Letters, Volume 6 (1*–29*)

Letter 1

LETTER 1* Introduction Letter 1 * fills in much of what had remained unknown about letter 250 of the basic collection of Augustine's letters. In letter 250, Augustine wrote to a young bishop named Auxilius in order to convey his unhappiness about an excommunication imposed on a Roman official, Classicianus, for entering a church to seize someone who had sought sanctuary there. Further, the excommunication had struck not only Classicianus but also his entire household. (While the term "excommunication" is not used as such, "anathema" and cognate forms are equivalent.) Augustine asked whether the collective excommunication was fitting since it was Classicianus alone who had acted to violate the right of sanctuary. Secondly, Augustine asked whether the penalty was really just ill this case even for Classicianus himself. Should sanctuary, the right of asylum in a church building, the house of faith, be granted to perjurers, those precisely who have not kept faith? As to the first issue, what we may call the quaestio iuris, Augustine expressed his uncertainty, given the absence of canonical guidance; If such decisions had been made at a point in the past, Augustine confessed his ignorance of them. Not without a certain irony, given his theology of original sin, he stressed that in the Christian era emphasis must be placed on individual responsibility for sins as opposed to the collective responsibility and accompanying punishments found in the Old Testament. As to the quaestio facti, Augustine expressed doubt about ClassiciaIIUS ' guilt in entering a church building to arrest perjurers. Despite all this, Augustine in the end was still reluctant to confront an episcopal colleague, even a very young and inexperienced one like Auxilius. He suggested to the layman Classicianus that it would be simpler f()r all concerned if he submitted and did penance. Most of these cases, including those involving Augustine'S own church buildings in Hippo, were a source of difficulty and ongoing friction with civil officials. l\Iany simply involved debtors rather than criminals. Sometimes Augustine resolved the problem by helping debLOrs himself (e.g. the case of Fascius in ep. 268). Other sanctuary cases we know of in Augustine's correspondence are those of Victorinus in ep. 28*, and Faventius, who figures in an exchange of letters (epp. 113-1 IS). In the case of Faventius, the church's problem was 9 10 SAINT AUGUSTINE solved when the fugitive was lured out of the church building by the civil authorities. But this type of solution itself raised new problems. Date Since Auxilius is an uncommon name and since there is an Auxilius, bishop of Nurco in Mauretania Caesariensis listed among the Catholic bishops at the conference of Carthage of 411, most commentators going back at least to Lenain de Tillemont in the 17th century, have identified this Auxilius with the bishop addressed by Augustine in ep.. 250. Furthermore, since in cp. 250, Augustine refers to Auxilius as "a young man, a colleague of scarcely a year" (ep. 250.2), commentators conclude that this letter must have been written in the year 412. Divjak concludes that ep. 1* must be contemporaneous. Folliet, however, dissents from this common dating for both letters 250 and 1*. He points out that Augustine in the same place mentioned above referred to himself as "an old man ... a bishop for so many years." But he probably could have said this of himselfin 412 as well. But Folliet holds for a date of 426 or later, so that this Auxilius is not the bishop of Nurco at the conference of 411. :Further, Augustine states in ep. 1 * that he will submit the question of collective excommunication to an African council in the future. Yet there is no trace of such a discussion in our conciliar records. Why not? Because there were no further councils at which Augustine was present between 427 and his death. I do not think that :Folliet's arguments are unanswerable, but it would be unusual to have a letter of Augustine in this collection from the early date of 412. A fragment of section 5 was previously known as ep. 250A. The translation of it h"ven here is that of Sr. Wilfrid Parsons, S.N.D., which appeared in FOTC 32 (1956), pp. 242-243. UGUSTINE SENDS GREETINGS in the Lord to his illustrious and most renowned lord and beloved son, Classicianusl : I. Folliet argues (Colloq, pp. 128-146) that "coum" Classicianus is not the comes Aflicae (as Boniface was later on), or even...