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Augustine's Mixed Feelings: Vergil's Aeneid and the Psalms of David in the Confessions*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2009

Michael C. McCarthy*
Affiliation:
Santa Clara University

Extract

The Aeneid of Vergil and the Psalter traditionally attributed to David so influenced Augustine's writing that one scholar has called the Confessions “a recapitulation of Vergilian epic in a Christian universe,” and another has described it as an “amplified Psalter.”1 Since both works permeate Augustine's narrative, classicists and theologians have long studied the place of the Aeneid and the Psalms in the Confessions, but never in relation to each other.2 Consequently, the dialogical quality of Augustine's text, which includes these radically divergent voices, has largely gone without comment. As paradigms of classical and biblical literature, however, the Aeneid and the Psalms contribute to the formation of the author's own voice and affections. Ancient readers, for instance, widely recognized Vergil's epic as the work of the summus poeta, a book with prophetic powers and the crown of Roman literature to be emulated by all Latin writers.3 Early Christians, in turn, regarded the Psalter as the fabric of constant prayer, a kind of compendium of all scripture pointing prophetically to Christ.4 Thus, the Confessions represent a struggle among powerful voices and emotions frequently operating at cross purposes.

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ARTICLES
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 2009

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References

1 Andrew Fichter, Poets Historical: Dynastic Epic in the Renaissance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982) 40; H. Lausberg, “Rezension zu George Nicolaus Knauer, Psalmenzitate,” ThR 53 (1957) 16.

2 On Vergil, for instance, in addition to Fichter (n. 1), see John J. O'Meara, “Augustine the Artist and the Aeneid,” in Mélanges offerts à Mademoiselle Christine Mohrmann (Utrecht: Spectrum, 1963) 252–61. Harald Hagendahl, Augustine and the Latin Classics (Göteborg: Göteborgs Universitet, 1967) 1.316–77, 2.384–463. Wolfgang Hübner, “Die praetoria memoriae im zehnten Buch der Confessiones: Vergilisches bei Augustin,” Revue des Études Augustiniennes 27 (1981) 245–63. Pierre Courcelle, Lecteurs païens et lecteurs chrétiens de l'Énéide. I. Les témoignages littéraires (Paris, 1984). Camille Bennett, “The Conversion of Vergil: The Aeneid in Augustine's Confessions,” Revue des Études Augustiniennes 34 (1988) 47–69. Sabine MacCormack, The Shadows of Poetry: Vergil in the Mind of Augustine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). On the Psalms, Georg Nicolaus Knauer, Psalmenzitate in Augustins Konfessionen (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1955). Hermann-Josef Sieben, “Der Psalter und die Bekehrung der Voces und Affectus. Zu Augustinus, Confessiones IX, 4.6 und X, 33,” Theologie und Philosophie 52 (1977) 481–97. John Sylvester-Johnson, “The Psalms in the ‘Confessions' of Augustine” (Ph.D. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1981). Paul Burns, “Augustine's Distinctive Use of the Psalms in the Confessions: The Role of Music and Recitation,” Augustinian Studies 24 (1993) 133–46. Günter Bader, Psalterium affectuum palaestra. Prolegomena zu einer Theologie des Psalters (Tübingen: Mohr, 1996) 138–48.

3 Augustine himself calls Vergil summus poeta in Enchiridion 17 and poeta nobilissimus in Civ. 4.11 and 10.27. See MacCormack, 1–44 (on “Their Renowned Poet”). Hagendahl, 2.384–89, and Courcelle, Lecteurs païens et lecteurs chrétiens de l'Énéide, discuss the importance of Vergil to Christians before Augustine.

4 See, for instance, Hiliary of Poitiers Instr. Ps. 5: “Without doubt what is said in the Psalms must be understood according to the proclamation of the Gospel, so that in whatever persona the spirit of prophecy speaks, it refers as a whole to the understanding of the glory and power of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, his incarnation, his passion, his kingdom, and our resurrection” (CCL 61.5–6 [trans. mine]).

5 Pierre Courcelle, Recherches sur les Confessions de saint Augustin (Paris: Boccard, 1950; expanded ed. 1968). Christine Mohrmann, “The Confessions as a Literary Work of Art” in Études sur le latin des chrétiens (Roma: 1961) 371–81. Pierre Courcelle, Les Confessions de saint Augustin dans la tradition littéraire (Paris: 1963). James J. O'Donnell describes the work of Courcelle as fomenting a “Copernican revolution” in Augustinian studies (Augustine: Confessions. Vol. 1: Introduction and Text; Vol. 2: Commentary on Books 1–7; Vol. 3 Commentary on Books 8–13, Indexes [Oxford: Clarendon, 1992] 1.xxi).

6 Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980) 66. Discussed in Elizabeth A. Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999) 122–23.

7 For a fine description of the growing tension, see Robert Markus, “Paganism, Christianity and the Latin Classics in the Fourth Century,” in Latin Literature of the Fourth Century (ed. J. W. Binns; London: Routledge, 1974) 1–21.

8 Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994) 94: “Intertextuality is, in a sense, the way that history, understood as cultural and ideological change and conflict, records itself within textuality.” For a more theoretical discussion of “double-voiced discourse,” see Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogical Imagination (trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist; Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981) 324–29.

9 Boyarin, 135 n. 2, offers a helpful discussion of the synchronic and diachronic aspects of discursive practices. For a discussion of the intertextual quality of the Confessions as such, see Frances Young, “The Confessions of St. Augustine: What is the Genre of this Work?” Augustinian Studies 30 (1999) 1–16. On intertexuality as a part of ancient literary culture that affects patristic writers, see Frances Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) 97–100.

10 On the link between Roman education and imperial values, see John Cavadini, “Pride” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia (ed. Allan Fitzgerald; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999) 679–84.

11 Henri Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity (trans. George Lamb; New York: Sheed and Ward, 1956) 204.

12 Martin Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: ‘Grammatica' and Literary Theory, 350–1100 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994) 76–80, 136.

13 Macrobius, for instance, analyzes Vergil in order to see “how the pattern of a speech expresses and evokes emotion.” Macrobius, Saturnalia 4.2.1 (trans. Percival Vaughan Davies; New York: Columbia University Press, 196) 256.

14 See Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture, 136, 147.

15 On the use of Psalms in early monasticism, see Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) 97. On various forms of psalmody in the fourth century, Robert Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West (2d rev. ed.; Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1993).

16 Augustine, Confessiones, 9.7.15 (ed. Martin Skutella; Stuttgart, Teubner, 1981) 193. Unless otherwise noted, all translations of the Confessions are those of Maria Boulding in Saint Augustine: The Confessions (Hyde Park: New City, 1997). References to the Psalms in this paper will refer to the numbering in Augustine's Vetus Latina Psalter. For an explanation, see Michael Cameron, “Enarrationes in Psalmos,” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia (ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999) 290.

17 Brian Daley, “Is Patristic Exegesis Still Usable?: Reflections on Early Christian Interpretation of the Psalms,” Communio 29 (2002) 204–5. Daley suggests that we still have Psalm commentaries by at least twenty-one patristic authors.

18 Basil of Caesarea notes that precisely in their sweetness the Psalms benefit those who hear them, “just as wise physicians who, when giving the fastidious rather bitter drugs to drink, frequently smear the cup with honey.” In Basil, Homily on Psalm 1.1 (trans. A. Way; FC 46: 152). The reference suggests Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 1.933–34. In his treatise on prayer, Evagrius of Pontus teaches that the use of Psalms “puts the passions to sleep and works to calm the incontinence of the body.” In Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus (trans. Robert E. Sinkewicz; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) 202. On psalmody as a spiritual remedy, see Luke Dysinger, O.S.B. Psalmody and Prayer in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) 104–30.

19 Athanasius, Ep. Marcell. 11–12 (PG 27.21–25).

20 For a fine recent discussion, see Paul R. Kolbet, “Athanasius, the Psalms, and the Reformation of the Self,” HTR 99 (2006) 85–101. Conf. 10.33.50 offers inconclusive evidence on whether Augustine knew of Athanasius's letter.

21 MacCormack, Shadows, 226 notes that Augustine's treatment of Vergil is “sometimes in the nature of a dialogue and at other times in the nature of confrontation.”

22 Bennett, “Conversion of Vergil,” 48, 67.

23 Conf. 1.13.20 Aeneae nescio cuius errores (Skut. 16 [Boulding, 53]; Conf. 9.4.8 cantica fidelia, sonos pietatis (Skut. 184 [Boulding, 214]).

24 Charles T. Mathewes, “Book One: The Presumptuousness of Autobiography and the Paradoxes of Beginning,” in A Reader's Companion to Augustine's Confessions (ed. Kim Paffenroth and Robert Kennedy; Louisville: Knox, 2003) 7–23, argues persuasively that the Confessions, and especially Book I, effectively deny the ability to write an honest autobiography, because finally the “self” is given, not self-authored. Fissures in the intertext thus represent the tensions Augustine represents in himself throughout the work.

25 Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (new ed.; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000) 157.

26 Catherine Chin, “Christians and the Roman Classroom: Memory, Grammar, and Rhetoric in Confessions X,” Augustinian Studies 33 (2002) 182, stresses the difficulties of maintaining the category of a “pure” Christianity as distinct from classical culture: “The articulation of ‘Christianity' and ‘classicism' as distinct entities in contemporary scholarship is in some ways a historical reproduction of the opposition Augustine attempts to maintain, albeit unsuccessfully, in the Confessions.”

27 Thus MacCormack, Shadows, xviii: “Vergil formed part of the very shape of Augustine's reality because he described reality in ways that Augustine found decisive.”

28 Conf. 3.1.1 (Skut. 36 [Boulding, 75]): sartago flagitiosorum amorum.

29 Compare Conf. 4.2.2 with Aen. 4.338–39.

30 Aen. 4.281–2: ardet arbire fuga dulcisque relinquere terras,/attonitus tanto monitu imperioque deorum. The text of the Aeneid is that of Roger Mynors (Oxford Classical Texts, 1969). Translations of the Aeneid are mine.

31 Conf. 8.12.29 (Skut. 178 [Boulding, 207]): nec ultra uolui legere nec opus erat. Statim quippe cum fine huiusce sententiae quasi luce securitatis infusa cordi meo omnes dubitationis tenebrae diffugerunt.

32 Conf. 4.3.5 (Skut. 57 [Boulding, 95]): mirabiliter consonus negotio.

33 Conf. 5.8.15 (Skut. 88 [translation mine]); Aen. 4.474; see also Aen. 4.665–66.

34 Conf. 9.10.23; see Bennett, “Conversion of Vergil,” 65 and O'Donnell, 3.123.

35 Aen. 6.679ff.

36 Maud W. Gleason, Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995) xxiv.

37 Conf. 3.7.13, alluding to Aen. 4.569–70; Conf. 9.9.19, alluding to Aen. 7.53.

38 Bennett, “Conversion of Vergil,” 61.

39 quibus tenere cogebar Aeneae nescio cuius errores oblitus errorum meorum et plorare Didonem mortuam, quia se occidit ab amore, cum interea me ipsum in his a te morientem, deus, vita mea, siccis oculis ferrem miserrimus. Conf. 1.13.20 (Skut. 16 [Boulding, 53, with slight modification]).

40 Ps 77:39: caro eram et spiritus ambulans et non revertens. See Conf. 1.13.20 (Skut. 15).

41 quid enim miserius misero non miserante se ipsum

et flente Didonis mortem, quae fiebat amando Aenean, non flente mortem suam, quae fiebat non amando te, deus. Conf. 1.13.21 (Skut. 16 [trans. mine]).

42 Et haec non flebam, et flebam

Dīdō/nem ēxtīnc/tām fēr/rōque ēx/trēmă sc/ūtām

sequens ipse extrema condita tua relicto te

et terra iens in terram. Conf. 1.13.21 (Skut. 16 [translation mine]).

Compare Aen. 6.457: vēn răt/ ēxtīnc/tām fēr/rōque ēx/trēmă s c/ūtām. The biblical allusion to God's reminding of Adam and Eve that they are “dust” as they leave paradise evokes the cause of the Fall, i.e., their believing that they could be what they are not (i.e., not “dust” but, as the serpent insinuates, “gods”). In his discussion of theatrical spectacles in Conf. 3.2, Augustine returns to the phenomenon of a similar illusion: the mirabilis insania of enjoying grieving for things which no one would actually want to suffer. The better the actor imitates the suffering the more intense the pleasure for the audience. On fourth-century critiques (esp. Chrysostom) of the deceptive quality of theater and rhetorical show, see Blake Leyerle, Theatrical Shows and Ascetic Lives: John Chrysostom's Attack on Spiritual Marriage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001) 44–7.

43 On the “falseness” of his sorrow, see Kim Paffenroth, “The Young Augustine: Lover of Sorrow,” Downside Review 118 (2000) 221–30. Also William Werphowski, “Weeping at the Death of Dido: Sorrow, Virtue, and Augustine's Confessions,” Journal of Religious Ethics 18 (2001) 175–91. For possible antecedents to Augustine's condemnation, see Howard Jacobson, “Augustine and Dido,” HTR 65 (1972) 296–97.

44 Conf. 3.11.19 (Skut. 51 [Boulding, 89]) exaudisti nec despexisti lacrimas. Compare Ps 6:10: Exaudivit Dominus vocem fletus mei; exaudivit Dominus deprecationem meam.

45 Conf. 1.10.16 (Skut. 13 [Boulding, 50]). See Ps 24:16: Respice in me, et miserere mei, quoniam unicus et pauper sum ego. See too Conf. 1.15.24 (Skut. 18), with allusions to Ps 106: 8, 15, 21, 31.

46 Conf. 1.13.21 (Skut. 16).

47 Conf. 1.13.21 (Skut. 16). O'Donnell 2.79 also cites Ps 34:21, 24–25 and Ps 69:4.

48 Conf. 1.13.21 (Skut. 16), suggesting James 4:4 (“the friendship of this world is enmity with God.”)

49 For example, Conf. 1.18.29 (Skut. 22) on “conventions” (pacta) in speech. On Augustine's insistence on the social construction of meaning, largely through speech patterns, see Robert A. Markus, Signs and Meanings: World and Text in Ancient Christianity (Liverpool: 1996) 40–41.

50 Conf. 1.8.13 (Skut. 11; [Boulding, 48]).

51 Conf. 1.13.22 (Skut. 17; [Boulding, 54]): secundum id pactum et placitum quo inter se homines ista signa firmarunt.

52 Conf. 1.16.25 (Skut. 19; [Boulding, 55]): vae tibi, flumen moris humani! quis resistet tibi?

53 Conf. 1.16.26 (Skut. 20 [translation mine]): Iovem quo pacto Danaae misisse aiunt in gremium quondam imbrem aureum, fucum factum mulieri.

54 Conf. 1.16.26 (Skut. 20 [translation mine]): quem deum, qui templa caeli summo sonitu concutit!/ ego homuncio id non facerem? ego illud vero feci ac libens. Paraphrase and quotation from Terence, Eunuchus, 583–91.

55 Conf. 1.16.26 (Skut. 20 [trans. mine]): ob hoc bonae spei puer appellabar.

56 Conf. 1.19.30 (Skut. 23): ipse uana excellentiae cupiditate uictus.

57 Conf. 1.18.29 (Skut. 23).

58 See Cavadini, “Pride,” 681.

59 Consider Geertz's famous analysis of the Balinese cockfight: “What the cockfight says it says in a vocabulary of sentiment…. Attending cockfights and participating in them is, for the Balinese, a kind of sentimental education. What he learns there is what his culture's ethos and his private sensibility … look like when spelled out externally in a collective text.” Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973) 449, as noted in Gleason, Making Men, xxxii, n. 13. See also Martha C. Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994) 508.

60 MacCormack, The Shadows of Poetry, 90–94.

61 numine laeso (Aen. 1.8) and aeternum vulnus (Aen. 1.36). Note Augustine's own cleverness in incorporating hexameters into the prose (soluta verba) of Conf. 1.17.27: non posset Italia Teucrorum avertere regem. (Modified from Aeneid 1.38).

62 Quintilian, Institutiones oratoriae 1.9.2: [Condiscant] versus primo solvere, mox mutatis verbis interpretari, tum paraphrasi audacius vertere, qua et breviare quaedam et exornare salvo modo poetae sensu permittitur. (Let them first learn how to take apart the verses, soon to interpret them with different words, then boldly to change them by paraphrasing, where it is permitted to shorten some verses and adorn others with the sense of the poet properly maintained.) Macrobius (Saturnalia 4.2.1, trans. Percival Vaughan Davies [New York: Columbia University Press, 1969], 257) analyzes “how the pattern of a speech expresses and evokes emotion … either indignation or pity.”After illustrating the art with which Juno starts her speeches, he turns to the example of Juno's whole oration in Aeneid 7.286–322: “The speech as a whole should be calculated to express and arouse emotion, both by the brevity of the sentences and by the frequent changes of the figures employed, thus giving the impression that the speaker is, as it were, being borne to and fro amid surging waves of anger.”

63 Conf. 1.17.27 (Skut. 21).

64 MacCormack (Shadows of Poetry, 132–35) discusses the theological concerns of Servius and Donatus. See too Don Fowler, “The Virgil Commentary of Servius” The Cambridge Companion to Virgil (ed. C. Martindale; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) 73–74.

65 Conf. 1.13.21 (Skut. 16).

66 Conf. 1.17.27(Skut. 21 [translation mine]): proponebatur … mihi negotium animae meae satis inquietum praemio laudis (A disquieting enough task was set before my soul for the reward of praise).

67 Conf. 1.17.27 (Skut. 21 [Boulding, 57]).

68 Conf. 1.18.28 (Skut. 21).

69 See Conf. 1.9.14 (Skut. 11), where his elders urge him to excel in linguosis artibus ad honorem hominum et falsas divitias famulantibus [the linguistic arts which serve human honor and false riches]. Conf. 3.3.6 (Skut. 40): hoc laudabilior, quo fraudulentior [the more fraudulent I was, the more likely I was to be praised]. Conf. 6.6.9 (Skut. 107), where he prepares to deliver a speech of praises for the emperor: quibus plura mentirer, et mentienti faveretur ab scientibus [in which I would tell more lies, and by lying find favor with those in the know]. Translations mine.

70 Aen. 6.853: parcere subiectis et debellare superbos. Cf. Civ. 1.1, where Augustine answers with James 4:6 (Prov 3:34): dictum est: ‘deus superbis resistit, humilibus autem dat gratia.' hoc vero, quod dei est, superbae quoque animae spiritus inflatus adfectat amatque sibi in laudibus dici: ‘parcere subiectis et debellare superbos.' (It is said: “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble” [James 4:6]. Truly, this is said of God, but the inflated spirit of the proud soul aspires and loves it to be said in its own praise: “to spare the subjected and to wage war on the proud.”) LCL 411:10–12 [translation mine].

71 Conf. 10.1.1 (Skut. 209 [Boulding, 237]) : “Truth is what I want to do (volo eam facere) in my heart by confession in your presence, and with my pen before many witnesses.” James O'Donnell (Confessions 1.xvi) begins the introduction to his commentary by noting that truth for Augustine was not a quality of verbal formula, “but veracity itself, a quality of a living human person. Augustine ‘made the truth'—in this sense, became himself truthful—when he found a pattern of words to say the truth well.”

72 Conf. 1.1.1 (Skut. 1): Magnus es, domine, et laudabilis valde. Cf. Ps 95:4; 144:3; 47:2.

73 Aen. 1.1: arma virumque cano …

74 Conf. 1.1.1 (Skut. 1 [translation mine]).

75 Conf. 1.1.1.

76 Conf. 3.5.9 (Skut. 42): visa est mihi indigna quam Tuliianae dignitati compararem.

77 Rowan Williams, “Language, Reality and Desire in Augustine's De Doctrina,” Journal of Literature and Theology 3 (1989) 138.

78 Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 103(3).4 (CCL 40.1501–2). As translated in Maria Boulding, Expositions of the Psalms (Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City, 2000–2004) 5.142.

79 Conf. 1.18.29 (Skut. 22–23).

80 James J. O'Donnell notes that few scholars of the Confessions take seriously the importance of ritual and ceremony to late ancient men and women: “Augustine is verbose about doctrine, close-mouthed about ritual. He appears to us as a man of doctrine exclusively, though he himself tells us … otherwise. There is a proportion to be redressed, and no accurate guide to the correct balance. Augustine's Christianity was not 100% doctrine: 0% ritual, or even 80%:20%; but was it 20% doctrine: 80% ritual? … We are left to wander between the extremes, following our hunches. What is clear is that cult was decisive for him: without cult, no Christianity” (O'Donnell, Confessions 1.xxviii–xxix).

81 Paul Burns, “Augustine's Distinctive Use of the Psalms in the Confessions,” 143. For an interesting approach, see Hjalman Sundén, “Saint Augustine and the Psalter in Light of Role-Psychology,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 26 (1987) 375–82.

82 Conf. 1.5.5 (Skut. 4 [Boulding, 42]).

83 See also 1.15.24, 5.1.1, 5.10.20. An excellent discussion of this and many points of Augustine's use of the psalms in the Confessions can be found in Knauer, Psalmenzitate, 78.

84 Knauer, Psalmenzitate, 67–8.

85 Ps 12:2; 45:25; 78:8; 90:47; 95:3.

86 Conf. 1.5.5 (Skut. 4).

87 Conf. 1.5.6 (Skut. 5 [Boulding, 42]).

88 Ibid.

89 Ibid.

90 Conf. 9.2.2 (Skut. 181): insanias mendaces et bella forensia.

91 Conf. 3.5.9 (Skut. 12): dedignabar.

92 Conf. 9.2.2 (Skut. 181 [Boulding, 210]): “[A]s we climbed up from the valley of weeping (Ps 83:7) singing our pilgrim song (Pss 119–133) you had armed us with sharp arrows and burning coals (Ps 119:3–4), with which to fight the guileful tongues of any who opposed our project while pretending to promote it.”

93 Conf. 9.2.4 (Skut. 182).

94 Conf. 9.3.6 (Skut. 184).

95 See Contra Academicos 1.5.15; 2.4.10; De Ordine 1.8.26.

96 Conf. 9.4.7 (Skut. 185): superbiae scholam.

97 Conf. 9.4.7 (Skut. 185 [translation mine]).

98 See Sieben, “Der Psalter,” 481–97, who argues that Augustine knew Athanasius's famous letter.

99 So O'Donnell, 3.91, counting the number of words in the work.

100 Conf. 9.4.8 (Skut. 185 [Boulding, 215]).

101 Conf. 9.2.4 (Skut. 182): cathedra mendacii, alluding to Ps 1:1. On his learning to speak, see Conf. 1.6.8, 1.8.13.

102 Sieben, “Der Psalter,” 486.

103 Conf. 9.4.8 (Skut. 185).

104 Conf. 9.4.8 (Skut. 185 [Boulding, 215]).

105 O'Donnell, 3.91. See also the comment of Brian Stock, Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1996) 115: “The relationship between Psalm 4 and the ‘text' of [Augustine's] life is supported by words and phrases drawn from other psalms. The vocabulary of his recent reading, so rearranged, is imposed on past experiences, which is in turn reshaped.” On the function of this scene regarding the Manichees, see Annemaré Kotzé, “Reading Psalm 4 to the Manicheans,” Vigiliae Christianae 55 (2001) 119–36. Also Annemaré Kotzé, Augustine's Confessions: Communicative Purpose and Audience (Leiden: Brill, 2004) 97–115.

106 Ps 4:2. Compare Aen. 1.94–101.

107 Conf. 9.4.8 (Skut. 186 [Boulding, 215]): Miserere mei, domine, et exaudi orationem meam (Ps 4:2).

108 Conf. 9.4.8 (Skut. 186): indignabar manichaeis.

109 Conf. 9.4.8 (Skut. 186): miserabar eos rursus.

110 See Conf. 3.2.3.

111 Conf. 9.4.8 (Skut. 186).

112 Conf. 3.2.3 (Skut. 38).

113 Conf. 9.4.8 (Skut. 186 [Boulding, 215]): vellem, ut alicubi iuxta essent tunc et me nesciente, quod ibi essent, intuerentur faciem meam et audirent voces meas, quando legi quartum psalmum in illo tunc otio, quid de me fecerit ille psalmus … audirent ignorante me, utrum audirent, ne me propter se illa dicere putarent, quae inter haec verba dixerim, quia et re vera nec ea dicerem nec sic ea dicerem, si me ab eis audiri viderique sentirem, nec si dicerem, sic acciperent, quomodo mecum et mihi coram te de familiari affectu animi mei.

114 Esp. Conf. 1.6.7–8.

115 Conf. 9.4.8 (Skut. 186): quid de me fecerit ille psalmus.

116 Conf. 9.4.9 (Skut. 186 [Boulding, 215]): filii hominum, quousque graves corde? ut quid diligitis vanitatem et quaeritis mendacium?

117 Conf. 9.4.9 (Skut. 187 [Boulding, 216]): qualem me fuisse reminiscebar.

118 Conf. 9.4.9 (Skut. 187 [Boulding, 216]): et insonui multa graviter ac fortiter in dolore recordationis meae.

119 Conf. 9.4.9 (Skut. 187 [Boulding, 216]): quae utinam audissent qui adhuc usque diligunt vanitatem et quaerunt mendacium : forte conturbarentur et evomuissent illud, et exaudires eos, cum clamarent ad te.

120 Conf. 9.4.9 (Skut. 187): vera morte carnis … pro nobis.

121 Conf. 9.4.10 (Skut 187 [Boulding, 216]), quoting Ps 4:5: irascimini et nolite peccare.

122 See Augustine, Civ. 9.5. Anger, Augustine notes, is an acceptable emotion when it is felt toward a sinner who needs correction. “In our discipline, the question is not whether the devout soul is angry, but why.” As in Augustine, City of God (trans. Henry Bettenson; London: Penguin, 1984) 349.

123 Conf. 9.4.10 (Skut. 187).

124 Conf. 1.6.8 (Skut. 6): indignabar non subditis maioribus et liberis non servientibus. Also 1.7.11.

125 Conf. 1.17.27 (Skut. 21).

126 Conf. 9.4.10 (Skut. 188 [Boulding, 216]): et imagines eorum famelica cogitatione lambiunt.

127 Conf. 9.4.10 (Skut. 188 [Boulding, 216–217]): O si fatigentur inedia et dicant : quis ostendet nobis bona ? et dicamus, et audiant : signatum est in nobis lumen vultus tui, domine. Non enim lumen nos sumus, quod inluminat omnem hominem, sed inluminamur a te, ut, qui fuimus aliquando tenebrae, simus in te. O si viderent internum aeternum, quod ego quia gustaveram, frendebam, quoniam non eis poteram ostendere, si affererent ad me cor in oculis suis foris at te et dicerent quis ostendit nobis bona?

128 Conf. 8.7.16.

129 Conf. 9.4.10 (Skut. 188 [Boulding, 217]): mihi dulcescere coeperas.

130 Conf. 9.4.10 (Skut. 188 [Boulding, 217]): Et exclamabam legens haec foris et agnoscens intus nec volebam multiplicari terrenis bonis devorans tempora et devoratus temporibus, cum haberem in aeterna simplicitate aliud frumentum et vinum et oleum.

131 Conf. 9.4.11 (Skut. 188–189 [Boulding, 216–17]): o in pace! o in id ipsum! o quid dixit: obdormiam et somnum capiam!

132 Conf. 9.4.11 (Skut. 188–89 [Boulding, 217]) nec ad alia multa adipiscenda, quae non sunt quod tu, sed tu, domine, singulariter in spe constituisti me.

133 Conf. 9.4.11 (Skut. 189 [Boulding, 217]): surdis mortuis.

134 Conf. 9.4.11 (Skut. 189 [Boulding, 217]).

135 Conf. 9.4.12.

136 Conf. 9.6.14 (Skut. 191 [Boulding, 220]): voces illae influebant auribus meis et eliquabatur veritas in cor meum et exaestuabat inde affectus pietatis, et currebant lacrimae, et bene mihi erat cum eis.

137 See Augustine, Serm. 374.2.

138 On the parallels, see O'Donnell 3.124.

139 Conf. 9.12.31.

140 Conf. 9.13.34 (Skut. 206 [Boulding, 233]): carnalis affectus.

141 Conf. 10.33.49 (Skut. 246 [Boulding, 270]): ardentius sentio moveri animos nostros in flammam pietatis, cum ita cantantur quam si non ita cantarentur.

142 Conf. 10.33.50 (Skut. 246).

143 Conf. 10.33.50 (Skut. 247).

144 Conf. 10.33.50 (Skut. 247 [Boulding, 270]): ecce ubi sum! Flete mecum et pro me flete qui aliquid boni vobiscum intus agitis, unde facta procedunt.

145 Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996) 5. See description of the tablets by Michelle Brown, The Making of England: Anglo Saxon Art and Culture AD 600–900 (ed. L. Webster and J. Backhouse; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991) 80–81.

146 Canon 2, Second Council of Nicea, in Norman Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990) 139. On the importance of the Psalms in the Middle Ages, see Pierre Riché, Education and Culture in the Barbarian West: Sixth through Eighth Centuries (trans. J. Contreni; Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1975) 173.

147 Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, 341.

148 Ibid., 342.

149 Augustine articulates his theology of the Psalter in multiple places. See, for instance, Ennarat. Ps. 37.6 (CCL 38.386–387). For an example of affective imitation of the psalms, see Enarrat. Ps. 30(2)s.3.1 (CCL 38.213). A magisterial study of all aspects of Augustine's commentary on the psalms is Michael Fiedrowicz, Psalmus Vox Totius Christi: Studien zu Augustins «Enarrationes in Psalmos» (Freiburg: Herder, 1997).

150 Conf. 10.4.5 (Skut. 212 [Boulding, 240]).