion. And even those who may doubt the soundness of his dogmatic conclusions, cannot but acknowledge the depth of his spiritual convictions, and the logical force and penetration with which he handled the most difficult questions, thus weaving all the elements of his experience and of his profound scriptural knowledge into a great system of Christian thought. Of the four great Fathers of the Church he was admittedly the greatest—more profound than Ambrose, his spiritual father, more original and systematic than Jerome, his correspondent, and intellectually far more distinguished than Gregory the Great, his pupil on the papal throne. The theological position and influence of Augustine may be said to be unrivalled. No single name has ever exercised such power over the Christian Church, and no one mind ever made so deep an impression upon Christian thought. In him scholastics and mystics, popes and the opponents of the papal supremacy, have seen their champion. He was the fulcrum on which Luther rested the thoughts by which he sought to lift the past of the Church out of the rut; yet the judgment of Catholics still proclaims the ideas of Augustine as the only sound basis of philosophy.

The best complete edition of Augustine’s works is that of the Maurines, in 11 vols. fol. published at Paris, 1679-1700, and reprinted in Migne’sPatrologie(Paris, 1841-1842). Of the new critical edition in theCorpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, issued by the Vienna Academy, thirteen volumes had been published in 1908, including theConfessions, theRetractations,De civitate Dei, and a number of exegetical and of dogmatic polemical works, together with a portion of theLetters. An English translation of nearly the whole of Augustine’s writings will be found in theSelect Library of the Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church(series 1, Buffalo, 1886, &c.). Tillemont, in hisMémoires pour servir à l’histoire ecclésiastique des VI premiers siècles, has devoted a quarto volume (vol. xiii.) to Augustine’s life and writings. The most complete monographs are those on the Catholic side by Kloth (Aix-la-Chapelle, 1839-1840, 3 vols.) and J.J.F. Poujoulat (7th ed., Paris, 1886, 2 vols.), and on the Protestant side by Bindemann (Berlin, Leipzig, Greifswald, 1844-1869, 3 vols,). There are interesting sketches, from quite different points of view, by von Hertling,Augustinus(2nd ed., Mainz, 1904), and Joseph McCabe,St Augustine and His Age(London, 1902). See also Nourrisson,La Philosophie de St Augustin(2nd ed., Paris, 1866, 2 vols.); H.A. Naville,St Augustin, étude sur la développement de sa pensée jusqu’à l’époque de son ordination(Geneva, 1872); Dorner,Augustinus(Berlin, 1873); Reuter,Augustinische Studien(Gotha, 1886); F. Scheel,Die Anschauung Augustins über Christi Person und Werk(Tübingen, 1901); A. Hatzfeld,Saint Augustin(6th ed., Paris, 1902); G. von Hertling,Augustin(Mainz, 1902); A. Egger,Der heilige Augustinus(Kempten, 1904); J.N. Espenberger,Die Elemente der Erbsunde nach Augustin und der Fruhscholastik(Mainz, 1905); S. Angus,The Sources of the First Ten Books of Augustine’s De Civitate Dei(Princeton, 1906); and the more modern text-books of the history of dogma, especially Harnack.

(G. K.)

1The reference is to the vision described above.

AUGUSTINE, SAINT(d.c.613), first archbishop of Canterbury, occupied a position of authority in the monastery of St Andrew at Rome, when Gregory I. summoned him to lead a mission to England inA.D.596. The apprehensions of Augustine’s followers caused him to return to Rome, but the pope furnished him with letters of commendation and encouraged him to proceed. He landed in Thanet inA.D.597, and was favourably received by Æthelberht, king of Kent, who granted a dwelling-place for the monks in Canterbury, and allowed them liberty to preach. Augustine first made use of the ancient church of St Martin at Canterbury, which before his arrival had been the oratory of the Queen Berhta and her confessor Liudhard. Æthelberht upon his conversion employed all his influence in support of the mission. In 601 Augustine received the pallium from Gregory and was given authority over the Celtic churches in Britain, as well as all future bishops consecrated in English territory, including York. Authority over the see of York was not, however, to descend to Augustine’s successors. In 603 he consecrated Christ Church, Canterbury, and built the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul, afterwards known as St Augustine’s. At the conference of Augustine’s Oak he endeavoured in vain to bring over the Celtic church to the observance of the Roman Easter. He afterwards consecrated Mellitus and Justus to the sees of London and Rochester respectively. The date of his death is not recorded by Bede, but MS. F of the Saxon Chronicle puts it in 614, and theAnnales Monasteriensesin 612.

See Bede,Eccl. Hist.(ed. by Plummer), i. 23-ii. 3.

AUGUSTINIAN CANONS,a religious order in the Roman Catholic Church, called also Austin Canons, Canons Regular, and in England Black Canons, because their cassock and mantle were black, though they wore a white surplice: elsewhere the colour of the habit varied considerably.

The canons regular (seeCanon) grew out of the earlier institute of canonical life, in consequence of the urgent exhortations of the Lateran Synod of 1059. The clergy of some cathedrals (in England, Carlisle), and of a great number of collegiate churches all over western Europe, responded to the appeal; and the need of a rule of life suited to the new regime produced, towards the end of the 11th century, the so-called Rule of St Augustine (seeAugustinians). This Rule was widely adopted by the canons regular, who also began to bind themselves by the vows of poverty, obedience and chastity. In the 12th century this discipline became universal among them; and so arose the order of Augustinian canons as a religious order in the strict sense of the word. They resembled the monks in so far as they lived in community and took religious vows; but their state of life remained essentially clerical, and as clerics their duty was to undertake the pastoral care and serve the parish churches in their patronage. They were bound to the choral celebration of the divine office, and in its general tenor their manner of life differed little from that of monks.

Their houses, at first without bonds between them, soon tended to draw together and coalesce into congregations with corporate organization and codes of constitutions supplementary to the Rule. The popes encouraged these centralizing tendencies; and in 1339 Benedict XII. organized the Augustinian canons on the same general lines as those laid down for the Benedictines, by a system of provincial chapters and visitations.

Some thirty congregations of canons regular of St Augustine are numbered. The most important were: (1) the Lateran canons, formed soon after the synod of 1059, by the clergy of the Lateran Basilica; (2) Congregation of St Victor in Paris, c. 1100, remarkable for the theological and mystical school of Hugh, Richard and Adam of St Victor; (3) Gilbertines (seeGilbert of Sempringham, St); (4) Windesheim Congregation,c.1400, in the Netherlands and over north and central Germany (seeGroot, Gerhard), to which belonged Thomas à Kempis; (5) Congregation of Ste Geneviève in Paris, a reformc.1630. During the later middle ages the houses of these various congregations of canons regular spread all over Europe and became extraordinarily numerous. They underwent the natural and inevitable vicissitudes of all orders, having their periods of depression and degeneracy, and again of revival and reform. The book of Johann Busch, himself a canon of Windesheim,De Reformatione monasteriorum, shows that in the 15th century grave relaxation had crept into many monasteries of Augustinian canons in north Germany, and the efforts at reform were only partially successful. The Reformation, the religious wars and the Revolution have swept away nearly all the canons regular, but some of their houses in Austria still exist in their medieval splendour. In England there were as many as 200 houses of Augustinian canons, and 60 of them were among the “greater monasteries” suppressed in 1538-1540 (for list see Tables inF.A. Gasquet’sEnglish Monastic Life). The first foundation was Holy Trinity, Aldgate, by Queen Maud, in 1108; Carlisle was an English cathedral of Augustinian canons. In Ireland the order was even more numerous, Christ Church, Dublin, being one of their houses. Three houses of the Lateran canons were established in England towards the close of the 19th century. Most of the congregations of Augustinian canons had convents of nuns, called canonesses; many such exist to this day.

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