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Augustine and the Art of Gardening

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Carol Harrison
Carol Harrison*
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Extract

Any description of man’s ideal state tells us a lot about the culture, society, and character of its author. Early Christian writers, as one might expect, tended to turn to Scripture, to the authoritative account in the book of Genesis of God’s creation of man and woman and of their life in the garden of Eden, in order to define their conception of the ideal life. There they discovered what to us, and perhaps to them, seems a rather strange, alien portrait of the life of two celibate naturists, at ease in a luxuriant garden which provided for all their needs. By some obscure and generally unspecified means, the Church fathers thought Adam and Eve were to be the founder members and originators of a society which, on condition it obeyed one simple rule, would become an immortal society.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 37: The Use and Abuse of Time in Christian History , 2002 , pp. 13 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2002

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References

1 De Genesi ad litteram, IV. xiii.24-xvii.29. All references to Augustine’s works are to the Benedictine edition, which is reprinted in PL 32–47. The best English translation of the De Genesi ad litteram is by Taylor, J. H.: Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, 2 vols, Ancient Christian Writers, 41–2 (New York, 1982)Google Scholar.

2 De Genesi ad litteram, IV.xvii.29

3 Ibid., VIII.viii.15.

4 Ibid., VIII.x.22.

5 See Pieper, Josef, Leisure the Basis of Culture (London, 1952), pp. 30–48 Google Scholar.

6 De Genesi ad litteram, VIII.xi.18.

7 Ibid., VIII.ix.17-18. See the whole of book VIII for an extended discussion.

8 Ibid., VIII.ix.18.

9 Ibid., XI.xlii.59.

10 ibid., XI.xxxvii.50.

11 Ciuitas Dei, XIX.x, XXII.xxii, XIX.vi.

12 Guitas Dei, XIX.xvii.

13 The contents of this paragraph are discussed by Augustine, ibid., XIX.

14 Harmony or concordia in the family constituted the basis for harmony and unity in the city and in the state – De bono coniugali, iv.3, iv.4, vii.6.

15 De Genesi ad litteram, XI.xxxvii.50.

16 E.g. in Epistola, XXIV* (J. Divjak, CEuvres Je saint Augustin, 46B: Lettres 1*-29*, Bibliothèque Augustinienne [(Paris), 1987], pp. 382–7), he insists that free-born men should not be sold into slavery. He used the church chest, on occasion, to liberate slaves in bad households.

17 Ciuitas Dei, XIX.15.

18 Ibid.

19 Sermones, CLIX.5; Ciuitas Dei, XIX.15.

20 Civitas Dei, XIX.16. On ensuring that slaves are converted and baptized see Epistola, XCVIII.6.

21 Ciuitas Dei, XIX.14.

22 On Paradise, XI.50 (PL 14, col. 299), quoted by Clark, E. A., Women in the Early Church (Collegeville, MN, 1983), p. 33 Google Scholar. Tertullian, Cf., An Exhortation to Charity, xii Google Scholar (PL 2, col. 927).

23 De Genesi ad litteram, Xl.xxxvii.50.

24 Contra Fanstum, XXIV.2; De Genesi ad litteram, III.xxii.34; De trinitate, XII.iii.10.

25 Ciuitas Dei, XXII.17-18.

26 See Arbresmann, R., ‘The attitude of Saint Augustine toward labor’, in Neiman, D. and Schatkin, W., eds, The Heritage of the Early Church. Essays in Honor of Georges Florovsky (Rome, 1973). p. 254 Google Scholar nn.31-2.

27 De opere monachorum, XIV, XVI; see Arbresmann, ‘Attitude’, pp. 252–3. In XIV Augustine cites the example of the Patriarchs who were shepherds, the Greek philosophers who were shoemakers, and Joseph, who was a carpenter.

28 De bono viduitatis, XXI.26, quoted by Arbresmann, ‘Attitude’, p. 251.

29 Peter Brown, Authority and the Sacred (Cambridge, 1995).

30 See e.g., De praescriptione haereticorum, VII, in Tertullien: Traité de la prescription contre les hérétiques, ed. R. F. Refoulé and P. de Labriolle, SC, 46 (Paris, 1957), pp. 96–9 (‘nothing could be more foreign to the Christian than the State’), and De idololatria, ed. J. H. Waszink and J. C. M. van Winden, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, 1 (Leiden, New York, Copenhagen, and Cologne, 1987). But see Apologeticum, XXXII, XLII (PL 1, cols 447, 490–1) for an attitude which, in fact, comes very close to Augustine’s compromise with the world.

31 Cuitas Dei, XIX is the key text here. See esp. XIX.17.

32 Ibid., XIX.19. Augustine describes these ideas theoretically in De doctrina Christiana, I, in terms of uti and frui; use and enjoyment. They recur frequently throughout his works (especially in sermons).

33 Ciuitas Dei, XIX.26.

34 Ibid., XIX.17.

35 Ibid.

36 Outside the family, Augustine argues, man was originally created to exercise rule only over irrational creatures, the animals, not over men: ‘hence the first just men were set up as shepherds of flocks, rather than as kings of men’: ibid., XIX.15.

37 Ibid., XIX.6.

38 Epistulae, CLI.14, CLII.2, CLIII.19, CLV.vii.17, cited by Markus, R. A., Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of Saint Augustine (Cambridge, 1970), p. 100 Google Scholar.

39 See Ciuitas Dei, V.24-6 for Augustine’s description of the Christian emperors.

40 Markus, Saeculum, ch.6.

41 Epistulae, CLXXXV.19. Cf. Contra litteras Petiliani, II.xcii.210, II.xcvii.224; johannis euangelium tractatus, XI.14; Epistulae, LXXXXV.19.

42 Ibid., CXXXIV.3, cited by Markus, Saeculum, p. 148.

43 Ciuitas Dei, IV.6.

44 Ibid., III.14.

45 Contra Faustum, XXII.74.

46 Epistulae, CLXXXIX.6. Cf. ciuitas Dei, III.10, XIX.7, XXII.6; Contra Faustum, XXII.74; Quaestionum in Heptateuchum, VI. 10.

47 De libero arbitrio, I.v.II; Contra Faustum, XXII.70, 75; Ciuitas Dei, I.21, 26.

48 E.g. Sermones, CCCII; Epistulae, XLIV; Ciuitas Dei, 1.17, cited by J. Rist, Augustine (Cambridge, 1994), p. 232.

49 See Ambrose, De officiis, I.xxxv.175 (PL 16, cols 74–5); Epistulae, XX.22 (PL 16, cols 1000–1).

50 Epistulae, CCXX.3, LXXXIX.4-7, where he points out the similarities between the two vocations.

51 Ciuitas Dei, XIX.15.

52 Epistulae, CXXXVIII.14. Cf. ibid., CLXXIII.2.

53 Ibid., CCXXIX.2.

54 See the account of Ramsay, B., Ambrose (London, 1997), pp. 19–20 Google Scholar.

55 Vita, 4. He had established a lay community, called the servi dei, in his home town of Thagaste.

56 De opere monachomm, XXXVII; Epistulae, CXXIX.3; Enarrationes in Psalmos, XCVIII.X-xiv.3; Sermones, CCCXL.I, CCCII.17.

57 E.g. ibid., CCCII.17.

58 For Lepelley, C. (Les Cités de l’Afrique romaine au Bas-Empire, 2 vols [Paris, 1979]Google Scholar, 1: 398) this is evidence of the Church’s marginal role in civil life and of the limited nature of the Chrisrianization of the city structures in North Africa.

59 E.g. De opere monachorum, XXXVII: ‘I would much prefer to do some manual work every day at certain hours as is the custom in well-regulated monasteries and to have the remaining hours free for reading, prayer, or for the study of the Scriptures than to have to bear the most confusing perplexities of other men’s disputes involving worldly concerns which I have to decide or settle in my capacity of judge or arbitrator, respectively.’

60 De doctrina Christiana, II.xi.60.

61 See esp. ibid., II.xix.29-xlii.63, and Verheijen, L. M. J., ‘Le De Doctrina Christiana de saint Augustin: Un manuel d’herméneutique et d’expression chrétienne avec, en II.xix.29-lxii.63, une “charte fondamentale pour une culture chrétienne”’, Augustiniana, 24 (1974), pp. 10–20 Google Scholar.

62 See Guitas Dei, XXII for evidence of Augustine’s appreciation of the achievements of human culture.

63 De Genesi aduersus Mankhaeos, II.IV.5-V.6. Harrison, C., Revelation and Beauty in the Thought of Saint Augustine (Oxford, 1992), pp. 59–63 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 See e.g. Augustine’s reflections in De catechizandis rudibus.

65 See Harrison, Revelation and Beauty, ch.i, in reference to the early works where these ideas are primarily discussed.

66 E.g. Enarrationes in Psalmos, XXXII; Sermones, II.25, LXXX.23. See Markus, R. A., The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge, 1990), p. 118 Google Scholar, for further references and discussion.

67 See De Genesi ad litteram, IV.ix.16-xvii.29.

68 Confessiones, I.i.I.

69 See De uirginitate, which is more occupied with the problem of pride and the virtue of humility than with the nature of virginity as such. Cf. Enarrationes in Psalmos, XCIX.10.

70 See Augustine’s Regula.

71 For a discussion of the possible Messalian origins of this group see Arbresmann, ‘Attitude’, pp. 246–7.

72 De opere monachorum, XXII, XXXIII. Only those with duties in the church (e.g. preaching, catechizing, celebrating: ibid., IV, IX, XIX, XXIV), and the sick and infirm (ibid., XXII, XXV, XXXV) are exempt. Those from the upper classes, unaccustomed to manual work, who have already benefited the monastery by handing over all their possessions, should be shown due consideration and given work, such as administration, which they can manage (ibid., XXXIII). References are taken from Arbresmann, ‘Attitude’.

73 De opere monachorum, XIX, XXXIII, and Regula, V.2. See Madec, G., Petites études Augusttniennes (Paris, 1994), p. 13 Google Scholar: ‘Le communisme spirituel’.

74 The liberating aspect of love is the key to Augustine’s theology of grace and human freedom following the fall. See Harrison, C., ‘Delectatio Victrix: grace and freedom in Saint Augustine’, Studia patristica, 27 (1993), pp. 298–302 Google Scholar.

75 E.g. De uirginitate, II.2, XI. 11. Augustine distinguishes between virginitas carnis, virginitas in carne, virginitas corporis; and virginitas cordis, virginitas in corde, virginitas mentis.