AUGUSTINISM (AUGUSTINIANISM). - Not only in the history of dogma did the bishop of Hippo exercise an influence of incalculable scope, but also upon the orientation of Western thought, outside the theological field, his action was decisive. The principal problems of life were studied by him and, in part, resolved; the situations of the soul examined and illuminated; in certain of the most arduous questions that the spirit poses, 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 also the whole body of his theories on the action of God, on grace and freedom is expressed by this word. To set out in a framework the principal phases of the development of Augustinian doctrines in the Middle Ages and in the modern era means to give in summary the history of so great a part of Christian culture and thought.
Scarcely emerged from the collapse of the Greco-Roman world, theologians and philosophers lovingly studied the works of St. Augustine and were formed in his school. He was the master of the West, and upon the rich soil of his writings the literature of the Middle Ages germinated and developed. Gregory the Great nourished himself on his ideas and spread them; St. Caesarius in the 6th century, Isidore, Bede, Alcuin in the 7th and 8th spread among their contemporaries the spiritual seeds contained in his works.
In the controversies from the 10th to the 12th century over 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 certain theories of the African doctor powerfully influenced the political literature of the Middle Ages. We know the influence of St. Augustine on certain fundamental concepts of this epoch, and the idea of "peace," as it is defined in the City of God, and likewise the idea of "justice, the just king, the tyrant," etc., inspired the writers who treated of 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 in the face of the divided and often impotent states of Europe. It was the consciousness of the necessity of obeying the imperious duties springing from the conception of Christian society as it is delineated in the De Civitate Dei that impelled the vicars of God on earth to intervene in politics. The same ideology influenced, moreover, the emperors and the Ghibelline writers.
To the bishop of Hippo, as to the greatest of the Fathers of the Church, turned the doctors and saints, enemies of dialectic, who grouped themselves around Gregory VII in the vigorous attempt to free the Church from the tutelage of the emperors: to him appealed the masters of the following centuries who brought, like Anselm and Abelard, dialectic into the very heart of the highest theological speculation. Until the first decades of the 13th century, Augustine dominated, without contestation, 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 exercised a great influence in Europe, where, because of 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 the Arabic, and these Arabic versions in turn were not immediate, but derived from Syriac texts. And the commentaries that accompanied them often contributed to altering the thought of the Stagirite.
This thinker did not introduce himself among Christians escorted, like Plato, by the Fathers of the Church, but presented himself recommended by the Jews and the Muslims. Polemics broke out somewhat everywhere, and the ecclesiastical authority prohibited in 1210 and 1215 the physics and metaphysics of Aristotle. But 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 tributary to Aristotle, but endowed with its own specific form; his doctrine constitutes a vigorous effort, crowned with success, to explain the universe from a rational point of view. But it encountered strong opposition, besides among the Averroists, on the part of the Augustinian school, represented at that time especially by the Franciscans, who continued the tradition of the theologians of the preceding centuries.
The A. of the 13th century did not deny, as some would have it, philosophy; it denied it, at most, as an autonomous philosophy, not as a heteronomous discipline: that is, it admitted it united to a complex of supernatural notions and influences which, after having ennobled 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 it is true; but this qualification does not destroy the other of philosopher, because he knew how to order knowledge and things in function of mysticism, and he carried, to the attainment of the goal, the experiment attempted upon an idea. He firmly believed that the transcendental and the supernatural constitute the very heart of the real, and, perceiving the numerous insufficiencies that the real presents, 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 1929, pp. 464-72).
We can 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 intelligence, 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 lowly and embryonic, of prime matter, independently of every substantial form; e) presence in matter of principles or "rationes seminales" of things; f) universal hylomorphism; g) multiplicity of forms in contingent beings, principally in man; h) individuation of the soul by its own virtue, 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 linked itself without doubt to the thought of the bishop of Hippo and reflected not only its general orientation, but also its principal doctrines. Many centuries, however, had passed from St. Augustine to the contemporaries of St. Bonaventure and Duns Scotus, and factors of various kinds — such as Aristotelianism and Arabic philosophy — had exercised a great influence on medieval man: a transformation, often perceptible, of the doctrine of the African bishop had taken place. Nevertheless one cannot deny to the Augustinians of the Middle Ages a legitimate descent, in the intellectual order, from the doctor of Hippo.
Philosophy itself, in fact, begins in the latter, as E. Gilson asserts, "with an act of faith in the supernatural order, which frees 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 have that autonomy, that consistency which St. Thomas attributes to it, and the actual world, the only one capable of being known, cannot be fully understood independently of Christ Jesus. Therefore when 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. Moreover, he too, like the great Father of the Church, finding himself in the necessity of choosing between two solutions to the same problem, will incline spontaneously, by the very premises of his system, toward the one that offers fewer concessions to nature and more to God. Thus he will accept the theory of illumination, because it ensures the maximum dependence of the intellect on God in the act of knowledge, and that of the "rationes seminales," because it grants the minimum margin to the creative activity conceded 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 of science, of active wisdom that is an invitation and a path to action. Therefore the first three cornerstones of the medieval Augustinian system, and likewise that of the "rationes seminales," can fit without difficulty into the general orientation of St. Augustine. But the other cornerstones too we can trace back, at least in root, to his teaching.
In fact, the theory of the impossibility of the creation of the world ab aeterno 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 "coeternal" which would entail the attribution of a mode of homogeneous 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 Book IX (chaps. 4-5: PL 42, 963-65) and Book X (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 a material substrate, subject therefore to mutations, a "materia spiritualis," is attributed even to the angels (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 its own virtue, not as a consequence of its union with the body.
Finally, the theory of the positive actuality, however lowly and embryonic, of prime matter, independently of every substantial form, has a support in certain passages of St. Augustine that could be interpreted in this sense. Especially in the De vera religione (XVIII, 35: PL 34, 137), he asserts that prime matter, although as far removed as possible from God, because God is being and it is almost nothing, is nevertheless not pure nothing. "Now God drew all things from that very thing which has neither beauty nor form; and this is nothingness. That, then, which in comparison with a more perfect thing appears formless, if it already has some form however small, however initial, is not yet nothingness; therefore even this, 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 March 7 of the same year, Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris, compiled a list of 219 propositions that he considered heretical and forbade defending them, on pain of excommunication. Directed principally against Averroism, this syllabus struck Thomism as well, condemning certain fundamental theories of that system. Robert Kilwardby too, archbishop of Canterbury, primate of England, to whom belonged the right of supervision over the University of Oxford, prohibited, on March 18, a series of grammatical, logical, and physical theses, striking numerous Thomist doctrines. These condemnations were certainly the work of the Augustinians, but their victory lasted little. Gradually they had to yield ground to their adversaries. Many of their theories, however, retained great fascination for men of thought, and the spirit of the great African Father remained alive and operative.
The first humanists link themselves to him and from him ascend to Cicero and to Plato. Petrarch, in the ascent of Mount Ventoux, carries with him a work of his, the Confessions, and having arrived at the highest ridge, in the presence of the rigid and snowy Alps, opens the volume at Book X, 8, 15, reads and exclaims: "Thus with what I had read I held myself content, and in silence I set myself to consider the folly of mortals, who, despising the noblest part of nature, lose themselves in a thousand vain speculations, and what they could find within themselves, they go seeking outside." From this reading is born humanism, or, at least, the most profound humanism of the great poet. The Renaissance, in its exaggerated admiration of Plato, rests, in general, on the philosophy of Augustine.
Great doctrines retain a prodigious force of expansion, not only over currents of ideas akin to them, but also, often, over systems that reveal themselves contrary and indifferent to their spirit. Thus it is explained how the thought of the bishop of Hippo was able to fertilize, almost at the same time, two divided and distinct currents of modern times: that of Descartes and that of Pascal. With E. Baudin we can discern, along the path of Augustinian speculation, the "constant presence of two philosophical a[ugustinisms], that of the ontologism of rational truths, which issues in Descartes, and that of the experience of religious truths, which has its apogee in Pascal. Different a[ugustinisms], which generate two different intuitionisms, that of reason and that of the heart" (in Recherches de sciences religieuses, 14 [1924], p. 345).
Even a part of the philosophy closest to us was born from the search for the solution of a problem that was first studied by Augustine. Analyzing judgments of a necessary character, the man of Hippo discovered in them an incommutability inexplicable as long as one stops in the world of the mutable, and recognized in them, or, better, in himself judging with those judgments, a reflection of God. Kant too, from the examination of the same problem, was led to the affirmation of the divine: but the divine of the African doctor was of a transcendent character, whereas that of the German philosopher and his followers is immanentistic (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 internal experience, and modern writers on psychology acknowledge him as father and master. Even in our own days his impulse in the field of philosophy is notable, and indeed 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 gathered by the Doctors of the Church: original sin, the necessity and gratuitousness of grace, dependence on God for every salutary act.
In 431 the Council of Ephesus and the letter of Celestine I with the annexed "capitula" condemned Pelagianism, sanctioning the doctrine of the bishop of Hippo. In the following centuries (5th and 6th) Prosper of Aquitaine, 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 in 530.
The best 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 mitigation was introduced little by little into his theories, and the current teaching of theologians produces an impression gentler than that of certain pages of his works, but his doctrine was substantially maintained by the Council of Trent.
The study of his literary production took on new impetus after the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, favored by the rapid succession of editions of his works, and new interpretations were given of his theories. But Jansenism, based on the purely natural character of original justice and on a predestination entirely gratuitous and preceding every attitude of action and will, was condemned. Little by little the concern to affirm clearly and categorically the role of freedom under the action of grace became preeminent among theologians. To this end the Molinists opposed the system of middle knowledge to the Thomists' system of physical predetermination, and the school represented by the Dominican Jean Vicente, by the Oratorian Thomassin and by the Sorbonnist Tournely upheld the system of moral predetermination, founded on the infallible and variously explained influence of God on the will.
Interest in Augustinian thought has not waned in recent times, on the Catholic side as much as on the Protestant side, and inquiry was sharpened on the occasion of the 15th centenary of the death of the great Doctor.
Augustine's philosophy 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 higher. It always pursues practical ends and does not abstract speculation from action. Not the intelligence, as such, of truth, but the beatifying possession of God is the ultimate goal of his researches; a good, therefore, not merely to be known, but to be possessed through love. It marks the passage from faith to mysticism by means of thought, and describes principally an order, that of charity, but the immediate point of its application is man, profoundly weakened by original sin and enlightened, insofar as he is endowed with intellect, by God. A law of interiority governs this investigation, and the human master who imparts instruction to us communicates to us only what we already secretly possess within (cf. E. Gilson, Introduction à l'étude de saint Augustin, Paris 1929, passim).
This doctrine preserves a wonderful force of renewal, no less than the systems of Plato and Aristotle, and can fertilize, without solution of time and space, minds even situated in different perspectives.
Bibliography10 works
AUGUSTINIANISM IN THE SCHOOL OF THE HERMITS OF ST. AUGUSTINE
Recent studies have brought out the important place that the philosophers and theologians of the Hermits occupy in medieval thought; but the investigation has barely begun. From the studies carried out so far we can gather these fundamental lines.
The Augustinian Order, from the time of its foundation
(second half of the 13th century), spontaneously felt the attraction for the doctrines of the bishop of Hippo, but found itself faced 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 sought unity and directed it toward the studies of the Order. Giles ends up, in substance, flowing into Thomism and defending its positions, advancing here and there new theories to perfect and explain it. 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 S. Elpidio (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 not a few others, constitutes the most valid defense of Thomism in its fundamental theses.
Nevertheless these philosophers retain several elements of a particular A. In philosophy they admit the superiority of the will over the intellect and resolve in an Augustinian sense the connected questions on the nature of beatitude; in theology they uphold the affective character of theological science having love as its end, the doctrine on the supernatural gifts of Adam, due «ex quadam decentia Creatoris», absolute predestination to glory presupposing original sin, the efficacy of grace, the pre-eminence of charity; in politico-ecclesiastical questions they champion the «potestas directa» of the Church in temporal matters, and they also tenaciously defend the rights of the Church and illustrate its properties, thus being the first to systematize the theological treatise De Ecclesia.
It was a common opinion, until a few years ago, that Cardinal Giovanni Torquemada (v.; d. 1468) had been the first to describe with a certain fullness the marks of the Church, after St. Thomas had made a mention of 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 Abbot H. X. Arquillière went back a century and a half in history, publishing the critical text of the De Regimine Christiano of James of Viterbo, 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). To this branch of theology other Augustinians also gave a notable contribution, 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 fixed the oldest exposition of the characteristics essential to the nature of the Church and of the spiritual rights of the papacy. Their temporalist dream fell, and later theologians abandoned their conception of the direct power of religious authority over material things, but the position of the Roman Pontiff in relation to Christ and to the members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the extension of his doctrinal and legislative powers were well coordinated by our writers, and the theology of the Papacy does not rest, one may assert, on other foundations.
One notices in the Augustinian Doctors a particular care to appeal 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 finished by Bartholomew of Urbino, is from the 14th century. Gregory (v.) of Rimini (d. 1357) in philosophy inclines to nominalism, but in theology he shows himself devoted to the teachings of the school of the Order, and indeed promotes a stronger return of it to St. Augustine and accentuates its anti-Pelagian character. On original sin, its consequences, the nature of concupiscence and the necessity of grace, he upholds doctrines that indicate in full vigor the influence of the bishop of Hippo. On the necessity of grace for performing good works, he, against the assertions of Scotus, Ockham, Aureolus, Adam Wodeham, shows the awareness of defending not so much the doctrine of St. Augustine as that defined by the Church, and conducts the polemic with an extraordinary positive documentation. However he also attempts to lend support to disputable and disputed positions, such as the necessity of grace for performing, even in the natural order, every action morally good in every respect.
The decidedly anti-Pelagian direction is 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), Giles of Viterbo (d. 1532). Among them, meanwhile, in the face of the decadence of scholasticism, a growing distrust toward the «sapientes mundi» makes its way and a more accentuated attachment to the authority of the «sancti».
At the Council of Trent, headed by the lofty figure of Seripando (v.), flanked particularly by Augustine Moreschini, Gregory of Padua, Aurelio of Rocca Contratta, Mariano of Feltre, Stefano of Sestino and by other theologians of the Order, the Augustinian school reappears together with the Thomist and Scotist ones and makes its voice heard especially in the discussions concerning original sin and justification. Seripando on concupiscence and the original state of man, grace and predestination, the law of charity against that of fear, develops Augustinian thoughts, later taken up and systematized by the so-called new Augustinian school from the 18th century to our own days.
To this school belong the great patrologists Christian Lupus (d. 1681) and Henry Noris (d. 1704), the able theologians Lorenzo Berti (v.; d. 1766), Fulgenzio Belelli (v.; d. 1742), Giuseppe Bertieri (d. 1804), Michele Marcelli (d. 1804) in Italy; Pietro Manso (d. 1735), Henry Florez (v.; d. 1773), Sidro Villaroig (d. 1816), Onorato Del Val (d. 1909) in Spain; Giordano Simon (d. 1776) and Engelbert Kluepfel (d. 1811) in Germany; Bernard Desirant (d. 1725) and Aurelio Piette (d. 1730) in Belgium; Fulgenzio La Fosse (d. 1673) in France. Even while linking itself to Seripando, to Gregory of Rimini and, in certain respects, to Giles of Rome, it is concerned to rejoin St. Augustine and claims to represent and defend his theological thought. Here briefly are its principal doctrinal lines.
With regard to the original state, the relations between the natural and the supernatural, human nature and the gifts conferred by God on the first man are particularly studied. Such 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 Jansenius. But on the other hand, man naturally desires to see God, nor can he have beatitude outside of Him; moreover the soul has an innate inclination to the body, concupiscence draws to evil and is repugnant to human nature. God therefore owes it to Himself, to His goodness, wisdom and justice to remove these inconveniences: the gifts therefore conferred on Adam, while not being due in an absolute manner, are so «ex decentia Creatoris». Original sin not only deprived man of the supernatural gifts, but also wounded him in the natural ones. From this there derived an infirmity constituted by rebellious concupiscence, which tends to evil and inclines to sin, and consequently is the cause of moral disorder, although, once freed from the guilt of sin through justification, it is not and cannot properly be called sin. From the miseries that afflict man in his present state we can demonstrate the existence of an original sin. To heal man from his moral infirmities, grace is necessary, without which not only can sin not be avoided for long, but neither can an act that is morally good in every respect be performed, even in the natural order—good, that is, in its object, its circumstances, and its ultimate end. 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 concupiscence and remains deprived of its effect; efficacious grace—that is, the grace that conquers the contrary inclination to evil—gives both the power and the act. The latter, however, admits of degrees; it is therefore a matter of an efficacy that is not absolute but relative to the force of the inclination to evil that it must overcome; grace that is sufficient in one individual can be efficacious in 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 take away the indifference of free will, because the object always appears limited and mixed with imperfection; indeed, it makes the will freer, because it gives it victory over sin. Efficacious grace for attaining eternal life is not granted to all, but only to those whom God has set apart from the "massa perditionis."
Given the sin of origin, predestination to glory is absolute and "ante praevista merita." Because of sin all men are subject to eternal condemnation: among them God elects some out of pure mercy, while others He leaves by a hidden but certainly most just judgment, and permits them to be lost 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 man's present state and is founded upon it. Before original sin and without it there was not, nor would there have been, a grace intrinsically efficacious, but only versatile, nor an absolute predestination to glory, but only one conditioned upon the assent of free will.
In this school the law of charity is also emphasized against the law of fear: repentance for sins out of fear of punishment alone does not suffice for justification even in the sacrament of Penance, but at least a beginning of love is always required. One may discuss the structure of this theological system, but one cannot deny that it is substantially connected to the doctrine of St. Augustine.
On the thought of this school in the various centuries in which it flourished, however, there are no organic and up-to-date studies. Werner's work is limited to the Middle Ages, and, although valuable in many respects, it would need additions and corrections. In recent years accurate monographs on certain 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. Thorough study will perhaps help to clarify certain points of Augustinianism which, because of their apparent affinity with positions of a Lutheran or Jansenist coloring, have given occasion for exaggerated reservations on the part of some theologians.
The stance of this school, once freed from some dross that is more accidental than substantial, can be useful in mitigating the extremist harshness of other systems, especially on the terrain of grace in relation to human freedom.
Bibliography22 works
Ugo Mariani