because roughly half the square, bisected on its diagonal. The triangle of any number can be ascer¬
318 SAINT A UG USTINE - SERMONS
NOTES
1. All are agreed upon this being roughly the date of the sermon; Kunzelmann makes it very precisely 19 April 412. Whether that was the Friday after Easter that year, I do not know. If it was, then presumably he is right; it is unlikely to have been so again in the three or four years before and after that date.
2. A nice little introduction to a sermon whose content most of them must have known almost by heart. Compare Sermons 248-252.
3. See Jn 21:1-14. 4. See Lk 5:4-11.
5. An incoherent clause in the Latin: si haereses et schismata non dividerentur. One expects non dividerent in the active voice—if heresies and schisms did not divide them. But then he makes (presumably) the Christians the subject of the passive non dividerentur. One could, at a pinch, regard haereses et schismata as accusatives of respect; which in effect I have done in my translation.
6. See Eph 2:14-17; Mk 12:10.
7. Now he is really mixing his symbolisms! There was nothing sinister, "left-handed," about Christ making of the two peoples, Jews and Gentiles, one; nothing to detract from unity in their having been two before they were united. The corresponding point, in any case, in the second story is that there was only one boat, representing unity.
He goes on, of course, in the next few sentences to elaborate on the meaning of right and left. His left-handed translator simply wishes to enter a mild protest in the name of Left-handers Lib. At least, in English, we keep the Latin for the pejorative overtones of lefthandedness; and so are not constantly bugged by the thought of the left (which we drive on, anyway) being sinister.
8. "Peace," like "unity," being one of his names for the Catholic Church.
9. We would say "millions." But thousands was the biggest round number in the Latin language of number. Greek went up to ten thousand, myriads.
10.1 have emended the text of this last clause slightly, especially the punctuation. As it stands, it runs, qui tenent, in memoriam, quod audierunt, me commemorante firmentur, which literally translated is: "let those who retain, into memory, what they have heard, me reminding be con¬ firmed"; rearrange as you please. I simply emend in memoriam to in memoria, and delete all the commas but one, reading: qui tenent in memoria quod audierunt, me commemorante firmentur.
11. In the rite of confirmation, presumably.
12. See Mt 3:15.
13. Augustine has recognized in 153 what is known^s the "triangle" of 17—triangle, I imagine, because roughly half the square, bisected on its diagonal. The triangle of any number can be ascer¬ tained by this formula: x2 + x = triangle of x
I understand it is mathematically very uninteresting. But in Augustine's symbolic arithmetic it was very interesting indeed. And to support him in this particular exegesis, and lend weight to the idea that it may well be true to the mind of the evangelist, Austin Farrer, in his book on the Apoca¬ lypse A Rebirth of Images, suggests convincingly that the river of life, Rev 21:1, seen issuing from the throne of God, should be envisaged as starting from the top comer of the four-square heavenly
SERMON 229M 319
Jerusalem (thought of as diamond shaped, and therefore standing on its point), and flowing along its diagonal. Now the city is 12 square; and the diagonal, or hypotenuse, of 12 is, as near as makes no difference, 17.