AUGUSTINIANISM (AGOSTINISMO). – Not only in the history of dogma did the Bishop of Hippo exert an incalculable influence, but his action was also decisive for the orientation of Western thought outside the theological sphere. The principal problems of life were studied and, in part, resolved by him; the states of the soul were examined and illuminated; in some of the most difficult questions posed to the spirit, his inquiry still marks the highest point of human speculation.
The philosophical spirit that animated his doctrines and the perpetuation of this spirit through the centuries in the systems of his followers is designated by the term *a.*; sometimes even the whole of his theories on the action of God, grace, and freedom are expressed by this word. To outline the principal phases in the development of Augustinian doctrines in the Middle Ages and in the modern era is to provide, in synthesis, the history of so much of Christian culture and thought.
Scarcely emerging from the collapse of the Greco-Roman world, theologians and philosophers studied the works of St. Augustine with love and formed themselves in his school. He was the master of the West, and upon the rich foundation of his writings there germinated and developed the literature of the Middle Ages. Gregory the Great nourished himself on his ideas and disseminated them; St. Caesarius in the 6th century, Isidore, Bede, and Alcuin in the 7th and 8th centuries spread among their contemporaries the spiritual seeds contained in his works.
In the controversies of the 10th to 12th centuries regarding the validity of simoniacal ordinations and the illegitimacy of reordinations, the texts of Augustine carried decisive weight. The *De civitate Dei* became the fundamental charter of the Church in its social mission, and some theories of the African doctor exerted a powerful influence on the political literature of the Middle Ages. We see the influence of St. Augustine on certain fundamental concepts of this era, and the idea of peace, as defined in *The City of God*, as well as the idea of justice, the just king, the tyrant, etc., inspired the writers who treated the relations between the two authorities, the civil and the ecclesiastical. It was the progress of these Augustinian concepts that created for the popes a sum of religious duties toward the divided and often impotent states of Europe. It was the consciousness of the necessity to obey the imperious duties arising from the conception of Christian society, as delineated in *The City of God*, that impelled the Vicars of God on earth to intervene in politics. The same ideology, moreover, influenced the emperors and the Ghibelline writers.
To the Bishop of Hippo, as to the greatest of the Church Fathers, turned the doctors and saints who were enemies of dialectic and who gathered around Gregory VII in their vigorous attempt to free the Church from the tutelage of the emperors; to him appealed the masters of the following centuries who, like Anselm and Abelard, brought dialectic into the very heart of the highest theological speculation. Until the first decades of the 13th century, Augustine reigned unchallenged in the schools of the Christian West.
Meanwhile, a profound renewal had taken place in Islamic and Jewish philosophical circles: the Aristotelianization of culture. This renewal soon exerted a great influence in Europe, where, because of the Crusades and the activity of merchants, contacts with the Eastern world had increased and bonds had been strengthened. The entire Aristotelian encyclopedia came into the possession of the scholastics, but the first translations were made from the Arabic, and those Arabic translations in turn were not direct but derived from Syriac texts. And the commentaries that accompanied them often contributed to distorting the thought of the Stagirite.
This thinker did not enter among Christians escorted, as Plato had been, by the Church Fathers, but presented himself recommended by Jews and Muslims. Polemics broke out everywhere, and the ecclesiastical authority prohibited Aristotle’s physics and metaphysics in 1210 and 1215. Yet the doctrines of this philosopher rapidly gained ground in the universities of Europe in the first half of the 13th century. It was then that Thomas Aquinas created a new system indebted to Aristotle but endowed with its own specific form; his doctrine constitutes a vigorous and successful effort to explain the universe from a rational point of view. Yet
it encountered strong opposition, not only from adversaries but also from the Augustinian school, represented at that time especially by the Franciscans, who continued the tradition of the theologians of previous centuries.
The *a.* of the 13th century did not, as some claim, deny philosophy; at most, it denied philosophy as an autonomous discipline, not as a heteronomous one; it admitted philosophy, that is, united to a complex of notions and supernatural influences that, after ennobling it, led it to its perfection.
One may speak of a transmutation of philosophical values, not of their suppression. It has been said that the Augustinian is a mystic, and this is true; but this qualification does not destroy the other of philosopher, because he knew how to systematize knowledge and things in function of the mystical and conducted, to the attainment of the goal, the experiment tried upon an idea. He firmly believed that the transcendental and the supernatural constitute the very heart of the real, and, perceiving the many insufficiencies of the real, he affirmed that the task of metaphysics consists in reintegrating into the economy of nature all that it requires of the supernatural, without which nature and man would become indecipherable enigmas (cf. E. Gilson, *La philosophie de St. Bonaventure*, Paris 1920, pp. 464–72).
We may thus summarize the salient characteristics of Christian thought in the Augustinian systematization of the 13th century: a) no formal distinction between theology and philosophy, between the order of rational truths and that of revealed truths; b) primacy of the will over the intellect, of the affective life over the intellectual; c) necessity that certain intellectual acts of man be preceded by an illuminating action on the part of God; d) positive actuality, however minimal and embryonic, of prime matter, independently of any substantial form; e) presence in matter of seminal principles or *rationes seminales* of things; f) universal hylemorphism; g) multiplicity of forms in contingent beings, principally in man; h) individuation of the soul by its own power, especially in man, not as a consequence of union with the body; i) identity of the soul with its faculties; l) impossibility of the creation of the world *ab aeterno*.
The *a.* of the Middle Ages was undoubtedly linked to the thought of the Bishop of Hippo and reflected not only his general orientation but also his principal doctrines. Many centuries, however, had passed from St. Augustine to the contemporaries of St. Bonaventure and Duns Scotus, and various factors—such as Aristotelianism and Arabic philosophy—had exerted a great influence on the medieval mind: a transformation, often considerable, of the doctrine of the African bishop had taken place. Nonetheless, one cannot deny the medieval Augustinians their legitimate intellectual descent from the Doctor of Hippo.
Philosophy, in fact, as E. Gilson asserts, begins in the case of the latter with “an act of faith in the supernatural order, which frees the will from the flesh through grace and the intellect from scepticism through revelation” (Introduction à l’étude de saint Augustin, Paris 1929, p. 294). For Augustine, philosophical thought does not possess that autonomy or consistency which St Thomas attributes to it; nor can the present world, the only one capable of being known, be fully comprehended apart from Christ Jesus. Hence, when the medieval thinker denies a formal distinction between theology and philosophy, between the order of rational truths and that of revealed truths, he is not far removed from the thought of the Bishop of Hippo.
Moreover, like the great Church Father, when faced with two solutions to the same problem, Augustine, given the premises of his system, will spontaneously incline towards the one that makes the fewest concessions to nature and the greatest to God. Thus he accepts the theory of illumination, because it ensures the maximum dependence of the intellect on God in the act of knowledge, and the theory of seminal reasons, because it grants the least scope to the creative activity proper to the creature.
The theory of the primacy of the will over the intellect likewise adheres to the thought of the African Doctor, according to whom philosophy has the character of wisdom rather than science, of active wisdom that is an invitation and a way to action. Hence the first three cornerstones of the medieval Augustinian system, including that of the “seminal reasons,” can be readily accommodated within the general orientation of St Augustine. But even the other cornerstones can be traced, at least in their roots, to his teaching.
The theory of the impossibility of the world’s creation from eternity was, in all probability, inspired by the precise denial on the part of the Bishop of Hippo of the legitimacy of a concept of a creature “co-eternal” with God, which would imply the attribution of a homogeneous mode of duration to heterogeneous modes of being (De civ. Dei, XII, 15, 1; PL 41, 363; ibid., XII, 15, 2; PL 41, 364; ibid., XII, 15, 3; PL 41, 365; ibid., XII, 16; PL 41, 365).
The doctrine of the identity of the soul with its faculties is known from what Augustine says in the ninth (chaps. 4–5: PL 42, 963–65) and tenth books (chap. 11: PL 42, 982–83) of the De Trinitate. The theory of universal hylomorphism is suggested by certain passages of the Bishop of Hippo in which even to angels is attributed a material substratum, subject therefore to change, a “spiritual matter” (De Genesi ad litt., V, 5, 13; PL 34, 326). Augustine likewise holds that the human soul is composed of spiritual matter (De Genesi ad litt., VII, 6, 9; VII, 7; PL 34, 359; ibid., VII, 27, 39; PL 34, 369–70), and from this premise medieval scholastics, faithful to his teaching, drew two corollaries: the multiplicity of forms in the human composite and in other contingent beings, and the individuation of the soul by its own power, not as a consequence of its union with the body.
Finally, the theory of the positive, albeit minimal and embryonic, actuality of prime matter independently of any substantial form finds support in certain passages of St Augustine that might be interpreted in this sense. In the De vera religione (XVIII, 35: PL 34, 137), he asserts that prime matter, although as far removed as possible from God—since God is being and it is almost nothing—is nonetheless not pure nothingness. “Now God drew all things from that which has neither beauty nor form; and this is nothingness. Yet that which, in comparison with something more perfect, appears formless, if it already possesses some form, however small and incipient, is not yet nothingness; yet even this, in so far as it is, is from God.”
In 1277, three years after the death of Thomas Aquinas, the controversies between the schools of the Thomists and the Augustinians burned more fiercely than ever. On 7 March of that year, Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, compiled a list of 219 propositions which he deemed heretical and forbade their defence under pain of excommunication. Directed principally against Averroism, this syllabus also struck Thomism, condemning several fundamental theories of that system. On 18 March, Robert Kilwardby, Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of England, who held the right of supervision over the University of Oxford, likewise prohibited a series of grammatical, logical and physical theses, thereby condemning numerous Thomist doctrines. These condemnations were certainly the work of the Augustinians, but their victory was short-lived. Little by little they had to yield ground to their adversaries. Many of their theories, however, retained a great fascination for thoughtful men, and the spirit of the great African Father remained alive and operative.
The first humanists took their inspiration from him and traced their lineage back to Cicero and Plato. When Petrarch climbed Mount Ventoux, he carried with him a copy of the Confessions. Upon reaching the summit and gazing at the rigid, snow-covered Alps, he opened the book to X, 8, 15, read, and exclaimed: “Thus I was content with what I had read and, keeping silence, began to reflect on the folly of mortals, who, despising the noblest part of nature, lose themselves in a thousand vain speculations and seek outside themselves what they might find within.” From this reading there arose humanism—or at least the deepest humanism—of the great poet. The Renaissance, in its secret admiration for Plato, generally rests upon the philosophy of Augustine.
Great doctrines retain a prodigious power of expansion, not only over kindred currents of thought but often also over systems that reveal themselves as contrary or indifferent to their spirit. Thus it is explained how the thought of the Bishop of Hippo could fertilise, almost simultaneously, two distinct and divided currents of modern times: that of Descartes and that of Pascal. With E. Baudin we may discern, along the path of Augustinian speculation, “the constant presence of two philosophical intuitions: that of the ontologism of rational truths, which culminates in Descartes, and that of the experience of religious truths, which reaches its apogee in Pascal—two intuitions, different in origin, that give rise to similar conclusions, one of reason and the other of the heart” (in Recherches de sciences religieuses, 14 [1924], p. 345).
Even a part of the philosophy closest to our own arose from the attempt to solve a problem first studied by Augustine. In analysing necessary judgments, the Bishop of Hippo perceived in them an inexplicable immutability so long as one remains within the world of the mutable, and recognised in them—or rather in the judging subject itself— a reflection of God. Kant, too, from his examination of the same problem, was led to affirm the divine; yet the divine of the African Doctor was transcendent, whereas that of the German philosopher and his followers is immanentist (cf. A. Masnovo, S. Agostino e S. Tommaso: Concordanze e sviluppi, in Vita e Pensiero, 33 [1942], p. 167).
St Augustine is the Doctor of introspection, of inner experience, and modern writers on psychology acknowledge him as their father and master. Even today his influence in the philosophical field is considerable, and a still flourishing school, that of Maurice Blondel, has declared itself indebted to him.
In the strictly theological field, the cornerstones of his system were taken up by the Doctors of the Church: original sin, the necessity and gratuity of grace, and the dependence of every salutary act on God.
In 431 the Council of Ephesus and Pope Celestine I’s letter with the appended *capitula* condemned Pelagianism, thereby sanctioning the doctrine of the Bishop of Hippo. In the following centuries (5th and 6th), Prosper of Aquitaine, Pope Gelasius I, and Fulgentius of Ruspe defended Augustinian theories against the attacks of the semi-Pelagians and the predestinarians, against whom the Council of Orange pronounced itself in 530.
The ablest medieval scholastics remained faithful to the great Church Father. The Thomist reform had repercussions in theology, but in this field the master remained the African Doctor. A mitigation gradually crept into his theories, and the present teaching of theologians produces a gentler impression than some pages of his works, yet his doctrine was substantially maintained by the Council of Trent.
The study of his literary output received fresh impetus after the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, aided by the rapid succession of editions of his works, and new interpretations were given of his theories. Yet Jansenism, based on the purely natural character of original justice and on a gratuitous predestination antecedent to every act of the will, was condemned. Little by little, theologians came to place increasing emphasis on affirming categorically the role of freedom under the action of grace. To this end, the Molinists opposed the Thomist system of physical predetermination with that of middle knowledge, while the school represented by the Dominican Jean Victor, the Oratorian Thomassin, and the Sorbonnese Tournely upheld the system of moral predetermination, founded on the infallible and diversely explained influence of God upon the will.
Interest in Augustinian thought has not waned in recent times, whether among Catholics or Protestants, and research has intensified on the occasion of the fifteenth centenary of the great Doctor’s death.
Augustine’s philosophy moves from the world and the soul to the Supreme Being, that is, from the external to the internal and from the internal to the transcendent. It always pursues practical ends and does not abstract speculation from action. Not the mere intellectual understanding of truth, but the beatifying possession of God is the ultimate goal of his inquiries; hence a good not merely to be known but to be possessed through love. It marks the passage from faith to mysticism by way of thought, and describes primarily an order, that of charity, though its immediate point of application is man, profoundly weakened by original sin and illumined, as a being endowed with intellect, by God. A law of interiority governs this investigation, and the human teacher who imparts instruction communicates nothing that we do not already possess hidden within ourselves (cf. E. Gilson, *Introduction à l’étude de saint Augustin*, Paris 1929, passim).
This doctrine retains a marvelous power of renewal, no less than the systems of Plato and Aristotle, and can fertilize, without regard to time or space, minds even situated in different perspectives.
THE AUTHOR IN THE SCHOOL OF THE AUGUSTINIAN HERMITS
Recent studies have highlighted the important place occupied in medieval thought by the philosophers and theologians of the Hermits; yet the inquiry is still in its early stages. From the work accomplished so far, we may gather these fundamental lines.
The Augustinian Order, from its very foundation (second half of the 13th century), felt a spontaneous attraction to the doctrines of the Bishop of Hippo, but found itself confronted with the powerful Thomist synthesis already in full development. Fortunately, it had in its first doctor, Giles of Rome (d. 1316), a profound and original thinker who reworked with genius the scientific achievements of his time and gave unity and direction to the studies of the Order. Giles ultimately converged, in substance, upon Thomas and defended his positions, occasionally advancing new theories to perfect and explain them. His school, the most flourishing at the close of the 13th century and in the first decades of the 14th, represented by numerous Doctors, among whom stand out James of Viterbo (d. 1308), Augustine of Ancona (d. 1328), Alexander of Saint Elpidius (d. 1326), Gerard of Siena (d. 1336), Michael of Massa (v. d. 1337), Bartholomew of Urbino (d. 1339), Bernard Oliuver (d. 1348), Thomas of Strasbourg (d. 1357), Alfonso Vargas (v. d. 1366), and many others, constitutes the most valid defense of Thomas in his fundamental theses.
Nevertheless, these philosophers retain many elements of a particular Augustinianism. In philosophy they admit the superiority of the will over the intellect and resolve in an Augustinian sense the attendant questions concerning the nature of beatitude; in theology they uphold the affective character of theological science, whose end is love, the doctrine of the supernatural gifts of Adam, due “ex quadam decentia Creatoris,” absolute predestination to glory on the supposition of original sin, the efficacy of grace, and the primacy of charity; in politico-ecclesiastical matters they propose the “direct power” of the Church in temporal affairs, and vigorously defend the rights and illustrate the properties of the Church, thus being the first to systematize the theological treatise *De Ecclesia*.
It was long held that Cardinal John Torquemada (v. d. 1468) had been the first to describe at some length the notes of the Church, after St. Thomas had made a brief mention of them in his commentary *In Symbolum Apostolorum expositio* (ed. H. Hurter, *Sanct. Patrum opuscula sel.*, VII, Innsbruck 1887, Art. IX, “Sanctam Eccl. catholicam,” pp. 232-38). Yet in 1926 Abbot H. X. Arquillière traced the history back by a century and a half, publishing the critical text of James of Viterbo’s *De Regimine Christiano*, presented as the most ancient treatise on the Church (*Le plus ancien traité de l'Eglise: Jacques de Viterbo, De Regimine Christiano* [1307-1302], Paris 1926). Other Augustinians also made a notable contribution to this branch of theology, especially Giles of Rome with his treatise *De potestate ecclesiastica* and Augustine Triumphus with his *Summa de potestate ecclesiastica*. They systematized and fixed the earliest exposition of the essential characteristics of the nature of the Church and of the spiritual rights of the papacy. Their temporalistic dream faded, and later theologians abandoned their conception of the direct power of religious authority over material things, yet the position of the Roman Pontiff in relation to Christ and the members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the extent of his doctrinal and legislative powers, were well coordinated by our writers, and it may be asserted that the theology of the Papacy rests on no other foundation.
A notable feature among the Augustinian Doctors is their particular care to refer back to the Bishop of Hippo, to study his works directly, and to defend his thought. Dating from the 14th century is the *Milleloguium s. Augustini*, begun by Agostino of Ancona and completed by Bartolomeo of Urbino. Gregory (q.v.; d. 1357), while inclined toward nominalism in philosophy, in theology remained faithful to the teachings of his Order’s school and indeed promoted a stronger return to St Augustine, accentuating its anti-Pelagian character. On original sin, its consequences, the nature of concupiscence, and the necessity of grace, he upheld doctrines that everywhere reveal the full force of the influence of the Bishop of Hippo. On the necessity of grace for performing good works, he countered the assertions of Scotus, Ockham, Aureolo, Adam Wodeham, and showed himself conscious of defending not merely the doctrine of St Augustine but that defined by the Church; he conducted the controversy with extraordinary positive documentation. Yet he also attempted to support disputable and disputed positions, such as the necessity of grace even for performing every morally good action in the natural order under every aspect.
The decidedly anti-Pelagian direction was maintained by subsequent Doctors of the school: Ugolino Malabranca (q.v.; d. 1374), John of Basel (d. 1392), Agostino Favaroni (d. 1443), Giacomo Pérez of Valencia (d. 1490), and Giles of Viterbo (d. 1532). Among them, as scholasticism declined, there arose a growing distrust of the “sapientes mundi” and a more pronounced attachment to the authority of the “saints.”
At the Council of Trent, under the leadership of the towering figure of Seripando (q.v.), flanked notably by Agostino Moreschini, Gregory of Padua, Aurelio of Rocca Contrada, Mariano of Feltre, Stephen of Sestino, and other theologians of the Order, the Augustinian school reappeared alongside the Thomist and Scotist schools and made its voice heard especially in discussions on original sin and justification. On concupiscence and the original state of man, grace and predestination, the law of charity over against that of fear, Seripando developed Augustinian ideas that were later taken up and systematized by the so-called new Augustinian school from the 18th century to our own day.
To this school belong the great patrologists Cristiano Lupo (d. 1681) and Enrico Noris (d. 1704), the able theologians Lorenzo Berti (q.v.; d. 1766), Fulgenzio Bellelli (q.v.; d. 1742), Giuseppe Bertieri (d. 1804), and Michele Marcelli (d. 1804) in Italy; Pedro Manzo (d. 1735), Enrique Flórez (q.v.; d. 1773), Sidro Villaroi (d. 1816), and Honorio Del Val (d. 1909) in Spain; Jordan Simon (d. 1776) and Enghiberto Kluepfel (d. 1811) in Germany; Bernard Desirant (d. 1725) and Aurelio Piette (d. 1730) in Belgium; and Fulgenzio La Fosse (d. 1673) in France. While also linking up with Seripando, Gregory of Rimini, and in some respects Giles of Rome, the school sought to reconnect with St Augustine and claimed to represent and defend his theological thought. Its main doctrinal lines may be briefly summarized as follows.
With regard to the original state, particular attention is given to the relations between the natural and the supernatural, human nature and the gifts conferred by God on the first man. These gifts were not proportionate to nature and are therefore called supernatural: this Catholic truth is in fact sincerely defended against the exaggerations of Baius and Jansenius. Yet on the other hand, man naturally desires to see God and cannot have beatitude outside Him; moreover, the soul has an innate inclination toward the body, concupiscence draws it toward evil and is repugnant to human nature. God therefore owes it to Himself, to His goodness, wisdom, and justice to remove these defects: the gifts conferred on Adam, though not owed in an absolute sense, were owed “ex decentia Creatoris.” Original sin did not merely deprive man of supernatural gifts but also wounded him in his natural gifts. From this there resulted an infirmity constituted by rebellious concupiscence, which tends toward evil and inclines to sin, and consequently is the cause of moral disorder, although, once freed from the guilt of fault through justification, it is neither can it properly be called sin. From the miseries that afflict man in his present state we can demonstrate the existence of a sin of origin. To heal man of his moral infirmities, grace is necessary; without it, not only can sin not be avoided for long, but not even an act morally good in every respect—good with respect to object, circumstances, and ultimate end—can be performed even in the natural order. The fallen man loves himself first of all and directs every action to himself as to his ultimate end. Sufficient grace gives the power but not the act, because it is overcome by cupidity and remains without effect; efficacious grace, that is, the grace that overcomes the contrary inclination toward evil, gives both power and act. The latter, however, admits of degrees; hence we are dealing with an efficacy that is not absolute but relative to the strength of the inclination toward evil that must be overcome; grace sufficient for one individual may be efficacious for another less depraved. This efficacy is explained in a moral sense, as an attraction toward the good object, a holy love that God kindles in the will, a victorious delight. Such delight does not remove the indifference of free will, because the object always appears limited and mixed with imperfection; indeed it renders the will more free, because it grants it victory over sin. Efficacious grace for attaining eternal life is not granted to all but only to those whom God has separated from the “mass of perdition.”
Assuming original sin, predestination to glory is absolute and “ante praevisa merita.” Because of sin, all men are subject to eternal condemnation: among them God elects some by pure mercy, while others He leaves, by a hidden but certainly most just judgment, to perish eternally. The mystery of predestination is traced back to that of God’s justice and mercy; the doctrine on the efficacy of grace and on predestination presupposes the present state of man and is founded upon II. Before original sin and without it, there would have been no grace intrinsically efficacious but only versatile grace, nor an absolute predestination to glory but only one conditioned on the assent of free will.
In this school, too, the law of charity is emphasized over against that of fear: repentance for sins out of fear of punishment alone is not sufficient for justification even in the sacrament of Penance, but there is always required at least a beginning of love. One may debate the structure of this theological system, but one cannot deny that it substantially coincides with the doctrine of St Augustine.
On the thought of this school in the various centuries of its flowering, however, there are no organic or up-to-date studies. Werner’s work is limited to the Middle Ages and, though valuable in many respects, would require additions and corrections. In recent years accurate monographs on some Augustinian Doctors have been published, and others are in preparation. This is the beginning of a vast work that will be brought to completion and from which the history of the development and evolution of Catholic philosophy and theology will greatly benefit. A thorough study may perhaps help to clarify certain points in the Augustinian doctrine that, because of their apparent affinity with positions of Lutheran or Jansenist hue, have occasioned exaggerated reservations on the part of some theologians.
The stance of this school, stripped of any more accidental than substantial dross, may serve to mitigate the extremist harshness of other systems, especially on the terrain of grace in relation to human freedom.