Saturday, March 15, 2008

New Augustine Sermons?


Via Fr Z:
I just got word that some new sermons of St. Augustine have been discovered in Vienna.
I don’t have details yet.


How is this possible, you might ask? Well, there are thousands of manuscripts scattered about in monasteries and libraries throughout Europe. It's quite a task to compare the contents of these books with each other for variant readings, etc... Every now and again, scholars discover previously unknown works in these manuscripts.

In recent times, perhaps the most significant finds in the Augustinian field have been the Dolbeau sermons and the Divjak letters:
The prolonged peace of Europe, combined with the phenomenal development of computer technology, encouraged scholars to examine the manuscripts stored in the libraries of Europe more intensively than ever previously. In 1975, Johannes Divjak of Vienna (on mission from the Austrian Academy, to catalogue all manuscripts of Augustine in European libraries) found a mid-fifteenth century manuscript in the Bibliothèque Municipale of Marseilles. Produced in around 1440 for King René of Anjou, a rich but unfortunate monarch, the author of a courtly novel in the best late medieval manner, The Story of a Heart Caught by Love, the manuscript had been known, but had not been closely examined. It was assumed that an elegant late medieval manuscript could hardly contain any new work of an author as frequently copied as was Augustine. Hence the surprise of Johannes Divjak when, on examining the text, he found that it contained, added to a standard collection of Augustine’s letters, twenty nine other letters, of which twenty seven (many of them very long) were utterly unknown. Known now as the Divjak Letters, these twenty nine letters tell us in great detail about hitherto unknown events and about the activities of Augustine as a bishop in Roman North Africa in the last decades of his life: the longest and most vivid of them range from between 419 and 428.
Yet again, in 1990, François Dolbeau perceived that an apparently uninteresting, badly-copied manuscript of the late fifteenth century, recently catalogued in the Stadtbibliothek of Mainz, contained groups of sermons known previously only through titles in Possidius’ Indiculum and through Carolingian library lists of sermons and a few, short extracts. They were first announced to the learned world as the Mayence Sermons (from the French word for Mainz, the place of their discovery) and are now known as the Dolbeau Sermons, from their discoverer. One cluster of these sermons represents Augustine’s preaching at Carthage in the spring and summer of 397—that is, in the crucial year of the beginning of his career as a bishop, at a time when the Confessions were already forming in his mind. The other group of sermons takes us to Carthage and the little towns outside Carthage in the late winter and spring of 403-404, at a time of urgent reform in Catholic worship combined with new Catholic aggression against pagans and Donatists.
Can you imagine the excitement a scholar must feel in making such a find?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm always telling my students that the scholarly life is a series of mood swings between thinking that everything has been said and done (usually in German, and printed in Fraktur) and realizing that nothing at all has been done and we need to get cracking!

Pastor in Monte said...

Fabulous discovery!

Anonymous said...

I have worked extensively in some of the major manuscript collections, in Vienna and Munich. The reason so many late medieval codices have not been thoroughly studied is that they often were dismissed by scholars as merely "devotional," that is, they contained some monk's commonplace jottings, the various texts he had copied over the years, in part for out of his own interest, but also to enhance his monastery's library.

Since the Enlightenment, indeed since the Renaissance humanists, the thrust of scholars was always to look for something new and unique, original. These collections of pious texts seemed uninteresting, merely "devotional collections."

To me they were fascinating because unexplored. All I ever wanted to understand was how the average guy thought and lived, not how the great geniuses made original contributions. But the mass of such codices and the costs of research in Europe (for a North American) combined with the prejudices of foundations for funding "sexy" postmodern, ideologically driven research rather than study of the mundane and ordinary manuscripts produced by nameless, nondescript copyists in faceless monasteries made it impossible ever to wallow at length in those collections.

Oh well.

Anonymous said...

have been wondering if Augustin's Expositions on the Psalms have ever been published unabridged in English. I have read the abridged versions.

Like the Scriptures, what Augustin wrote cannot ever be fully understood through human wisdom. One of the most important subjects he taught about was baptisms but few have understood what he wrote or what the Scriptures declare. Why? Few have obeyed Mt 6:33a. We must seek first God's Kingdom and God's Righteousness, the Righteousness that is revealed in the Gospel for us to have Faith in or we cannot ever fully understand the Scriptures, Mk 1:14-15; Ro 1:16-25.

Augustin knew it is critical that we begin where we were all told to begin according to Mt 6:33a; Ro 1:16-25. This is why two of his most quoted Scriptures are Ro 5:5 and Ro 10:3. Augustin understood because, like all other true Christians, he had the Greatest Teacher there ever was and is and will be, Jn 6:44-45.

“O you kindreds of the people! Ascribe unto the Lord worship and honour!" Ascribe them not unto yourselves because they [the apostles] also, who have declared it unto you, have not declared their own but His honour. Do ye then "ascribe unto the Lord worship and honour" and say, "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us but unto Your Name give the praise!" Put not your trust in man! If each of you is baptized, let him say, "He [the Lord Jesus Christ] baptizes me," of whom the friend of the Bridegroom [John the Baptist] said, "He baptizes with the Holy Spirit!" For when you say this, you ascribe unto the Lord worship and honour! "Ascribe unto the Lord worship and honour!" [Amen! Amen!]

From Augustin's Exposition on Ps 96, paragraph 8.

Anonymous said...

11/15/11

Do you scholars know that Augustin and George Fox taught the very same Gospel? Yes, they did! Augustin didn't believe in physical water baptisms for anyone, not even for physical infants. He did believe in the one and only spiritual New Covenant Holy Spirit Baptism for spiritual infants. He did believe in the one Baptism given by the one Lord Jesus Christ through Repentance and the one Faith in His Righteousness that is revealed in the Gospel.

Are you scholars familiar with the 1260 Last Day's prophecies of The Revelation? Do you know there were 1260 years between the conversions of Augustin and George Fox? Do you know there were 1260 years between their physical deaths, keeping in mind that when Fox died, January was still considered the 11th month and, therefore, the year he died was 1690?

anne robare / canawedding on aol