of whom had a pagan background. My view is that this is one of the cases in the history of the Church
SERMON 196 63
NOTES
1. This is my estimate of the date, based on the preacher saying in section 4 that by God's grace it was a Christian city, with only two sorts of people in it, Christians and Jews; no pagans, and he doesn't even mention Donatists. I doubt if he could have called Hippo Regius a Christian city when he first became bishop in 396—and he certainly could not have passed over the Donatists in silence. Because he calls himself bishop in that last section, Kunzelmann and Fischer date the sermon "after 396." It is not that I disagree with them; it is just that I think they are carrying cautious prudence to extremes. And other authorities say that it was "probably" preached in Hippo. But since in this last section Augustine is appealing precisely to his authority as bishop, it is hard to see where else he can have been preaching, but in the city of which he was the bishop.
2. We have already found him calling Christ "the day." The text behind this attribution was probably Ps 118:24, This is the day which the Lord has made. As he speaks of the day dawning, he was probably preaching at the dawn Mass, or the Mass later in the day.
3. He makes the rough word-play we have met before—I think he got fonder of it the older he grew, no doubt because he found people remembered it—between in mente and in ventre.
4. Roman magistrates were accompanied, or rather preceded, by heralds, chosen no doubt for their lung power; they acted as a kind of public address system. So Christ the judge was preceded by his herald, John the Baptist.
5. See Lk 1:39-45.
6. Almost all translations say that Anna was eighty-four years old. But that is not, I think, what Luke says; he says that having lived with her husband for seven years from her girlhood (or virginity), she was a widow "up to" eighty-four years. If one assumes, conventionally, that she was married at the age of 14, this would make her 105 years old; indeed "well advanced in years," and the same age as the heroine Judith lived to (Jdt 16:22-23). Eighty-four, while a respectable age, is nothing unusual.
7. See Lk 2:36-38.
8. See Sir 3:18.
9. Nemo exorbitat.
10. See Dn 13. 11.1 think he means, cause the four gospels to be written.
12. The "occasional Christians," not usually to be seen in Church.
13. No mention of divisions among Christians, of the Donatists above all. It is this passage, together with all sorts of little points of style and manner, that convinces me this is a late sermon, after 420.
14. Ecclesiastical disapproval has, of course, never managed to suppress the rowdy celebration of New Year. For some details of what this entailed in those days, see Sermon 198. Perhaps the next sentence suggests one kind of activity, mimic court cases such as are held—or used to be—on ships crossing the equator; or could there have been something like modem beauty contests, for the title of Miss and Mr. Hippo Regius? Another interpretation is that Augustine was warning his congre¬ gation not to set their "private judgment" about the rightness and wrongness of the New Year junketing against the official judgment of the Church. But that doesn't quite fit the Latin, which doesn't say "People shouldn't make themselves judges," non se faciant judices, but "People shouldn't make judges for themselves, non sibi faciant judices. Also, this interpretation looks rather like a post-Reformation anachronism.
15. The Jews, clearly, were better at avoiding pagan syncretism than average Christians, most of whom had a pagan background. My view is that this is one of the cases in the history of the Church in which vox populi, rather than vox episcoporum eventually proved to be the vox Dei.
16. A summer solstice ritual, no doubt. I believe in Ireland the custom long survived of leaping over bonfires at midsummer on the eve of John the Baptist's day—purification by fire instead of by sea water.