Augustine: The Seminar A Few Good Books See "Linear Syllabus: Procedures" for concise instructions about seeking bibliographical guidance in Augustine, and "Linear Syllabus: Substance" for specific recommendations keyed to topics I hope to cover in this seminar. This note is a purely personal, impressionistic listing of books that have helped me the most in reading Augustine over the years. *Many* excellent books are omitted. First, a concise list of A.'s own works of particular appeal and interest, then modern works. Augustine (mostly obvious): Confessions (best translations: Ryan, Pusey) City of God (best translation: Bettenson in Penguin) Christian Doctrine True Religion Enarrations on the Psalms Against the Academics, The Happy Life, Order, Soliloquies (from his Cassiciacum sojourn between conversion and baptism in 386/7) Tractates on the Epistle of John (a beautiful evocation of A.'s doctrine of Christian love; if you resist his ideas generally, this may be the best single chance you can give him to let you see how it all made sense to *him*; bound together in the old "Library of Christian Classics" volume of A., Later Writings with:) Spirit and Letter (his anti-Pelagian position expounded before he developed his full animosity for the opposite position; lucid, sympathetic, important) "Divjak Letters" (Already in Fathers of the Church, also available in French translation with notes in the Bibliotheque Augustinienne series, these are more than two dozen letters of A. discovered only in the 1970s and then published -- reading them and the discussion they have evoked is an exciting introduction to the liveliest new work on A.) Acts of the Council of Carthage of 411 (not available in English to my knowledge; stenographic transcript of the imperial-sponsored debate between Donatists and Catholics in 411 that resolved the state on its anti-Donatist support of A.'s party. Beautifully edited, translated, and annotated in the French series Source Chretiennes) (ON EDITIONS AND TRANSLATIONS: The Maurist edition of the 17th century is the last coherent edition of the complete works that will ever be produced. It is reprinted in PL. For many works, there are better, more recent editions, especially in the series *Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum* and *Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina*. The serious reader will also want to look for the small volumes in the French series *Bibliotheque Augustinienne*, which give a Latin text, French translation, and excellent annotation -- many now date from the 60s, but there are revised editions of some appearing and new work as well. For English translations, there are many renditions of Conf. and City of God, fewer of others. Look for the series *Fathers of the Church* in a good research or seminar library for the widest collection; the old series *Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers* also has a healthy sampling.) Modern Works: Brown, Peter: Augustine of Hippo (We'll be talking about this. The first, the best, real modern biography. A wonderful read.) Burnaby, John: Amor Dei (On Augustine's doctrine of love, an Anglican Oxford don's rejoinder to A. Nygren's *Agape and Eros*, which accused A.'s doctrine of *caritas* of betraying fundamental Christian values) Van Der Meer, Frederick: Augustine the Bishop (Huge fat book drawing together from a thousand places in A.'s writings the details to make a coherent picture of what life in A.'s church community at Hippo was like.) Te Selle, E.: Augustine the Theologian (A theological biography, or perhaps a biography of the theology. Published 1970, it's been long out of print: why?) Markus, Robert A.: Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of Saint Augustine Markus, Robert A.: The End of Ancient Christianity (Two beautiful and lucid books written twenty years apart by one of A.'s most sympathetic and penetrating readers. The first links elements of what would once have been called Augustine's "political theory" in a convincing synthesis; the second is a meditation on the history of Christianity in the fourth to sixth centuries, on how "ancient Christianity" came to an end and made way for something else that might as well be called "medieval") Cochrane, Charles N.: Christianity and Classical Culture (How antiquity got from classical to Christian, from Augustus to Augustine. Dated in many ways, written on the eve of World War II out of a fear that old values were deeply threatened, the book is still an eminently serious and interesting attempt to put "Christian" and "Classical" on the same footing, take both seriously, and look at how they differ from and resemble each other. Marrou, Henri-Irenee: Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique (The first major work of an eminent scholar, a survey of what became of Latin culture in late antiquity seen through its most distinguished representative. Still as bracing and broadening as when it was published before WWII.) Courcelle, Pierre: Recherches sur les Confessions de saint Augustin (Pub. 1950 [2nd ed. with add't material, 1968], a work that did for the Conf. what serious scholarly study did for the Bible in the 19th century. It opened a generation of fruitful debate and revolutionized what we know of the Conf. and of Augustine.) Kirwan, Christopher: Augustine (in the series: Arguments of the Philosophers) (This one I mean to read myself this term while we work. "Philosophy" as now imagined is very different in extension from what Augustine would have called "philosophia", but A. has remained a source of fascination. Wittgenstein has important things to say about A. [and perhaps the easiest way to make the link is F. Ker, *Theology After Wittgenstein*, of a few years ago], the *Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy* puts him in context, and several books of Richard Sorabji, notably *Time, Creation, and the Continuum*, address his issues, and see also G. O'Daly, *Augustine's Philosophy of Mind*, by a young scholar who knows Augustine astonishingly well and thinks with great lucidity. Ilsetraut Hadot, *Arts Liberaux et philosophie dans la pensee antique*, gives important impetus to reassessment of the *religious* power of the 'liberal arts, and Hadot's husband, Pierre H., has written important books on Augustine's inspiration Marius Victorinus and on other aspects of late antique philosophy -- perhaps most important is his *Exercises Spirituels*, on the way in which philosophy was a way of life, not an academic discipline. Now it is a noteworthy problem that very few people have written about Augustine for whom he is anything except the Great Saint and Theologian: even if they hate him, that's the him they hate, so to speak. That's a real limitation on the view that it's possible to take of him. For a fairly off-the-wall negative approach, see Claude Lorin, *Pour Saint Augustin* (1989). For an approach that simply takes a different route and gets to some places that nobody else gets, Kenneth Burke's *Rhetoric of Religion* is excellent. For something completely different, try *Saint Augustine: Father of European and African Civilization* (1985, published by the Schiller Institute, with hortatory remarks by the volume's guiding spirit, Lyndon Larouche). Of course, Bob Dylan sang *I Dreamed I Saw Saint Augustine*, and Sting's recent *Ten Summoner's Tales* includes *Saint Augustine in Hell*.