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7/26/2019 Sinner and Saint
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Augustine: Sinner and Saint. A New Biography by J. O'DonnellReview by: Gillian ClarkThe Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 96 (2006), pp. 304-305Published by: Society for the Promotion of Roman StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20430558 .
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304
REVIEWS
J. O DONNELL,
AUGUSTINE: SINNER
AND SAINT. A NEW
BIOGRAPHY. London:
Profile
Books,
zoo5.
Pp.
xiv
+
396,
i
map.
ISBN
i-86197-686-0.
?25.oo.
How has
the
Provost
of
Georgetown University
(Washington, DC)
found time to write a
big
book
about Augustine?
The answers
include
characteristics he shares with
his
subject.
He
is a
pro
ductive and forceful
writer.
He has
technical support,
now
updated
from notarii to
web techni
cians.
He can
draw
on
decades of
research
and
publication,
including
his
admired
commentary
on
Confessions
(I992,
now on
line). Perhaps also,
like
Augustine
embarking
on
City
of God,
he
had
reason to think that his
big book
was
needed:
Georgetown
is near aWhite
House
where Christian
values are confidently invoked.
Like
Augustine,
O Donnell
requires
his audience
to
consider
what
they take for granted:
about
Augustine, about
biography,
about the
continuity
of
Christian
texts
and doctrines and churches.
He
insistently
reminds them that
it
might
have
been
otherwise;
it
has
been
otherwise.
In
the late fourth
and
early
fifth
centuries,
Christian
beliefs and
practices
were at
least
as
diverse
as
they
are now.
It was
not
obvious
that
Christianity
would
endure,
as a
major
world
religion,
for
(so
far)
another sixteen hundred
years;
or
that
Augustine
of
Hippo, bishop
of
the
minority church
in
a
second-rank
African
diocese,
would
still
be revered
or
attacked
as
Saint
Augustine,
Doctor
of
the
Church and
a
major
influence
on Western
theology.
Historians of Late Antiquity are over the shock of seeing Augustine as an undistinguished
figure
in his
time,
but this
book
is
designed
to
reach
beyond
the
academic
world,
like
Augustine
preaching
to an
unpredictable
audience. O D. s
books
include Avatars
of
the
Word:
from
Papyrus
to
Cyberspace
(i998)
on
the effect of
changes
in
information
technology,
and he has
long
experience of
university teaching
and of
internet
queries.
For academic
readers,
there
are
new
perceptions and
provocations,
and
the
endnotes
are
right
up
to
date.
(Why
do
so
many
American
publishers
omit
bibliographies?)
For
general readers,
everything
is
translated,
the
style
is
easy
going, and there
are
modern
analogies,
some
of which
do
not
easily
cross the
Atlantic.
O D.
expects
(34)
that
most
of
his
readers
will
be
aware
of
Confessions
(a
review
by
someone
who
was
not
would be really interesting) and
reminds
them
not to let
Confessions
persuade
them
that
they
know Augustine. What
they
know
is
what Augustine
wrote,
and
Augustine helped the books
survive
by listing
them
with
notes
in
his Retractationes.
O D.
sees
this brief work
as
the second
Confessions: not because it provides the framework for narratives of Augustine s later life, but
because
it
constructs that
life,
this
time
as a
sequence
of
books
in
response
to
requests
or needs.
Retractationes replaced the
living, breathing, quarrelling
cleric with
Augustine the
author
(3I9),
and O D. will not
let
that
happen.
So
what kind of
new
biography
comes
from
an
expert
who
is
so
wary
of
Augustine s cunning traps (3I7)
and so aware of how he himself
approaches
his
subject
and
how
his
readers
might
react?
In the Festschrift for Robert Markus
(W.
Klingshirn
and
M.
Vessey (eds),
The Limits
of
Ancient
Christianity (i999)),
O D.
addressed
The
Next
Life
of
Augustine
(215-3I),
the
putative
successor
to
Peter Brown s
brilliantly
influential
Augustine
of Hippo (1967,
rev. edn
zooo).
He
questioned
the
powerful
attraction
that
pulls
writers
the
present
one included
-
to
the
coherent
narrative of a
single
life
(222)
and
considered
ways
of
replacing
the
conversion
story
that
Augustine
constructed
in
Confessions
with
multiple Augustines
more
appropriate
to an
electronic
age
of
continuing dialogue.
is
necessarily
more
fixed,
but
Augustine:
Sinner and
Saint is
multiple
both
in its
Augustines
and
in
its assessments. O D.
imagines (8o-i)
what
Augustine s reputation
might
have been if
Confessions
had
not survived the centuries inwhich
it
was
scarcely
read.
He reflects
on
Augustine
the
Manichaean,
and
devises
(5I-z)
a
Donatist
dismis
sal
of
Augustine
who
lacked
the
moral
strength
for
more
austere
traditions,
and who
manoeuvred
among politicians
to advance
the
minority
Caecilianist church.
Instead of
Augustine
the
pioneer
monk,
O D.
offers
Augustine
the
gentleman,
who lives
simply
but
comfortably
and
finds,
as
life
goes on,
that his
religious
beliefs
fit
his
Roman conservatism.
All
these
Augustines
live
among
scenes
from
late
antique
life
presented
with relaxed
enjoyment:
for
instance,
Sunday
sermons at
Hippo, Jerome
taking offence,
the
endless
preliminary
negotiations
in
the
Donatist
peace process.
Some
historians would settle for
explaining
how
Augustine
makes sense
in
that
context,
how
he
does
exegesis
like
a
grammaticus
and
theology
like
a
Platonist and
polemic
like
an orator.
But
then
Augustine
would be
safely historicized; instead,
O D.
wants readers to
consider
the
strange
ness of his beliefs
about
humanity, God,
and
scripture.
Augustine
assumes that
he
is
body
and soul: so what is his soul like
(82-3),
and how
acceptable
or
intelligible
are
any
of his beliefs about
it?
The
chapter
on
Augustine
the
Theologians
(no
mis
print) offers
vigorous
disagreement
with
Augustine s
interpretation
of
his own
and
of every
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IV. LATE
ROMAN HISTORY AND EARLY CHRISTIANITY 305
human life
in
relation to God. The earlier chapter on Augustine and the Invention of
Christianity begins
(I71)
with
a
counterfactual encyclopedia entry
on
the defunct religion
of
Glunchism (any relation to
the Grinch who stole Christmas?), a renegade Jewish sect that became
too dependent on
the Roman state. Augustine the Glunchist
is
the starting-point for a sustained
effort to defamiliarize Augustine s religion, culminating (204) in an evocation of Don Quixote of
Hippo . This Augustine went to war
with phantasms because
he
took
a peculiar set
of
texts
for
fact, and
was
supported by
a
community
of
obsessives (zo6) who bought, and still buy,
into some
oddly
persistent stories.
But
O D.
will
not
allow Augustine
to
be sidelined that way either: he
interrupts himself (zo6) to
challenge such judgements.
Much
of
the book is about power
struggles and needless polemic, theological failure (especially
in response to Pelagius
and
to
Julian of Eclanum), and
disastrous success. By the end
of his life
(323), Augustine is to blame
for
the
Vandal
invasions,
because
a
political ally invited them, and
for the
collapse
of African
Christianity,
because the
putsch
he
masterminded
for
his church
(ch.
8) weakened the
native
tradition. Augustine s
religion
is
joyless
and
jokeless
(zoz:
but what
would
a
liturgical joke
be
like?), and loneliness
and
anxiety drive
his
unnecessary quarrels. Early
in
the
book O D. observes what
were
temptations
to
Augustine
become life
goals when moderns
think
of
them
as
self-esteem, education,
and sexual fulfilment
(66).
Does
the
saint s
voice
murmur
My
point
exactly ?
Augustine
wanted,
he
said, something
more
than
worldly
success
and sexual fulfil
ment; he
thought
it
was love of
God,
and
in
his
experience,
indiscriminate
curiosity (all
over
the
place)
and
pride
in
oneself
(shutting
out
others)
were
especially likely
to
get
in
the
way. Whether
he needed
therapy or the
grace of
God
is,
to borrow one
of his
not
now phrases, another
question requiring
long
discussion. O D. s answer is
clear,
but
he
also reminds
readers (3z6)
that
Augustine
wanted
them to
amend
their
own
lives,
not
speculate
about his.
In
the final
chapters
especially,
the
sceptical, provocative,
sometimes
dismissive
tone
is
balanced both
by
affection
( by
now
he s learned
to
put
up with me ,
375)
and
by generous praise
for the
quality
of
Augustine s
writing (307, 309)
and
the
importance
of
the
questions
he asked. The book
remains
multiple and
fascinating.
Was
there
a core
self
in
this bundle
of
Augustines? Augustine
would have said that
God alone
knows.
Universityof Bristol GILLIAN LARK
A. MIRKOVIC,
PRELUDE TO CONSTANTINE:
THE ABGAR
TRADITION IN EARLY
CHRISTIANITY
(Arbeiten
zur
Religion
und Geschichte des
Urchristentums; Studies in the
Religion and History
of Early Christianity i5). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004. Pp. xv
+
i8z. ISBN
-8zo4-6585-z.
?z6.oo.
Alexander Mirkovic s
revision
of
his
zooz
Vanderbilt University dissertation
explores
the
legend
of Abgar of Edessa, the royal
correspondent
to
Jesus who
was
converted
by
one of
his
disciples.
M. s approach
is
not pathbreaking (he postulates that the legend contains many layers, many of
which reflect
different
social and historical circumstances
(8)),
but it isworthwhile. As he
points
out, scholars
have read this
legend (preserved
in
Eusebius Historia
Ecclesiastica (HE)
and the
fifth-century Syriac
Teaching of
Addai
(TA))
either
as
part
of
Eusebius
efforts
to
glorify
his
new
imperial patron, Constantine, or (following Walter Bauer and Han Drijvers) as orthodox propa
ganda designed
to
deflate the majority heretics
of
fourth-century
Edessa.
M.
instead reads
the
legend as one of several comparable court tales , articulating a minority group s desires and
anxieties about religion
and
power and,
in the
case
of
the
Abgar
legend, ultimately transforming
the
role of
religious leaders
in Roman
politics and patronage.
Ch. i,
on
the history
and
historiography
of
the
Abgar legend
(i-i6),
lays
out
M. s
reliance
on
Sebastian Brock s i992 essay
on the common source
(an
Early
Syriac Version )
used
by
both
Eusebius and the
pseudonymous author
of
the
TA
(whom
M. insists
throughout
on
calling
Labubna ).
M.
provides a
synoptic translation of the Abgar portions of the
HE
and
TA
(9-I4;
he
does
not
divulge the source
of these translations, which
are
rife with spelling
errors).
Ch.
z
(I7-6i) reconstructs
the
stages of
the
legend s circulation,
from
a
third-century oral
tradition
to
the
final
redaction
of
Labubna
in
the
fifth
century.
M.
incorporates
as
evidence Egeria, who
heard the story
in
the 380s
from
the
Bishop
of Edessa
and acquired
copies of the
Jesus-Abgar
cor
respondence. M. views Egeria as a witness to the oral circulation of the legend, although Egeria s
mention
of her
sisters written
translation
of
this
text
(It. Eg. i9.i9) surely
indicates that the
legend was already
circulating
in
Latin
in
theWest well before Egeria heard the story in Edessa.
M. concludes
that
the redactions
of
the
TA
show
that
one of
its
main
goals
is to link the church
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