In his ‘Traite des Études Monastiques’ Dom Jean Mabillon quotes with evident approval the opinion of a contemporary writer that whereas all the Greek Fathers are summed up in St John Chrysostom so all the Latin Fathers can truly be said to be contained in St Augustine. From the year 431 when Pope Celestine I sang the praises of Augustine in his well-known letter to the bishops of Gaul, the teaching Church has not ceased to recommend in an altogether exceptional way his writings and doctrine.

Of course it is in the realm of divine grace that his authority is pre-eminent, but it would be inexact to confine his influence within such a limit. He is the Father of the Western Church, bridging the gulf between the old and the new; providing us with a summary of what had been thought out by his predecessors, and preparing the way for the great medieval development which was to follow. Living his life about midway between the councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon—probably the most vigorous period of the Church’s history—he brought to bear on Christian revelation the elements of pagan philosophy which his powerful and essentially courageous mind had duly assimilated.

With Pelagianism in the fourth century something new appeared. It was almost as if the growing distance between then and the time of our Lord called for an increased self-reliance in him who would follow Christ, in order to bridge the gap. St Augustine, ever strongly aware of God’s transcendence and of man’s impotence before it, opposed and crushed this mistaken self-confidence by insisting on the exclusive omnipotence of love in grace.

There is to my mind little doubt that St Augustine regarded preaching as the most important of a bishop’s duties. It is the pastoral work par excellence, to feed the flock, to break the bread of the Word to the hungry. It is the bishop’s proper mode of almsgiving, of investing the talent which the Lord has given to him. ‘To lead a carefree life of leisure’, says Augustine, ‘little force would be needed to make me do that. There could be nothing more enjoyable than rummaging about in the divine treasure chest, with no one to plague me. While preaching, arguing, rebuking, building God’s house, having to manage for every one, who wouldn’t shrink from such a heavy burden i But the gospel scares me’—namely, the parable of the slothful servant. He also preached on that text, once when ‘the lords my brethren and fellow-bishops have been good enough to visit us and encourage us by their presence; and yet for some reason or other they refuse to give tired me a helping hand, and you a sermon when I ask them’. A short sermon, and very pointed. Poor blushing bishops in the apse!

Besides preaching tirelessly himself, he also provided in the De Doctrina Christiana what really seems to be a manual on preaching for the clergy. Most of this work, it is true, is concerned with how to interpret Scripture; but this means, for Augustine, how to acquire the matter for your sermons.

About two years before his actual conversion St Augustine evinced the first signs of the kind of life he would embrace. He had reached the stage when it was no longer a matter of being sure of God but of ‘how to become more steadfast in God.’

He hoped to be directed by Simplicianus as to which should be the best course for one in his case to walk in the way of God. He witnessed the church full of faithful and one went this way and one went that, and he felt unhappy that although he had renounced all desire of honour and gain because of the attraction he felt for the ‘sweetness of God and the beauty of his house which he loved’, there yet remained entanglements which he found it hard to sever.

Augustine was aided in the last stages towards his conversion by the Striking accounts he heard of the numbers of those who devoted themselves to the monastic life. Pontitianus, his fellow countryman, a high official of the Milanese court, related to him the history of the Egyptian monk, St Antony, who on reading in St Matthew (19, 21): ‘Go, sell what thou hast and give to the poor and come follow me’, entered upon the religious life. He discovered that at that very time there was flourishing just outside Milan a monastery ‘full of good brethren’ under obedience to St Ambrose and this interested Augustine intensely. ‘Hitherto’, he says, ‘we knew nothing of it.’

Religious thought and feeling in the West have never, for a reason which will become apparent, evolved so direct and satisfying a symbol of divine activity in the world as that of Shiva dancing. Those who are even slightly conversant with the iconography of this Hindu god will recognize that, whether we find him represented in the wild, destructive dance which expresses his purgatorial power, as in the seventh-century stone-carvings of Kanchi, or in the gracious pas seul of the later bronzes, where his primitive force has been confined within the flowing rhythms of an exquisite art-object, here at least we are faced with the embodiment of an experience of the universe which is prior to all commentary. Our ability to recognize this fact is, however, the most immediate and sufficient proof that the experience as such is not the peculiar property of the peoples of India. I do not know whether it has ever been suggested that St Augustine’s De Musica may be considered as a fully developed treatise on this theme, perhaps even unique in its kind, but I propose in the following pages to present it in this way. Certainly I myself have found that with the representations of Shiva as an imaginative support, many of the more hidden connections in a work which involves not a few obscurities become psychologically intelligible, and that what might be judged to be a dialogue of purely antiquarian interest assumes a quite contemporary importance. As the divine activity in the world takes more than one form, so Shiva has more than once dance, and at first sight it is difficult to convince oneself that the hostile destroyer and the wholly sympathetic performer of a dance which is pure delight are figures of one and the same god.

Some twenty-five years ago, the fifteenth centenary of the death of St Augustine (August 28th, 430) occasioned a considerable output of articles, mélanges, and full-length studies. The sixteenth centenary of the birth of the great African doctor (November 13 th, 354) occurs this year, and the well- known Augustinian scholar Père F. Cayré, A.A., had the happy idea of organizing a congress to bring together theologians and historians, philosophers and patristic scholars, in order to see exactly how research on Augustine had developed in the past twenty-five years. This congress, which was held in Paris from September 21st-24th, was extremely successful. Some three hundred and fifty congressistes from within France and abroad, priests and laymen, religious and seculars, Catholic and nonCatholic, met in Paris at the Institut Catholique. Forty universities were officially represented. Among English-speaking scholars we noticed Professors Armstrong, Baxters, and Burnaby, H. Chadwick, O’Meara (from Dublin), Quasten (from Washington), Dr Cross and Fr Callus, and doubtless many more whose names escape us. One hundred and ten communications were sent which fill two large volumes of 1,160 pages. To avoid the wearisome reading of papers and prevent the congressistes being split up into small groups, the contributions were ranged around certain main themes, were presented by a reporter, and discussed at each session. One was thus able to hear and discuss the reports of Mile. Mohrman, on philosophical and literary questions, of Professors Mandouze on mysticism, Pincherle on Platonism, Marrou on the theology of history, etc. The discussions, often close, sometimes decidedly animated, were invariably of great interest.