AUDUBALD
AUGUSTINUS
210
Aa, which a heathen noble, whom he had bap-tised, had bestowed upon him. Here in a sort ofisland, situated amidst a vast marsh, scarcely tobe approached except in a boat, rose the cele-brated abbey known at a later period by thename of St. Bertin, from the youngest of the threemonks from Luxeuil. After thirty years of self-denying labours which recovered the heathentribes of Morinia from their idolatries, St. Omerdied about A.D. 667, bequeathing his name to theexisting town, which was built round the cemeteryoriginally intended for the monks of St. Bertin.'Acta SS. Ord. Boned . iii. 535-541. [G. F. M.]
AUDUBALD. See Eadbald, Baed. H. E.ii. 10, 11.
AUGENDUS, a Carthaginian (Cyp. Ep. 41),who joined against Cyprian in the faction ofFelicissimus. In Ep. 42 he is excommunicatedby bishop Caldonius, Cyprian’s commissaryduring his retirement, along with Repostus,Irene, Paulus, Sophronius, Soliassus. Possiblythe same Augendus (Cyp. Ep. 44) reappears as adeacon of Novatian’s sent to Carthage with thepresbyter Maximus, who becomes the Nova-tianist bishop in Carthage. In this case on thebreaking up of Felicissimus’ party, he wouldafter his excommunication, accompany Novatusto Rome and join Novatian, and return as No-vatus did (Cyp. Ep. 50) to push the Novatianistcause against Cyprian. [E. B. W.]
AUGULUS, AUGURIUS, or AUGUSTUS,M., an alleged martyr in Britain, bishop of Au-gusta or London, under Diocletian ( Martyrol .Feb. 6). [A. W. H.]
AUGUSTINUS, AURELIUS, ST., wasborn, Nov. 13, A.D. 354, at Tagaste (Tajelt), atown of Numidia. His parents were of humbleorigin. His father, Patricius, seems to have beena violent, vulgar man; but God had placed nearhim the most precious of all guardian angels, aChristian mother. No person in the AncientChurch is so well known as Monnica,® noneis more worthy of our affectionate veneration.Purified and subdued, yet preserving all hernatural ardour, Monnica became a blessing toher family; she won over to Christ her husband,first, and then her beloved son, the object of heranxiety and of her prayers. Everywhere herholy love pursued him, while she was more per-severing in her efforts to save him than he wasin his endeavours to ruin himself; as indefati-gable as Charity, like charity she kept on hopingagainst all hope. A long time elapsed beforeMonnica’s prayers were answered. Through ascruple which astonishes in the middle of the4th century, but which would have been per-fectly understood two hundred years before, shepostponed her son’s baptism, dreading lest shemight be too hasty in giving him the seal offaith, and foreseeing the frailty of that unsub-dued nature ( Confess. i. 11). Augustine tookaway with him from his home only a few vaguerecollections of Christianity; he says himselfthat he kept within his soul the echo of thename of Jesus Christ which he had so often heardhis mother pronounce; and, like those melodieswhich suddenly conjure up before us a whole
. * For the orthography of this name, see Bahr, Gesch.der Romisch. Literatur, Supplement, vol. ii. p. 225, andnote, p. 228.
phase of our past life, that sacred name, when*ever it resounded in his ear, recalled to him hismother’s piety and the God of his infancy.
Augustine’s sins are known. He yielded tothe violent passions of youth, and fell a victimto the temptations which assailed him on allsides ( Confess. ii. 3; iii. 1). He could not, how-ever, find satisfaction in the sad pleasures of de-bauchery ; he was stricken down by an illnesswhich could find its cure only at the foot of thecross. He endeavoured to find peace in literarypursuits, and threw himself into that directionwith intense energy. The longings of his soul,however, were not satisfied; nor was he a manwho would seek in rhetoric a compensation foithe loss of faith ( Confess . iv. 2). He was not likehis fellow countryman Apuleius, whose greatestpleasure was to arrange words in harmoniousorder, and who had no desire beyond that ofcalling forth applause. Augustine could not becomforted so easily; and, notwithstanding allthe success he obtained, he still felt sick atheart. He endeavoured to find in the theatreand amidst the games of the circus a kind of in-toxicating forgetfulness, but the only result wasthat his evil passions there received a fresh im-pulse. Even friendship proved to him an insuffi-cient remedy; it became the source of his bitterestsorrows, and the loss of a friend rendered lifeinsupportable (Confess, iv. 4).
The perusal of Cicero’s Hortensius purified anddeveloped in Augustine the love of truth, whilstit spoke to him in beautiful language of God andof immortality (Confess, iii. 4, viii. 7). And yet hewas not capable of appreciating truth in its noblestshape. He confesses himself that, at that periodof his life, the study of the Holy Scriptures pro-duced no impression upon him. The simplicityand occasional ruggedness of the style offendedhim. Before escaping from the fascinating charmsof error and the unruliness of passion, Augustinewas to wander still further. He lost his way intwo of the many false directions which attractedhis contemporaries : heresy and pantheism.
At an epoch of syncretism, heresy exercisedgreat influence; it favoured the popular ten-dencies of the age, and seemed to bring about areconciliation between the popular religions andChristianity. It sheltered, so to speak, the oldsubstratum of heathen ideas under the standardof faith. On the one hand, it gave satisfactionto the pride of metaphysicians, for instead of sal-vation through conversion and humiliation, itpreached salvation through silence. The oldEastern dualism was revived, sometimes underits grossest form, sometimes with extraordinarysubtlety, evil being uniformly stripped of itsmoral character, and represented as a metaphy-sical necessity. [Gnosticism.]
Manichaeism was one of the numerous mani-festations of that inveterate dualism, being a com-bination of Parsism with Christianity. Alreadythe old religious ideas of Zoroaster had long beenmodified by the teaching of the Gospel, and theBundehesh, a book added to the Zendavesta,bears the evident mark of that kind of compro-mise. From the same alliance proceeded Mani-chaeism which, however, allowed a greater shareto Christian ideas. In that singular system thekingdom of light and the kingdom of darknessare seen to stand out in bold contrast to one an-other. Between them a war has broken out,