St. Augustine
familiaritate coniuncti non sunt etiam corporaliter mecum. Nam ut longe mittam cognationem tuam, quantum libet valeat germanitas tui sanguinis, non vincit amicitiae vinculum quo nobis invicem ego et frater Severus inhaeremus; et tamen nosti quam raro mihi eum videre contingat. Atque hoc fecit non utique voluntas vel mea vel illius, sed dum matris ecclesiae necessitates propter futurum saeculum quo nobiscum inseparabiliter convivemus, nostri temporis necessitatibus anteponimus. Quanto ergo aequius te tolerare oportet pro utilitate ipsius matris ecclesiae eius fratris absentiam cum quo non tam diu cibum dominicum ruminas, quam diu ego cum dulcissimo concive meo Severo, qui mecum tamen nunc vix et interdum per exiguas chartulas loquitur et eas quidem plures aliarum curarum et negotiorum refertas quam portantes aliquid nostrorum in Christi suavitate pratorum!
2Hic forsitan dicas: “Quid enim? Et apud nos germanus meus ecclesiae non erit utilis aut propter aliud eum mecum habere desidero?” Plane si tantum ibi, quantum hic mihi eius praesentia lucrandis vel regendis ovibus domini utilis videretur, non dico duritiam sed iniquitatem meam nemo non iure culparet. Sed cum Latina lingua, cuius inopia in nostris regionibus evangelica dispensatio multum laborat,
Letters of St. Augustine
of individuals united to me in the closest and most pleasing intimacy. For, to leave the fact of your kinship quite out of account, the blood-bond between you may be as strong as you please, yet it is not superior to the bond of friendship that binds brother Severus and me so closely to each other; and yet you know how seldom I have the happiness of seeing him. And it is not my wish or his that is responsible for this, but the fact that the claims of our mother, the Church, having regard to the world to come, in which we shall live together and never part, are more important than the claims of our own time. Out of consideration, therefore, for the welfare of that same mother, the Church, you ought with all the greater equanimity to endure the absence of the brother with whom you have not been browsing upon the food of the Lord as long as I did with my delightful fellow-townsman, Severus,a who yet holds converse with me now with difficulty and at intervals by means of meagre letters, and those indeed packed, for the most part, with other cares and concerns instead of bringing any evidence of our wanderings in the sweet meadows of Christ.
At this point you may perhaps reply, “What2 then? Here too, beside me, will my brother not be of service to the Church, or is it for any other reason that I want to have him with me?” Certainly, if his being with you seemed as profitable for the winning and directing of the Lord’s flock as it is here to me, there is no one who would not justly blame—I shall not call it my hard-heartedness, but my unfairness. But since he is familiar with a languageb the lack of which in our territories greatly hinders the administration of the Gospel, while where you are the same
- aSee p. 108, note b.
- bAs the text stands, with no variant, there is an anacoluthon, and the sense demands “Punic” instead of “Latin.” Even in Hippo, a coast town long Romanized, there were many who spoke Punic, and in inland districts it was often the only language spoken (see note b on p. 24). The true reading probably lies hid in Latina or cum Latina, and perhaps there was no adjective present (cum illam [calleat?] linguam), Latina being an imported gloss.