The de vita christiana enjoys the distinction of a twofold presentation in Migne’s Patrologia Latina. It first appears in the appendix to the works of St. Augustine, since that is where it was found in the oldest manuscripts. In the foreword¹ to the text, the treatise is ascribed, on the authority of Gennadius, to Fastidius, a bishop of the Britons in the first half of the fifth century.² In the second printing of the treatise, appearing some twenty years later, the work is removed from the sheltering aegis of St. Augustine and assigned quite definitely to Fastidius.³

Interest in De...

The comparatively brief moral thesis, De mendacio, is the last work St. Augustine reviews in the first volume of his Retractationes. Since the second volume of this work deals with his publications as bishop, it is generally assumed that the De mendacio was written in 395, shortly before his consecration as Coadjutor Bishop of Hippo.

The dedication, ‘Ad Consentium,’ found in the Codex Monacensis, the best of the manuscripts used by Zycha in the preparation of his text for the Vienna Corpus, is evidently an error, due perhaps to the fact that another tract, the Contra mendacium, written by St....

St. Augustine’s treatise Contra mendacium forms a special detail in the history of a religious controversy which, in its full extent, lasted about 200 years. The treatise is confined to the examination of a problem in moral theology that arose in the course of an otherwise largely dogmatic dispute. The problem of whether lying is ever justifiable is one of perennial concern and general importance even apart from the circumstances that inspired this particular discussion of it.

The religious controversy in the progress of which Contra mendacium was one day to appear constitutes a chapter in the ecclesiastical history of...

In a letter¹ written in the last year of his life St. Augustine testified that he had written a work entitled De continentia; in his Indiculus, Possidius lists a sermon under the same title. The authenticity of the work was questioned by Erasmus,² but from the time of the Benedictine edition of the work in 1685, in which the style and matter of the treatise were recognized as Augustine’s, the doubt raised by Erasmus has not returned.

De continentia was written about 395, the year before Augustine became Bishop of Hippo and at the height of his refutation of the...

St. augustine’s minor moral treatise, De patientia, was probably preached as a sermon, as the phrase. ‘dearly beloved’ (Ch.3) indicates. It is usually assigned to the year 417, since it was quite clearly written before the condemnation of Pelagianism in 418.¹ Because is was not included in the Retractations, there has been some doubt as to its authorship, and Erasmus, in particular, hesitated to assign it to St. Augustine. On the grounds of its style and language, he put it in the same category with Continence, Faith in Things Unseen, and The Substance of Charity.

The Benedictine editors, however, refused...

Although erasmus and others questioned the authenticity of the treatise, The Excellence of Widowhood (De bono viduitatis), there is convincing evidence that St. Augustine is the author.¹ The fact that it is not mentioned in the Retractations is not a valid argument against its genuineness, for not all of his works are enumerated therein. Most probably, he regarded it as a letter that he did not intend to revise. It opens with the usual epistolary salutation and contains numerous direct addresses to Juliana, to whom it was written. Possidius lists it among the letters in his Indiculus under the title...

Saint augustine wrote the treatise, De opere monachorum, about 400,¹ at the request of Aurelius, Bishop of Carthage, in an attempt to settle a problem concerned with monastic discipline. Certain monks in Carthage, mindful of St. Paul’s injunction: ‘If any man will not work, neither let him eat,’² maintained themselves by their own labor. Other monks, however, wished to live on the alms of the faithful, finding support for their attitude in the words of our Lord: ‘Look at the birds of the air: they do not sow, or reap, or gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them.’³...

This sermon of St. Augustine, De utilitate jejunii, was not found in the codices extant at the time of the Benedictine collection of his works. According to their notation in the Migne edition,¹ the sermon was found only in the printed editions of the works. Exact information as to the time and circumstances of its delivery are lacking. The opening sentence, ‘De utilitate jejunii admonemur aliquid loqui; et Deus et tempus nos admonet,’ might point merely to a period or to a day of special fasting. The quotation, ‘Omnes in Adam moriuntur,’² and the subsequent lines dealing with the necessity...

The date of The Eight Questions of Dulcitius is established by Bardy as 422.¹ In the Retractations² Augustine comments on this work as follows: ‘The book which I called The Eight Questions of Dulcitius should not be mentioned among my books in this work, since it is composed of what was written by me before in other books. However, additional discussion will be found which we added, and the answer to one of these questions was not taken from any of my other works but was given as it occurred to me at the moment.’ Thus Augustine himself describes quite...