This introductory essay marks the beginning of our new essay series “Augustine Among the Moderns,” launching on April 24, the anniversary of Augustine’s baptism in Milan. We are delighted to offer this new series that will connect Augustine’s works and thought to modern authors and ideas. Below Eric Saak offers a reflection on Augustine’s late medieval and early modern reception and influence.
Charting Augustine’s reception is a daunting task. After St. Paul, Augustine was perhaps the most influential Christian author throughout the Middle Ages and into early modern Europe. For over a century, scholars have sought to identify a more specific role of Augustine’s reception as a catalyst for the Reformation, particularly with respect to Martin Luther, a member of the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine (OESA) himself. Yet even here, often the distinction has been between Augustine’s doctrine of grace and predestination placed in opposition to Augustine’s doctrine of the Church, whereby the question is not so much how did Augustine influence or impact the Reformation, and consequently, the emergence of early modern Europe, but which Augustine, so to speak, did so and how. Whereas John Calvin claimed that Augustine is “totally on our side” (Augustinus totus noster), the Decree on Justification of the Council of Trent repeated almost word for word Luther’s definition of passive righteousness, which Luther himself traced back to Augustine.
In many ways, the conflicts that arose in the early sixteenth century (and simply continued and became exacerbated thereafter) were based on differing interpretations of Augustine as much as they were on differing interpretations of Scripture. Moreover, Augustine had a major role to play in the emergence of Renaissance humanism, though one not nearly so frequently acknowledged. Consequently, the reception of Augustine with respect to the interpretation and understanding of Augustine, can legitimately be seen as having been the major catalyst for both the Renaissance and the Reformation, and thus of unique importance for coming to an understanding of the emergence of early modern Europe.
Yet a special, particular reception of Augustine did not simply begin with Luther and the Reformation. Already in the fourteenth century, members of the OESA sought to appropriate Augustine anew, creating for themselves a new identity as Augustine’s true sons and heirs, whereby Augustine was to be imitated in all things. Following Augustine’s Rule and example, the Augustinians viewed the bishop as their father, teacher, leader, and head. This yielded a new Augustinianism that was broader than the issues of Anti-Pelagianism and ecclesiology, even as among the Augustinian Hermits there were outstanding representatives of both, with the Hermits Giles of Rome, James of Viterbo, and Augustinus of Ancona having been the architects of papal hierocratic theory.
It was only with the onset of the Reformation, then, that this broader Augustinian tradition became narrowed and focused on either the issues of grace/predestination or ecclesiology, which led to the conflicts over Jansenism in the seventeenth century. In so many ways, the early modern reception of Augustine can be seen as various appropriations of Augustine for one’s own use and purpose, whereby consequently, the thought of the Bishop of Hippo himself became lost. The received Augustine became a different Augustine than the historical figure, who has become increasingly unknown.
Today, society is overwhelmingly and thoroughly Pelagian and Donatistic, in both their secular and religio-theological forms. At least in the United States until rather recently, morality, at least perceived morality, was certainly a necessary qualification for holding public office. That, though, seems to have been abandoned, whereby we are now less Donatistic than perhaps at any previous time.
Yet that does not mean that we have become more Augustinian, for Augustine defined sin as love of self, of being turned in upon one’s own self within the state of sin of our temporal world. Our hyper-individualism is simply a hyper-sinfulness in Augustine’s terms, from which it is impossible to save oneself. It is only by God’s grace that we can be “straightened out.” It is, perhaps, only if we can bring about a new “Augustinian Renaissance,” that we can rediscover that love that is old, but ever new, as we knock and yearn for the door to be opened. Augustine must be received anew, and ever so, as long as we little pieces of God’s creation remain unquiet souls. This, perhaps, is what the reception of Augustine in early modern Europe reveals most of all.
Eric Saak
Eric Saak is a professor of history at Indiana University Indianapolis. He has published widely on the late medieval Augustinian tradition, including "High Way to Heaven" (Brill 2002), "Creating Augustine" (Oxford 2012), "Luther and the Reformation of the Later Middle Ages" (Cambridge 2017), and "Augustinian Theology in the Later Middle Ages. Vol. 1: Concepts, Perspectives and the Emergence of Augustinian Identity" (Leiden, January 2022).