41. Vita 24 (Geerlings, 70–74); trans. Muller and Deferrari, FOTC 15:101–3. (continued)
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.
The Bishop 107 dating around 402, Augustine deals with a touchy dispute. Two senior colleagues both laid claim to the primacy, and one of them, Victorinus, formally summoned a regional council. Augustine did not want to be caught in the crossfire and diplomatically bowed out of coming. He noted subtle irregularities in the names and order of addressees (likely evidence of behind-the-scenes power plays). Such squabbling caused dangerous tensions among Catholics who needed to act as a united front against their formidable Donatist rivals. Here he counsels Victorinus to find a peaceful solution. From Letter 59:
(1) The synodal summons reached me on November 9, at the end of the day, and it found me altogether unprepared, so that I was not able to go. But whether it disturbed me because of my inexperience, or whether I was disturbed with good reason, it is for your Holiness and Dignity to decide. I read in the same summons that it had been addressed even to the Mauretanias, although we know that those provinces have their own primates. And if any of them were summoned to a council held in Numidia, then it was certainly proper to put in the summons the names of other Maurish bishops who have precedence there, and I was much surprised at not finding them there. In the second place, even the notice to the Numidians was in so mixed and disorderly an arrangement that I found my name in the third place, and I know how much more recently I became bishop than many others. This is unjust to others and unfair to me. Moreover, our venerable brother and colleague, Xanthippius of Tago, says that the primacy belongs to him, that he is recognized as such by many, and he sends out letters in this capacity. No doubt, this mistake can easily be recognized and settled between your Holinesses; still, his name should not have been passed over in the summons which your Reverence sent out. I should have been much surprised if he had been listed halfway down and not at the head of the list, but it is much more surprising that no mention is made of him at all, since he had the best claim to come to the council, so that the question of his rank as primate might be treated first of all before the bishops of all the Numidian churches.
(2) For these reasons I would have hesitated to come, fearing that the summons in which such mistakes occur might have been forged, although the emergencies of the time and other pressing necessities would doubly prevent me. Consequently, I ask your Beatitude to pardon me and to deign to insist first of all on harmonious agreement between your Holiness and the aged Xanthippius, on the question of which one of you should summon a council; or at least—which I think would be better—that you both convoke your colleagues, especially those that are near in age in the episcopacy, who would easily distinguish which one of you speaks the truth. Let the controversy be settled among the few of you, and when the mistake is rectified, let the younger ones be summoned by the others, since they neither can nor ought