The Best Reader and the One Repetitor? The Bishop in Augustine's Confessions

Extract

The Confessions of Saint Augustine’ have been esteemed throughout the centuries for the literary elegance with which their author integrates self-disclosure, compunction, and analysis of the human and redeemed condition. For all the claims made for this classic, however, rarely has it been noted that prime among Augustine’s intentions in writing was to convey a definitive point of view regarding the orthopraxy of the Church. This article maintains that central to the Confessions is an unequivocal instruction regarding the reading and interpretation of texts. Written between 397 and 401, only a few years following Augustine’s succession in 395 to the see of Hippo, the Confessions are a study of the place of texts in the community. Furthermore, they are an explicit defence of the bishop’s primacy in the governance of a community’s texts.

No matter what his topic at any given moment, Augustine’s attention throughout the Confessions scarcely deviates from the issues of speech, language, poetics, and, ultimately, scripture. Augustine plumbs their meaning throughout, returning repeatedly to how all these function for ill or good within community. Cognizant of the extent to which language and texts can abet fallen human nature and lead towards its worst proclivities, Augustine admonishes readers ever to beware of the potential of texts to deceive, endanger, and enslave. To note only this, however, would be to remain ignorant of the author’s far more important conviction. If some words can entrap, cannot different words liberate? The scriptural Word of the psalms, which Augustine quotes so profligately that his own voice