Spending Easter with Augustine, Part 2

The end of Book One and beginning of Book Two in the oldest surviving manuscript of the Confessions. It is housed in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale (Central National Library) in Rome, which gives the dating of the MS as 551-600. This will be the cover image of my forthcoming edited volume, Augustine’s Confessions: A Critical Guide, from Cambridge University Press.

In my second session on the Confessions (https://player.vimeo.com/video/934506936?h=585cc5a4e4) I talked about language, the theft of the pears, sin and motivation generally, and the lust of the flesh and lust of the eyes in particular. It went well—once again there were great questions, and this time I had a much better sense of what I could cover in the time we had without undue haste. The snickerdoodles I baked were also well-received.

I do watch these things back, which can be helpful in refining what I do for the next one, though this time what I notice most is how oversized my suit coat is. I have only one suit that’s been altered to fit the new, leaner me, and I wore that for the first session. Three more suits are with the tailor now; the one I’m wearing in this video will be part of the next batch I get taken in.

At one point in the presentation I responded to an observation—jokingly, I must point out—by saying “You just gave Augustine a stroke.” Alas, so much of what I’ve written just now would give Augustine a stroke. Cookies? For no reason but to give pleasure to people? How very lust-of-the-flesh of me. “You have taught me that I should take food and drink in the same way that I take medicine,” Augustine says in Confessions 10.31.44. Medicine is for health and wholeness, not for pleasure, and I am confident that none of us was suffering from a snickerdoodle deficit.

I’ve always balked at this remark. Who actually taught you—I’m speaking to Augustine here, in the spirit of carrying on a conversation with an unseen partner that so pervades the Confessions—who actually taught you that food and drink should be taken like medicine? Not Jesus, whose first miracle was the provision of vast quantities of notably excellent wine. Not Scripture, which so often uses images of feasting and revelry for what is good not only in this life but in the life of the world to come. Have you forgotten your favorite parable? The Prodigal Son is welcomed home by his loving father with a blowout barbecue, not a bowl of chicken noodle soup and a vitamin supplement.

That’s an external critique. There’s an internal critique, however—or perhaps more of an internal remedy—that I noticed only while writing this post, and it expands the notion of medicine in a most appealing way. Within the Confessions itself, Augustine often associates medicine with redemption, even specifically with Christ. Consider:

Hear me through the Medicine for our wounds, who hung upon the tree and now is seated at your right hand and intercedes for us. (9.13.35)

My hope in him is strong, and rightly so, for you will heal all my infirmities through him who sits at your right hand and intercedes with you for us. Otherwise I would be in despair, for many and great are my infirmities, many and great; but your medicine is yet more abundant. We could have thought that your Word is far from any fellowship with human beings and so have fallen into despair, had he not become flesh and dwelt among us. (10.43.69)

Even for Augustine, there is more to medicine than mere bitterness (1.14.23) and usefulness.

There’s probably a paper in that.

My wardrobe worries would also give Augustine a stroke, and for more than one reason. Obviously I shouldn’t pay attention to how I look, and I certainly shouldn’t be spending money in the service of vanity for the sake of more pleasingly fitting clothes—which, to make matters worse, fit badly only because I’ve been devoting myself to getting leaner and bigger, which is surely just more vanity at work. So Augustine would say. Wardrobe in general is a sticking point: there’s also the problem of sleeveless shirts, which (at my trainer’s suggestion) I’ve taken to wearing when I work out, so that I can be encouraged by the visible improvement. Which I am, frankly. I’ve even taken to wearing them when I’m out walking Tess, so that I can get some sun on my arms, which of course only matters for the way I look when I’m wearing a sleeveless shirt: a vicious circle of vanity, you might think.

When I was an unathletic kid, I was fond of 1 Timothy 4:8a, which in the Authorized Version reads, “Bodily exercise profiteth little.” See, jocks: even St Paul is dismissive of your pursuits. Now that I’m sojourning in the outer precincts of Gym Bro Land, however, I prefer the more accurate translation of the RSV: “Bodily training is of some value.” (This is also what the Vulgate says: corporalis exercitatio ad modicum utilis est.) I think Augustine could be on board with the fact that my carefully calibrated diet and training routine have greatly improved my blood work; I feel quite certain, though, that he would not be a fan of my delight in finally having arms with some shape to them.

One last thing. Bonhams is having one of its twice-yearly Scottish Art sales. The very fact that I’m on their email list constitutes a standing date with the three Cs: covetousness, concupiscence, and cupidity. Maybe I’ll buy some very minor work as a birthday present to myself. The auction happens just after I turn 57: or, as Augustine might have put it in the Confessions if he hadn’t still been in his mid-40s, “early in the fifty-eighth year of my flesh.”

James McIntosh Patrick, “A stream in summer, the Fife hills in the distance”

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