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The Doubting Augustine: The Deletion of Monica from Fourteenth-Century Vitae Augustini in the Augustinian Order of Hermits
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 June 2016
Abstract
This study examines the erasure of Monica in five hagiographies of Augustine written by the Order of Hermits of St Augustine in the fourteenth century. It investigates how the character of Monica functions as a foil to Augustine's religious doubt in his Confessions and why that emphasis was problematic for the Augustinian Hermits. The essay will demonstrate that the presence of Monica was incompatible with the hermits’ desire to showcase Augustine's eremitism as the cornerstone of his religious practice. In order to emphasize Augustine's devotion to the eremitical life, the hermits denied any substantial presence to Monica, who was a problematic reminder both of Augustine's doubt about monasticism and of the hermits’ doubts about the legitimacy of their parentage. This study explores the hermits’ doubt about the role of Monica in Augustine's religious formation, and how that doubt was indicative of their institutionalized way of looking at their faith.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 52: DOUBTING CHRISTIANITY: THE CHURCH AND DOUBT , June 2016 , pp. 150 - 163
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2016
References
1 An example of this kind of language can be found in Verdun, Bibliothèque publique, MS 41, Henry of Friemar, ‘Tractatus de origine et progressu Ordinis Fratrum Eremitarum S. Augustini’, saec. XIV, fols 144r–150r. This text is also found in an edition by Rudolph Arbesmann: Henricus de Frimaria, Tractatus de origine et progressu Ordinis Fratrum Heremitarum Sancti Augustini, ed. Rudolph Arbesmann as ‘Henry of Friemar's Treatise on the Origin and Development of the Order of the Hermit Friars and its True and Real Title’, Augustiniana 6 (1956), 37–145.
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6 Arbesmann, ed., ‘Henry of Friemar's Treatise’; idem, ‘Jordanus of Saxony's Vita S. Augustini: The Source for John Capgrave's Life of St Augustine’, Traditio 1 (1943), 341–53; idem, ‘A Legendary of Early Augustinian Saints’, Analecta Augustiniana 29 (1966), 5–58; idem, ‘The Vita Aurelii Augustini Hipponensis episcopi in Cod. Laurent. Plut. 90 Sup. 48’, Traditio 18 (1962), 319–55; Rano, Balbino, ‘Las dos primeras obras conocidas sobre el origen de la Orden Augustiniana’, Analecta Augustiniana 45 (1982), 331–76Google Scholar; idem, ‘San Agustín y los orígenes de su orden. Reglo, monasterio de Tagaste y Sermones ad fratres in eremo’, La Ciudad de Dios 200 (1987), 649–727.]
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8 Examples include Courcelle, J. and Courcelle, P., Iconographie de Saint Augustin. Les Cycles du XIVe siècle (Paris, 1965)Google Scholar; eidem, Iconographie de Saint Augustin. Les Cycles du XVe siècle (Paris, 1969); Bettini, S. and Puppi, L., La chiesa degli Eremitani di Padova (Vicenza, 1970)Google Scholar; Blume, D. and Hansen, D., ‘Agostino pater e praeceptor di un nuovo ordine religioso (considerazioni sulla propaganda illustrata degli eremiti agostiniani)’, in Arte e spiritualità negli ordini mendicanti. Gli Agostiniani e il cappellone di S. Nicola a Tolentino (Rome, 1992), 79–91Google Scholar; Cordelia Warr, ‘Hermits, Habits and History: The Dress of the Augustinian Hermits’, Janis Elliott, ‘Augustine and the New Augustinianism in the Choir Frescoes of the Eremitani, Padua’, Cooper, Donal, ‘St Augustine's Ecstasy before the Trinity in the Art of the Hermits, c.1360–1440’, in Bourdua, Louise and Dunlop, Anne, eds, Art and the Augustinian Order in Early Renaissance Italy (Aldershot, 2007), 17–28, 99–126, 183–204Google Scholar respectively. Important works of Augustinian iconography have been published by the contemporary Augustinian Order, notably in the volumes Per corporalia ad incorporalia. Spiritualità, agiografia, iconografia e architettura nel medioevo agostiniano (Tolentino, 2000); Arte e spiritualità negli ordini mendicanti.
9 Bourdua, Louise, ‘De origine et progressu ordinis fratrum heremitarum: Guariento and the Eremitani in Padua’, Papers of the British School at Rome 66 (1998), 177–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; eadem, ‘Entombing the Founder St Augustine of Hippo’, in eadem and Dunlop, eds, Art and the Augustinian Order, 29–50; Ahl, D. Cole, ‘Benozzo Gozzoli's Frescoes of the Life of Saint Augustine in San Gimignano: Their Meaning in Context’, Artibus et Historiae 7 (1986), 35–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 This conflict is examined thoroughly in Elm, Kaspar, ‘Augustinus canonicus – Augustinus Eremita. A Quattrocento cause célèbre’, in Verdon, Timothy and Henderson, John, eds, Christianity and the Renaissance: Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattrocento (Syracuse, NY, 1990), 84–107Google Scholar. See also Dale, Sharon, ‘A House Divided: San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro in Pavia and the Politics of Pope John XXII’, JMedH 27 (2001), 55–77Google Scholar, at 56; Saak, High Way to Heaven, 164.
11 John XXII's grants to the OESA are documented in Codex Diplomaticus Ordinis Eremitarum Sancti Augustini Papiae, ed. Rodolfo Maiocchi and Naz Casacca, 3 vols (Pavia, 1905–7), especially 1: 15. See also Saak, High Way to Heaven, 160.
12 Codex Diplomaticus, ed. Maiocchi and Casacca, 1: 14.
13 Bourdua, ‘De origine et progressu ordinis fratrum heremitarum’, 178.
14 Examples include Ottley, Robert, Studies in the Confessions of St Augustine (London, 1919), 5Google Scholar; Spark, Muriel, ‘St Monica’, The Month 17 (1957), 309–20Google Scholar, at 310; Levenson, Carl, ‘Distance and Presence in Augustine's Confessions’, Journal of Religion 65 (1985), 500–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 505; Ziolkowski, Eric J., ‘St Augustine: Aeneas’ Antitype, Monica's Boy’, Literature and Theology 9 (1995), 1–23, at 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 Rosemary Radford Ruether, ‘Augustine: Sexuality, Gender and Women’, Anne-Marie Bowery, ‘Monica: The Feminine Face of Christ’, Burrus, Virginia and Keller, Catherine, ‘Confessing Monica’, in Stark, Judith Chelius, ed., Feminist Interpretations of Augustine (University Park, PA, 2007), 47–67Google Scholar, 69–95, 119–45 respectively; Ferrari, Leo, ‘Monica on the Wooden Ruler’, Augustinian Studies 6 (1975), 193–205CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clark, Elizabeth A., ‘Holy Women, Holy Words: Early Christian Women, Social History, and the “Linguistic Turn”’, JECS 6 (1998), 413–30Google Scholar; Rader, Rosemary, Breaking Boundaries: Male/Female Friendship in Early Christian Communities (New York, 1983)Google Scholar; Benso, Silvia, ‘Monica's Grin of Tension’, in Vaught, Carl G., ed., Contemporary Themes in Augustine's Confessions: Part II, Contemporary Philosophy 15/2 (1993), 5–10Google Scholar.
16 Bowery, ‘Monica: The Feminine Face of Christ’, 75.
17 Ferrari, ‘Monica on the Wooden Ruler’; see also, in this volume, Kimberley-Joy Knight, ‘Lachrymose Holiness and the Problem of Doubt in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Hagiographies’, 122–38.
18 Benso, ‘Monica's Grin of Tension’, 8.
19 Bowery, ‘Monica: The Feminine Face of Christ’, 80.
20 Augustine, Confessions 9.4.8 (ed. and transl. by Henry Chadwick [Oxford, 1991], 160).
21 Starnes, Colin, Augustine's Conversion: A Guide to the Argument of Confessions I–IX (Kitchener, ON, 1990), 129Google Scholar.
22 Augustine, Confessions 1.11.17.
23 Ibid. 1.11.18.
24 Ibid. 3.11.19.
25 Ibid. 5.7.13.
26 Ibid. 5.8.14–15.
27 Bowery, ‘Monica: The Feminine Face of Christ’, 85; cf. Augustine, Confessions 8.12.30.
28 Bowery, ‘Monica: The Feminine Face of Christ’, 85; cf. Augustine, Confessions 8.11.27.
29 Augustine, Confessions 9.12.30.
30 Power, Kim, Veiled Desire: Augustine's Writing on Women (London, 1995), 71–93Google Scholar.
31 ‘Surgunt indocti et caelum rapiunt, et nos cum doctrinis nostris sine corde, ecce ubi voluntamur in carne et sanguine!’: Augustine, Confessions 8.8.19.
32 Ibid. 9.10.23–6.
33 For the theft of the pears, see ibid. 2.4.9. This is contrasted with Augustine's many references to Monica in the section on his infancy and youth as having already found God, such as when he describes his mother as having nourished him in the womb when he was sinful (1.7.12), or his comparison of the piety of his mother to the Church, which he describes as the mother of us all: 2.11.17. Monica fears for Augustine when he reaches sexual maturity and implores him not to act upon that maturity; Augustine dismisses her concerns as ‘womanish counsels’ and endeavours to keep up with the sexual exploits of his adolescent friends: 2.3.6–7. Augustine discusses his concubine and initially unwanted son with her at the beginning of Book 4, and sends her away in order to prepare for marriage to a Roman girl: 6.15.25. This follows a discussion about the lengths to which Monica went in order to arrange his marriage, so as to offer him a legitimate place to express his sexuality: 6.13.23. Augustine recalls how he was attracted to the philosophy of Cicero, particularly in the Hortensius, in spite of his mother's attempts to nourish him with the love of Christ: 3.4.8. He becomes a Manichee in Book 4, and describes his mother's weeping for his soul at length: 3.11.19–20. Monica begs Augustine not to go to Rome, or at least to allow her to accompany him; he deceives her and leaves in the night while she is asleep: 5.8.15. For examples of Augustine struggling to accept Christianity in his heart even though he had already rationally accepted the truth of Christ, see 8.11.25–7. In particular, he has difficulty letting go of his lustful desires, in spite of Monica's continued counsels on the subject.
34 Augustine experiences a mystical conversion under the fig tree in Valerius's garden in Book 8. He tells his mother of his ‘tolle lege’ experience and she rejoices: 8.12.30. For Augustine's vision at Ostia with Monica, the experience which marks his full acceptance of Christ and commitment to his faith, see note 32 above.
35 Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana, MS Plut. 90. Sup. 48, fols 1r–13r; see Arbesmann, ‘The Vita’, 320.
36 MS Plut. 90. Sup. 48, fol. 7r.
37 Rano, ‘Las dos primeras obras’, 337. This work appears in the same manuscript as the Vita Aurelii Augustini Hipponensis episcopi, MS Plut. 90, Sup. 48.
38 Ibid., fol. 38v.
39 Ibid.
40 ‘Mater sua ante tempus quietationis eidem congratulabatur, quod non tantum fidelem christianum eum videbat, sed etiam Dei servum’: ibid., fol. 58v.
41 Van der Lof remarks that there were three ways in which Augustine used the term servus Dei, the development of which mirrors ecclesiastical developments in Augustine's time. Initially, Augustine appears to have used the term simply to mean any member of Christendom. As the concept of eremitism and monasticism grew, it evolved to signify a brotherhood of a special few, who practised a genre of asceticism in the search of religious perfection. Finally, after having founded a monastery in Hippo, he used the term to mean specifically those living a monastic life: van der Lof, L. J., ‘The Threefold Meaning of Servi Dei in the Writings of Saint Augustine’, Augustinian Studies 12 (1981), 43–59, at 56CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Zumkeller also argues that Augustine's usage of the words servire Deo implied the goals of the monastic life and that servus Dei was increasingly used to mean ‘monk’ over any previous connotations. He found over seventy-five instances in Augustine's writings of servus Dei or servire Deo being so used: Zumkeller, Adolar, Das Mönchtum des heiligen Augustinus, Cassiciacum 11, 2nd edn (Würzburg, 1968), 158Google Scholar.
42 Prague, Clementum, Metropolitan Chapter Library, MS Metr. Kap. 812, fols 35v–40r. This tentative dating is supplied by Saak (High Way to Heaven, 201), who uses Nicholas of Alessandria's involvement in the proceedings between the canons and the hermits as the motivation behind his authorship. An edition of this text appeared in Rano, ‘Las dos primeras obras’, 352–76.
43 MS Metr. Kap. 812, fol. 38r.
44 Ibid.
45 Saak, High Way to Heaven, 209.
46 Paris, Biblothèque de l'Arsenal, MS 251, fols 1rb–104v; cf. Arbesmann, ‘Jordanus of Saxony's Vita S. Augustini’. There has been some debate regarding the date of authorship of this text, with Hümpfner assigning it a date of 1319–22: ‘Introduction’, xxiv; whereas Walsh has argued for the late 1330s, as it was at that time that Jordan was working with Henry of Friemar: ‘Wie ein Bettelorden zu (s)einem Gründer kam’, 593. The latter dating has generally found more acceptance.
47 MS 251, fol. 54rb.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid., fol. 54vb. For Augustine's departure for Rome and Monica's death, see ibid., fols 56ra, 61rb respectively.
50 Ibid., fol. 64rb. A phrase from Possidius's Vita Augustini, claiming that Augustine had lived in an eremitical way when overseas (i.e. when he was Italy) is used in the first four texts to prove that Augustine founded a monastic community while living in Italy: Possidius, Vita Augustini 5.52.7–8 (PL 32, 37). For the use made of this, see MS Plut. 90. Sup. 48, fol. 8r (Vita Augustini); Rano, ‘Las dos primeras obras’, 339–40 (Initium), 368 (Nicholas of Alessandria, Sermo de beato Augustino); Arbesmann, ed., ‘Henry of Friemar's Treatise’, 97, 121–7.
51 For example, Petrarch possessed a small copy of Augustine's Confessions, which he claimed to carry everywhere with him, specifically on his famous climb of Mont Ventoux; he was given it by his friend Dionigi da Borgo San Sepolcro, an Italian Augustinian Hermit: The Essential Petrarch, ed. and transl. Peter Hainsworth (Indianapolis, IN, 2010), 220–6, especially 224–5. Jordan of Quedlinburg stated explicitly at the beginning of his text that he was using the Confessions, along with the Sermones ad fratres in heremo, as his primary source material: MS 251, fol. 54rb. Saak refers to the anonymous Vita as ‘strung together portions of texts from Augustine's Confessions’, and to the Initium as being based primarily on the Confessions and Possidius: High Way to Heaven, 190, 196.