Title: Conference and Confession: Literary Pragmatics in Augustine's "Apologia contra Hieronymum"
Abstract: Conference and Confession:Literary Pragmatics in Augustine's "Apologia contra Hieronymum" Mark Vessey (bio) In the decade or so between his ordination to the priesthood and the completion of the Confessions Augustine can be seen working towards a "literary pragmatics" that would provide an integrated vision of the relations between (1) the Christian writer, (2) texts of his own composition, (3) the biblical text, and (4) his fellow Christian readers-and-writers. As expounded and enacted in the De doctrina christiana and Confessions this Augustinian literary pragmatics depends on the ideal of the biblical "conference": a text act performed jointly by two or more human beings in the presence of God and in a spirit of charity. Augustine formulates the conference paradigm in reaction to Jerome's advocacy of an ascetic and professional practice of scriptural interpretation, using hints supplied by his epistolary conversation with Paulinus of NoIa. The ensemble of the De doctrina christiana and Confessions may thus be construed as an apologia contra Hieronymum silently dedicated to Paulinus. According to his first biographer, when Augustine returned from Italy to his native North Africa in 388, he and his friends gave themselves up to a life of fasting, prayer, good works, and Bible study. Like the blessed man in the Psalms, the former public orator of Milan now delighted in "meditating day and night in the law of the Lord." The fruits of this meditation, too, were made public: Et de his quae sibi deus cogitanti atque oranti intellecta revelabat, et praesentes et absentes sermonibus ac libris docebat ("And what God revealed to his understanding as he thought and prayed, he would teach in conversation to those who were present and in books to those who were not").1 Possidius did not join Augustine's circle until a few [End Page 175] years later, so it is possible that he allowed subsequent developments to influence his description of the primitive community at Thagaste.2 Be that as it may, the account given in the Vita Augustini of the saint's activity in teaching and writing is fully consistent for all phases of his post-conversion career. As pious layman, priest, and then bishop, Augustine continually meditated on "the things of God", imparted what he discovered (that is, what God revealed to him) by word of mouth to those he could reach in this way, and committed the same to writing for the benefit of readers in other places and times. Possidius' attention to the processes of doctrinal transmission is astonishingly scrupulous; his narrative is punctuated throughout with references to Augustine's habits of Bible study, preaching, writing, and publication, and to the experiences of his listeners and readers. No other saint's life from late Latin antiquity stands comparison with the Vita Augustini in respect of such information.3 How are we to account for this peculiarity? If the choice is between regarding it as a hagiographer's quirk and as the reflection of Augustine's personal preoccupation with the modalities of Christian doctrina, we shall have no difficulty preferring the latter alternative. Possidius' presentation of Augustine's life and literary works (listed in an appendix to the Vita) reposes on a set of reasoned assumptions, worked out or approved by Augustine himself, about the cooperation of literate and articulate Christians in the intellection and promulgation of revealed Truth. Those assumptions relate to the nature of divine revelation (including the function of Scripture); the personal qualities, lifestyle, and public comportment of the religious teacher; the social and institutional contexts of Christian instruction; and the needs and abilities of a late antique Christian readership. More concisely, they specify the conditions of a doctrinal and literary practice dedicated to bringing human beings to a knowledge and love of God; or, in terms of a distinction proposed by Augustine himself, a policy of charitable use in the service of everlasting enjoyment. Although modern humanistic discourse has no ready way of naming this ensemble of concerns, many of them can be shown to fall within the province of "literary pragmatics,"4 defined as a science of the relations [End Page 176] between texts, the users of those texts, and the conditions (material and...
Publication Year: 1993
Publication Date: 1993-06-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 65
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