Resultados25 letters/passages
augustine_hippo · c. 420 · score 0.02
Augustine to Pope Celestine, greetings. I write with a heavy heart about a serious matter involving Antoninus, formerly the bishop of Fussala. This is a situation I feel personally responsible for, and I want to lay the facts before you honestly. When the town of Fussala needed a bishop, I recommended a young man named …
augustine_hippo · c. 393 · score 0.02
… le world: a schism had been made by wicked men, condemned by ecclesiastical and imperial judgment, and was sustained by nothing but obstinate fury. If, however, anyone says that the Council of Seventy was legitimate, let him first show that Caecilianus was present or lawfully summoned. But he was neither present nor su …
augustine_hippo · c. 422 · score 0.02
Farewell, dear friend. I pray for you daily. [Context: Count Boniface was the Roman military governor of Africa and one of the most powerful men in the Western Empire. Augustine had known him for years and had once hoped he would enter the religious life. Instead, Boniface became entangled in the deadly politics of the …
augustine_hippo · c. 392 · score 0.02
Augustine to Eusebius, my excellent lord and brother, greetings. I did not impose on you — by nagging or pleading against your reluctance — the duty of arbitrating between bishops, as you call it. Even if I had wanted to, I could easily have shown how qualified you are to judge between us in a case so clear and simple. …
augustine_hippo · c. 406 · score 0.02
Augustine to Albina, Pinianus, and Melania, greetings in the Lord. I was overjoyed to receive your letter, dearest friends in Christ. The news of your continued devotion — your generosity to the poor, your care for the churches, your commitment to the ascetic life you have chosen together — fills me with gratitude and …
augustine_hippo · c. 396 · score 0.02
If you knew the circumstances bearing on him as well as you know your own, the delay would neither surprise nor grieve you. The same is true of my own situation — I ask you to take my word for it, as you cannot see how I am occupied. There are other bishops older than I am, more deserving of authority and closer to you …
augustine_hippo · c. 392 · score 0.01
Augustine to Profuturus, greetings. I am writing to you about a matter that weighs on me constantly — the controversy over the Priscillianists and the way in which certain bishops have handled it. You know, I think, how deeply the situation disturbs me. Not because I have any sympathy for Priscillian's errors — they ar …
augustine_hippo · c. 420 · score 0.01
Augustine to the community of religious women at Hippo, greetings. Since the troubles I addressed in my recent letter have made it clear that a written rule is needed — one that can be read, studied, and referred to when disputes arise — I set down here the principles by which your community should be governed. The fir …
augustine_hippo · c. 428 · score 0.01
Let Your Sincerity also consider this: even if the full and complete power over her marriage were granted to me, and even if she herself, already mature and willing to marry, entrusted herself to be given to whomever I chose, with God as judge—I say this, and I say it truly, that this match pleases me, yet before God a …
augustine_hippo · c. 396 · score 0.01
Letter 64 — To Quintianus, Presbyter Under Suspension (A.D. 401) To my lord Quintianus, my most beloved brother and fellow-priest — Augustine sends greetings in the Lord. We do not turn away from bodies that lack physical beauty — all the more so since our souls are not yet as beautiful as we hope they will one day be, …
augustine_hippo · c. 422 · score 0.01
Augustine to Boniface, greetings. I hear disturbing reports about you, my friend, and I am compelled to write. When I first knew you, you were a man on fire for Christ. You served as a military commander with honor, defended the innocent, and lived with a discipline that put many monks to shame. You even considered lea …
augustine_hippo · c. 392 · score 0.01
Would that he pursued this question in such a way that he did not so openly blaspheme the Church spread throughout the whole world, except for the Romans and still a few others in the West. For who can endure that, concerning all the Eastern peoples and many Western Christian peoples as well, concerning so many servant …
augustine_hippo · c. 393 · score 0.01
So dear is this world to people, and so cheap have they become to themselves! This letter, then, will be my defense as a witness in the judgment of God, who knows with what spirit I have acted, and who said: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God." Now, as you may recall, when we were in …
augustine_hippo · c. 398 · score 0.01
When you conquer, I too shall conquer, if I come to understand my error; and conversely, when I conquer, you prevail, for parents store up treasure for children, not children for parents. Let us then respond to everything, and — if Christ commands — resolve these many questions in brief discourse. You say you received …
augustine_hippo · c. 393 · score 0.01
Publicola to my beloved and venerable Father Augustine, greetings. I write to you, Father, burdened with questions that may seem trivial to a man of your learning but that weigh on me because I do not know the answers and cannot find peace until I do. Here is my first question. When our people travel through regions wh …
augustine_hippo · c. 398 · score 0.01
I received three letters at once — or rather three short treatises — from your Dignity through the deacon Cyprian, containing what you call various questions but what I perceive to be criticisms of my works. If I wished to respond to everything, a book-length volume would be needed. Still, I shall try not to exceed the …
augustine_hippo · c. 398 · score 0.01
Jerome to Augustine, greetings. I have received — at last, and by a roundabout route — letters that are said to be from you. I say "said to be" because they reached me not through any messenger you sent but through copies that were circulating in Rome and elsewhere before I ever saw them myself. Imagine my surprise at …
augustine_hippo · c. 392 · score 0.01
Last year I sent a letter to your Dignity through our brother Asterius the subdeacon [a minor cleric below the rank of deacon], fulfilling my ready duty of greeting, which I trust was delivered to you. Now also, through my holy brother Praesidius the deacon, I entreat you first to remember me, and then to regard the be …
augustine_hippo · c. 392 · score 0.01
You say — and I appreciate the soundness of your judgment — that if Proculeianus had known about the young man beating his mother, he would have barred him from communion. I answer in a single sentence: he knows now. Let him bar him now. Let me mention another matter. A man named Primus, formerly a subdeacon at the chu …
augustine_hippo · c. 396 · score 0.01
That was not the case. They left of their own accord; they deserted us of their own accord, in spite of all my efforts to dissuade them out of concern for their own wellbeing. As for Donatus: since he has now been ordained before any decision was reached in Council about his case, I leave the matter to your wisdom — pe …
augustine_hippo · c. 396 · score 0.01
Letter 60 — To Aurelius of Carthage: Bad Monks Do Not Make Good Clergy (A.D. 401) To Father Aurelius, my most blessed lord and brother in the priesthood, most sincerely beloved — Augustine sends greetings in the Lord. I have received no letter from your Holiness since we parted, but I have now read your Grace's letter …
augustine_hippo · c. 392 · score 0.01
And I myself, turning this saying over in my mind again and again, have always held it as though it were a heavenly oracle. For I have often found, with much grief, that many weak persons are disturbed by the contentious obstinacy or the superstitious fear of certain brethren who raise such questions that nothing but a …
augustine_hippo · c. 394 · score 0.01
Augustine to Eudoxius and the brothers with him, greetings. I write to you not as a bishop issuing commands but as a brother offering encouragement — because the life you have chosen, the monastic life, deserves all the encouragement a fellow servant of Christ can give. You have withdrawn from the world's noise. You ha …
augustine_hippo · c. 395 · score 0.01
Augustine to Generosus, greetings. You have asked me for a clear account of why we — the Catholic communion — believe that ours is the true Church and that the Donatists are in schism. I will give you the clearest account I can, and I will try to do it without rancor, because the truth does not need anger to defend it. …
augustine_hippo · c. 393 · score 0.01
The case was examined, judged, and completed. Peace was offered, but pride refused it. Now regarding the violence that the Donatists inflicted through the Circumcellions — those roving bands who, under the pretense of religion, committed every sort of outrage — they attacked Catholic churches, they beat our clergy, the …