St. Augustine
pertulisti, plus tamen nolo haec ipsa te sine aliqua in melius vitae mutatione fuisse perpessum.
1Primum gratulationem reddo meritis tuis, quod te in illa sede dominus deus noster sine ulla, sicut audivimus, plebis suae discissione constituit. Deinde insinuo sanctitati tuae quae sint circa nos, ut non solum orando pro nobis, verum etiam consulendo et opitulando subvenias. In magna quippe tribulatione positus haec ad tuam beatitudinem scripta direxi, quoniam volens prodesse quibusdam in nostra vicinitate membris Christi, magnam illis cladem inprovidus et incautus ingessi.
2Fussala dicitur Hipponiensi territorio confine
Letters of St. Augustine
should not wish you to endure henceforward such sufferings as you have endured in the past, my wish is yet greater that you may not have endured them without some change of your life for the better.
First of all I pay my tribute of congratulation to1 your merits that the Lord our God has placed you in that apostolic chair with (as we are informed) no division among His people. In the next place, I lay before your Holiness the state of affairs with us, so that you may come to our assistance not only by praying for us, but also by giving us your counsel and assistance,c for I am writing to your Holiness under deep affliction: by my lack of foresight and caution I have brought a great disaster upon certain members of Christ in our neighbourhood, though I had intended only their benefit.
Fussalad is the name of a small town not far from2
- aSee above, p. 340.
- bFor the word papa see note a on p. 302.
- cAugustine here appeals to Celestine to reconsider a case on which his predecessor Boniface had earlier pronounced judgement. Later, the African bishops decided not to allow appeals from Africa to Rome, and when in 426 Celestine wrote on behalf of a priest deposed from office, they pointed out that the African Church retained the right of judging its own causes (Cod. Eccl. Cath. cxxv. “non provocent nisi ad Africana concilia vel ad primates provinciarum suarum; ad: transmarina autem qui putaverit appellandum, a nullo intra, Africam in communionem suscipiatur”).
- dThe exact site of Fussala is unknown, but it probably lay to the south or south-east, for on that side the boundary of the commune of Hippo extended to about 40 miles. A later letter (Ep. ccxxiv.) speaks of a priest of Fussala. It was still a bishopric in 484, and a passage of Procopius mentions the construction of a fortress there under Justinian. In Civ. Dei xxii. 8. 6 is mention of a private estate near Fussala, on which the owner had built a chapel in which he placed soil from the Holy Sepulchre. The bishop mentioned below, Antoninus, was present at the Council of Mileve in 416 (Ep. clxxvi., title), but in view of his misdeeds Augustine assumed control himself (§ 5, cf. Ep. ccxxiv.), and retained it till his death. Castellum is defined by Augustine himself in De Consensu Evang. iii. 25. 71: “castellum . . . non absurde accipimus etiam villam potuisse appellari.”