Greek eleos, from the Hebrew hesed, which like the Latin pietas is the essential family virtue,
Book XII 499
Gradations in things seen by intellectual vision
31. 59. So too in that third category of things seen by intellectual vision, there are some that are seen in the soul itself, like the virtues, all with their contrary vices; either virtues that are going to abide, like loving kindness,54 or ones that are useful for this life and will not be needed hereafter, like faith by which we believe what we cannot yet see, or hope by which we look forward with patience to things to come, or patience itself by which we put up with all adversity until we reach the destination we desire. These and similar virtues, to be sure, are now very necessary for carrying on with our earthly pilgrimage, but will not be needed in that life for the attainment ofwhich they are so necessary. Yet it is only intellectually that they can be seen; they are not, after all, bodies nor do they have bodily images.
But the light itself is something else, the light by which the soul is enlightened in order truly to understand and observe all things either in itself or in this light. For this light is now God himself, while the soul is a creature, even though a rational and intelligent one made to his image. So when it strives to gaze upon that light, it blinks and shivers in its weakness, and quite simply lacks the power to do so. Yet that light is what enables it to understand whatever is within the range of its power. When therefore it is snatched up there, and being withdrawn from the senses of the flesh is set more firmly in the presence of that vision, not spatially but in its own kind of way, it also sees above itself the one by whose aid it also is enabled to see whatever it can see in itselfby intellectual understanding.
Where does the soul go when it leaves the body? The reality ofhell —and heaven
32. 60. You may ask, though, what happens to the soul when it quits the body: is it carried away to some bodily places, or to non-bodily ones like bodily places, or on the contrary not even to these but to that which surpasses both bodies and bodily likenesses? Then l reply at once that to bodily places it is either not carried at all unless together with a body of some sort, or at any rate is not carried by local motion. So now let him demonstrate who can that it has some sort of body when it quits this body; l for my part think not.
To spiritual places on the other hand it is carried away according to its merits, or else to places of punishment resembling bodies, such as have often been exhibited to people who have been carried away from the body's senses and have lain there as if they were dead. They have seen the pains of hell since they
54. Pietas; here fairly clearly meaning the same as caritas; both coming ultimately, through the Greek eleos, from the Hebrew hesed, which like the Latin pietas is the essential family virtue, together with emeth. faithfulness or trustworthiness. 1 Cor 13 is clearly at the back of Augustine's mind in this passage.