Tractates on the Gospel of John
INTRODUCTION
Tractate 27 was delivered on an August 10 in Hippo, the year 414 seems the best date; this is the only sermon in the group for which it can be unquestionably demonstrated that Augustine was in Hippo.
(48) S. Poque^^ suggests a very precise dating for a group of thirteen sermons, that is, En in Ps 95 and 1 27 to 133 and Tractates 7 to 12, intercalated as Le Landais had shown them to be. For En in Ps 12 J she proposes that the Felix Martyr honored therein is not Felix of Nola, as La Bonnardiere and Le Landais had held, but one of the two martyrs of Abitinae whose feasts were celebrated on February 12 and 13. From liturgical references in Tractates 10, 11, and 12 she argues for the first week of Lent for these three sermons. Her conclusion is that the thirteen sermons in this group were given between February
13 and March 5 or 9 in 407.
The Term "Tractate"
(49) The term "Tractate" {tractatus) in Latin Christian writings was a technical designation for a specific type of sermon, one which combined scriptural exegesis, preaching, spiritual commentary, and theological reflection, and which was intended to be delivered by the bishop to his congregation.^" In the strictest sense this is the kind of sermon properly called a homily since it is generally brief and given as part of a liturgy.^' As a literary type of sermon, in its more general sense, this "Tractate" form arose in a gradual development from the basic secular meaning of tractatvs, any oral or written inves-
89. S. Poque, "Trois semaines de predication a Hippone en fevrier-mars 407," RAug7(i97i) 169-187. 90. See Agaesse, 15-16; G. Bardy, "Tractare, Tractatus," RSR 33 (1946) 211-235; Berrouard, Homelies I-XVI, 25-29; and G. Doyle, "Augustine's Sermonic Method," The Westminster Theological Journal 39 (1977) 214-215. 91. En In Ps 118: prooemium: . . . ad pertractationem eius accedo . . . Statui autem per sermones id agere, qui proferantur in populis, quas Graeci homilias vocant, "... I approach the pertractatio of it . . . However I decided to treat it through the kind of sermons which are delivered amidst the people, which the Greeks call homilies." (CCL 40.1665)