ENDNOTES

Book I

1 (pp. 9-10) To this end I was sent to school... they were then a great and grievous ill to me: The young Augustine’s initiation in the formal language arts of the late Roman school system (grammar, logic, rhetoric) is set against his extracurricular acquisition of an alternative mode of speech: the direct address to god that is also the idiom of his Confessions. The attempt to distinguish a “divine” art of language from the routines of human eloquence is pursued to the end of the work.
2 (pp. 10-11) the shows and sports of my elders.... able to give such shows: Top-ranking civic officials in late Roman society were expected to lay on lavish entertainments for the urban populace: gladiatorial contests, theatrical performances, displays of wild animals, and so on. The privilege (and financial burden) of hosting such shows was thus a sign of high achievement.
3 (p. 11) I was signed with the sign of his cross, and was seasoned with his salt even from the womb of my mother, who greatly trusted in you: Infants of Christian families were sanctified with prayers, the sign of the cross, and the placing of salt on the tongue as exorcism. Baptism itself was often deferred, though the practice of baptizing infants was more prevalent in North Africa than elsewhere and contributed to the development of Augustine’s theory of inherited or “original” sin, according to which even newborn children already shared in the guilt of Adam.
4 (p. 12) But what were the causes for my strong dislike of Greek literature, which I studied from my boyhood? ... in the midst of these things: Although elite Roman culture in the western part of the empire was bilingual (Latin and Greek) in theory, in practice formal instruction in Greek was quite limited. Augustine never read Greek easily. Here he draws a line between lessons in elementary literacy, whether Greek or Latin, and the more advanced study of literary works, such as the poems of Homer or Virgil. Virgil’s Aeneid was a central text of the school curriculum, serving as a virtual encyclopedi a of Roman history and culture. It tells how Aeneas and other refugees from the sacked city of Troy came at length to Italy and there implanted the future race of Rome. Along the way Aeneas won the heart of Dido, queen of Carthage. Her suicide after his desertion forms the climax of book 4 of the Aeneid. The quotation in 1.13.21 below (Aeneid 6.457) is from Aeneas’ speech to Dido in the underworld; she does not reply. The sword she had used to kill herself was Aeneas’ own. Creusa (1.13.22) was the wife of Aeneas, left for dead in the ruins of Troy, who afterward appeared to him in a vision (Aeneid 2.736-795). See also Introduction, pp. xvi-xvii and xl-xlii.
5 . (pp. 14-15) But woe to you, torrent of human custom!... “whoever committed such crimes might appear to imitate the celestial gods and not abandoned men”: The licentious behavior of the deities in mythological poetry had made such literature suspect to ancient moralists long before Christians took issue with it. Augustine picks up one line of rationalizing explanation—these so-called “gods” were modeled after human beings—and uses it to mount a fresh attack.
6 . (p. 15) Of Jove’s descending in a shower of gold... I’ve done it, and with all my heart, I’m glad: The quotations are from Terence’s play The Eunuch, lines 585 ff.
7 . (p. 16) The assignment was that I should declaim the words of Juno, as she raged and sorrowed that she could not “bar off Italy from all the approaches of the Teucrian king”: The passage is from Virgil’s Aeneid 1.38. In the poem, Juno is the supporter of Carthage against Rome, vainly striving to prevent the fulfillment of Aeneas’ destiny. The “declamation” was a standard exercise in the rhetorical schools. It required the student to compose a speech for a given occasion and in a given character, often taken from history or, as here, historical fiction.
8 (p. 16) But it was no wonder that I was thus carried toward vanity and was estranged from you, my god, when men were held up ... so long as they did it in a full and ornate oration of well-chosen words: The complaint against those who are more tolerant of moral than of grammatical irregularity gives a new twist to a point already made by Augustine in his Christian Teaching (De doctrina Christiana) 3.3.7, in which he insisted that it was more important for the preacher to make himself understood by ordinary people, even at the cost of speaking “incorrectly,” than to observe every nicety of Latin grammar and diction.
9 . (p. 16) That younger son did not charter horses or chariots, or ships, or fly away on visible wings, or journey by walking so that in the far country he might prodigally waste all that you gave him when he set out: The gospel parable of the Prodigal Son underlies all the motifs of wandering or travel abroad on which the spiritual narrative of the Confessions is plotted. Allusions to it are usually combined with hints of the scheme of the human soul’s journey away from, and return to, the divine One, as imprinted on Augustine’s mind by the Enneads of Plotinus and related works of late Platonist—“Neoplatonic”-philosophy; see 7.9.13 for the “books of the Platonists.” Intermittently, as here, the imagery of travel acquires a further, ironic dimension by being associated with the epic journey of the Roman hero Aeneas.

Book 2

1 . (p. 19) Thus you may gather me up out of those fragments in which I was torn to pieces, while I turned away from you who are one, and lost myself among the many: The metaphor of dispersal and reintegration, like the metaphor of departure and return, is Neoplatonic in inspiration; see also note 9 to book 1. As the Confessions proceeds, the horizontal axis of travel and separation is complemented by a vertical axis of descent and ascent, likewise Neoplatonic but accommodated by Augustine to a biblically derived cosmology.
2 (p. 20) This project was more a matter of my father’s ambition than of his means, for he was only a poor citizen of Thagaste: Augustine’s father Patricius (named at 9.9.19) was evidently a small landowner of the tax-class known as “curial,” meaning those who were financially and personally responsible for assuring the public services of the municipality. Such a man would naturally want his son to have a good education, but it is clear that Patricius and Monica were over-extending themselves in the hope that Augustine would get on in the world and raise the fortunes of the family. Getting on, in this case, meant first of all getting to Carthage. As mentioned already in passing at 1.16.26, schoolmasters charged fees to the parents, even if the best of them also drew a salary from the public purse. Only a tiny minority of young male Romans received a full training in the primary and secondary school subjects of grammar (language and literature) and rhetoric (composition, public speaking) that were the prerequisites for professional and civil service careers.
3 (p. 22) See with what companions I walked the streets of Babylon!: Babylon, the biblical place of the captivity of the Israelites, serves as a topographical metaphor for the allurements of the world and the senses, and is opposed to the (heavenly) city of Jerusalem as the goal of properly spiritual desire. This particular pairing of place names, which was traditional in Christian exegesis and ideology by Augustine’s time, would be enshrined by him in the City of God as a division between the “earthly city” and the “city of god,” twin communities intermingled in history but separated at the Last Judgment.
4 (p. 24) So it seems that even Catiline himself loved not his own villainies, but something else, and it was this that gave him the motive for his crimes: Catiline was a famously corrupt governor of Africa who later tried to seize overall control of the Roman Republic, was vigorously opposed by Cicero, and was finally defeated and killed in battle by Mark Antony in 62 B.C. Augustine quotes from Sallust, Catiline 16.
5 (p. 27) And I became a wasteland to myself: “Wasteland” is A. C. Outler’s unique translation of regio egestatis (“region of lack”). Augustine’s phrase blends a reminiscence of the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:14) with a geography of spiritual alienation derived from Plotinus. Outler must have had in mind T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land (1922), which includes a direct quotation (line 307) of the opening of book 3 of the Confessions, as translated by Tobie Matthew (1620), “To Carthage then I came....” See Introduction, pp. xv-xviii.

Book 3

1 (p. 30) I dared, even while your solemn rites were being celebrated inside the walls of your church, to indulge my lust and to plan a project which merited death as its fruit: A sermon of Augustine’s confirms that church services were seen by some as god-given opportunities for beginning sexual conquests. For a countervailing emphasis on “the walls of the church” as bulwarks of salvation, rather than as cover for seduction, see 8.2.4-5.
2 (p. 30) Still I was relatively sedate, lord, as you know, and had no share in the wreckings of the Wreckers... they amused themselves in jeering and horseplay at the expense of others: Student discipline seems to have been more of a problem at Carthage than elsewhere; see also 5.8.14. Augustine’s gang members are literally “overturners” (ever-sores). Hence he puns that they were themselves “overturned” (eversi) and “turned the wrong way” (perversi) by “demons,” meaning—in his mythology—the angels who fell from heaven with Satan and who thereafter delight in coming between human beings and god (10.42.67). There is an implicit contrast with the process of conversio (“turning around”), by which Augustine himself will be brought back to god through the genuine mediation of Christ.
3 (p. 31) In the ordinary course of study I came upon a certain book of Cicero’s... what won me was not its style but its substance: The Hortensius was a dialogue based on Aristotle’s Protrepticus, designed as an exhortation to the study of philosophy, named after one of Cicero’s great rivals as an orator, who was a character in it. Only fragments survive, and this reference in the Confessions is the only clue to the work’s place in the Roman educational curriculum. Cicero’s perfect orator was also a trained philosopher, an ideal rarely realized in practice and ignored by the standard rhetorical handbooks of Augustine’s time. Although comparable narratives of philosophical “conversion” appear in both non-Christian and Christian texts that Augustine may be supposed to have known, his sense of philosophical vocation was unusual—as indeed, by the standards of the age, was the philosophical culture that he eventually managed to acquire. Adolescent readings aside, the main stimulus probably came from the Platonist circles to which he was introduced at Milan; see book 7.
4 (p. 32) When I then turned toward the scriptures, they appeared to me to be quite unworthy to be compared with the dignity of Tully.... I looked upon myself as fully grown: “Tully” is Marcus Tullius Cicero. The opposition of style to substance is one of Augustine’s devices for thinking through the relations between human eloquence and the proper language(s) of conversation with and about god, especially in connection with the texts of the divinely authorized “scriptures” (that is, the books of the biblical canon, the Old and New Testaments). Since the style of the Latin translations of the scriptures used by Augustine and his contemporaries was far less polished than that of Cicero and other cherished classical models, the best arguments he can make are for the Bible’s superior virtues of content and intelligibility. Here the emphasis is at once on the Bible’s accessibility to novice readers, provided they are not too proud to appreciate such simplicity, and on the deeper meanings that it reserves for the more spiritually enlightened. See further 6.5.8, 12.14.17 ff.
5 (p. 32) Thus I fell among men, delirious in their pride, carnal and voluble... the basic elements of this world, your creation: Frustrated in his search for wisdom in the Bible, Augustine turns to the esoteric Christian philosophy of the Manicheans, a sect banned by Roman imperial law. See Introduction, pp. xxxi-xxxv. The next few paragraphs present a somewhat miscellaneous array of Manichean teachings, now considered by Augustine as erroneous: their cosmology; their rejection of certain Old Testament books on the grounds that they represented god in physical terms and the patriarchs as engaging in unlawful acts; their dietary rules. See also 4.1.1, 5.5.8. Anti-Manichean animus is the main driving force of books 3-7, and a potent factor throughout the Confessions.
6 (p. 33) For how much better were the fables of the grammarians and poets than these snares! ... though I sang about “the flying Medea” I never believed it, but those other things I did believe: Augustine returns to the critique of pagan mythology launched in book 1, but with an important concession: However implausible they may be, the fictions of pagan poets can nonetheless be made to serve a useful purpose (for example, by allegorical interpretation in a moral sense). By contrast, the cosmological myths of the Manicheans are merely deceptive. The story of Medea in flight is found in Ovid, Metamorphoses 7.219-236 and was presumably a classroom standard.
7 (p. 37) These are the major forms of iniquity that spring out of the lust of the flesh, and of the eye, and of power: The threefold division of misdemeanors-excesses of the flesh, excesses of the gaze (including intellectual curiosity), excessive desire for prestige and power over other people—underpins much of the analysis in the Confessions. The scriptural root is 1 John 2:16: “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the father, but is of the world” (King James Version). The fullest development of the scheme comes at 10.30.41-10.39.64.
8 (p. 40) “But let him alone for a time... what an error it is and how great its impiety is”: The anonymous bishop inadvertently anticipated one of the most striking features of Augustine’s autobiographical narrative: its construction as a series of acts of reading. However this phenomenon is explained, it is hard to overlook the evidence that points to an exceptionally intelligent, sensitive, and inquisitive young man whose access to books and appetite for reading constantly outstripped the local supply of qualified mentors and conversation partners. The author who became famous for talking aloud and in writing to himself and to god was first and last a student in a class of his own.

Book 4

1 . (pp. 41-42) In those years I had one to whom I was not joined in lawful marriage.... compel our love: This kind of common-law relationship was not at all unusual in antiquity, and makes sense in the light of Augustine’s plans for social advancement by marrying up; see 6.13.23. The moralizing, dismissive tone of this passage fails, however, to capture the warmth of what was evidently a powerful affective bond: Contrast 6.15.25, and 9.6.14 on the son born of this union.
2 (p. 43) There was at that time a wise man, very skillful and quite famous in medicine.... rhetorical contest: Helvius Vindicianus (named at 7.6.8) was governor of the province of Africa Proconsularis from c.379 to 382; he was also known as an author of medical books. That his contact with Augustine did not end with the ceremony of prize-giving may be taken as a sign that the schoolmaster was now moving comfortably in the best Carthaginian society.
3 (p. 43) For when a man, by accident, opens the pages of some poet ... wondrously apposite to the reader’s present business: The habit of drawing “lots” or “fortunes” by random consultation of a literary work, such as Virgil’s Aeneid, may have become more common as books were increasingly produced in the form of spine-hinged codices rather than as continuous scrolls; see Introduction, p. xviii. Biblical texts could be used for the same purpose; see 8.12.29.
4 (pp. 43-44) my most dear Nebridius-a splendid youth and most circumspect, who scoffed at the whole business of divination: Nebridius, the son of a well-off Carthaginian family, would later follow Augustine to Milan (6.10.17, 7.2.3). He shared his friend’s intellectual and religious interests, and Augustine made a point of preserving a set of their letters. He “converted” soon after Augustine himself and died not long after returning to Africa (9.3.6).
5 (p. 44) thus far, I had come upon no certain proof... by which it could be shown without doubt that what had been truly foretold by those consulted came from accident or chance, and not from the art of the stargazers: This is the heart of the matter for Augustine. The diviners claimed to practice an art— that is, to be in possession of a rule-based science of prediction. As a Christian thinker, Augustine would determine that any success they had in their predictions must be the result of pure chance or, alternatively, the result of a deliberate deception wrought by “demons” to further blind diviners and their clients to the true ordinances of the Christian god. In both the Confessions and the partly contemporary Christian Teaching, Augustine is at pains to establish the art of biblical interpretation as the only scientific way to understand the course of individual human lives and of history as a whole—though he is always careful not to claim predictive powers for the interpreter.
6 (p. 46) the friendship of Orestes and Pylades; they would have gladly died for one another... worse than death to them: Orestes, son of Agamemnon, is a leading figure in plays by Aeschylus and Euripides; Pylades appears as his faithful companion. Their names are routinely linked to exemplify perfect friendship. While granting that their story might be fiction, Augustine is willing to make use of it for his own purpose, thus demonstrating how pagan mythology can be recycled for Christian purposes, according to the principle stated at 3.6.11 (see also endnote 6 on book 3).
7 (p. 46) “He was half of my soul”... perhaps I was also afraid to die, in case he should then die wholly whom I had so greatly loved: The quoted saying appears in Ovid, Tristia 4.4.72, and elsewhere. In his Revisions (see Introduction, pp. xxxvii-xl) Augustine censures the last sentence of this paragraph as more suited to a declamation or scholastic exercise than to the seriousness of confession. In mitigation of his own fault, he notes that at least he had the grace to insert the word “perhaps.”
8 (p. 48) Let my soul praise you, in all these things, god, creator of all: The phrase “god, creator of all” echoes the first line of a hymn by Ambrose of Milan that will return like a refrain later in the Confessions (9.12.32, 10.34.52, 11.27.35).
9 (p. 49) The word itself calls you to return, and there there is a place of unperturbed rest, where love is not forsaken unless it first forsakes: This “word” is otherwise known as the “only-begotten” son of god (as in John 1:1 ff.), second “person” of the Christian trinity (with the father and the holy spirit). It is the creative force behind the universe, assumes human flesh as Jesus Christ, and is also identified with the divine “word” of the scriptures. These theological coordinates had been established by Christian teachers and church councils by the time Augustine came to compose the Confessions. His own writing contributes to their naturalization in the language of (Latin) Christianity.
10 (p. 51) Hierius, orator of the city of Rome... so wonderful a Latin orator and also so well versed in philosophy: Nothing is known for certain of this Hierius besides what Augustine tells us here. Presumably some of his writings had reached Carthage. In any case, he held the kind of position that a fellow orator in a provincial capital was bound to envy. Augustine himself makes the connection explicit. In the course of the next few books, other contemporary figures will be introduced who will serve in similar fashion to model the life options to which Augustine was successively drawn. All of these characters are staged for a purpose, and it is the author’s characterization of them, rather than any independently documented biographical profile, that counts most for the Confessions. Augustine’s treatise On the Beautiful and the Fitting has never come to light; nor would he have wished it to. Only works composed after his “conversion” were catalogued in his Revisions and thereby guaranteed secure transmission to later ages.
11 (p. 54) a book of Aristotle’s entitled The Ten Categories ... under the chief category of substance: The Ten Categories was the first text in the Aristotelian corpus of logic, dealing-as this summary indicates—with forms of predication or what can be said about something. Here it illustrates the difficulty that Augustine was having, and would continue to have, in saying anything reliable about god. It is not only logic that comes up short: The whole cycle of the “liberal arts,” he says, was of no avail to him at this stage, at least from the point of view from which he now looks back.

Book 5

1 (p. 58) a certain bishop of the Manicheans, Faustus by name, a great snare of the devil... the charm of his eloquence: Faustus was a man a few years older than Augustine himself, from the town of Milev in Numidia. He abandoned his wife and children on becoming a Manichean and was made a bishop of the sect by 382. A few years later he was denounced to the Roman authorities—Manicheism being illegal—and exiled to an island in the Mediterranean, but was released soon afterward. Before he died (c.390) he produced a treatise refuting objections made by catholic Christians against Manichean doctrine and attacking Christian belief in the divine inspiration of the Old Testament. Augustine answered this work at length in his Against Faustus, composed around the same time as the Confessions.
2 . (p. 62) He had, however, read some of Tully’s orations, a very few books of Seneca, and some of the poets: Faustus had the kind of intellectual equipment to be expected of someone who had been to school but not read far outside the curriculum. “Tully” is Cicero, the model orator and a favorite of Augustine’s too. Seneca was either the philosopher of that name or possibly his father the rhetorician. The poets would have included Virgil and Horace. Augustine can be disdainful of such a limited repertoire, but few of the original audience of the Confessions would have been any better read.
3 (p. 65) I lied to my mother-and such a mother!-and escaped.... That night I slipped away secretly, and she remained to pray and weep: This is one of several places where the plotting of the Confessions ironically recalls Virgil’s Aeneid. As Aeneas had put to sea without word to Dido (Aeneid 4.571-583), so Augustine gives his mother the slip. Cyprian was the bishop of Carthage, martyred in 258. See also Introduction, pp. xvi-xvii, xxii, xli-xlii.
4 (p. 66) you had forgiven me none of these things in Christ, neither had he abolished by his cross the enmity that I had incurred from you through my sins.... appeared to me unreal: Following Saint Paul (Romans 5), the author of the Confessions has the death of the “man” Christ lift the general death sentence passed on humankind as a penalty for the fault of the “first man,” Adam; see also Colossians 2:14. The Augustine who lay sick at Rome in 383 was both intellectually and practically excluded from the benefit of this saving act: He still lacked a proper understanding of the humanity of Christ, and he had not yet been baptized into the community of professing Christians.
5 (p. 67) I was now half inclined to believe that those philosophers whom they call Academics were wiser than the rest... just as they are commonly reputed to do: The reference is to the Greek philosophical school known as the New Academy, of the mid-second century B.C., which developed the position known as Skepticism, summarized here by Augustine. His main source, at least until he came upon the more recent “books of the Platonists” (7.9.13), would have been dialogues of Cicero‘s, the Academica.
6 (pp. 69-70) I used the influence of those same persons... to ensure that Symmachus, who was then prefect, after he had proved me by audition, should appoint me: Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, prefect of the city of Rome in 384, was a prominent member of the traditionalist party that resisted the innovations brought about the Christianization of Roman society and institutions in the second half of the fourth century. While prefect, he urged the emperor Valentinian II (whose merits Augustine would soon be proclaiming [6.6.9]), to restore the Altar of Victory—a symbol of Rome’s greatness dating from the time of Augustus—to the senate house at Rome. A collection of his letters survives, as do several speeches.
7 (p. 70) Ambrose the bishop, famed through the whole world as one of the best of mortals, your devoted servant: The son of a high-ranking imperial official, Ambrose had pursued a traditional administrative career path until 374 when, as governor of the province of Aemilia-Liguria, he was suddenly, and to his own evident surprise, made bishop of Milan by popular acclamation. As bishop he exercised notable influence over the emperors Gratian (367-383) and Valentinian II (375-392), and in 384 opposed Symmachus’ campaign to restore the Altar of Victory; see previous note. A vigorous promoter of the ascetic ideals of consecrated virginity and clerical celibacy, skilled at applying Platonist concepts to Christian doctrine, champion of the Nicene dogma of the divine trinity in opposition to the Arians (see note 7 to book 9), prolific expositor of biblical texts, and an accomplished orator, he would have presented Augustine with the figure of a bishop such as he had never encountered before. In the Confessions Ambrose is credited above all with helping Augustine to see past Manichean objections to the Old Testament and to conceive of god as a spiritual being. Although Ambrose published a large number of works of controversial theology, ascetic direction, and biblical exegesis, Augustine seems not to have read many of them. Nor do his own writings before the Confessions give any hint that Ambrose was a formative influence for him. It is worth observing that the composition of the Confessions probably dates from 397, the year in which Ambrose died, and that Paulinus of Nola, with whom Augustine had begun corresponding a little earlier (see Introduction, pp. xxxi-xxxv), was a great admirer of the bishop of Milan. The one clear textual link between Ambrose and the Confessions is provided by Augustine’s quotations of the hymn “Deus creator omnium” (see note 8 to book 4). In the story as Augustine will tell it here, it was his mother, Monica, who had the closer dealings with Ambrose.

Book 6

1 (p. 73) So also my mother brought to certain oratories, erected in the memory of the saints, offerings of porridge, bread, and wine... question his prohibition: Christian mortuary observances were only slowly differentiated from those otherwise customary in the Greco-Roman world. Festive eating and drinking at tombs was a routine feature of the “pagan” cult of the dead; see Introduction, p. xxxix. In this area, as in others, Ambrose seems to have been an innovator.
2 (p. 74) Ambrose himself I esteemed a happy man.... Only his celibacy appeared to me a painful burden: Ambrose’s profession of celibacy was as much of a surprise to Augustine as was his prohibition of graveside picnics to Monica, and obviously far harder to reckon with. Here again the bishop of Milan was setting new standards. Not until the fifth century in the West did celibacy come to be widely regarded as a requirement for all higher ranks of clergy; even then, and for long afterward, the rule was not generally enforced. To make celibacy a condition for full Christian profession by one who did not expect to take holy orders was even more extreme. Augustine’s vision of Continence personified at 8.11.27 (and see 6.11.20) can thus be numbered among the more special effects of the Confessions. Without ever promoting the merits of the celibate life to the detriment of procreative marital sexuality, as some of his contemporaries did, Augustine nonetheless contributed substantially to the Christian institutionalization of sexual abstinence.
3 (p. 74) Now, as he read, his eyes glanced over the pages and his heart searched out the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent.... Whatever his motive was in so doing, it was doubtless, in such a man, a good one: This is a celebrated passage in modern scholarly discussion. The practice of reading to oneself without vocalizing the text was less common in antiquity than it has since become. In a culture that set a high value on oratory and public performance of all kinds, in which the production of books was very labor-intensive, the majority of the population was illiterate, and where those with the leisure to enjoy literary works also had slaves to read to them, written texts were more likely to be seen as scripts for recitation than as vehicles of silent reflection. However, there is also abundant evidence that silent reading did occur in antiquity and that it was not usually regarded as freakish. Why then does Augustine linger over the figure of Ambrose as silent reader? Any answer to this question should probably take account of all the other passages in the Confessions in which the activity of reading is foregrounded and where our own readerly acts, alongside Augustine’s or those of another character, are implicitly brought under consideration.
4 (p. 76) “The letter kills, but the spirit gives life”: This was and remains a fundamental principle of Christian hermeneutics, not least-historically-because Augustine so insisted upon it; see especially book 3 of his Christian Teaching. In the first instance, such “spiritual” interpretation enabled Christian readers consistently to derive a sense from the Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament) that was compatible with the teaching of the New Testament, a project seen as impossible by the Manicheans, among others. While there is no sign in Ambrose’s extant writings that 2 Corinthians 3:6 was a favorite text of his, the larger interpretive strategy had a long history before him, and he certainly relied on it in his own exegesis.
5 (p. 77) I always believed both that you are and that you have a care for us ... that through them your will may be believed in and that you might be sought: Augustine’s conviction of the supreme truthfulness and authority of the canonical books of scripture is based on the assumption that a god who cares for his human creatures would not allow them all to be misled on such a grand scale by false tradition. Thus, at a stroke, he severs the Gordian knot of problems of transmission, authenticity, and textual reliability that have preoccupied biblical philologists from before his time to the present day.
6 (p. 78) the day on which I was preparing to recite a panegyric on the emperor: As public orator in the imperial capital of Milan, Augustine was regularly called upon to deliver speeches on state occasions. These would have to purvey a version of the current official policy and burnish the figure of the emperor or one of his top officers. Praising the teenage Valentinian II, whose policy was directed by his mother, Justina, and a few courtiers, would have demanded special resources of tact and hyperbole. Other speeches from this period, by other orators, survive, allowing one to gain a sense of the atmosphere of such occasions. The nearest we come to Augustine’s own imperial panegyric style may be in the Confessions itself, where at last he could invoke a lord and master worthy of his rhetorical powers.
7 (p. 79) Alypius had been born in the same town as I; his parents were of the highest rank there, but he was a bit younger than I: On Alypius, see Introduction, pp. xxviii-xxxv By the time of the Confessions, he was bishop in Augustine’s home town of Thagaste. A vivid figure in Augustine’s narrative, and frequently named in official church documents of the time, he has left no significant writings of his own.
8 (p. 87) Romanianus, my fellow townsman, an intimate friend from childhood days: Other sources reveal that Romanianus acted as a patron to Augustine, beginning by helping to pay for his education at Carthage. The scheme of a philosophical commune would have depended in large measure on his wealth. Augustine would dedicate to him his work Against the Academics, composed in circumstances to be recounted in book 9. A Manichean partly as a result of Augustine’s influence, Romanianus was not baptized until the mid-390s.

Book 7

1 . (p. 92) Who was it that put this in me, and implanted in me the root of bitterness... since a good creator made him wholly a good angel?: Having rejected the Manichean view of evil as a distinct entity or principle in the universe, Augustine has to account for the appearance of evil in a universe created by a god who is perfectly good. The question that resonates through the early part of this book is therefore: Where does evil come from? The language at this point anticipates interests that Augustine would only acquire a decade after the thought processes he is describing. Persuaded by his reading of Paul’s Epistles in the 390s that evil in human beings arises from a weakness of the will, making us actively fail to do what is good, Augustine also inferred from Paul that such failure, though culpable in every case, was inescapable because of a universal genetic defect in the human will inherited from the “original sin” of Adam and Eve; see 8.8.19-8.10.24. Hence the ulterior question was: Why did Adam and Eve, created perfect by god, sin in the first place? Christian exegetes, going beyond the canonical narrative of Genesis, had already worked up the notion that Satan or the devil, identified both with the serpent of Genesis 3 and with Lucifer, the fallen angel of Isaiah 14:12-15, had precipitated the sin of Adam and Eve. How then, asks Augustine, did an angel, also part of god’s perfect creation, develop the evil will that led to his own fall and then Adam’s? This line of exegetical reasoning, firmly sketched in the Confessions (see especially 8.8.20 ff.) would be more fully developed in the tracts that Augustine later wrote against Pelagius (see note 6 to book 10 below) and others who, in his view, seriously overestimated the present power of the human will to do good without special help from god. (For the fall of the angels, see books 11 and 12 of the City of God.) The rest of the present discussion in book 7 has a more philosophical color, dictated by the readings announced at 7.9.13 and perhaps also by the Platonist strain in Ambrose’s preaching.
2 . (p. 95) Vindicianus ... Firminus: Vindicianus has appeared already in this connection at 4.3.5. Of Firminus nothing else is known.
3 (p. 98) certain books of the Platonists, translated from Greek into Latin: At 8.2.3 Augustine attributes at least some of these Latin translations to Marius Victorinus (on whom see note 2 to book 8). Exactly which Platonist philosophers (apart from Plato, whose works he knew at best indirectly) Augustine read, in which versions, at this time in his life or later, are matters of scholarly debate. There is general agreement that in the 380s he became familiar with the Enneads of Plotinus (204/5-270), which Victorinus had translated, and probably also with certain works by Plotinus’ disciple Porphyry (c.234-c.301). The strongly theological Neoplatonism of Plotinus and Porphyry offered a field of encounter between “pagan” intellectuals and highly educated Christians, and there was clearly a circle of people interested in this material in Milan at the time of Augustine’s stay there. The “monstrously proud” provider of the books used by him is thought to have been Manlius Theodorus, a high-ranking imperial officer to whom he devoted his dialogue The Happy Life not long afterward, though he came to think less well of him in time (Revisions 2.1). In the passage that follows, Augustine measures the theological contents of the Platonist books against the biblical revelation of John 1 and other New Testament texts. In the City of God 10.29, he would recall once being told that a certain (Milanese?) Platonist used to say that the opening lines of John’s gospel deserved to be set up in letters of gold in every church. Books 8-10 of the City of God provide a running commentary on the “Christian Platonist” content of the Confessions. By the time he composed them, however, Augustine had belatedly realized that Porphyry had been a trenchant critic of Christianity, and his tone is therefore less conciliatory than here.
4 (p. 100) that Egyptian food for which Esau lost his birthright ... that gold which you did allow your people to take from Egypt, since wherever it was it was yours: Egypt, as a place of captivity for the ancient Israelites (like Babylon; see note 3 to book 2), provides another geographical metaphor for the condition of being “away from home” that Augustine sees as defining the life of the Christian community in the present world. The Platonist books, for all the useful teaching they contained, were nonetheless products of “Egypt,” hence potentially dangerous to the Christian reader. Augustine claims to have extracted what was valuable in them, without being corrupted. The idea that Christians might appropriate the truthful (because god-given) elements of “pagan” philosophy and other disciplines, in the same way that the biblical Israelites carried off the gold and silver vessels and fine attire of their Egyptian captors, had been developed by earlier writers as part of a rationale for selective Christian use of the intellectual amenities of their surrounding culture. The passage that Augustine here cites from Acts (17.28) was regularly used to exemplify the principle. His own fullest statement of this policy of “despoiling the Egyptians” is in Christian Teaching 2.40.60-61.
5 (p. 104) And thus by degrees I was led upward from bodies to the soul... was not yet able to eat: This is the first of three places in the Confessions in which Augustine narrates a mystical ascent toward oneness with god, scripted on a Plotinian model with additional biblical touches. See also 9.10.23-25, 10.8.12 ff. While at Milan, he planned a set of books on the liberal arts that would have “led by certain steps from corporeal to incorporeal things” (Revisions 1.6).
6 (p. 105) I saw in our lord Christ only a man of eminent wisdom to whom no other man could be compared... his divine care for us: At this point, Augustine sees Christ as an exceptional human being, not as the divine “word” made human in the flesh. It was for such a belief that Photinus (named later in the section) was convicted of heresy in 351. Alypius, he goes on to say, was subject to another erroneous opinion about Christ’s nature, associated with a certain Apollinaris. Ambrose of Milan had been instrumental in the official condemnation of Apollinarianism in the West.

Book 8

1 (p. 109) Simplicianus, who appeared to me a faithful servant of yours... one who felt as I did to walk in your way: Simplicianus was also Augustine’s informant on the Platonist enthusiast for John 1:1-5; see note 3 to book 7. Despite his advanced age, he would succeed Ambrose as bishop of Milan in 397. Shortly before embarking on the Confessions, Augustine produced written answers to a set of questions posed to him by Simplicianus on passages in Romans 7 and 9. It was in the course of discussion of the latter that he came to the radical conclusion that the human will was powerless to answer god’s call without god’s special help or “grace.” This was the basis for his subsequent teaching and controversial writing (for example, against Pelagius) on grace, free will, and predestination (god’s choice of those he would reserve for a life of eternal bliss and those he would not).
2 (pp. 110-111) he told me about Victorinus himself... submitting his forehead to the ignominy of the cross: The orator Marius Victorinus, an African émigré like Augustine at this time, was the author and translator of important works of grammar, rhetoric, and Greek philosophy; see also note 3 to book 7. Following his “conversion,” he turned his talents to Christian theological and exegetical writings, some of which Augustine may conceivably have known at first hand. Augustine makes him a champion of “pagan” polytheism who saw the error of his ways. The verse quotation is from Virgil, Aeneid 8.698-700, referring to Egyptian deities once ranged by Cleopatra against the Roman pantheon and later adopted by the Romans themselves. The statue of Victorinus in the Forum is also mentioned by Jerome in his adaptation of Eusebius’ Chronicle, and there is a chance that this and several other historical details in book 8 were suggested to Augustine by his reading of that work. Like the other “conversion” scenes related in the first part of this book, the one starring Victorinus is layered with foreshadowings of Augustine’s own experience.
3 (p. 115) in the reign of the Emperor Julian, there was a law passed by which Christians were forbidden to teach literature and rhetoric: Julian, called “apostate” by ecclesiastical writers because he rejected his Christian upbringing and restored polytheistic cults, ruled as sole emperor from 361 to 363. One of his laws from that period banned Christians from teaching grammar and rhetoric, on the grounds that it was immoral for them to expound texts proclaiming gods in whom they themselves did not believe. The law was naturally resented by Christians and criticized even by such an admirer of Julian’s as the historian Ammianus Marcellinus. How many teachers actually lost or resigned their jobs is not clear. For Augustine in the Confessions, like Jerome before him, the “pagan” intolerance of Julian supplied a model for a similarly hard-line attitude toward traditional high culture on the part of Christians.
4 (p. 117) Verecundus- a citizen of Milan and professor of grammar, and a very intimate friend of us all ... he greatly needed: Verecundus was better off than the ordinary run of grammarians; see 9.3.5 for his country estate.
5 (p. 117) Ponticianus, a fellow countryman of ours from Africa, ... one of my wearisome rhetoric textbooks: Ponticianus’ surprise tells us that copies of Christian texts like Paul’s Epistles in a single codex would not have differed outwardly from utilitarian works of classical culture such as schoolbooks. Literate Christianity depended on the same technology of “pocket” editions as literacy in general.
6 (p. 117) Anthony, the Egyptian monk, whose name was in high repute among your servants, although up to that time not familiar to me: This Antony was reputedly a propertied gentleman who, around 285, on hearing Christ’s command to the rich man (Matthew 19:21) read in church, gave up all his possessions and retired into the Egyptian desert to live as a hermit. Nascent monastic legend made him the first Christian exponent of this radically asocial option for holiness. A Life of Antony written in Greek by Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria in the mid-fourth century, had wide circulation and was available in Latin translation by the time Augustine came to Milan. However, none of Augustine’s references to Antony suggest that he had studied the Life closely, or even read it for himself. The Confessions participates in a contemporary fascination with life-writing, without being part of anything robust enough to count yet as a Christian biographical tradition.
7 (p. 118) the group of officials called “special agents”: Agentes in rebus were official couriers often used for internal intelligence work and therefore regarded by many with suspicion bordering on dread. For these agents, success in the job could lead to promotion and imperial favor, reflected in the informal title “friend of the emperor.”
8 . (p. 125) I.flung myself down under a fig tree—how I know not—and gave free course to my tears: The fig tree that provides cover for Augustine’s anguish is already loaded with associations from Genesis 3:7 (the shame of Adam and Eve), Matthew 21:19-20 (Jesus’ curse on the tree without fruit), and John 1:47-50 (Nathanael’s acclamation of Jesus). Note also 3.10.18 for a Manichean echo. This scene, to an even greater degree than all the others staged in book 8, has raised questions about the balance between historical and symbolic truth in Augustine’s narrative. There may be times when a fig tree is just a fig tree, but this is not one of them.
9 (p. 126) I had heard how Anthony, accidentally coming into church while the gospel was being read,... all the gloom of doubt vanished away: Antony was “converted” by a scriptural text read out loud by a member of the clergy in a public assembly of Christians, Augustine (in the Confessions) by one that he reads silently to himself and makes public in a book of his own. See also 9.4.8, where he explicitly considers the kind of private-yet-public performance of scriptural texts and readings that is the essence of “confession” in the sense he intends.

Book 9

1 (p. 129) there were only a few days before the vintage vacation; ... devours what it loves as though it were food: The vintage school vacation ran from August 23 to October 15. The mention of the season is a cue for the clusters of imagery relating to harvest and wine-drinking that mark the book as a whole. Even the narrative of the young Monica’s overindulgence in wine (9.8.17-18) fits the larger scheme, while also partly prefiguring—by parody—the mystical ascent to plenty at 9.10.24. In both cases, Augustine will emphasize progress by degrees. Here already he associates the coming of his freedom from teaching with Psalms 119-133, each of which was entitled canticum graduum (“song of degrees”) in his Latin psalter, encouraging figurative interpretation in terms of a narrative of ascent.
2 (p. 130) you will repay Verecundus for that country house at Cassiciacum- ... that fruitful mountain—your own: The house party at Verecundus’ country estate near Milan follows a pattern of genteel “philosophical” retreat that had been favored by the Roman nobility and their clients since the time of the late Republic, when Cicero composed the works that were to be Augustine’s chief literary model for the dialogues of Cassiciacum; see following note.
3 . (p. 131) My books testify to what I got done there in writing,... my letters to Nebridius, who was still absent: Augustine’s extant writings of this period are mainly listed at the beginning of his Revisions. There are dialogues titled Against the Academics (that is, against the school of philosophy discussed at 5.10.19), The Happy Life, and Order (about providence), and the first-ever experiment in the genre of what Augustine called Soliloquies, a conversation out loud with himself. A series of letters to and from Nebridius survives as numbers 3-14 in the modern collection of Augustine’s correspondence, though most of those pieces are apparently of slightly later date. As a group, the works from Cassiciacum attest the philosophical concerns recorded in books 5-8 of the Confessions, but in a language that is far more classically sedate and far less vivid with scriptural allusion. For all that, they are remarkable essays in a new mode of Christian philosophy. Augustine’s dialogues are staged with characters from his own immediate entourage, largely familiar to us from the Confessions. He presents the texts as transcripts of conversations that actually occurred, taken down by shorthand writers (but no doubt carefully reworked). Strikingly, Monica-a woman, without formal education—not only has a speaking part in this company but speaks with a powerful and distinctive voice.
4 (pp. 131-132) For at first he preferred that they should smell of the cedars of the schools which the lord has now broken down, rather than of the wholesome herbs of the church, hostile to serpents: Here Augustine combines a reference to the biblical “cedars of Lebanon” (Psalms 29:5) with an allusion to the practice of using cedar oil to preserve the coverings of books.
5 (p. 132) I pored over the Fourth Psalm.... out of the private affections of my soul ... : The Psalms are Augustine’s primer in the art of praising god, which is the art of the Confessions. However, individual psalms often speak in a variety of different voices or persons, presenting something like a play (or dialogue) and requiring the interpreter to decide who is speaking at each turn. Augustine was particularly sensitive to the dramatic quality of these texts, as his improvisation on Psalm 4 will demonstrate. Before launching into it, he stops to consider how his own performance as reader and commentator on a psalm would strike a spectator looking from the point of view that had once been his own. Even more than the earlier “scene” of Ambrose’s silent reading (6.3.3), this one seems designed to catch a reader of the Confessions in the act. (Note that the Latin text of Psalm 4 used by Augustine does not correspond at all points to modern English versions.)
6 (p. 135) the boy Adeodatus, my son after the flesh, the offspring of my sin.... he was then only in his sixteenth year: Adeodatus (the name means “god-given”) was Augustine’s son by the woman he had cast off for the sake of the plan-since abandoned—of making a society marriage (6.15.25). Born in the early 370s, Adeodatus would have accompanied Augustine throughout his time in Italy. The dialogue The Teacher, in which Adeodatus debates with his father, was written in Africa in 389, not long before the young man’s death. He is the only child of Augustine that the latter ever mentions.
7 (pp. 135-136) The church of Milan had only recently begun to employ this mode of consolation and exaltation... almost all your congregations throughout the rest of the world: In January 386 Valentinian II issued an edict of toleration for those, such as the Goths by then settled in Italy, who still resisted the definition of Christ as being “of the same substance” (in Greek, homoousios) as god the father; their opponents called them “Arians” after the Alexandrian presbyter Arius, whose opinions had originally provoked the debates leading up to the Council of Nicea in 325. Ambrose followed the Nicene, “homoousian” line endorsed by the Council of Constantinople in 381. In the face of Valentinian’s demand that the bishop hand over his church for Easter Week of 386, he had his congregation occupy the basilica around the clock. Arius and his supporters had long before used hymns as propaganda, and the practice of hymn singing in church seems to have become widespread in eastern, Greek-speaking Christian communities during the fourth century. Partly on the strength of this passage, Ambrose is credited with introducing it in the West. He himself composed a number of Latin hymns; see below, note 13.
8 (p. 136) Then by a vision you made known to your renowned bishop the spot where lay the bodies of Gervasius and Protasius... were healed: A letter of Ambrose records how, when preparing to dedicate a new church in Milan in June 386, he was inspired to dig in a certain place, whereupon two skeletons were discovered with their heads severed, and duly identified as the remains of martyrs of an early persecution. As the era of Christian martyrdoms under the Roman Empire began to recede, the cult of such relics acquired new importance as a stimulus to piety and support for the idea of a Christian community extended through time; see Introduction, pp. xxv-xxviii. Though initially skeptical about miracle stories, Augustine later grew more convinced of their value (City of God 22.8-10). In the present case, he appears to have telescoped events in order to have the discovery of the saints’ relics coincide with the contest between Ambrose and the empress Justina.
9 . (pp. 136-137) You, lord, who make those of one mind to dwell in a single house, also brought Evodius to join our company.... prepared himself for yours: Evodius would be Augustine’s interlocutor in two dialogues—Free Will (book 1) and The Magnitude of the Soul-composed at Rome shortly after the events related here. By the time the Confessions appeared he was bishop of Uzalis in North Africa, one of the new generation of well-educated African clerics with experience of the wider world, skills acquired in imperial service, and a sense of the power—and limits—of diplomacy.
10 (p. 137) And when we had got as far as Ostia on the Tiber, my mother died: For the importance of Monica’s death in the conception of the Confessions, see Introduction, pp. xxxix-xl.
11 (p. 142) my brother: He is named as Navigius in the dialogues of Cassiciacum, and is Augustine’s only known sibling.
12 (p. 144) I had heard that the word for bath [balneum] derives from the Greek balaneion, because it throws grief out of the mind: Augustine derives the Greek word for bath (balaneion) from the verb “to throw” (ballein) and the noun “grief ” (ania). The etymology is no more or less fanciful than others commonly alleged throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages.
13 (p. 145) Deus, creator omnium, ... And undoes heavy griefs: The lines are from a hymn of Ambrose to be sung at evening service. The first line has already been echoed at 4.10.15 (as well as less distinctly elsewhere) and will sound again in books 10 and 11.
14 . (pp.146-147) For when the day of her dissolution was so close, she took no thought to have her body sumptuously wrapped... or even care to be buried in her own country: Flouting this dying wish, Ancius Auchenius Bassus, consul for the year 431, had a monumental inscription placed at Monica’s burial place. Part of the stone was discovered by boys digging a hole for a basketball hoop in 1945. The epitaph praised Monica as the chaste mother of a famous son. Her presumed remains were transferred to the church of San Agostino at Rome in 1430. Augustine gave his view of such matters in a treatise, The Care of the Dead, written around 422 in response to an inquiry from Paulinus of Nola, himself a notable impresario of the cult of saints; see Introduction, pp. xxix-xxxiii. As this passage of the Confessions indicates, Augustine believed that prayers for the dead could be beneficial to them, especially when offered at the mass. From hints such as this, later theologians would develop the doctrine of purgatory

Book 10

1 (p. 151) But what is it that I love in loving you?: The question announces the master theme of the first half of book 10, to 10.27.38.
2 (p. 152) “Anaximenes was deceived; I am not god”: Anaximenes of Miletus, a pre-Socratic philosopher, taught that air was the primitive matter of the whole cosmos, the substance from which other elements were derived. In one of his letters Augustine cites Anaximenes as an exemplar of the kind of vain quest after knowledge (“curiosity”) that he will criticize at 10.35.54-57.
3 (p. 155) All this I do within myself, in that huge hall of my memory.... I can meditate on all these things as if they were present: The memory is the faculty that makes a work like the Confessions possible. The search for god and the comprehension of the self are strictly cognate processes.
4 (p. 155) Men go forth to marvel... they neglect to marvel at themselves : This is the passage to which Petrarch would claim to have turned by chance, in his famous account of a hike up Mount Ventoux, written in 1336 when he was the same age as Augustine had been at the moment of his enlightenment in the garden at Milan (8.12.29-30). Petrarch’s sense of affinity with Augustine, partly the product of late-medieval spiritual readings of the Confessions, also heralds the modern appreciation of the Confessions as a master-text of individual self-consciousness.
5 (p. 163) How, then, do I seek you, lord? For when I seek you, my god, I seek a happy life: The Happy Life was among the dialogues composed by Augustine at Cassiciacum. There he concluded that a happy person was one who possessed or held fast to god. Happiness (“blessedness” in older English Bible translations) is a recurrent theme of the Psalms, beginning at Psalm 1:1, and the keyword of Matthew 5:3-11 (the “beatitudes”), as well as a standard topic of classical philosophy. The Latin word for ”happy (beatus) occurs almost forty times in this book of the Confessions.
6 (p. 168) Give what you command and command what you will: From a late work of Augustine’s, The Gift of Perseverance, we know that this sentence caught the attention of Pelagius, a British monk living at Rome, who heard someone else quote it from the Confessions. To Pelagius’ ears, the suggestion that god should be responsible for granting human beings the ability to perform his commands made nonsense of the idea of divine lawgiving. Without wishing to impugn god’s justice, Augustine laid his main emphasis on divine grace (that is, god’s free gift of salvation). Beginning, after Saint Paul, from a conviction of the inherent weakness of the human will caused by Adam’s sin, he held that human beings were powerless to obey god’s commands unless aided by god himself; see note 1 to book 7. The difference of opinion became public a decade after the Confessions was published, leading to a prolonged and ill-tempered contest between Augustine and those whom he called Pelagians. Here, in line with the narrative of book 8, sexual continence provides the primary test case for Augustine’s theory. The literal sense of continence as self-containment is enriched by an (ultimately Neoplatonic) insistence on god as the principle of the reintegration of the fragmented human being.
7 (p. 168) “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life”: This is the biblical injunction motivating an anatomy of “lust” (in Latin, concupiscentia) that is fundamental to the Confessions; see note 7 to book 3. The second half of book 10 lays out the whole scheme: lust of the flesh (10.30.41-34.53), lust of the eyes or “curiosity” (10.35.54-57), and lust for power and prestige (10.36.58-39.64).
8 (p. 173) Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, who required the readers of the psalm to use so slight an inflection of the voice that it was more like speaking than singing: Athanasius (c.296-373) was a leading promoter of the Nicene cause during the fourth-century debates over the relationship between the first two persons of the divine trinity; not coincidentally, he was also a leading publicist for the new, ascetic, and monastic style of dedicated Christian life; see note 6 to book 8 for his Life of Antony. His Letter to Marcellinus, on how to make best use of the Psalms, forms a fascinating parallel with Augustine’s practice in the Confessions and elsewhere, though it cannot have provided this direction for liturgical reading.
9 (pp. 174-175) Those who know how to praise you for it, “God, creator of all,” take it up in your hymn: See 9.12.32 for this hymn of Ambrose.
10 (p. 175) What numberless things there are: products of the various arts and manufactures in our clothes, shoes, vessels, and all such things, as well as pictures and images of various kinds—and all these far beyond the necessary and moderate use of them or their significance for the life of piety—which human beings have added for the delight of the eye, copying the outward forms of the things they make but inwardly forsaking him by whom they were made and destroying what they themselves have been made to be!: The distinction between useful human artifacts and artworks designed purely to please the outer or inner eye is a key feature of Augustine’s discussion of the forms of human culture in book 2 of the contemporary Christian Teaching (2.25.38-39). Pictures, statues, theatrical performances, literary fictions and other works of art that copy nature serve no useful purpose, since the originals are already there to attest and praise the creator. Only god is worth possessing, and human art cannot represent him; at best—as in a hymn by Ambrose or in Augustine’s Confessions—it may declare him.
11 (p. 183) For the mediator they sought was the devil, disguising himself as an angel of light. And he allured their proud flesh the more because he had no fleshly body: Building on hints in the New Testament (for example, Corinthians 10:20, James 2:19), Augustine identifies Satan and the fallen angels with the “demons” or incorporeal beings whom Platonic philosophers and practitioners of theurgic rites treated as intermediaries between the gods and human beings; see especially City of God, books 8-10. In his system, there is only one true mediator between humanity and god—namely, Christ, god in the flesh.
12 (p. 184) Terrified by my sins and the load of my misery, I had resolved in my heart and considered flight into the wilderness: What actual moment in his life is Augustine recalling here? We know that he was initially reluctant to take on the role of presbyter when ordained in the church at Hippo in 391. A recent hypothesis has him briefly contemplating a life of ascetic seclusion as an alternative to the burdens of pastoral office. The conjecture makes excellent sense of this passage of the Confessions, in which Augustine also cites Psalm 119:18 on the wonders of god’s “law,” thus announcing the biblical exegesis to follow in books 11-13. One of the ways Augustine appears to have made sense of his pastoral role was by preaching intensively on scripture. He began to do this as a presbyter, contrary to the normal practice of the African church, which reserved preaching for bishops. His sermons on biblical texts, transcribed and preserved at his behest, were to be a major resource for later preachers.

Book 11

1 (p. 185) so that all may say, “Great is the lord and greatly to be praised.” I have said this before and will say it again: See 1.1.1. The deliberate echo signals both continuity of overall design and a new departure after the partly recapitulative book 10.
2 (p. 185) But how long would it take for the voice of my pen to tell enough of your exhortations... what we give even if we do not owe it: We hear the voice of the over-taxed bishop for whom “service” includes much besides the special activity of scriptural exegesis to which he now wishes to turn. Later in his career Augustine would appoint a surrogate to take care of routine business while he devoted himself to his literary labors.
3 (p. 186) from the very beginning, when you made heaven and earth ... thenceforward to the everlasting reign of your holy city with you: The scope of the project anticipates books 11-22 of the City of God, which attempt to account for all history between termini given by the biblical Genesis and Revelation, respectively. For any reader looking for a sequel to the Confessions, those books of the City of God are an obvious choice, while books 1-10 expand on the cultural and philosophical concerns of the earlier work.
4 (p. 187) Let me hear and understand how in the beginning you made heaven and earth.... grant me also the gift to understand them: Here, as at several other points in the Confessions, it is possible to suspect a slightly polemical-or at least strategic-distancing of Augustine’s position from that of his contemporary Jerome. Where the latter stressed the importance of returning to the Hebrew and Greek originals of biblical texts in order to reach an accurate interpretation, Augustine, who had no Hebrew and little Greek, appeals to a criterion of truth beyond philology. The word and son of god who speaks in the scriptures speaks also to the inward sense of every believer.
5 (pp. 187-188) Look around; there are the heaven and the earth.... our knowledge is ignorance when it is compared with your knowledge: Augustine’s double appeal to the scriptures and to the creatures as parallel declarations of god opened the way to medieval and later doctrines of god’s two books, of Nature (or the World) and the Bible.
6 (p. 191) Now, are not those still full of their old carnal nature who ask us: “What was god doing before he made heaven and earth?”... why, then, is not the creation itself also from eternity?”: The argument here is with the Manicheans and certain Neoplatonists who objected to the Genesis account of creation on the grounds that a god who set about something in this sudden fashion must have had a change of mind, and hence himself be subject to change. By ingeniously identifying the “beginning” of Genesis 1:1 with the “beginning” of John 8:25 (at 11.8.10-9.11), Augustine turns the first of these verses into a statement that god created the world through his son, the word, thereby removing the suspicion of temporal innovation. He now tries several other tacks. See further 12.20.29.
7 . (p. 193) There was no time, therefore, when you had not made anything, because you had made time itself.... For what is time?: Augustine’s treatment of the problem of time recalls longstanding debates among ancient philosophers. His particular contribution is to develop Aristotle’s suggestion that time is subjective, an experience of the human soul, by linking it at once with the dynamics of memory (as already discussed in book 10) and with a Plotinian idea of human life in time as distracted and dispersed (“distended,” he will say) until gathered into the eternal One.
8 (pp. 195-196) Give me leave, lord, to seek still further.... I see it in the present because it is still in my memory: The autobiographical reminiscences of the Confessions thus illustrate a more general point about the role of the memory in the perception of time. By the end of this book, the perspective will have been almost reversed: All experience of human life in time, we are there invited to think, is like the experience of a literary text. For the next paragraph or two, Augustine is concerned with the special class of “memories of the future” presented by biblical prophecy. Although he quickly abandons the problem as too difficult, the drift of his thought is toward a theory of the biblical text as a linear unfolding of the eternal, atemporal “memory” of god (11.31.41).
9 (p. 202) Deus creator omnium: this verse of eight syllables alternates between short and long syllables: See 9.12.32 for the hymn of Ambrose of which Augustine here quotes the first line.
10 (p. 204) I am about to repeat a psalm that I know: Yet again this biblical genre provides Augustine with a paradigm for the “action” that the Confessions strives somehow to compress. The book that began with a reprise of the psalmist’s praise of the creator will end with a vision of all creation encoded like a psalm.

Book 12

1 (p. 207) But where is that heaven of heavens, lord, of which we hear in the words of the psalm... and not for the sons of men: Augustine takes the psalmist’s reference to a “heaven of heavens” to signify that there is another, purely intelligible sphere beyond the visible heaven or “sky” belonging to the material creation (“earth” in the largest sense). Taking up other hints from scripture apart from Genesis 1, he will subsequently describe this superior heaven as the “house of god,” as created “wisdom,” and as the realm in which spiritual beings—god and the angels, and ultimately all the blessed inhabitants of the heavenly “Jerusalem” or everlasting “city of god”—apprehend the total reality of creation without being subject to the constraints of temporality. The initial discussion runs to 12.13.16, after which Augustine turns to broader methodological issues raised by the problem of interpreting Genesis 1:1. His line-by-line exegesis then continues in book 13, to Genesis 2:3. This was not his first essay in expounding the biblical creation story, an interpretive genre with ample precedent in earlier Christian literature. He had already written a treatise On Genesis against the Manicheans (see also note 6 to book 11) and begun his Literal Commentary on Genesis. The interpretation of fered in book 13 will be predominantly allegorical. There and in the present book the author constantly interweaves ideas derived from scripture with others suggested by his readings of Platonist philosop hers such as Plotinus. It has been noticed that in quoting Psalm 115:16 here, Augustine (unusually for the Confessions) names a “psalm” as his source, a gesture which may underline the importance he attached to this particular text of scripture as a witness to the whole order of creation, and which in any case recalls his suggested analogy at the end of book 11 between human knowledge of a psalm and god’s knowledge of everything.
2 (p. 209) you created something and that out of nothing: Augustine endorses an already widely accepted Christian view that god created the universe “out of nothing” (ex nihilo), rather than making use of pre-existing matter as the Platonists believed.
3 (p. 211) Truth, light of my heart, let not my own darkness speak to me!... I have believed your books, and their words are very deep: Despite its occasional longueurs, the whole discussion of Genesis 1 remains part of the single verbal performance of the Confessions, conceived from the outset as an encounter with god facilitated by the words of his scriptures and informed by the promptings of the inner voice of truth (Christ, the word).
4 (pp. 213-214) Marvelous is the depth of your oracles.... It is a fearful thing to look into them: an awe of honor and a tremor of love: Since 3.5.9, if somewhat intermittently in the ensuing books, Augustine has been sketching a theory of the special nature of the divine books that he and other Christians called simply “scripture(s).” In the remainder of this book, he will thrash out the problem in more detail, in a context enlivened by the prospect of stubborn contradiction by other parties. The major themes are those of all hermeneutics or interpretive theory: authorial intention, multiple meaning, the limits of legitimate interpretation. See also Introduction, pp. xxxii-xxxv.
5 (p. 218) And our master knew it well, for it was on these two commandments that he hung all the Law and the Prophets: Augustine alludes to the double command to love god and neighbor (Matthew 22:37-39, cited at 12.25.35). According to the hermeneutical “rule of love” propounded by Augustine, no legitimate interpretation of scripture can conflict with this injunction of Christ’s. Conversely, no interpretation that tends to reinforce love for god and neighbor can be harmful, even if demonstrably false. The rule is laid down formally in Christian Teaching 1.36.40, 2.7.10. See also 13.24.36 below.
6 (p. 222) But in the midst of so many truths which occur to the interpreters of these words... you in your immutable word have created all things, invisible and visible?: The confidence with which Augustine asserts the second of these things is literally one of faith. Belief in god the father as creator of all things through his only-begotten, coeternal son was part of the creed-based consensus of Nicene Christianity that Augustine had accepted on returning to the church. The idea of a “rule of faith” consisting of the core doctrines of Christianity and normative for all scriptural exegesis can be traced back to the second century. This hermeneutical principle is stated formally in Christian Teaching 1.5-21.
7 (pp. 224-225) I cannot believe that you gave your most faithful servant Moses a lesser gift... congruent to my words: To lend psychological plausibility to his theory that the biblical text is miraculously designed by its (ultimate) divine author to be accessible in different ways to readers of different capacities, Augustine imagines what he would have wanted for a text of his composition, had he been Moses and known of the reception that was in store for his writings. He repeats the experiment at 12.31.42. Although it is tempting to read these passages as authorial warrant to regard the Confessions itself as providentially polysemic in the same way as Genesis when read by Augustine, we must note that in both places he stresses the unique authority (auctoritas) of the divinely inspired scriptures. Although Augustine understands his own ministry as a Christian teacher to be part of the same overall divine dispensation that provided for the canonical books of the Bible, he never blurs the boundary between what is “scripture” in the canonical sense and what is merely Christian writing, by him or anyone else. Even so, the psychological appeal of the argument depends on his and our being able to entertain for a moment the idea that god could have summoned Augustine as another (or instead of) Moses.

Book 13

1 (p. 232) For your good spirit which moved over the face of the waters ... and made blessed: After rejecting as absurd any idea that the creation could have been merited by the creatures or needed by god, Augustine is ready to speak of the “spirit of god” of Genesis 1:2, whom he identifies as the third person of the Christian trinity and, in a scheme original to him, as the will of god. The full triadic structure of divine being (god the father), knowing (son), and willing (holy spirit) is explained briefly at 13.11.12 and in Augustine’s work The Trinity, begun soon after the Confessions. The work of the holy spirit in the world is the matter of this book, presented as an allegorical exegesis of the six days of creation, beginning at 13.12.13.
2 (p. 236) Go forward in your confession, my faith... we were formerly in darkness, but now we are light in the lord: This last confession of the Confessions has as its grammatical subject the universal body of confessing believers, mystically identified with the body of Christ. Augustine is speaking from within the church into which he was baptized in Milan at Easter 387, but also on behalf of a longer-term community of the “city of god” (the elect) and with an eye too to those outside this godly society (the damned). The whole of human history is covered by his exegesis of the remaining verses of Genesis 1. Characteristically, the speech that he now begins to utter is one confected from the sayings of biblical authors, especially Paul and, as ever, the psalmist.
3 (pp. 238-239) Now who but you, our god, made for us that firmament of the authority of your divine scripture to be over us? ... the fame of their death: This is a particularly clear instance of the way in which the exegetical narrative of book 13 is composed. An allegorical-ecclesial interpretation of Genesis 1:6-8 is made possible by the imported analogy of heaven and scroll from Isaiah 34:4, then deepened by a surprising inference from Genesis 3:21. Under cover of this reinvented “firmament,” Augustine will descant upon the authority of scripture and the difference between human and angelic apprehension of god’s “word.” The proliferating scenarios of the rest of the book arise from similar processes of cross-fertilization between scriptural texts. For an authorial key to the emerging plot, see 13.24.37 and 13.34.49.
4 (pp. 240-241) Who has gathered the embittered ones into a single society? ... by the providence of your governance of all things: Augustine interprets the bitter waters of the sea as an image of those who follow worldly ends instead of being turned to god. The separation of seas from the land (Genesis 1:9-10) thus symbolizes the division between the “city of god”—provisionally the church—and the “city of the world.” However, human beings in this present life cannot know exactly who will be counted in each of those communities at the end of time. That is the judgment of god, who predestined their membership before the beginning of time; see the end of 13.23.33, the beginning of 13.34.49 and, for the full treatment, the City of God.
5 (p. 243) There was that rich man who asked of the good teacher what he should do to attain eternal life: This is a subliminal link back to the story of Antony at 8.6.15 and 8.12.29.
6 (p. 249) Therefore in your church... just as there is neither Jew nor Greek, nor bond nor free: For Augustine’s understanding of differences in sex and gender, see note 10 below.
7 (p. 251) What, then, shall I say, truth, my life: that it was idly and vainly said? ... understood in the mind in many different ways: This important hermeneutical principle is expounded at length in book 2 of Christian Teaching. Once again, the interpretive practice of the Confessions illustrates the theory of the slightly earlier work. It also expands it, since Augustine here makes hermeneutical activity part of god’s design in the creation of humanity: The ability to construe more than one meaning in a single expression and to find more than one expression for a given teaching or truth is an aspect of the human “procreative” function announced at Genesis 1:28.
8 (p. 256) And I heard this, lord my god, and drank up a drop of sweetness from your truth, ... they do not see your works through your spirit, nor recognize you in them: A final jibe at the Manicheans, who, failing to see that all creation was originally good, posited a separate evil power as the author of what was not.
9 (p. 257) We see the firmament of heaven, either the original body of the world between the spiritual (higher) waters and the corporeal (lower) waters: In Revisions 2.6 Augustine censures this remark as carelessly made, averring that “the matter is very obscure.” As we have seen, his exposition of Genesis 1:7 at 13.15.16-16.19 avoids defining what is literally meant by the waters above and below the firmament, to focus instead on the allegory of the firmament as god’s scripture.
10 (p. 258) We see the face of the earth, replete with earthly creatures; and man, created in your image and likeness... subjected to the deliberation of the mind in order to conceive the rules of right action: The equivalences “male = mind, spirit” and “female = body, fleshly appetite” were settled in (Platonist) Christian thought long before Augustine, and he does nothing to disturb them. Statements he makes elsewhere suggest that he believed that women shared in the “image of god” only as members of the human species, not in their female-ness. Such an understanding presumably underlies the present (concessive) statement about woman’s “like nature of rational intelligence in the mind.” Augustine’s attitudes were normal for his time and culture. While his interpretations of Genesis 2-4 did much to propagate negative views of the female body and female sexuality, some of his thinking about gender roles appears contrastingly progressive. See note 3 to book 9 above on Monica’s contribution to the philosophical dialogues of Cassiciacum. Augustine’s theological correspondence with women displays a quiet confidence in their intellectual powers and capacity to influence public opinion. Although his own report on the impact of the Confessions refers only to its effect on certain “brothers,” he surely envisaged a mixed audience from the start. The evidence of surviving manuscripts shows that when the work came into fashion in the later Middle Ages, it was appreciated as much by female as by male readers. The first abridged edition in English, at Paris in 1638 (based on Tobie Matthew’s translation of 1620), was published by a woman, Françoise Blagaert.