AGOSTINISMO (AGOSTINIANISMO). — Not only in the history of dogma did the bishop of Hippo exercise an influence of incalculable scope, but his action was also decisive in shaping Western thought outside the theological sphere. He studied and, in part, resolved the principal problems of life; he examined and illumined the states of the soul; in some of the most arduous questions posed by the spirit, his inquiry still marks the highest point reached by 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.; at times, the whole of his theories concerning God’s action, grace, and freedom is also expressed by this word. To set out in a framework the principal phases in the development of Augustinian doctrines in the Middle Ages and the modern age is to provide, in summary form, the history of so large a part of Christian culture and thought.
Barely emerged from the collapse of the Greco-Roman world, theologians and philosophers devoted themselves lovingly to the study of the works of s. Agostino and formed themselves in his school. He was the teacher of the West, and medieval literature germinated and developed upon the rich foundation of his writings. Gregory the Great nourished himself on his ideas and disseminated them; s. Cesario in the sixth century, Isidore, Bede, and Alcuin in the seventh and eighth spread among their contemporaries the spiritual seeds contained in his works.
In the controversies from the tenth to the twelfth century concerning the validity of simoniacal ordinations and the illegitimacy of reordinations, Augustine’s texts carried decisive weight. The De civitate Dei became the fundamental charter of the Church in its social mission, and certain theories of the African doctor powerfully influenced the political literature of the Middle Ages. We know the influence of s. Agostino on certain fundamental concepts of this period; the idea of “peace,” as defined in the City of God, and likewise the ideas of “justice, just king, tyrant,” etc., inspired the writers who dealt with relations between the two authorities, the civil and the ecclesiastical. It was the development of these Augustinian concepts that created for the popes a sum of religious duties toward the divided and often powerless states of Europe. It was awareness of the necessity of obeying the imperative duties arising from the conception of Christian society, as outlined in the De Civitate Dei, that impelled the vicars of God on earth to intervene in politics. The same ideology, moreover, influenced the emperors and the Ghibelline writers.
Doctors and saints hostile to dialectic, who gathered around Gregory VII in the vigorous attempt to free the Church from the guardianship of the emperors, turned to the bishop of Hippo as the greatest of the Fathers of the Church; the teachers of the following centuries, who, like Anselm and Abelard, brought dialectic into the very heart of the highest theological speculation, appealed to him. Until the first decades of the thirteenth century, Agostino exercised uncontested dominance 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, owing to the Crusades and the activity of merchants, contacts with the Eastern world had increased and ties had been strengthened. The entire Aristotelian encyclopedia came into the possession of the Scholastics, but the first translations were made from Arabic, and the Arabic versions, in turn, were not direct, but derived from Syriac texts. The commentaries accompanying them often contributed to altering the thought of the Stagirite.
This thinker did not enter among the Christians escorted, like Plato, by the Fathers of the Church, but presented himself recommended by the Jews and Muslims. Controversies broke out almost everywhere, and ecclesiastical authority prohibited Aristotle’s physics and metaphysics in 1210 and 1215. But the doctrines of this philosopher rapidly gained ground in the universities of Europe during the first half of the thirteenth 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. But
it encountered strong opposition, not only from the Averroists but also from the Augustinian school, represented at that time especially by the Franciscans, who continued the tradition of the theologians of earlier centuries.
The a. of the thirteenth century did not deny, as some maintain, philosophy; at most, it denied it as an autonomous philosophy, not as a heteronomous discipline: that is, it admitted it united with a complex of supernatural notions and influences which, 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 abolish the other, that of philosopher, because he knew how to arrange knowledge and things in function of mysticism, and he carried to the attainment of its goal the experiment attempted on an idea. He firmly believed that the transcendental and the supernatural constitute the very heart of reality, and, perceiving the numerous insufficiencies presented by reality, he affirmed that the task of metaphysics consists in reintegrating into the economy of nature everything that it requires of the supernatural, without which nature and man would become indecipherable enigmas (cf. E. Gilson, La philosophie de St. Bonaventure, Paris 1929, pp. 464–72).
We may thus summarize the salient characteristics of Christian thought in the Augustinian system of the thirteenth century: a) no formal distinction between theology and philosophy, between the order of rational truths and that of revealed truths; b) the primacy of the will over the intellect, of the affective life over the intellectual life; c) the necessity that certain intellectual acts of man be preceded by an illuminating action on the part of God; d) the positive actuality, however minimal and embryonic, of prime matter, independently of every substantial form; e) the presence in matter of principles or “rationes seminales” of things; f) universal hylomorphism; g) the multiplicity of forms in contingent beings, principally in man; h) the individuation of the soul by virtue of its own power, especially in man, not as a consequence of its union with the body; i) the identity of the soul with its faculties; l) the impossibility of the creation of the world ab aeterno.
The a. of the Middle Ages was undoubtedly connected with the thought of the bishop of Hippo and reflected not only its general orientation but also its principal doctrines. Yet many centuries had passed from s. Agostino to the contemporaries of s. Bonaventura and Duna Scoto, and various factors — such as Aristotelianism and Arabic philosophy — had exerted a great influence on medieval man: a transformation, often perceptible, of the African bishop’s doctrine had taken place. Nevertheless, the Augustinians of the Middle Ages cannot be denied their legitimate intellectual descent from the doctor of Hippo.
The philosophy, in fact, of the latter begins, as E. Gilson asserts, “with an act of faith in the supernatural order, which liberates the will from the flesh through grace, and thought from skepticism through revelation” (Introduction à l'étude de saint Augustin, Paris 1929, p. 294). For Augustine, philosophical thought does not possess that autonomy, that consistency, which s. Thomas attributes to it, and the present world, the only one capable of being known, cannot be fully understood independently of Christ Jesus. Thus, when the medieval man denies a formal distinction between theology and philosophy, between the order of rational truths and that of revealed truths, he is not far from the thought of the doctor of Hippo. He too, moreover, like the great Father of the Church, when faced with the necessity of choosing between two solutions to the same problem, will spontaneously incline, by virtue of the very premises of his system, toward the one that makes fewer concessions to nature and more to God. Thus he will accept the theory of illumination, because it ensures the intellect’s maximum dependence on God in the act of knowing, and that of the «rationes seminales», because it grants the least scope to the creative activity conceded to the creature.
The theory of the primacy of the will over the intellect likewise accords with the thought of the African doctor, according to whom philosophy has the character of wisdom rather than science, of an active wisdom that is an invitation and a path to action. Thus the first three cornerstones of the medieval Augustinian system, including that of the «rationes seminales», can readily be incorporated into the general orientation of s. Augustine. But the other cornerstones, too, can be traced back, at least in radice, to his teaching.
Indeed, the theory that the creation of the world ab aeterno is impossible was, in all probability, inspired by the bishop of Hippo’s precise denial of the legitimacy of a concept of a «coeterna» creature, which would entail attributing a homogeneous mode of duration to heterogeneous modes of being (De civit. 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 consonant with what Augustine says in Books IX (chaps. 4-5: PL 42, 963-65) and X (chap. 11: PL 42, 982-83) of De Trinitate. The theory of universal hylomorphism is suggested by certain passages of the bishop of Hippo, in which even the angels are attributed a material substratum, and therefore subject to change, a «materia spiritualia» (De Genesi ad litt., V, 5, 13: PL 34, 326). The human soul, too, according to Augustine, 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 the 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 virtue of its own power, not as a consequence of its union with the body.
Finally, the theory of the positive actuality, however minimal and embryonic, of prime matter independently of every substantial form finds support in certain passages of s. Augustine that could be interpreted in this sense. Especially in De vera religione (XVIII, 35: PL 34, 137), he asserts that prime matter, although as far removed from God as possible, because God is being and it is almost nothing, is nevertheless not pure nothingness. “Now God drew all things from that which has neither beauty nor form; and this is nothingness. But that which, in comparison with something more perfect, appears formless, if it already possesses some form, however small, however incipient, is not yet nothingness; yet this too, insofar 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 were burning more fiercely than ever. On 7 March of that same year, Stefano Tempier, bishop of Paris, compiled a list of 219 propositions that he considered heretical and prohibited their defense under penalty of excommunication. Directed principally against Averroism, this syllabus also struck at Thomism, condemning certain fundamental theories of that system. Roberto Kilwardby, archbishop of Canterbury and primate of England, who had the right of supervision over the University of Oxford, likewise prohibited, on 18 March, a series of grammatical, logical, and physical theses, thereby striking at numerous Thomist doctrines. These condemnations were certainly the work of the Augustinians, but their victory lasted only briefly. Little by little they had to yield ground to their adversaries. Many of their theories, however, retained a powerful attraction for men of thought, and the spirit of the great African Father remained alive and active.
The first humanists linked themselves to him and through him reached Cicero and Plato. When climbing Monte Ventoux, Petrarch carried one of his works with him, the Confessions, and, having reached the highest summit, in the presence of the austere, snow-covered Alps, he opened the volume to Book X, 8, 15, read, and exclaimed: «Thus I was content with what I had read, and in silence I began to consider the foolishness of mortals, who, despising the noblest part of nature, lose themselves in a thousand vain speculations, and go seeking outside themselves what they could find within». From this reading humanism was born—or at least the profoundest humanism of the great poet. The Renaissance, in its exaggerated admiration of Plato, generally rests upon the philosophy of Augustine.
Great doctrines retain a prodigious power of expansion, not only over currents of thought akin to them, but also, often, over systems that prove contrary or indifferent to their spirit. This explains how the thought of the bishop of Hippo could fertilize, almost at the same time, two distinct and separate currents of the modern age: that of Descartes and that of Pascal. With E. Baudin, along the path of Augustinian speculation we can discern the «constant presence of two Augustinian philosophical currents, that of the ontologism of rational truths, which culminates in Descartes, and that of the experience of religious truths, whose apogee is in Pascal. Different Augustinianisms, which generate two different intuitionisms, that of reason and that of the heart» (in Recherches de sciences religieuses, 14 [1924], p. 345).
A part of the philosophy closer to our own time, too, arose from the search for a solution to a problem that Augustine was the first to study. In analyzing judgments possessing a necessary character, the Hipponese discovered in them an inexplicable immutability so long as one remains within the world of change, and he recognized in them—or rather, in the self that judges through such judgments—a reflection of God. Kant, too, from examining the same problem, was led to the affirmation of the divine; but whereas the divine of the African doctor was transcendent in character, 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).
S. Augustine is the doctor of introspection and inner experience, and modern writers on psychology recognize him as father and teacher. Even in our own day his impulse in the philosophical field is considerable, and one school that is still flourishing, that of Maurizio Blondel, has expressly 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 dependence on God for every salutary act.
In 431 the Council of Ephesus and the letter of Celestine I, with the appended « capitula », condemned Pelagianism, sanctioning the doctrine of the bishop of Hippo. In the following centuries (fifth and sixth), Prospero d'Aquitania, Gelasio I, and Fulgenzio di Ruspe defended Augustinian theories against the attacks of the Semipelagians and the Predestinarians, against whom the Council of Orange pronounced judgment in 530.
The finest scholastics of the Middle Ages remained faithful to the great Father of the Church. The Thomist reform had repercussions in theology, but in this field the master remained the African Doctor. A gradual mitigation was introduced into his theories, and the current teaching of theologians produces a gentler impression than that of certain pages of his works, but his doctrine was substantially upheld by the Council of Trent.
The study of his literary production received fresh impetus after the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, encouraged by the rapid succession of editions of his works, and new interpretations of his theories were offered. But Jansenism, based on the purely natural character of original justice and on predestination as wholly gratuitous and preceding every disposition of action and will, was condemned. Gradually, among theologians, the concern to affirm clearly and categorically the role of freedom under the action of grace became predominant. To this end, the Molinists opposed to the Thomists’ system of physical predetermination that of middle knowledge, while the school represented by the Dominican Jean Vicente, the Oratorian Thomassin, and the Sorbonnist Tournely upheld the system of moral predetermination, founded on God’s infallible influence on the will, explained in various ways.
Interest in Augustinian thought has not diminished in recent times, either on the Catholic or on the Protestant side, and research was intensified on the occasion of the fifteenth centenary of the great Doctor’s death.
The philosophy of Agostino proceeds from the world and the soul to the Supreme Being, that is, from the exterior to the interior, and from the interior to the superior. It always pursues practical ends and does not separate speculation from action. The ultimate goal of his inquiries is not the intellect’s apprehension of truth as such, but the beatifying possession of God; hence, a good not merely to be known, but to be possessed through love. It marks the passage from faith to mysticism by means of thought, and principally describes an order, that of charity; but the immediate point of its application is man, profoundly weakened by original sin and, insofar as endowed with intellect, illumined by God. A law of interiority governs this investigation, and the human teacher who imparts instruction to us communicates nothing other than what we already secretly possess within us (cf. E. Gilson, Introduction à l'étude de saint Augustin, Parigi 1929, passim).
This doctrine retains a marvelous power of renewal, no less than the systems of Plato and Aristotle, and can fecundate spirits, without limitation of time or space, even when situated within different perspectives.
The Augustinian Order, from the time of its establishment
(second half of the 13th century), felt a spontaneous attraction to the doctrines of the Bishop of Hippo, but found itself confronted by the powerful Thomistic synthesis, already in full development. Fortunately, in its first Doctor, Giles of Rome (d. 1316), it possessed a profound and original thinker who brilliantly reworked the scientific achievements of his age and demanded unity of, and gave direction to, the studies of the Order. Giles ultimately arrived, in substance, at Thomism and defended its positions, advancing here and there new theories in order to perfect and explain II. His school, the most flourishing in the late 13th century and 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 St. Elpidius (d. 1326), Gerard of Siena (d. 1336), Michael of Massa (v. d. 1337), Bartholomew of Urbino (d. 1350), Bernard Olivieri (d. 1348), Thomas of Strasbourg (d. 1357), Alfonso Vargas (v. d. 1366), and many others, constituted the strongest defense of Thomism in its fundamental theses.
Nevertheless, these philosophers retained several elements of a particular Augustinianism. In philosophy they admitted the superiority of the will over the intellect and resolved, in an Augustinian sense, the related questions concerning the nature of beatitude; in theology they maintained the affective character of theological science, whose end is love; the doctrine concerning Adam’s supernatural gifts, due «ex quacum decenti Creatoris»; absolute predestination to glory presupposing original sin; the efficacy of grace; and the preeminence of charity. In politico-ecclesiastical questions they advocated the «potestas directa» of the Church in temporal affairs, and they also tenaciously defended the rights of the Church and elucidated its properties, thus being the first to systematize the theological treatise De Ecclesia.
Until a few years ago, it was commonly held that Cardinal John Torquemada (v. d. 1468) had been the first to describe at some length the marks of the Church, after St. Thomas had made a brief reference to them in the treatise In Symbolum Apostolorum expositio (ed. H. Hurter, Sanct. Patrum opuscula sel., VII, Innsbruck 1887, Art. IX, «Sanctam Eccl. catholicam», pp. 232–38). But in 1926 the Abbé H. X. Arquillière went back a century and a half in history, publishing the critical text of James of Viterbo’s De Regimine Christiano, presented as the oldest treatise on the Church (Le plus ancien traité de l'Église Jacques de Viterbo, De Regimine christiano [1301-1302], Paris 1926). Other Augustinians also made a significant contribution to this branch of theology, especially Giles of Rome with the treatise De potestate ecclesiastica and Augustine Triumphus with the Summa de potestate ecclesiastica. They gathered into a system and established the earliest exposition of the essential characteristics of the nature of the Church and of the spiritual rights of the papacy. Their temporalist dream collapsed, and later theologians abandoned their conception of the direct power of religious authority over material affairs; but the position of the Roman Pontiff in relation to Christ and to the members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, as well as the extent of his doctrinal and legislative powers, were well coordinated by our writers, and the theology of the Papacy, one may assert, rests on no other foundations.
Among the Augustinian Doctors, one observes a particular care to refer back to the Bishop of Hippo, to study his works directly, and to defend his thought. The Milleloquium s. Augustini, begun by Augustine of Ancona and completed by Bartholomew of Urbino, dates from the 14th century. Gregory (v.) of Rimini (d. 1357) inclined toward nominalism in philosophy, but in theology showed himself faithful to the teachings of the school of the Order; indeed, he promoted a stronger return of that school to St. Augustine and accentuated its anti-Pelagian character. Concerning original sin, its consequences, the nature of concupiscence, and the necessity of grace, he maintained doctrines that reveal in full force the influence of the Bishop of Hippo. Regarding the necessity of grace for performing good works, against the assertions of Scotus, Ockham, Aureolus, and Adam Wodeham, he showed an awareness that he was defending not so much the doctrine of St. Augustine as that defined by the Church, and he conducted the controversy with extraordinarily extensive positive documentation. He also attempted, however, to lend support to disputable and disputed positions, such as the necessity of grace for performing, even in the natural order, every morally good action in every respect.
The decidedly anti-Pelagian orientation was maintained by the subsequent Doctors of the school: Ugolino Malabranca (v. d. 1374), John of Basel (d. 1392), Augustine Favaroni (d. 1443), James Pérez of Valencia (d. 1490), and Giles of Viterbo (d. 1532). Meanwhile, among them, in the face of the decline of scholasticism, a growing distrust of the «sapientes mundi» and a more pronounced attachment to the authority of the «sancti» began to emerge.
At the Council of Trent, under Seripando (v.), particularly supported by Augustine Moreschini, Gregory of Padua, Aurelius of Rocca Contratta, Mariano of Feltre, Stefano 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 the discussions concerning original sin and justification. Seripando developed Augustinian ideas concerning concupiscence and man’s original state, grace and predestination, and the law of charity as opposed to that of fear; these ideas were subsequently taken up and systematized by the so-called new Augustinian school from the 18th century to the present day.
The great patrologists Christian Lupus (d. 1681) and Henry Noris (d. 1704) belonged to this school, as did the distinguished theologians Lorenzo Berti (v. d. 1766), Fulgentius Bellelli (v. d. 1742), Giuseppe Bertieri (d. 1804), and Michele Marcelli (d. 1804) in Italy; Pietro Manso (d. 1735), Enrique Flórez (v. d. 1773), Sidro Villaroig (d. 1816), and Honoré Del Val (d. 1909) in Spain; Giordano Simon (d. 1776) and Engelbert Klüpfel (d. 1811) in Germany; Bernard Desirant (d. 1725) and Aurelius Piette (d. 1730) in Belgium; and Fulgentius La Fosse (d. 1673) in France. While also linking itself to Seripando, Gregory of Rimini, and, in certain respects, Giles of Rome, it was concerned to reconnect itself with St. Augustine and claimed to represent and defend his theological thought. Here, in brief, are its principal doctrinal lines.
With regard to the original state, particular attention is devoted to the relations between the natural and the supernatural, and between human nature and the gifts conferred by God upon the first man. These gifts are not proportionate to nature and are therefore called supernatural: this Catholic truth is effectively and sincerely defended against the exaggerations of Baius and Jansen. On the other hand, man naturally desires to see God, nor can he possess beatitude apart from Him; moreover, the soul has an innate inclination toward the body, while concupiscence draws toward evil and is repugnant to human nature. God, therefore, owes it to Himself, to His goodness, wisdom, and justice, to remove these inconveniences: consequently, the gifts conferred upon Adam, although not absolutely due, were due «ex decentia Creatoris». Original sin not only deprived man of supernatural gifts, but also wounded him in his natural gifts. From it resulted an infirmity constituted by rebellious concupiscence, which tends toward evil.
and inclines him to sin, and consequently is a cause of moral disorder, although, once freed from the guilt of sin through justification, it is not, nor can it properly be called, sin. From the miseries that afflict man in his present state we can demonstrate the existence of an original sin. In order to heal man of his moral infirmities, grace is necessary; without it not only can sin not be avoided for any length of time, but not even, in the natural order, can an act be performed that is morally good in every respect—that is, good in its object, circumstances, and ultimate end. Fallen man loves himself above all else and directs every action toward himself as its ultimate end. Sufficient grace grants the power, but not the act, because it is overcome by cupidity and remains without effect; efficacious grace—that is, grace which overcomes the contrary inclination to evil—grants both the power and the act. The latter, however, admits of degrees; it is therefore an efficacy not absolute, but relative to the strength of the inclination to evil that it must overcome; grace sufficient in one individual may be efficacious in another less depraved individual. 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 makes the will freer, 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 «massa perditionis».
Given original sin, predestination to glory is absolute and «ante praevista merita». Through sin all men are subject to eternal condemnation: among them God elects some through pure mercy, while He leaves others, by a hidden but certainly most just judgment, and permits them to be eternally lost. The mystery of predestination is referred back to that of God's justice and mercy; the doctrine of the efficacy of grace and of predestination presupposes man's present state and is founded upon II. Before original sin, and without it, there was and would have been no intrinsically efficacious grace, but only versatile grace, nor an absolute predestination to glory, but only one conditional upon the assent of free will.
In this school the law of charity is likewise emphasized against that of fear: repentance for sins prompted solely by fear of punishment is not sufficient for justification, not even in the sacrament of Penance, but at least a beginning of love is always required. The structure of this theological system may be debated, but it cannot be denied that it is substantially connected with the doctrine of s. Agostino.
There are, however, no systematic and up-to-date studies on the thought of this school during the various centuries in which it flourished. Werner's work is limited to the Middle Ages and, although valuable in many respects, would require additions and corrections. In recent years careful monographs on certain Augustinian Doctors have been published, and others are in preparation. This is the beginning of a vast undertaking that will be brought to completion and from which the history of the development and evolution of Catholic philosophy and theology will derive great benefit. In-depth study may perhaps help to clarify certain points of Augustinianism which, because of their apparent affinity with positions of a Lutheran or Jansenist coloration, have given occasion for exaggerated reservations on the part of some theologians.
The attitude of this school, freed from certain accretions more accidental than substantial, may be useful in moderating the extremist harshness of other systems, especially in the field of grace in relation to human freedom.