41. Vita 24 (Geerlings, 70–74); trans. Muller and Deferrari, FOTC 15:101–3.
large number of needy he ordered the holy vessels to be broken and melted down for distribution among the poor.41
The Hazards of Bequests
Possidius mentions that Augustine occasionally turned down bequests. Here is an instance. In a late sermon, given in the wake of a financial scandal involving one of his clergy, he offers a public accounting of financial matters and explains why he turned down a bequest from a local shipping magnate. From Sermon 355: (5) I did not want to accept the bequest from Boniface (also known as Fatus). It was not a matter of generosity, but of fear. I did not want the Church of Christ to be in the shipping business. There are a lot of people who earn a lot from ships. If, however, there is just one accident, if a ship goes down and is wrecked, are we going to hand over the crew to torturers? After all, there would be an inquest inquiring why the ship sank, and those men who just escaped drowning in the waves would now be tortured by a judge. But would we hand them over? It's not right for the Church to agree to that. How, therefore, would this enormous financial burden be paid off? Where would it get paid off from? It's not right for us to have a special reserve fund. It is not for bishops to set aside gold and then walk away from the beggar's hand. Every day so many are asking for help, so many groaning, so many needy pleading that we have to leave many, many sad people behind because we do not have enough to give to all of them. Yet should we be required to set up a special fund to deal with shipwrecks? Therefore, I made this decision to avoid problems like this. No one should praise it, but no one should gripe either.42
Augustine as a Numidian Bishop
Augustine spent lots of time in meetings with fellow bishops. The conciliar tradition was exceptionally vibrant in the North African church. The senior bishop in each province was known as the primate. Aurelius, as bishop of Carthage, automatically held the primacy in the province of Africa Proconsularis, but in the province of Numidia, where Augustine worked, the primacy rotated from see to see, to whoever was the senior bishop. Primates had certain carefully guarded privileges, such as the right to preside over ordinations of the province's new bishops and the right to summon province-wide councils. In a letter,
41. Vita 24 (Geerlings, 70–74); trans. Muller and Deferrari, FOTC 15:101–3. 42. S. 355.5 (PL 39:1572); my trans.