Monnica: My Mother

Extract

It seems strange, at the time the Oedipus complex was being unravelled, that the case history of Augustine of Hippo (A.D. 350-434) and his mother Monnica should not have been more generally used as basic illustrative material. Perhaps it was too firmly embedded, in the lay mind, in the bracket of salvation-history to be eligible for general use. Fortunately, however, the portrait of this provincial Roman-African mother has been preserved simply because it was safely insulated within the pages of a ‘devotional’ book—the Confessions of Augustine, a writing that itself has barely begun to disgorge its total psychological treasures. To excise and examine the history of Monnica will tell us a lot about Augustine, which in its turn could tell us a lot about Augustine-style Western Christianity—a grass-roots examination that is becoming a popular lay pastime.

The biography of Monnica presents a complex study. At times Augustine almost persuades us into believing that she is actually the theme of the Confessions:

‘Do Thou inspire, O Lord my God, do Thou inspire Thy servants, my brethren, Thy sons, my masters, whom I serve with heart and voice and pen, that whoso reads these pages may remember before Thy altar, Monnica, Thy handmaid ... so shall her dying request be granted to her in richer abundance by the prayers of many, through my Confessions, than through my prayers.’

But even when he presents her ‘straight’ he depicts a complicated love-hate relationship, however much he attempts to polish up the love aspect. Added to which is the immense difficulty presented by Augustine’s own dichotomous style of writing and thinking whereby he presents Monnica to us through a series of quite contradictory lenses.