{139} Book Nine

Augustine abandons his career and retires to a country estate with his mother, son, and friends to enjoy unconstrained discussion and contemplation. Returning to Milan, he, Alypius, and Adeodatus are baptized, plunged into the sacramental death and rebirth that establish the central theme of this book. Augustine records the baptisms and deaths of his friends Verecundus and Nebridius; his father, Patrick; and his son, Adeodatus; but the death of Monnica receives the most attention. Augustine recounts her life, her wisdom, and her devotion to God. Shortly before her death, as they are waiting to sail back to Africa from Ostia (the port of Rome), she and Augustine discuss the eternal life of the saints; they “traverse all bodily things” and “touch [Wisdom]—just barely—with the utmost energy of [their] hearts” (9.10.24). Augustine grieves deeply over his mother’s death; his reflections on the proper place of grief in human life are gentler than his conclusions in Book 4 after the death of his unnamed friend: for his love for Monnica was true friendship.

Augustine throws off his old life, including his career as a teacher of rhetoric (9.1.1–9.3.6). He goes to Cassiciacum (9.4.7–9.5.13) with his mother, son, and friends, enjoying philosophical discussions and writing dialogues (9.4.7). He is deeply moved by the Psalms (9.4.8) but baffled by Isaiah (9.5.13). He returns to Milan (9.6.14–9.7.16) for baptism. Augustine recounts the life of Monnica (9.8.17–9.9.21). In the course of a conversation together at Ostia, Monnica and Augustine have an experience of glimpsing Wisdom beyond all earthly things (9.10.23–26). A few days later, Monnica dies (9.11.27–28), and Augustine grieves (9.12.29–9.13.36). He asks that Monnica and Patrick be remembered at the altar (9.13.37).

1.1 O Lord, I am your servant; I am your servant and the child of your handmaid: you have broken my chains. I will offer to you a sacrifice of praise. [Ps. 115:16–17] Let my heart and my tongue praise you, and let all my bones say, “O Lord, who is like you?” [Ps. 34:10] Let them say this, and you answer me and say to my soul, “I am your salvation.” [Ps. 34:3] Who am I, and what sort of man am I? What evil was lacking from my deeds, or if not from my deeds then from my words, or if not from my words then from my will? But you, O Lord, are gracious and merciful, [Ex. 34:6; Ps. 85:5, 102:8] and your right hand in its tender care has regard for the immense darkness of my death and drains the bottomless pit of corruption from the depths of my heart. And this was the whole of it: not to will what I willed, and to will what you willed. [Mt. 26:39; Mk.14:36; Jn. 5:30, 6:38] But where was my free choice in all those long years? And from what deep and hidden recess was it called forth in that moment {140} when I bowed my neck to your easy yoke and my shoulders to your light burden, [Mt. 11:30 / Ps. 18:15] Christ Jesus, my helper and my redeemer? How sweet it suddenly became for me to be without the sweetness of those trifles, which I had feared to lose but now rejoiced to send away. For you cast them away from me, you who are the true, the supreme, sweetness; you cast them away and in their place you yourself entered into me, sweeter than any pleasure, though not for flesh and blood; brighter than any light, yet deeper and more intimate than any hidden recess; loftier than any honor, but not for those who are lofty in themselves. At last my soul was free from its gnawing cares: its ambition and greed, its obsession with scratching the itch of its lusts. At last I was speaking freely to you, my brightness, my wealth, and my salvation, O Lord my God.

2.2 And it pleased me in your sight [Ps. 18:15] not to make a noisy spectacle of withdrawing the service of my tongue in the marketplace of unbridled speech, but instead to slip away quietly, so that young men who were not meditating on your law, [Ps. 1:2, 118:70, 77, 92, 97, 174 / Ps. 39:5] not meditating on your peace, but instead on mad falsehoods and court battles, would not purchase from my mouth the weapons of their frenzy. Fortunately it was now only a few days from the Vintage Vacation,1 and I made up my mind to hold out for those few days so that I could retire gracefully; now that you had bought me for yourself, I would not go back to putting myself up for sale. So our resolution was known to you, but not to anyone else except for our close friends; we agreed not to share the news with just anyone. But to us who were climbing up from the valley of weeping [Ps. 83:7] and singing a song of degrees2 you had sent sharp arrows and hot burning coals against the deceitful tongue3 [Ps. 119:3–4] that might speak against us under the guise of giving advice and devour us like food under the pretext of friendship.

2.3 You had pierced our heart with the arrows of your charity, and we carried about your words like swords that had penetrated to our inmost {141} being.4 And the examples of your servants, whom you had brought out of darkness into light and out of death into life, were brought together into the very center of our thought and burned fiercely. They burned off our heaviness, our sluggishness, so that we would not fall back into the depths; they enkindled us powerfully, so that no breath of contradiction from a deceitful tongue could put out the fire, but would only make us burn all the more brightly.

We knew, of course, that there would also be some who would praise our vow and resolution for the sake of your Name, which you have hallowed [Ez. 36:23; Mt. 6:9] throughout the earth. So it seemed like self-aggrandizement not to wait for the holidays that were so close, but instead to make a public show of resigning my position in front of everyone so that my action would be on everyone’s lips; seeing that I had decided to depart so close to the upcoming Vintage Vacation, people would have a great deal to say about how I had set my heart on making myself look terribly important. And how would it have served me for people to question and argue about my state of mind and to let our good be spoken of as evil? [Rom. 14:16]

2.4 As it happened, that summer my lungs had begun to give way under the strain of too much work teaching. I found it difficult to breathe, and the pains in my chest betrayed the weakened state of my lungs. I could no longer speak in a full voice or for prolonged stretches of time. At first this concerned me, because my symptoms were practically forcing me to set down the burden of my teaching position, or, if I could be cured and recover, at least to take some time off. But once the wholehearted will to be still and see that you are the Lord [Ps. 45:11] had arisen in me and become firmly fixed—as you know, my God—I actually began to rejoice in having this honest excuse to mitigate the offense I would cause to people who for the sake of their children wanted me never to be free.5 So, full of such joy, I put up with the delay until it had run its course—it was about twenty days, I think—though it required strength to make it through, because the greed that had once made my heavy work bearable had disappeared; had patience not taken its place, I would have been crushed under the load.

Some of your servants, my brothers and sisters, will perhaps say that I sinned by remaining even one hour in the seat of the liar [Ps. 1:1] when my heart was already fully intent on serving you. I will not argue with them. But you, most merciful Lord: did you not cast this sin into {142} oblivion and forgive it, along with all my other hideous and deadly sins, in the sacred water of baptism?

3.5 Verecundus was consumed with anxiety over this salutary resolution of ours, because he saw that he would lose our fellowship owing to the chains by which he was so tightly bound. He was not yet a Christian. His wife was a baptized believer, yet it was on account of her, more than anything else, that he was held back from joining us on the journey that we had undertaken. He said that he was unwilling to be a Christian in any other way than the one way he could not follow. But he very kindly offered us his hospitality as long as we wanted to stay. You will reward him, O Lord, at the resurrection of the just, [Lk. 14:14] because you have already rewarded him with his allotted place among the just. [Ps. 124:3] For after we had left him and gone to Rome, he was chastened by a bodily illness, and while he was sick he became a Christian; and having been baptized, he departed this life. In this way you had mercy not only on him but on us as well, so that we would not be tortured by the unbearable grief of remembering his outstanding generosity as our friend but being unable to count him among your flock.6 Thanks be to you, our God! We are yours. Your encouragements and your consolations testify that we are yours. Faithful to your promise, you are rewarding Verecundus for granting us the use of his country house at Cassiciacum,7 where we rested in you from the turmoil of this present world; you are rewarding him with the delights of your paradise, which is lush and green for ever. For you have forgiven his earthly sins on the mountain flowing with milk, your mountain, the mountain of abundance.8 [Ps. 67:16–17 VL]

3.6 So Verecundus was distressed, but Nebridius rejoiced with us. For although he was not yet a Christian and had fallen into that most destructive pit of error, so that he believed that the flesh of the Truth, [Jn. 14:6] your Son, was a phantasm, still, he was beginning to climb up out of {143} it: he was not yet initiated into any of the sacraments of your Church, but he was a most ardent seeker after truth. Not long after our conversion and regeneration through your baptism, you released him from the flesh; he was by then a baptized catholic, serving you among your people in Africa in perfect chastity and continence, and through him his entire household had become Christian. And now he lives in the bosom of Abraham. [Lk. 16:22] Whatever is meant by the bosom of Abraham, that is where my Nebridius lives, my dear friend, once a freedman but now your adoptive son, O Lord; that is where he lives.9 For what other place could there be for such a soul? He lives in that place about which he used to ask me so many questions, insignificant and ignorant man that I am. He no longer gives his ear to my mouth but puts his spiritual mouth to your fount and drinks from it as much wisdom as he can [Sir. 1:5, 26:15; Prov. 18:4] in his great eagerness, happy without limit and without end. And I do not think that he is so intoxicated from this that he forgets me, since you, O Lord, whom he drinks, keep us always in remembrance.

And so this is how we were. We offered comfort to Verecundus in his sadness, assuring him that our conversion would not put an end to our friendship and encouraging him to embrace the faith appropriate to his status, that is, to married life. And we awaited the time when Nebridius would follow us. He was so close that he could easily have done it, and he was already on the verge of doing so by the time those days had at last run their course. For it did seem that those days were long and many, because we greatly desired the freedom and leisure to sing to you from our innermost being, “My heart has said to you, ‘I have sought your face; your face, O Lord, I will seek.’” [Ps. 26:8]

4.7 The day came when I was set free from the profession of rhetoric in actual fact; I had already been set free from it in thought, but now it was done. You rescued my tongue from it as you had already rescued my heart, and I blessed you with joy when I arrived at the country house with all my friends. The books recording the discussions I had with my friends who were with me,10 and the dialogue I had with {144} myself alone in your presence,11 bear witness that what I wrote there was indeed already in your service, though in this in-between time it still breathed too much of the school of pride.12 My letters13 bear witness to what I wrote to Nebridius, who was not with us.

And when will there be time enough for me to recount all your great acts of kindness toward us in those days, especially as I am hastening to things that are greater still? For my memory calls me back there, and it becomes sweet to me, O Lord, to confess to you the inward lashings by which you brought me to heel, and how you made me into level ground, bringing low the mountains and hills of my thoughts, making my crooked places straight and my rough places smooth, [Is. 40:4 qtd. Lk. 3:5] and how you made even Alypius, the brother of my heart, subject to the name of your Only-begotten, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He had at first rejected that name as unworthy of being included in our writings, for he wanted them to carry the aroma of the cedars of higher learning, which the Lord has already brought low, [Ps. 28:5] rather than the life-giving herbs of your Church that ward off serpents.

4.8 How I lifted up my voice to you, my God, when I read the Psalms of David, those songs of faith, sounds of true religion that banish the spirit swollen with pride! I was still unformed in genuine love for you, a catechumen at leisure in a country house with Alypius, likewise a catechumen. My mother clung to us with the tenderness of a woman, the robust faith of a man, the steadfastness of age, the charity of a mother, and true Christian piety. How I lifted up my voice to you in those Psalms, and how they set me afire in you, so that I burned to recite them before the whole world, if only I could, to confound the arrogance of the human race! And yet indeed they are sung throughout all the world, [Ps. 18:5 / Ps. 18:7] and no one is hidden from your burning heat. With what passionate and bitter mortification did I despise the Manichees—and yet I pitied them too because they did not know those sacraments, those instruments of healing, and in their sickness they raged against {145} the medicine that could have made them well. I could wish that they were there with me, without my knowing it, so that they could see my face and hear my voice when I read the fourth Psalm14 in that time of leisure. They would hear how that Psalm affected me—“You answered me when I called upon you, O God of my justice; you set me free when I was in distress; have mercy on me, O Lord, and hear my prayer”—they [Ps. 4:2] would hear without my knowing that they were listening, so that they would not suppose the words I spoke in the midst of the words of the Psalm were spoken on their account. For in truth I would not have spoken them, or would not have spoken them in the same way, if I had known that they could hear me and see me; and if I had so spoken, they would not have received my words in the way that I spoke them to myself and in your presence, giving voice to the deepest devotion of my mind.

4.9 I shuddered with fear and at the same time burned with hope and exultation in your mercy, [Ps. 30:8] Father. And all these went forth through my eyes and my voice when your good Spirit [Ps. 142:10] turned to us and said to us, “Children of men, how long will your hearts be hardened? Why do you love emptiness and seek after a lie?” [Ps. 4:3] For truly I had loved emptiness and sought after a lie, and you, O Lord, had already magnified your Holy One, raising him from the dead and setting him at your right hand; and from there he sent from on high the one he had promised, [Lk. 24:49; Jn. 15:26 / Jn. 14:16–17] the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth. Your Holy One had already sent him, but I did not know it. He had sent him, because he had already been magnified by his rising from the dead and his ascending into heaven, whereas before that time the Spirit had not yet been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified. [Jn. 7:39] And the prophecy cries out, “How long will your hearts be hardened? Why do you love emptiness and seek after a lie? Know that the Lord has magnified his Holy One.” [Ps. 4:3–4] It cries out, “How long?”; it cries out, “Know.” And for so long I did not know; for so long I loved emptiness and sought after a lie. And so I heard these words and trembled, because I remembered that I had been like those of whom these words were spoken. For I had clung to phantasms in place of the truth, and in them there was emptiness and a lie. Deep and fierce were my many groans from the pain of this memory. If only those who still love emptiness and seek after a lie could have heard them: perhaps they would have been confounded and vomited up their error. And you would hear them when they cried out to you, [Ps. 30:23] for the {146} one who intercedes with you for us [Rom. 8:34 / Rom. 5:9] died for us, died a true death in his flesh.

4.10 I read, “Be angry and do not sin,” [Ps. 4:5] and oh, how this stirred me, my God! For I had already learned to be angry with myself for my past sins, so that I might sin no more. And I was right to be angry, for it was not some other nature from the race of darkness that sinned in me, as those who are not angry with themselves say, storing up wrath for themselves on the day of wrath, the day when your righteous judgment will be revealed. [Rom. 2:5]

Likewise my goods were no longer outside me; they were not to be sought by the eyes of the flesh in the light of this earthly sun. For those who desire to rejoice in what is outside themselves easily become empty: [Rom. 1:21] they are poured out into things that are seen, temporal things, [2 Cor. 4:18] and in the hunger of their thought they lick the images of those things. If only they would grow weary of their starvation and say, “Who will show us good things?” [Ps. 4:6] And let us say—and let them hear—“The light of your countenance has set its seal upon us, O Lord.” [Ps. 4:7] For we ourselves are not the Light that enlightens every human being; [Jn. 1:9] no, we are enlightened by you, so that we who once were darkness may be light in you. [Eph. 5:8 ] If only they could see this inward light! I had tasted it, and because [Ps. 33:9; 1 Pet. 2:3] I had tasted it I gnashed my teeth in frustration because I had no power to show it to them. If only they would set before me their hearts, which have their eyes fixed on things outside you, and say to me, “Who will show us good things?” [Ps. 4:6] It was there: there, in the place where I was angry, in the inner chamber [Mt. 6:6] where I felt the stings of remorse, where I had made my sacrifice to you, [Ps. 4:5 / Eph. 4:22; Col. 3:9 / 2 Cor. 4:16; Col. 3:10] offering up my old nature and looking to you in hope as I began to set my thoughts upon a life made new; there, where I had begun to taste your sweetness, where you had given me gladness in my heart. As I read these things with my outward eyes and [Ps. 4:7] acknowledged them within me, I shouted for joy. And it was not my will that earthly goods be multiplied for me, consuming times even as times consumed me, for in your eternal simplicity I had other grain and wine and oil. [Ps. 4:8]

4.11 At the next line I cried out from the depths of my heart, “Oh, in peace! Oh, in the Selfsame!”15 Oh, what does it say? “I will lie down and fall asleep.” [Ps. 4:9] For who will withstand us when the saying that is written shall come to pass: “Death is swallowed up in victory”? [1 Cor. 15:54] And you are truly the Selfsame, you who do not change, [Mal. 3:6] and in you is rest that makes us forget all our labors, for there is none [Gn. 41:51 / Deut. 4:35; Is. 45:5] besides you, and there {147} will be no more striving for the many things that are not what you are: no, it is in unity, O Lord, that you have established me in hope. [Ps. 4:10]

I went on reading, and I was on fire, and I could find nothing to do for those who were deaf and dead, as I had been, a plague, bitterly and blindly carping against writings that are sweet with the honey [Ps. 118:103] of your heaven and bright with your light. But now I [Ps. 118:105; Jn. 1:9, 8:12 / Ps. 138:21] was sickened by the enemies of your Scriptures.

4.12 When will I have time to recount all the days of that vacation? But I have not forgotten them, and I will not pass over in silence the bitterness of your chastisement and the marvelous quickness of your mercy. You tormented me then with toothache, and when it grew so bad that I could no longer speak, it entered into my heart [1 Cor. 2:9] to entreat all those who were with me to pray on my behalf to you, the God of every kind of salvation.16 [Ps. 17:47, 37:23] I wrote this on a wax tablet and gave it to them to read. No sooner had we fallen to our knees in fervent prayer than the pain went away. But what was the pain? And how did it go away? I was filled with holy fear, I admit, my Lord, my God. [Jn. 20:28] I had never experienced such a thing in my life: your purposes for me had penetrated to the very depths of my being. Rejoicing in faith, I praised your Name, [Ps. 144:2; Sir. 51:15] and that faith did not allow me to feel assurance concerning my past sins, for which I had not yet been forgiven through your baptism.

5.13 When the Vintage Vacation had come to an end, I resigned my post. The people of Milan would have to look for some other salesman of words for their students. The reasons were that I had chosen to serve you, and also that I was no longer capable of doing the job because of my difficulty breathing and the pains in my chest. And I wrote letters to your bishop Ambrose, that holy man, acknowledging my past errors and my present resolution. I asked him to advise me concerning the best way to go about reading your Scriptures, so that I could be better prepared and fitter to receive such great grace. He recommended the prophet Isaiah, I think because he foretells, more clearly than anyone else, the Gospel and the calling of the Gentiles. But when I began to read it, I could make no sense of it; and thinking the whole book would be more of the same, I decided to put off any further reading until I had become better acquainted with the Lord’s way of speaking.

6.14 When the time had come for me to give in my name for baptism, we left the countryside and returned to Milan. Alypius, too, {148} desired to be reborn in you along with me. He had already put on [Rom. 13:14; Col. 3:12] the humility that befits your sacraments and had vigorously subdued his body, to the point that with extraordinary daring he would walk around barefoot on the cold Italian ground. We included in our company the boy Adeodatus, who had been born of the sin of my flesh. You had made him a remarkable young man. He was about fifteen years old, but he surpassed in intellectual talent many serious and learned men. I praise you for your gifts, O Lord my God, Creator of all things and wondrously powerful in bringing form to our deformities. For I had brought nothing to that boy but my sin. We gave him the nourishment of your teaching, but it was you alone, and no other, who inspired us to do so. I praise you for your gifts. My book entitled On the Teacher is a discussion between him and me. You know that all the words I put in the mouth of my interlocutor in that book were his own thoughts, when he was sixteen years old. And I experienced many other great things from him at other times, things more marvelous still: his brilliance dumbfounded me. Who besides you could work such miracles? It was not long before you took his life from this earth, and I call him to mind with full confidence; nothing from his boyhood or adolescence makes me afraid; indeed, I have no fear at all on his account. He was our companion as one of the same age as we were in your grace, standing in need of training in your teaching.

And we were baptized,17 and all anxiety over our past life vanished. In those days18 I could not have enough of the wonderful sweetness of meditating on the depth of your plan [Rom. 11:33] for the salvation of the human race. How I wept as your hymns and songs [Eph. 5:19] were sung, cut to the quick by the voices of your Church lifted up in sweet music! Those voices flooded my ears, and your truth poured forth as a clear stream into my heart, welling up into passionate devotion; the tears flowed, and it was good for me that they did.

7.15 The Church in Milan had only recently begun to employ this form of comfort and encouragement; the brethren lifted up their voices {149} together with great enthusiasm. It had been a year, or not much longer, since Justina, mother of the boy-king Valentinian, was persecuting your man Ambrose in the interest of her heresy; she had been led astray by the Arians.19 The devout congregation kept watch in the church, prepared to die with their bishop, your servant. My mother, your handmaid, [Ps. 115:16] was there, foremost among them all in her care and watchfulness, fully alive with her prayers. We were still cold, untouched by the heat of your Spirit, but we were excited by the chaos and disturbance in the city. At that time the singing of hymns and psalms in the manner of the Eastern churches was introduced, so that the people would not grow faint from sorrow and fatigue. The practice has been kept up from that time until today, and many, perhaps nearly all, of your flocks throughout the world now do likewise.

7.16 It was at this time that you revealed to Bishop Ambrose, through a vision, the place where the bodies of the martyrs Protasius and Gervasius were hidden. You had concealed them, uncorrupted, for many years in a treasury known only to you, so that at the right time you could bring them forth to restrain the fury of a woman—albeit a woman of the royal house. For when their tombs had been opened and their bodies dug up, and they were brought with due honor to the basilica of Ambrose, those who were troubled with unclean spirits were healed, [Lk. 6:18] the demons themselves making their confession. And not only that, but one citizen, quite well known in the city, who had been blind for many years, asked what was the cause of the people’s noisy celebration. When he was told, he leapt to his feet and asked his guide to lead him there. Upon arriving, he begged to be allowed in so that he could touch with his handkerchief the bier on which lay the bodies of your saints, whose death is precious in your sight. [Ps. 115:15] When he did this and touched the handkerchief to his eyes, immediately they were opened. From there the story spread, your people praised you fervently, with hearts aglow, and the mind of your enemy, though not brought to healing faith, was at least checked in her frenzied desire to persecute. Thanks be to you, my God!

From what source, and to what purpose, have you guided my recollection so that I might confess even these things to you, when I have passed over many important things that I have forgotten? And yet at that time, when your anointing oils spread their sweet fragrance, we {150} were not chasing after you. [Song 1:3] And it was for this reason that I wept so much when your hymns were sung: for so long I had been sighing for you, and now at last I had begun to breathe you in—so far as air was free to move in a house [2 Cor. 5:1 / Is. 40:6 ] of grass.20

8.17 You, who make those who dwell together in a house to be of one accord, brought into our fellowship Evodius, a young [Ps. 67:7] man from our hometown. While serving as an agens in rebus,21 he had turned to you—this was before we did—and was baptized; he left the service of the world and was bound to you. We were together, and we made a holy decision that we would dwell together in the future. Seeking a place where we could be of the greatest use in your service, we made ready to return as a group to Africa. And while we were at Ostia on the Tiber,22 my mother died.

I am leaving out many things, for I am in great haste: accept my confessions and thanksgivings, O Lord, even for the countless things I am passing over in silence. But I will not pass over whatever my soul brings forth concerning your servant who brought me forth both in her flesh, that I might be born into this temporal light, and in her heart, that I might be born into light eternal. I will speak, not of her gifts, but of your gifts in her. For she did not make herself or bring herself up: you created her—neither her mother nor her father knew what sort of person their child would become—and the rod [Ps. 22:4] of your Christ, the discipline of your Only-begotten, trained her in reverence for you [Ps. 5:8] in a faithful household, by a good member of your Church.

But she did not speak as much about the careful discipline she received from her mother as she did about what she received from an elderly servant who had carried her father on her back when he was an infant, as nearly grown girls so often carry younger children. For this reason, and because of her age and excellent character, she was held in great honor by her masters in that Christian household and was entrusted with the care of the master’s daughters, a task she carried out faithfully. She was stern with holy severity in correcting them when there was need, and she showed solid good sense in teaching them. For she would {151} not let them drink water, even if they were parched with thirst, except at mealtimes, when they were nourished quite moderately at their parents’ table. She was taking care that they not develop a bad habit, and she added this sound advice: “For [2 Tim. 1:13; Tit. 2:8] now you drink water, because you cannot drink wine. But once you are married and take charge of the storehouses and cellars, water will not satisfy you, but the habit of drinking will overpower you.” By the reasonableness of this instruction and her authoritative way of giving commands, she restrained the eager desire of a tender age and imposed an honorable limit on the girls’ very thirst, so that they would not even desire what was not fitting.

8.18 It did creep up on her, though, as your servant told me, her son; drunkenness did creep up on her. It was her parents’ custom to send her, as a reliable young girl, to draw the wine from the cask. She would plunge the cup through the opening at the top and then, before she poured it into the jug, she would put it to her lips for a tiny sip—no more than that, because she disliked the taste. She did not do this out of a desire to get drunk, but just from an excess of the high spirits of youth, which often find boisterous release in playful acts of the sort that adults, with their weightier judgment, suppress in immature minds. And so by adding to that small sip a little more every day (for one who scorns small things falls little by little) [Sir. 19:1] she fell into a habit, and before long she was greedily drinking small cups full of wine.

What had become then of that wise old woman and her stern prohibition? Did it have no power against that secret sickness unless your medicine,23 O Lord, watched over us? Her father and mother and guardians were not there, but you were present: you who created us, who call us, who work for our good and for the salvation of our souls even through those who are placed in authority over us. What were you doing then, my God? How did you cure her? How did you restore her to health? Did you not wield the harsh and sharp outcry from another soul as a healing sword, drawn from your hidden providence, and with a single stroke cut off that rottenness? For the servant who used to accompany her to the cask was quarreling with her young mistress, as sometimes happens, and when they were alone together she threw my mother’s misdeeds in her face with a bitter insult, calling her a drunkard. Pierced by this rebuke, she looked upon her own uncleanness and immediately condemned it and cast it off.

{152} Just as the praises of friends lead us astray, so too the rebukes of our enemies often set us back on the right path. But you repay them, not for what you do through them, but for what they themselves will. That girl in her anger wanted to antagonize her young mistress, not to heal her. That is why she spoke in private, either because the quarrel happened to break out at a time and place where they were alone, or perhaps because she was afraid she would be in trouble for taking so long to report it. You, O Lord, Ruler of things in heaven and things on earth, bend to your own purposes the depths of the torrent, the turbulent flow of the ages on which you impose your order. By the madness of one soul you healed another, so that no one who observes this will credit his own power if someone else whom he intended to correct is corrected by his words.

9.19 And so she was brought up modestly and soberly; it was you who made her obedient to her parents, rather than they who made her obedient to you. When she reached the age to be married,24 she was given to her husband and served him as her master. [Eph. 5:22] She did everything she could to win him to you, speaking about you [1 Pet. 3:1–2] to him through her actions, by which you made her beautiful, worthy of reverent love, and wonderful in the eyes of her husband. She bore with his unjust use of the marriage bed25 and had no quarrel with her husband on that account. For she was awaiting your mercy upon him, [Ps. 85:13] so that he would be made chaste [1 Pet. 1:22; 1 Jn. 3:3] through believing in you. Now in those days he was outstandingly generous but equally quick-tempered. But she knew not to oppose her husband when he was angry: not in what she did, not even in what she said. Instead she would wait for the right time, when his anger had cooled and he was calm, and then she would explain to him why she had acted as she did, in case he had perhaps reacted without giving the matter sufficient thought. Many wives with gentler husbands bore the marks of beatings on their disfigured faces, and in their friendly talks together they would complain about their husbands’ conduct. But my mother, in a lighthearted tone but with utter seriousness, warned them against such talk. From the time they heard the marriage contract read out, she said, they should have regarded it as a legal document making them handmaids of their husbands; from then on they should be mindful of their status and not rise up in pride against their lords. Her friends, knowing what a foul-tempered husband she had to put up with, were astounded that no one had ever heard, or seen any {153} indication, that Patrick beat his wife, or that they were at odds with each other over some domestic quarrel even for a day. In their friendly conversation they asked her why that was, and she taught them the approach on which she had decided, which I described earlier. Those who followed her advice discovered its value and were happy; those who ignored it were left oppressed and troubled.

9.20 She won over even her mother-in-law, who had at first been set against her by the whispers of mischievous servant girls, by her obedience and her unstinting patience and gentleness: so much so that her mother-in-law went of her own accord to her son to expose the meddling tongues of the servant girls that had shattered the domestic peace between her and her daughter-in-law, and to insist that they be punished. And so he, in obedience to his mother and out of concern for discipline within his family and harmony among those belonging to his household, subjected the girls to beatings, just as his mother had decided. She assured them that anyone who spoke ill of her daughter-in-law thinking it would please her should expect such punishment from her. No one dared to say anything more, and the mutual goodwill of their life together was remarkable for its sweetness.

9.21 And there was another great gift you had bestowed on your good servant, in whose womb you had created me, my God, my mercy: [Ps. 58:18] whenever she could, she offered herself as a peacemaker between souls who were at variance and quarreling. When she heard them say severe and bitter words about each other—the sort of acrimonious words that are brought up like vomit from the heaving and indigestion of strife, when the caustic speech of a present friend about her absent enemy gives vent to the glutted stomach of her hatreds—she would say nothing to either about the other except what might serve to reconcile them. I would think this only a small good were it not that I have sorrowful experience of countless hordes of people—infected by who knows what sort of plague of sins, seeping out in some utterly mysterious way—who do not merely pass on what one angry enemy said of another, but even add things that were not said at all. But it should be a matter of simple humanity to refrain from instigating or fomenting enmity by malicious speech, if not indeed to work hard to put an end to it by speaking graciously. Such a person was my mother, because you, her inmost Teacher, had taught her thus in the schoolroom of her deepest self.26

{154} 9.22 At last she also won her husband for you [1 Pet. 3:1] near the end of his life in this world, and once he had been baptized she no longer had any cause to complain of the things she had borne with before he was baptized. And she was a servant of your servants: all of your servants who knew her praised and honored and loved you greatly in her, for they recognized your presence in her heart, attested by the fruits of her holy life. For she had been the wife of one husband; [Tob. 14:17; Mt. 7:20; 1 Pet. 3:11 / 1 Tim. 5:9 / 1 Tim. 5:4] she had made due repayment to her parents; she had managed her household religiously; she was well attested for her good deeds. She had brought up her children, laboring again and again to give them birth [1 Tim. 5:10 / Gal. 4:19] whenever she saw they were going astray from you. Finally, Lord, in the days before she fell asleep27 in you, when we were all living together as companions after we had received the grace of your baptism, she took such great care of all of us, your servants—for it is by your Gift28 that you allow us to speak—as though she were the mother of each of us, and she served us as though we were all her fathers.

10.23 Now when the day on which she was to depart this life was close at hand (what day that was, you knew, but we did not), it came to pass—and I believe that you arranged this, by the hidden working of your providence—that she and I were standing alone together, leaning against a window that looked out on a garden within the house where we were staying at Ostia on the Tiber, where we could be away from the crowds after the fatigue of a long journey and rest before we set sail. We were talking together very sweetly, just the two of us, and forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, [Phil. 3:13] we were asking each other, in the presence of the Truth, which you yourself are, [Jn. 14:6; 2 Pet. 1:12 / Is. 64:4; 1 Cor. 2:9] what the eternal life of your saints will be like, which no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the human heart. But with the mouth of our heart we were panting after the heavenly streams that flow from your fount, the fount of life, [Ps. 35:10] which is in your presence; we longed to be sprinkled with the water from that fount, so far as our capacity allowed, so that we might somehow conceive so great a thing.

10.24 And when our conversation had reached such a point that it seemed to us that no pleasure of the senses of the flesh, however great, in any bodily light, however splendid, was worthy to be compared with the joy of that life—no, not worthy even to be mentioned in {155} the same breath—we lifted ourselves up, with affections more fiercely enkindled, to the Selfsame. [Ps. 4:9] Step by step we traversed all bodily things, and even the heavens from which the sun and moon and stars shed their light upon the earth. And we climbed higher still in our inner thoughts and speech and in wonder at your works: [Rom. 1:20] and we entered into our own minds and passed beyond them until we reached that land of unfailing plenty where you feed the flock of Israel [Ez. 34:14; Ps. 79:2] for ever with the food of truth, where life is the Wisdom by whom all things were made, [Jn. 1:3] both those that once were and those that are yet to be; but Wisdom is not made: she29 is as she always was and always will be. Or rather, there is no “was” or “will be” in Wisdom, but only is: for she is eternal, and what was or will be is not eternal. And while we were speaking and gazing at her with eager longing, we touched her—just barely—with the utmost energy of our hearts.

And we sighed and left the first fruits of our spirit30 [Rom. 8:23] bound there; we returned to the noise of our mouths, where a word has a beginning and an ending. How little like your Word, our Lord, who abides for ever in himself without growing old, and makes all things new! [Wisd. 7:27]

10.25 So we said,

 “if for someone the noise of the flesh fell silent,

      images of earth and water and air fell silent,

      the heavens fell silent,

      and the soul itself fell silent and transcended itself by thinking
               no longer of itself;

 if dreams and revelatory visions fell silent,

      every tongue, every sign, and whatever speaks only by passing
               away:

 if for someone all these things fell completely silent—

      for if someone heard them, all of them would say, ‘we did not
            make ourselves; no, he who abides for ever made us’;[Sir. 18:1; Ps. 32:11, 116:2; Is. 40:8; Jn. 12:34 / Ps. 99:3]

      if, having said these things, they ceased to speak,

            because they had turned our ears to the one who made
                them—

 

 {156} and he spoke, not through them, but through himself,

      so that we might hear his Word, [Jn. 1:1] not by any bodily tongue,

      not through the voice of an angel [Gn. 22:11 / Ex. 33:9; Ps. 76:18 / Num. 12:8; 1 Cor. 13:12] or a noise from the clouds,

      not by any riddling likeness,

      but himself, the very one whom we love in these things:

 if we were to hear him apart from these things,

      as we now strain forward [Phil. 3:13] and with our fleeting thought touch
            the eternal Wisdom who abides above all things,

      if this could endure, and all the visions that fall so far short of this
            could vanish away,

      and this vision alone were to seize the one who beholds it and take
            full possession of him and hide him away in inner joys,

      so that the momentary knowledge that had left us sighing
            would endure as life everlasting:

 is not this what it would mean to ‘enter into the joy of your Lord’? [Mt. 15:21]
      And when will this be?

 Will it be when we all rise again, but we are not all changed?”31 [1 Cor. 15:51]

10.26 Such were the things I said, even if not in just this way or exactly these words. Yet you know, Lord, that on that day when we had this conversation, and in the midst of our words this world and all its pleasures came to seem worthless in our eyes, my mother said, “Son, as for me, I no longer have pleasure in anything in this present life. I do not know what there is left for me to do here, and why I remain here, now that everything I hoped for in this world has been fulfilled. There was but one thing for which I wanted to remain yet a little while in this present life: to see you a catholic Christian before I died. And God has granted this to me even more abundantly than I had hoped, for I see that you have even spurned earthly happiness to be his servant. What, then, am I doing here?”

11.27 How I replied to her words I do not clearly remember, for about that time—within five days, or not much longer—she took to her bed with fever. One day during her illness she lost consciousness and for a short time was unaware of what was going on around her. We ran to her, but she quickly regained consciousness. She looked at my brother and me standing there, and asked us, “Where was I?” in the way that someone who is looking for something might do. Then, {157} seeing us thunderstruck with grief, she said, “Bury your mother here.” I was silent, holding back my tears, but my brother said something to the effect that he hoped she would not die abroad, but in her homeland, for that would be more auspicious. When she heard this, her distress showed on her face and her eyes rebuked him for entertaining such thoughts; then she turned from him and looked at me and said, “Can you believe what he is saying?” And then she said to both of us, “Bury this body anywhere; do not worry about it at all. All I ask is that you remember me at the altar of the Lord, wherever you may be.” And when she had made her meaning clear to us in such words as she could manage to speak, she fell silent, in agony as her illness grew worse.

11.28 But I pondered your gifts, O invisible God, [Col. 1:15] the gifts that you send into the hearts of your faithful people, gifts that produce such astonishing fruits, and I rejoiced and gave thanks to you,32 [Col. 1:3] because I remembered what I had known so well: she had always been passionately concerned about the grave she had provided and made ready for herself next to the body of her husband. Because they had lived together so harmoniously, she had wanted (so small is the power of the human mind to grasp the things of God!) to be granted the further happiness that after her journey overseas, the husband and wife whose earthly bodies had been joined together in life would be joined together under the same earth, and that everyone would remember this and speak of it. But when, by your abundant goodness, this foolishness had begun to leave her heart, I was not aware of it; and now I rejoiced, marveling that this change had become evident to me in this way—though during our conversation at the window, when she asked “What am I doing here?”, she had given no indication that she longed to die in her homeland. I heard later that when we were already at Ostia she had been talking one day in her trusting, motherly way with some of my friends about scorn for this life and the blessing of death. I was not there at the time. They were astonished at such masculine resolve on the part of a woman—for you had given it to her—and asked her whether she did not fear leaving her body so far from her own city. “Nothing,” she said, “is far from God, [Acts 17:27] and there is no reason to fear that he will not know where to find me so that he can raise me again at the end of the age.”

{158} So on the ninth day of her illness, in the fifty-sixth year of her age, in the thirty-third year of my age, that devout and pious soul was set free from the body.

12.29 I closed her eyes, and an immense sorrow welled up in the depths of my heart and was ready to flow forth in tears; yet in that moment, by a fierce command of my mind, my eyes held back the flood until it dried up, and the struggle caused me great pain. But when she breathed her last, the child Adeodatus wailed with grief; all of us restrained him and kept him quiet. And in this way something childish in myself that would have burst into tears was restrained and hushed by the more grown-up voice of my heart. For we did not judge it fitting to observe her burial rites with the tearful lamentations and cries of sorrow with which people often bewail the misery of the dying or mourn as if the dead were altogether gone. [1 Thess. 4:13] For she had not died in misery, nor was she altogether dead. The testimony of her way of life and her unfeigned faith [1 Tim. 1:5] gave us unshakeable reasons to be confident of this.

12.30 What was it, then, that made the grief I kept inside me such a heavy burden? Just this: we had grown accustomed to living together, such sweet and precious companionship, and its sudden ending was a fresh wound. I did take comfort in the solemn words she spoke in the final days of her illness, thanking me kindly for my help and calling me a dutiful son; she recalled with great affection that she had never heard from my lips a harsh word or an insolent expression hurled against her. But my God, who made us, [Ps. 99:3; Bar. 4:7] how was the respect I showed her in any way similar, in any way worthy of comparison, to the service she had done for me? And so because I was now deprived of the great comfort I had from her, my soul was wounded, and the one life in which my life and hers had been joined was ripped apart.

12.31 Once the boy’s tears had been checked, Evodius took up a Psalter and began to sing a Psalm. All of us in the house joined in: “I will sing of your mercy and judgment, O Lord.”33 [Ps. 100:1] Now when they heard what was happening, many brothers and religious women gathered, and while those whose duty it was made arrangements for the funeral according to custom, I withdrew as politely as I could to a place where I could be with friends who did not think I should be left alone, and I engaged in such discussion as was suitable for the occasion, applying the truth as a balm to lighten my anguish: you knew my anguish, but they did not; they listened intently and thought I had no feeling of sorrow. But in your ears, where none of them could hear, {159} I railed against the softness of my affection and dammed the flood of grief, and it did abate, though only a very little. Then it returned with renewed vehemence, and though I did not break into tears and the grief did not show on my face, I did know very well how heavy a burden lay upon my heart. And because I violently resented that these human feelings had such great power over me—though indeed they must come about in due order, because such is the condition of human life—my grief over my grief added sorrow to sorrow, and I was steeped in a twofold sadness.

12.32 When the body was borne out, we went out and returned without shedding a tear. Not even in the prayers that we poured out to you when the sacrifice of our redemption was offered for her next to her tomb, where the body had been laid before it was buried, as is the custom there—not even in those prayers did I weep. But the whole day my grief oppressed me, though no one could see it, and with a troubled mind I begged you with all my might to heal my sorrow. But you did not—meaning, I believe, to impress upon my mind by this one example that every kind of habit is bondage, even for a mind that is no longer fed by any deceitful word.

And it struck me as a good idea to go to the baths, for I had heard that the baths derived their name from the Greek word balanion, because they banish trouble from the mind.34 And I confess to your mercy, O Father of orphans, [Ps. 67:6] that I bathed, and I was no different from what I had been before I bathed; I had not sweated out the bitterness of grief from my heart. Then I went to sleep, and when I awoke I found that my sorrow had been greatly relieved, so much so that as I sat alone on my bed, I called to mind the truthful verses of your servant Ambrose. For you are

God, Creator of all things that are,

ruling the firmament, and clothing

day with robes of light,

granting gracious sleep at night,

to weary laborers giving rest

that they return to work refreshed:

calm and lighten weary minds,

and set free those enchained by grief.35

{160} 12.33 And little by little I returned to my earlier thoughts about your handmaid, the devout life she led in you, her holy kindness and forbearance toward us. Now, all at once, I had lost her, and I found comfort in weeping in your sight, about her and for her, about myself and for myself. The tears that I had been holding in I now set free to flow as much as they would, a flood that bore up my heart so that it rested upon them. For it was your ears that heard my weeping, not the ears of any human being who would twist the meaning of my tears to suit his own pride.

And now, O Lord, I confess to you in writing: let anyone who desires read it, and let him interpret it as he desires. And if he finds sin in the tears I shed for my mother for that brief stretch of time—the mother who was, for a time, dead before my eyes, who had wept for me for so many years that I might live before your eyes—let him not mock me; no, rather, if he is great in charity, let him weep himself for my sins to you, the Father of all who are brothers and sisters of your Christ.

13.34 But now that my heart has been healed of that wound, in which I could be blamed for a too-worldly affection,36 I pour forth to you, our God, tears of a very different kind for your servant, tears that flow from a spirit shaken by thoughts of the dangers that beset every soul that dies in Adam. Although she had been made alive in Christ, [1 Cor. 15:22] and before she was set free from the body she so lived that your Name was praised in her faith and in her conduct, yet I cannot be so bold as to say that from the time when you regenerated her through baptism [Tit. 3:5] no word fell from her lips contrary to your commandment. [Mt. 12:36–37] And the Truth, your Son, has said, “If anyone says to his brother, ‘You fool,’ he will be liable to the hell of fire.” [Mt. 5:22] Woe betide even a praiseworthy human life if you examine it minutely and leave your mercy behind! [Ps. 129:3] But in truth you are not eager to search out our sins, and so we have confidence in our hope that we will find a place with you. If anyone recounts his true merits to you, what is he recounting? Nothing but your own gifts. Oh, that human {161} beings might know that they are indeed human, [Ps. 9:21] and that anyone who boasts might boast in the Lord! [1 Cor. 1:31; 2 Cor. 10:17]

13.35 And so, my praise [Ex. 15:2; Deut. 10:21; Ps. 21:4, 117:14; Is. 12:2; Jer. 17:14 / Jn. 14:6 / Ps. 68:14, 142:1; Jdt. 9:17 / Gal. 3:13 qtg. Deut: 21:23 / Ps. 109:1 / Rom. 8:34 / Mt. 6:12] and my life, I set aside for a brief moment her good deeds, for which I praise you and give you thanks, and now I pray to you on account of my mother’s sins. Hear me through the Medicine for our wounds, who hung upon the tree and now is seated at your right hand and intercedes for us. I know that she dealt mercifully with others and heartily forgave their debts. Forgive her her debts, if indeed she incurred any debts in the many years she lived after receiving the water of salvation. Forgive her, Lord; forgive her, I beseech you; do not enter into judgment with her. Let mercy be [Ps. 142:2] exalted above judgment,37 because your words are true and you have [Jas. 2:13] promised mercy to those who are merciful. [Mt. 5:7] It is by your gift that they are merciful: you will have compassion on those to whom you have shown compassion, and you will show mercy to those on whom you have had mercy. [Rom. 9:15 qtg. Ex. 33:19]

13.36 And I believe that you have already done what I am asking of you; but accept, O Lord, the willing tribute of my lips. [Ps. 118:108] For when the day of her release was drawing near, [2 Tim. 4:6] she took no thought for having her body buried in a costly tomb or anointed with sweet-smelling spices; she desired no choice memorial and had no concern about being buried in her native land. About these things she had no instructions to give us: she asked only that we remember her at your altar, where she had served you without missing even a single day; for she knew that the sacred Victim was given there, the one who erased the handwriting of the decree that was against us, [Col. 2:14] who defeated the enemy who was reckoning up our sins and looked for some fault in him but found none, in whom we are conquerors. Who is there to repay him for the shedding of his innocent blood? Who is there to restore to him the price by which he bought us [1 Cor. 6:20, 7:23] and so steal us away from him? Your handmaid bound her soul by the chains of faith to the sacrament of the price of our redemption, and no one will snatch her [Jn. 10:28–29] away from the shelter of your presence. Let no lion or dragon hinder her, not by force, not by stealth.38 [Ps. 90:13] For she will not say that she owes no debt, lest the crafty Accuser convict her of guilt and take possession of her; she will testify that her debts have been forgiven [Mt. 6:12] by the one whom no one can repay, who repaid our debts though he owed nothing.

{162} 13.37 Let her therefore be in peace with her husband, her first and only husband, [1 Tim. 5:9] whom she served, offering fruit to you by her forbearance, [Lk. 8:15 / 1 Pet. 3:1–2] that she might also win him for you. Inspire, O my God, inspire your servants, my brothers and sisters, your children, my masters, whom I serve in heart and voice and words: inspire them so that all who read these things will remember your servant Monnica39 at your altar, with Patrick, once her husband, by whose flesh you brought me into this life, though I do not know how.40 Let them remember with devout affection my parents in this fleeting light, my brother and sister through you, Father, and our mother the catholic Church, my fellow citizens in the eternal Jerusalem, [Gal. 4:26; Rev. 21:2 / Heb. 11:13–14] for which your pilgrim people sigh with longing from their going forth until their return, so that her last request of me will be fulfilled more abundantly by the prayers of many, inspired by these confessions, than by my prayers alone.

1. 23 August to 15 October, “a time for respite from the summer heat and for bringing in the autumn harvest” (Codex Theodosianus 2.8.19).

2. Each of the Psalms from 119 through 133 is labeled “a song of degrees” (canticum graduum). The sense of gradus here is “steps upward.”

3. en. Ps. 119.5, “The sharp arrows of the warrior are the words of God. Behold, they are shot at the heart and transfix it; but when the heart is transfixed by the arrows of the word of God, it is not made desolate; no, love is awakened. . . . But what are the hot burning coals? [more literally, “the coals that lay waste”] It is no great matter to contend with words against the deceitful tongue and sinful lips; it is no great matter to contend with words. One must contend also with examples. Examples are the hot burning coals.”

4. “our inmost being”: visceribus. On this word see 5.9.17, fn. 12.

5. There is untranslatable wordplay here: “children” is liberos, “free” is liberum.

6. Another bit of untranslatable wordplay: “outstanding” is egregiam, “flock” is grege.

7. The location of Cassiciacum is disputed.

8. “on the mountain flowing with milk”: in monte incaseato, literally, “on the mountain where much cheese is made.” Augustine comments in en. Ps. 67.22, “But what are we to understand as the ‘mountain of God, the mountain of abundance, the mountain where much cheese is made’? What else but the Lord Christ, of whom another prophet says, ‘In the last days the mountain of the Lord will be established as the highest of the mountains’ (Is. 2:2)? Christ himself is the mountain where much cheese is made because he nourishes his little children with grace as with milk; he is the mountain of abundance for strengthening and enriching them with the excellence of his gifts. For milk itself, from which cheese is made, signifies grace in a wondrous way, since it flows abundantly from mothers’ breasts and with a delightful mercy is poured forth for little children.”

9. “once a freedman but now your adoptive son”: ex liberto filius. The expression is obscure. ­Chadwick takes it to mean that he was “God’s freedman by baptism, adopted son in paradise.” But it seems unlikely that Augustine would think baptism itself falls short of making someone God’s son or daughter by adoption. Another possibility, suggested by Chadwick and (perhaps) implied by Boulding, is that Nebridius had the social status of a freedman. More remote still is the possibility that Augustine is the freedman and Nebridius his adoptive son (“most unlikely,” as O’Donnell rightly says). My translation is deliberately non-committal, though it excludes the last of these possibilities.

10. Against the Academics, On the Happy Life, and On Order.

11. Soliloquies, in which Augustine carries on a dialogue with personified Reason.

12. In their edition, Gibb and Montgomery say, “The point of the comparison seems to be that the pride of the schools was still noticeable in his style, as the loud breathing of the combatants in a gymnastic contest continues after the bout is over” (O’Donnell III:83). Perhaps, but a pausatio (a new word in the fourth century) need not be an ending; it can be an interruption or interval. So taken, Augustine could be saying that the school of pride was still breathing heavily through his writings like a boxer between rounds—but that would suggest an impending return to the fight, which Augustine does not envisage. So I take pausatio as an “in-between time,” when his writing betrays a still-too-confident Platonism not yet fully disciplined by Scripture and Christian doctrine, as it will later come to be.

13. Letters 3 and 4.

14. 9.4.8 through 9.4.11 offer an extended reading of Psalm 4. For Augustine’s text of the Psalm, see Appendix A.

15. See 1.6.10, fn. 7.

16. “salvation”: salutis, also meaning health; hence Augustine’s addition of the word omnimodae, “every kind of,” to express that God is the God of both salvation from sin and healing from illness.

17. Ambrose himself baptized Augustine at the Easter Vigil during the night of 24–25 April 387. As early as the time of Charlemagne (742–814) the legend had arisen that Augustine and Ambrose improvised the Te Deum (which begins “We praise thee, O God; we acknowledge thee to be the Lord”—“acknowledge” being a form of the verb that gives us the noun translated “Confessions”) as Augustine came up from the font. This was probably the first time that Augustine witnessed the full Eucharistic liturgy, and certainly the first time he received Communion.

18. The days from Easter through the Sunday following, when newly initiated Christians retained their white baptismal garments and were given further daily instruction in the faith. Many such Easter Week sermons from Augustine himself survive.

19. Arians denied the full divinity of Christ. Justina was the second wife of Valentinian I and the mother of Valentinian II, who became emperor (nominally) at the age of four in 375. The events that Augustine goes on to recount took place when Justina demanded that Ambrose make a church available for the Arians within the city walls.

20. 2 Corinthians 5:1 says, “We know that if the earthly house in which we dwell is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” The “house” is therefore not merely the body, but the whole of our earthly life as “flesh”: temporary, deficient, destined to be “further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life,” as Paul goes on to say. Augustine adds “of grass” because of Isaiah 40:6, “All flesh is grass.” Augustine comments strikingly in en. Ps. 102.23, “All flesh is grass, and the Word was made flesh. . . . What abides in eternity has not scorned to take upon himself grass, so that grass would not be bereft of hope.”

21. For the meaning of agens in rebus see 8.6.15, fn. 15.

22. Cf. Virgil, Aeneid 1.13–14.

23. “your medicine” is, implicitly, Christ, as also at 7.8.12, “Through the hidden hand of your medicine, my swelling subsided, and the turbulent and clouded gaze of my mind was being healed” (and see fn. 11 there). The connection is explicit at 9.13.35, “Hear me through the Medicine for our wounds, who hung upon the tree, and now is seated at your right hand and intercedes for us.”

24. Cf. Virgil, Aeneid 7.53.

25. “unjust use of the marriage bed”: iniurias cubilis. Most likely not “infidelities” (as some translators have it) or spousal abuse, but excessive or improperly directed passion.

26. As O’Donnell points out, in the first six books magister, “teacher,” is often “schoolmaster”; here, for the first time, and from now on, the Teacher is Christ. For Christ as the sole teacher of intelligible truth, see Augustine’s dialogue On the Teacher (De magistro), mentioned earlier in this Book (9.6.14).

27. “falling asleep” is Biblical language for death in anticipation of resurrection: see, in particular, John 11:11–12, Acts 13:36, 1 Corinthians 6:15–20, and 1 Thessalonians 4:13–15.

28. “Gift” is capitalized here because it refers to God the Holy Spirit.

29. Though “Wisdom” here refers to Christ, the Latin word (sapientia) is feminine, so I use feminine pronouns, as Augustine does.

30. Although Paul’s use of the expression “first fruits of the spirit” is most naturally taken to mean the first workings of the Holy Spirit in the human soul, Augustine takes the “first fruits” to be an offering to God (a frequent usage in the Old Testament) of what is best and highest in the human spirit, thus “bound” as for sacrifice, a token of the complete dedication of the whole person to God in the life of the world to come.

31. The version of 1 Corinthians 15:51 that Augustine knows (“We shall all rise again, but we shall not all be changed”) differs from ours (“We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed”). He takes it to mean that the just and the unjust alike will all be resurrected, but only the just will be changed so as to have a spiritual body free from all weakness and pain.

32. Both allusions to Paul’s Letter to the Colossians have Christological overtones: “[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Colossians 1:15); “We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Colossians 1:3). And since for Augustine the Holy Spirit is pre-eminently the giver of gifts and himself the pre-eminent gift sent from God into the human heart (see, for example, Luke 24:29, John 14:16–17 and 15:26, and Romans 5:5), this passage is firmly, though quietly, Trinitarian.

33. Augustine’s text of Psalm 100 is translated in Appendix C.

34. The etymology proposed here—from ballo, “to cast away,” and ania, “sorrow”—is not actually correct.

35. A hymn for evening, evidently one of Augustine’s favorites, because he quotes or alludes to it frequently in the Confessions (2.6.12, 4.10.15, 5.5.9, 6.4.5, 9.6.14, 10.34.52,11.37.45) and elsewhere; Monnica herself quotes it in On the Happy Life 4.35. I have tried to translate as literally as possible while preserving something of the rhythm of the Latin, an effort in which I have been helped by the rhyming metrical translation by Charles Bigg in The New English Hymnal (Hymn 152).

36. in quo poterat redargui carnalis affectus: super-literally, “in which carnal affection could be charged [against me].” The phrase gives translators fits. Some want to add a concessive word like “perhaps” (Boulding: “in which I was perhaps guilty of some carnal affection”), but the Latin says flat-out that he could in fact be blamed. “Carnal” is also a difficulty; some commentators who have clearly read more Freud than Paul find something vaguely Oedipal here. Chadwick understands Augustine as speaking of an “emotion of physical kinship” and Ruden as “emotions with a mere physical basis.” But “carnal” is the regular Pauline (and Augustinian) contrast term for “spiritual”: it means “worldly” or “this-worldly,” of “the flesh” (caro) in the sense of everything about human life that is destined to pass away.

37. Not “let mercy triumph over judgment,” for, Augustine says in Letter 167.9.16, mercy “is not opposed to judgment, but is exalted above it, because more people come within the scope of mercy, but only those who themselves have offered mercy.”

38. en. Ps. s 2.9: “The lion rages openly; the dragon lies in wait stealthily. The devil has both powers.”

39. This is the only place in Augustine’s works where his mother is named. The manuscripts overwhelmingly give this spelling (with two n’s).

40. See 1.6.7. Augustine entertained three possibilities—that the soul is transmitted by the ordinary process of reproduction, that it is created by a special act of God, or that it pre-exists the body—and never found conclusive arguments for or against any of them.