Augustine, Letters

LCL 239: 374-375

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St. Augustine

No. 49 (Ep. CCXI)

1Sicut parata est severitas peccata quae invenerit, vindicare, ita non vult caritas quod vindicet, invenire. Haec causa fecit, ut non venirem ad vos, cum meam praesentiam quaereretis, non ad pacis vestrae gaudium, sed ad dissensionis vestrae augmentum. Quo modo enim contemnerem et inpunitum relinquerem, si et me praesente tantus vester tumultus existeret, quantus me absente etsi oculos meos latuit, tamen aures meas vestris vocibus verberavit? Nam fortassis etiam maior esset vestra seditio in praesentia mea, quam necesse esset vobis non concedi, quod in perniciosissimum exemplum contra sanam disciplinam, quod vobis non expedit, petebatis; ac sic non quales volo, invenirem vos et ipse invenirer a vobis qualem non volebatis.

2Cum ergo scribat apostolus ad Corinthios dicens: Testem deum facio super animam meam, quia parcens vobis nondum veni Corinthum, non quia dominamur fidei

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Letters of St. Augustine

No. 49 (Ep. CCXI)^a (a.d. 423)

Just as severity is ready to punish the sins it discovers,1 so love is anxious not to discover sins to punish. That was the motive which withheld me from coming to you, when you besought my presence, not to rejoice in your peacefulness, but to increase your strife. For how could I have made light of your wrangling or left it unpunished, if even in my presence it had arisen to the same pitch as that which in my absence, though it was hidden from my eyes, yet assailed my ears with your clamour? Perhaps your rebelliousness would have been even greater in my presence, which it was necessary for me to withhold from you since you were demanding, to the detriment of sound discipline, things inexpedient for you and furnishing a most dangerous precedent. Thus I should not have found you such as I desire, and you would have found me such as you did not desire.

The Apostle writes to the Corinthians and says, “I2 call God for a record upon my soul, that to spare you I came not as yet unto Corinth. Not for that we

^aThis famous letter is the source of the Augustinian Rule, which from the eleventh century to the Renascence was the standard of canons regular, preaching friars, knights of the military orders, and the hospital brethren and sisters—of the active, as opposed to the contemplative religious orders, which were nearly all Benedictine. In this its original form, it was part of a letter addressed to a convent of nuns in Hippo, probably that to which the last letter was written, although the circumstances do not appear to be quite identical. The Rule itself, the first actual monastic legislation in Western Europe, was early adapted to communities of men, but it is not a complete system of rules for monastic observance, requiring expansion and elucidation from Augustine’s other ascetic writings, especially the De Opere Monachorum and De Sancta Virginitate. Here, for example, Augustine passes over the great monastic counsel of silence and touches but lightly on the subject of labour, yet the Rule became essentially that of the religious orders with an active mission. Nor, again, does he speak in detail of the liturgical offices, perhaps because in the Africa of his day there was no uniformity (Ep. lv. 34 “de hac re varia consuetudo est”) and no great enthusiasm for it (ib., “pleraque in Africa ecclesiae membra pigriora sunt”), except among the Donatists. Yet such as it is, the “Rule” had all the authority of his name and all the mingled severity and kindness of his nature to make it imposing to the medieval mind.

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DOI: 10.4159/DLCL.augustine-letters.1930

Augustine, Letters

LCL 239: 374-375

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