The Bishops’ Bishop
Part one: Drafted to the Episcopacy

In 391, four years after his baptism, St. Augustine arrived in the town of Hippo Regius, in North Africa, with the intention of founding a monastery. Thirty-five years later, he recounted in Sermon 355 how this simple plan went awry. "I was grabbed," he explained. Augustine did not exaggerate. He was conscripted into becoming one of the most influential bishops – possibly the most influential -- in Christian history.

Sixteen hundred years after his death, he remains the primary model for all who wear the miter and ring.

Peter Brown, in his masterful biography, Augustine of Hippo (Faber and Faber Limited, London 1967; 2000 University of California Press, London and Los Angeles, 2000), recounts Augustine’s activities following his baptism on Easter Sunday of 387, by Bishop Ambrose of Milan.

Augustine and a small circle of friends decided to leave Italy and return to Africa, Augustine’s birthplace. With them were his mother Monica and his son Adeodatus, whom Augustine had kept with him after breaking off his long relationship with his mother. Soon after they arrived in the seaport of Ostia, they were forced to stop. A civil war was raging in the Roman Empire and the port was blockaded. Monica became ill and nine days later died, her life’s mission of bringing her son to the faith having been completed. After her funeral, Augustine and his friends returned to Rome to wait out the blockade.

The following year, the party was finally able to sail to Carthage in North Africa. They settled into a monastic community on part of an estate owned by Augustine’s family in his birthplace, Thagaste. Augustine looked forward to leading a fairly reclusive, contemplative life. During this period, Adeodatus died. He was probably about 18 years of age.

Brown writes that "grief and a sense of emptiness now pressed Augustine into a more active life." In 391, he learned that an acquaintance in Hippo Regius wished to talk with him about religious life. Augustine began to think of founding a second monastery. This one would concentrate on the study of Scripture and prepare the members to play a more active role in the life of the African Church. And so he set off for Hippo Regius.

Kidnapped by God

Augustine was not aware of the fact that the Church in North Africa saw him as a potential leader. However, he had no aspiration for office, so he kept a very low profile. He had good reason. It was not unheard of for a prospective church leader to be literally seized by the people and forced to become their priest and/or bishop.

Hippo seemed a safe enough place to visit, however; it already had a strong bishop, a Greek named Valerius. But Valerius himself realized he had impediments. For one thing, he was limited in his knowledge of Latin and Punic, the languages most commonly spoken in his diocese. More important, he was faced with a stand-off between two opposing views of church: those of the Catholics and those of the Donatists, whose power and influence had reduced Catholicism to minority status Bishop Valerius knew that his people needed a church leader with a firm hand, great intelligence, ability to speak their language, and brilliance in both the written and spoken word. Augustine was such a man, so Valerius sprang his trap.

Augustine arrived in Hippo to see the candidate for his monastic community and took time to visit the town basilica. The wily old bishop saw him in the congregation and proceeded to preach on the urgent needs of the church. Where was a there a leader to fill those needs? Well, there he was right in the church. The people immediately seized Augustine, dragging him to Valerius.

The reluctant monk asked for time to study the faith and set up the monastery he had journeyed to Hippo to established. Valerius agreed to his terms and Augustine had no choice but to accede to the bishop’s wishes that he become a priest.

In Augustine’s times, priests did not preach; that privilege was restricted to bishops. However, Valerius absolved the new priest from the ban to make use of his talents and took the unprecedented step of arranging for the protégé to address a conference of the bishops of Africa on "Faith and Creed." In Saint Augustine (Viking Penguin, 1999), author Gary Wills notes that this was a fairly basic topic and probably indicated that some of the African bishops themselves were in great need of instruction.

One of the bishops who heard Augustine speak was Aurelius, the primate of Carthage. A reformer himself, Aurelius struck up a friendship with Augustine. In years to come, he would appoint many bishops from the clergy Augustine trained in the monastery at Hippo.

By now, Augustine’s reputation was known around Africa and Valerius worried that a group from another diocese would kidnap his prize. He wanted Augustine to succeed him in Hippo. He carefully guarded his new priest and schemed to have Augustine named his coadjutor with right of succession. This was a direct violation of the canons of the church at that time. F. Van De Meer in his work, Augustine the Bishop (Sheed and Ward 1961), states that Valerius may not have realized he was violating the canon. Peter Brown, on the other, doesn’t for one moment believe that Valerius didn’t know.

However, it is not likely that Augustine knew there was a violation or he would not have gone along with Valerius’ plans.

Tne final snag nearly scuttled Valerius’ plan. Bishop Megalius of Calama, the senior bishop and primate of Numidia in which Hippo was located, announced that he could not ordain Augustine a bishop. He had information that Augustine had given another man’s wife a love potion and seduced her. It turned out that the love potion was actually a eulogian, a blessed keepsake. To his credit, Megalius apologized to Augustine and went ahead with the episcopal ordination. In 396 Valerius died and Augustine succeeded him.

A Decisive Debut

Even before he became bishop, Augustine was grappling with the Donatist sect, who comprised the majority of the Christian population in Hippo. The origins of this sect lay in the last great persecution of the Christians by the Roman emperor Diocletian in the years 303-305. Christians had been forced to hand over their precious books of Holy Scripture for burning.

Those who defied Rome and suffered for it, condemned bishops who surrendered their books as traitors to the faith.

One of those so-called traitors ordained the bishop of Carthage in 311. Eighty of the bishops of Numidia declared this ordination invalid. They banded together and elected their own rival bishop. This "pure" bishop was succeeded by another named Donatus, whose heroic martyrdom gave the group his name.

Brown sums up the basic Donatist idea: they were a chosen people, with their own bishops, their own villages. Outsiders and outside ideas were not wanted. Catholic bishops were not validly ordained and anyone who had cooperated with the Roman laws was forever outlawed. Wherever there was a Catholic bishop, the Donatists installed one of their own as a rival. Gary Wills says that when Augustine preached in his basilica, he actually could hear shouting and noise from the Donatist church.

The Donatists’ exclusionary beliefs and practices appalled Augustine, who believed that far from isolating itself, Christianity was destined by God to expand, and not just in a geographic sense. The good Christian must become holy, interact with sinners, and be prepared to correct them.

"Augustine took the field as the voice of the Catholic Church," Brown writes. First, he tried to engage the Donatists in dialogue by pointing out with the two groups had in coming and by inviting them to discuss their differences publicly.

The Donatists would not cooperate and finally, Augustine was forced to take stronger measures. He forbade marriages of Catholics and any non-Catholic (including Donatists), and outlawed donations or legacies to non-Catholics. He also mounted an information campaign that 21st century public relations professionals would recognize.

Augustine used the commentaries he wrote and delivered on current events to make his theological arguments against the Donatists in language that the farmers and burghers of Hippo would understand.

In Donatistas post conlationem, Contra (Against the Donatists), he skewered the Donatist bishops, accusing them of debating incompetently and of misinterpreting Scripture by deliberately ignoring passages about the church’s mission to spread and evangelized. He appealed to their followers not to be seduced by such men.

Finally, after a conference at Carthage called by the Imperial authorities to deal with the schism, the Donatists were judged to be in error and their institutional power was destroyed.

His zeal, decisiveness and high profile battles with the Donatists earned Augustine a reputation as a church reformer and as a force to be reckoned with, not only in ecclesiastical circles but in the community as a whole. Another great thinker might have let this go to his head but Augustine was too much aware of his own human frailty to let this happen. He was also too busy, dealing with the foibles and peccadilloes of his people.

Hippo -- a Breadbasket Town of Ordinary People

The city of Hippo was more than a thousand years old. The town was surrounded by rich fields of corn, making it a breadbasket for the Roman Empire. The area also boasted vineyards and olive groves. It also was blessed with a great harbor. The city itself was reasonably orderly if dirty but the outlying areas were less law-abiding.

Augustine’s church and monastery were at a distance from the center of town and about mile from the harbor. Nearby were the villas of the rich but Augustine did not encourage their friendship. He kept a tight rein on his monks, too, developing a rich library for their education and forbidding them to have women visitors. This may have been prudish on his part. However, it was also smart, considering the taste for scandal on the part of many people of that time. 

According to Van Meer, the people of Hippo had the usual vices and weaknesses of urban dwellers. Most of them took no great part in public life. Many were quarrelsome and suspicious and since all transactions were managed by contract, the few wealthy folk were involved in countless lawsuits.

The people of Hippo liked their wine and their festivals. Augustine frequently was at some pains to get them to appear for Mass in a sober state. In sum, they were no better and no worse than any other Christians. Indeed Van Meer writes of them that "they sinned rather from the instability of their spirit than of malice."

How did this great thinker, writer, speaker and Catholic "powerhouse" communicate with and serve this primarily poor and theologically ignorant congregation?

He did it with simplicity, charity, wit and a great deal of repetition, as the next installment of All Things Augustine, "The Pastor-Bishop" will show.

Back to All Things Augustine

To Villanova Magazine Archives