30. Ep. 50 (CCL 31:214); trans. Parsons, FOTC 18:237.
The Bishop
Christians. The town council ignored the bloodshed and wrote Augustine demanding that the Christian community pay damages. Augustine, who was generally diplomatic even to hostile correspondents, wrote a decidedly sarcastic reply. This is the complete text of Letter 50, to the city elders of Sufes:
The infamous crime and unspeakable cruelty of your savagery shakes the earth and strikes the heavens, when blood flows and murder cries aloud in your streets and shrines. By you Roman law is buried, respect for upright judges is trampled underfoot; and among you there is surely neither respect nor fear for the emperors. The innocent blood of sixty brothers has been shed among you, and if anyone killed more, he enjoyed praise and held high position in your government. Let us come, now, to the chief cause. If you say Hercules is your god, we will restore him. There is bronze, there is no lack of stone, there are several kinds of marble, and a supply of artisans is at hand. So then your god is carved carefully, he is smoothed off, and adorned. We will add red clay to paint him red so that your prayers may have the true ring of sacredness.29 For if you say that Hercules is your god, we can take up a collection from everybody and buy you a god from the stone-cutter. You, on the other hand, need to give us back the lives which your fierce hand wrested from us, and your Hercules will be restored to you exactly as the lives of so many are given back by you.30
Staying an Execution
In 412, two Donatists brutally attacked two Catholic clergy, killing one, mutilating the other. Such violence was not uncommon (see Chapter 7). The following letter is relevant here because it illustrates what Augustine saw as his required episcopal duty vis-à-vis civil authorities. He wrote to an imperial judge named Apringius and asked him to commute the death sentence against the convicted Donatists. Note his passing mention of judicial torture, something we find appalling; but such practice was a routine element of the Roman legal system. From Letter 134, to Apringius:
(1) In exercising the power which God has given you, a human being over other human beings, I am sure you call to mind the divine judgment at which judges, too, will have to give an account of their judgments. I know, of course, down the statue. The law was put into effect inconsistently and may have been widely resisted in some locales, as Augustine indicates here.
29. "Red clay": Ancient statuary was usually painted. Red was associated with very ancient statuary, and so new statues were painted red to give them the allure of antiquity. Augustine is being ironic, associating red paint with the bloody results of pagan religion.
30. Ep. 50 (CCL 31:214); trans. Parsons, FOTC 18:237.
that you are steeped in the Christian faith, and this gives me greater confidence in addressing your Excellency not only with a request, but even with a warning, because of the Lord, in whose heavenly household you are enrolled along with us, in whom we have the same hope of eternal life, and to whom we pray for you during the holy Mysteries. Therefore, noble lord, deservedly exalted and distinguished son, I ask first of all that I may not seem unmannerly in thus intruding upon your field of action with the anxiety which I must needs feel deeply for the Church entrusted to me, whose interests I am bound to serve, and which I desire to benefit rather than to rule. Secondly, I beg that you do not refuse to hear nor delay to agree to what I urge or request.
(2) An indictment, dispatched in advance through the vigilance of the guardians of public order, has brought certain Circumcellions31 and Donatists under the authority of the courts and the law. These were examined by your brother, my son Marcellinus,32 a distinguished man and estimable tribune and legate, and without the use of hooks or fire, but solely under the constraint of the rod, they confessed that they had committed revolting crimes against my brothers and fellow presbyters, as, for example, that they had waylaid one of these and killed him, and that they had abducted another from his house and mutilated him by putting out his eye and cutting off his finger. When I heard that they had confessed to these crimes, I had not the slightest doubt that they would be subject to capital punishment at your hands. So I have made haste to write this letter to your Nobility, begging and praying you, by the mercy of Christ, as we rejoice in your great and certain happiness, not to allow similar tortures to be inflicted on them, although, to be sure, the law cannot punish them by stoning or by cutting off a finger or plucking out an eye, acts which their cruelty made possible for them. Therefore, I am at ease about the men who have confessed, that they will not suffer reciprocal treatment, but what I fear is that either they or the others who have been convicted of murder may be sentenced according to the full weight of your authority. As a bishop I warn a Christian, and as a Christian I appeal to a judge, not to let this happen.
(3) It is of you that the Apostle spoke, as we read it, that you "do not bear the sword in vain," and that you be "God's ministers, avengers against those who do evil" (Rom 13:4). But ruling a province is different from rul-
31. "Circumcellions": Augustine portrays them as the violent wing of the Donatist party; for a broader discussion of this, see Chapter 7.
32. "My son Marcellinus": Flavius Marcellinus (d. 413) was the imperial commissioner sent to North Africa to resolve the bitter, century-long schism between Catholics and Donatists (see Chapter 7). Marcellinus decided in favor of the Catholics, and he and Augustine became close friends. Augustine ended up dedicating City of God to him (see Chapter 9). Marcellinus was also instrumental in drawing Augustine into the Pelagian controversy (see Chapter 10). Marcellinus and his brother Apringius would be summarily executed in 413, innocent victims, it seems, of a bloody purge.
ing a Church. The former must be governed by instilling fear; the latter is to be made lovable by the use of mildness. If I were making my pleas to a non Christian judge, I should deal differently with him, but even so I should not fail to present the case of the Church and, as far as he would allow, I should insist that the sufferings of the servants of God, which ought to serve as a pattern of patience, should not be sullied with the blood of their enemies. If, however, he would not agree to this, I should suspect that his opposition came from a hostile source. But now, since the matter is being brought before you, I follow another method, another argument. We see in you a governor of exalted power, but we also recognize you as a son with a Christian idea of duty. Leaving out of consideration your exalted position and your faith, I am treating a matter of common interest with you; you can act in it as I cannot; consult with us about it and lend us a helping hand.
(4) As a result of prudent action, the enemies of the Church have confessed the revolting crimes that they have committed against Catholic clerics, and they have incriminated themselves by their own words, whereas they usually ensnare inexperienced souls with their false and seductive talk, boasting of the persecution that they claim to suffer. The court records should be read in order to heal the souls that they have envenomed with their deadly enticement. Surely it would not please you that we should fear to read to the end of these records, if they should include the bloodthirsty punishment of these culprits, supposing we laid aside our conscientious fear that those who have suffered should seem to have rendered evil for evil. Therefore, if there were no other punishment decreed for curbing the wickedness of desperate men, extreme necessity might require that such men be put to death, although, as far as we are concerned, if no lesser punishment were possible for them, we should prefer to let them go free, rather than avenge the martyrdom of our brothers by shedding their blood. But now that there is another possible punishment by which the mildness of the Church can be made evident, and the violent excess of savage men be restrained, why do you not commute your sentence to a more prudent and more lenient one, as judges have the liberty of doing even in non-ecclesiastical cases? Share, then, our fear of the judgment of God the Father, and show forth the mildness of our Mother Church. For when you act, the Church acts, for whose sake and as whose son you act. Strive to outdo the wicked in goodness. By a monstrous crime they tore limbs from a living body; you can, by a work of mercy, make them apply to some useful work the wholly intact limbs that they exercised in their unspeakable deeds. They did not spare the servants of God who were preaching repentance to them. Spare them now that you have arrested, summoned, and convicted them. They shed Christian blood with impious sword. Withhold,