De Doctrina Christiana (review)

Students of the thought of Augustine of Hippo will welcome the quite readable, eminently clear, and cleverly turned language of R. P. H. Green’s new translation of the De doctrina christiana. The De doctrina christiana is a work that has had an immense influence upon the Latin West and clearly deserves a new translation of such excellence. The influence of the work is well documented by the two volumes of the papers presented at a conference at the University of Notre Dame in 1991. The one edited by D. W. H. Arnold and P. Bright is entitled: De Doctrina Christiana: A Classic of Western Culture (JECS 4 [1996]: 538–39); the other edited by E. English bears the title: Reading and Wisdom: The De Doctrina Christiana in the Middle Ages.

Along with his translation, R. P. H. Green, Professor of Humanities at Glascow University, presents on the facing pages the accepted Latin text established in the early 1960s by W. M. Green in CSEL 80 and J. Martin in CCSL 32. The translator used in the text and translation of the newer numbering of the CSEL edition, though he has wisely retained in the margin of the Latin text the older numbering system with the division of books into chapters and paragraphs. Green has occasionally emended the text, as he indicates in the notes, at times making use of the suggestions of C. Schaüblein in his article, “Zum Text von Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana,” Weiner Studien 8 (1974): 173–81. All told, the textual emendations to the critical text are few in number and seldom significantly alter the sense. I counted approximately a dozen places where Green suggests a reading other than what is found in the received text. A sampling of these are: reading vel instead of vitam at I, viii, 8; the addition of aut minus diligat quod amplius diligendum est in I, xxvii, 28; the addition of cum in II, xii, 17; the retention of artifices instead of artes and the addition of et in II, xiii, 36; the addition of longam in II, xxxviii, 56; the addition of estote in III, xxv, 36; and reading singula instead of singulae in III, xxv, 37.

The translation itself reads smoothly; it is a model of both accuracy and readability. I kept a list of expressions that I thought less than perfectly felicitous, but decided that they were generally too minor to mention, though I do have a problem in speaking of “the original versions” of the scriptures especially as a translation of “exemplaria praecedentia” in II, xi, 16. So too, I find “racial differences” as an odd version of “gentili diversitate” in III, xiv, 22. What really brought home to me the excellence of the translation was the fact that I could read it without feeling the constant urge to check it against the Latin, which is my normal experience with most translations.

The introduction to the Latin text and translation is quite brief, referring the reader to various items in a select bibliography or in the notes to the text rather than providing a detailed commentary on the work. In fact the introduction is limited in scope to three topics: one, a discussion of the aims of the author and the circumstances of the work’s composition, two, a brief summary of the contents of the work and some comments on its significance, and three, an even briefer discussion of the oldest manuscript of the first two books of the work, which possibly dates from fifth-century Africa, along with some notes about the discovery of numerous other manuscripts which the two editors of the CSEL and CCSL editions did not have available for their editions made over thirty years ago. Despite the brevity of the introduction, I frequently found Green’s comments most insightful and helpful. For instance, he sees Augustine’s use of “doctrina christiana” as reflecting the use of “doctrina” in the Pastoral Epistles...