PATRISTICS, LITERATURE,

AND HISTORIES OFTHE BOOK

MARK VESSEY
Vancouver

LA PATRISTIQUE, CEST AUTRE CHOSE:

ANDR MANDOUZE, PETER BROWN
AND THE AVOCATIONS OFPATRISTICS
AS APHILOLOGICAL SCIENCE

Ask your fathers and they will show you, your elders and they
will tell you (Deut.32,7).With this line from asong ofMoses,
acertain Vincentius, pen-name Peregrinus, writing from an
island on the Gallo-Roman riviera, launched the first methodological essay in patristics avant la lettre, awork later known
as the Commonitorium and nowadays remembered chiefly for its
authors beguilingly uncontroversial definition oforthodoxy
as that which has been believed everywhere, at all times, by
all persons.1 Composing his treatise under the double impact
ofthe complete works ofAugustine (d.430) and the acts ofthe
first Council ofEphesus (431), in amilieu in which the routines
ofmonastic conference or collatio were being skilfully blended
with those ofwritten discourse, Vincent was among the earliest
thinkers to project aplenary text ofthe Christian Fathers,
understanding the latter to be approved teachers providentially
spread throughout the Church in time and space (in ecclesia
dei divinitus per tempora et loca dispensatos), whose teachings
had been, or would be, transmitted in writing to persons living
in other places and times.2
1
Vinc. Lirin., Comm.1,1 ed.R.Demeulenaire, CCSL 64, p.147:
Dicente scriptura et monente: Interroga patres tuos et dicent tibi, seniores et
adnuntianbunt tibi [...]; 2,5, p.149: In ipsa item catholica ecclesia magnopere
curandum est, ut id teneamus quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus
creditum est.
2 Vinc.Lirin., Comm.38,10(CCSL 64, p.188); H.J.Sieben, Die Konzilsidee der Alten Kirche, Paderborn,1970, p.149-170 (Der Konzilsbegriff des
Vincenz vonLerin).

10.1484/J.BAIEP.5.107530

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Vincent drafted his Commonitorium on the island ofLerinum

(Lrins) in 434.Meanwhile, on the other side ofthe Mediterranean, in Hippo Regius, the man who had lately come to play
Tiro to Augustines Cicero, Possidius ofCalama, was wrapping
up his biography ofthe most prolific ofLatin-writing Fathers
with afew well-chosen tropes oforality, insisting for example
that Augustine had always been more than just an antitype ofthe
evangelists scribe instructed unto the kingdom ofheaven,
which bringeth forth out ofhis treasure things new and old
(Matt.13, 52, KJV).3 It did no harm that the same biblical verse
had already been used by Augustine himselfto capture the
figural, polysemic quality ofdivine scriptureat the beginning
ofone ofhis most writerly, least oratorical works, the De Genesi
ad litteram or Literal Commentary on Genesis.4
Passages and paradoxes like these may now be seen as marking acritical threshold for Western or Latin-Roman consciousness ofthe textuality ofthe far-flung Christian community as
acognitive, social and political phenomenon. Critical threshold
marking is an activity to which historians even ofthe latest
fashion are still prone, and anniversaries confirm our weakness for it. Here the half-centenary ofan international scholarly
organization provides an opportunity to mark such athreshold
in the recent history ofscholarship on the Fathers as scriptores
ecclesiastici, writers ofthe church, as Jerome called them in the
title ofhis influential catalogue oftheir company, otherwise
known as the Deviris illustribus.5 Though styled plenary in the
conference program, this paper will encompass no great tracts
oftime, space, thought or bibliography.Its coordinates will
be fleeting and provincial.It means to open, without circumscribing, the space for adiscussion that will then find its own
way between other papers to follow, under the rubric of Patristics, Literature, and Histories ofthe Book, according to the
interestsin the first instance ofthose whom the providence
3
Possidius, Vita Augustini, 31,10, in Vita di Cipriano, Vita di Ambrogio, Vita
di Agostino ed.A.A.R.Bastiaensen, Roma,Milano, 1975, p.240.
4 Aug., Gen.ad litt., I,1 ed.J.Zycha, (CSEL 28/1, p.3).
5 Hier., Epist.112,3(to Augustine) ed.I.Hilberg,(CSEL 55, p.370);
M. Vessey, Augustine among the Writers ofthe Church, in ACompanion
to Augustine ed.M.Vessey, Malden, MA, 2012, p.240-254.

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ofour hosts has gathered from around the world for acollatio
or conference on the Fathers in (of all places) Jerusalem.

Patristics at the limits

Acollective instinct for the plenary seems to have been afeatureif not anote ofpatristic studies since the time of
Vincent ofLrins, or whenever we date the beginning of
such activities.We might begin by asking our own fathers.
My father in patristics, whether he knew it or not, was that
great and genial scholar ofAugustine, Andr Mandouze, in
whose seminar at the Sorbonne as an auditeur libre, more than
thirty years ago, Iwas introduced to adiscipline until then
unknown and unnamed to me. Andr Mandouze was apeerless impresario ofthe Fathers. Some ofyou will have relished,
if only on video, his presentation ofAugustines Confessions in
Strasbourg Cathedral during lanne de lAlgrie en France
of2003, co-starring Grard Dpardieu.6 Rarely has an actor
ofDpardieus gifts been so completely upstaged by an elderly
scholar. Mandouze was abrilliant publicist for the causes that
he espoused, as well as an impressively conscientious academic.7
Four and ahalf decades earlier, in1959, he had delivered aplenary report to the Third International Conference on Patristic
Studies in Oxford. Its title was Mesure et dmesure de la Patristique (The Proportions and Disproportion ofPatristics or
The Extent and Excesses ofPatristics).8 In those days, as AdolfMartin Ritter has reminded us, French was still the international language ofpatristic studies.9 Written to be read, the text
ofMandouzes report was published unaltered.Even in print
it is an unmistakably Mandouzian oration: sinuous, allusive,
G.Dpardieu, A.Mandouze, Approches et lectures de saint Augustin [videocassette], Paris,2004; G.Dpardieu, A.Mandouze, Lire Saint Augustin,
Paris,2004. Thelive performance was also given in Paris and Bordeaux.
7 For ascholars autobiography like no other, see A.Mandouze, Mmoires
doutre-sicle, I:Dune Rsistance lautre, s.l.,1998; II:(1962-1981) gauche
toute, bon Dieu!, Paris,2003.
8A.Mandouze, Mesure et dmesure de la Patristique, in Studia Patristica,
3=TU, 78 ed.F.L.Cross, Berlin,1961, p.3-19.
9 See his contribution to this volume, p.195-207.
6

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M. VESSEY

provocative, baroquisant. It occupies aplace ofhonour at the

front ofthe published proceedings, under the Latin heading
Introductio, asection-title used there for the only time (sofar) in
the exponentially expanding series ofStudia Patristica.Yet already,
as we shall see, that touch ofeditorial decorum risked upsetting
the brinkmanshipthe calculated mesure en dmesure of Mandouzes plenary discourse.
His lecture began comfortably enough:
Since our collective enterprise belongs to atradition that
ultimately goes back to the Fathers themselves, it seems to
me fitting, in order to situate more precisely the succession
in which we stand (le relais que nous prenons), to begin with
the conclusion reached by Father de Ghellinck at the close
ofhis survey ofthe Progress and main directions in patristic
studies over the past fifteen centuries.10

That survey ofde Ghellinks being then ofrecent date, this sentence by itself already effortlessly reunited the present company
in Oxford with fifth-century collatores ofthe Fathers like Vincent
ofLrins. Thequotation that followed now fills apage, ending
with de Ghellincks last words in1947:
What is beyond doubt [he had written] is that the continuation ofthis research, and a fortiori ofthe progress of these
studies, is only possible at the price ofindefatigable labour
and ofatechnical mastery, the necessity ofwhich makes itself
ever more keenly felt with the expansion of the field to be
cultivated and the multiplicity of new disciplines of knowledge called upon to exploit it with sober competence.11

Steady, well-coordinated professional expertise was the prerequisite for any patristic science that would not sooner or later
overflow its own measure, asalready in1947this science
promised and threatened to do.It was almost as if, speaking
ofthe immediate post-War crise de croissance in patristic studies,

Mandouze, Mesure, p.3.

J.De Ghellinck, Patristique et MoyenAge: tudes dhistoire littraire et
doctrinale, II:Introduction et complments ltude de la patristique, Brussels, Paris,
1947 [repr.1961], p.180.
10
11

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LA PATRISTIQUE, CEST AUTRE CHOSE

de Ghellinck had foreseen the need for the Oxford patristic

conferencesour Oxford conferences, as Mandouze collegially called them on that early autumn day in1959.12
Indefatigable labour, technical mastery, sober competence,
following in atradition as old as the Fathers themselves... Another
plenary speaker in Jerusalem, reading apaper to be revised for
this volume, might with perfect justice begin by placing this
weeks collective enterprise and its sponsoring Association
squarely and ecumenically in the tradition evoked by Mandouze
in1959 after de Ghellinck in1947. That was not my purpose in
beginning where Ihave.Nor can Iadd anything to the accounts
that other speakers have given ofthe genesis and early history
ofthe Association, by reading (as one might) between the lines
ofMandouzes Oxford plenary for early hints ofan initiative that
would come to fruition in Paris six years later.Instead, Iwant
to press this text ofMandouzes alittle harder in adirection
that it already takes from the start, with its founding reference
to awork ofle Pre de Ghellinck, in order to suggest that that
reference should now be interpreted as asign ofif not in fact
the signal for ahistoric break in the relais or succession oftexts
descending from the Fathers towards ourselves.

Patrology, history ofancient Christian literature

The work ofde Ghellincks in question had been subscribed
by its author from Louvain on the feast ofSt.John Damascene
in1946 and published the next year as the second volume in the
series ofhis collected studies, entitled Patristique et Moyen Age:
12 Mandouze, Mesure, p.4: nos confrences dOxford. Cfr. Mandouze, Mmoires, I,p.36: Je ne me doutais pas, ce moment-l [in1934],
que mes dlices, ce serait, partir de1959, de me rendre, sauf exception, tous
les quatre ans en Angleterre, non plus Wimbledon, mais Oxford pour
participer ce que jappelle irrvrencieusement la foire aux Pres(de lglise).
Jaurai sans aucun doute en reparler. Alater reference(p.238) to participation in le march aux Pres(de lglise, bien sr) shows that Mandouze in
fact already attended the second Oxford conference in1955, and that he did so
in the company ofH.-I.Marrou, whose paper that year, Civitas Dei, civitas
terrena. Num tertium quid?(Studia Patristica,2, p.342-350) announced anew
understanding ofAugustines sense ofthe saeculum as le temps de lhistoire.
See also below, n.36.

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M. VESSEY

tudes dhistoire littraire et doctrinale.13 At least four volumes were

planned, but the difficulties ofthe time, and the authors death
in1950, restricted the actual series to three. Thefirst contained
researches on the origins ofthe Apostles Creed. Thesecond,
to which Mandouze would refer in Oxford, was separately titled
Introduction et complments ltude de la patristique and presented
part ofalarger body ofmaterial that de Ghellinck had been
assembling and revising in view ofaunified Introduction that
could serve as asupplement to standard handbooks ofpatristics
or patrology. Inthe meantime, as he explained in apreface,
the chapters in the present volume dealt mainly with histoire
littraire, offering asummary tableau ofthe general transmission
ofpatristic works, their immediate mode ofdiffusion, [and] the use
made ofthem either soon after their appearance or in later ages.
He expressed ahope that veterans as well as novices in the study
oftheology would benefit from seeing the gradual, centurieslong process ofChristian education documented in this way
through the history ofthe books that had nourished the thought
ofgenerations before their own.14
This, then, was to be literary history as history ofthe books
ofthe Fathers as ancillary discipline to theology.De Ghellincks
outline ofthat history is atour de force comparable to Wilamowitzs
Geschichte der Philologie, and better documented.15 It has not been
superseded as ageneral treatment ofthe subject.
This second, literary-historical volume ofde Ghellincks
Patristique et Moyen Age took the form ofadiptych.Its latter
section gathered the evidence for the diffusion and transmission
ofpatristic writings in the early centuries and drew up abalance
sheet ofwhat had been lost and preserved, ending encouragingly
with the discovery ofthe Toura papyri (in1941).But it
was the first section ofthe book, containing asurvey ofthe
Progress and main directions (tendances) in patristic studies over
See n.11 above.
De Ghellinck, Patristique et Moyen Age, II, p.viii.
15 Cfr. U.Von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, History ofClassical Scholarship
tr.A.Harrised.with an intro.and notes by H.Lloyd-Jones, London,
1982; first published in1921 as Geschichte der Philologie.On Wilamowitzs sense
ofthe scope and obligations ofphilology, see the editors introductory remarks,
esp.p.vii-xvii.
13
14

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[theprevious] fifteen centuries, thatin its closing sentence,

already quotedwould provide Mandouze with his stately
yet destabilizing opening gambit in Oxford.That section, too,
is almost exclusively literary or book-historical in content.
The story that it told was one ofthe progressive recovery and
critical editing oftexts, ofthe refinement ofphilological methods
from the Renaissance onwards, and ofthe gradual absorption
ofthe textual objects ofpatristic study into the non-theological,
philological sciences ofantiquity as those had developed since the
early nineteenth century. (Wilamowitz is aconstant referencepoint.) The final chapter addressed the latest consequence
of these new directions in scholarship, under aheading that,
while equivocal, stopped aquestion-mark short ofbeing
explicitly interrogative: Patrology or history ofancient Christian
literature.
Patrologie ou histoire de la littrature chrtienne antique (?). After
reviewing the debates in recent decades between Protestant,
Catholic, and confessionally unaligned proponents ofnew-style
literary histories that would include patristic texts within their
purview and so potentially displace patrology as aphilological
discipline, de Ghellinck came to aconclusion in which nothing
was concluded:
Despite all theoften meritoriousattempts reviewed in the
foregoing pages, we are not yet close to possessing adefinitive
[literary] history, so diverse are the materials to be considered,
so elusive or complex the literary character ofmany
ofthe writers, and so poorly understood [...] the relations
between them and the ambient literature [of the time],
or their mutual influences on each other.16

The ideal ofa(new) literary history that would take due

account ofthe Fathers ofthe Church, if ever it was to be
realized, still waited on further research.That is where de
Ghellinck ended in1947, with the rallying cry that Mandouze
would repeat with adifference in1959.

DeGhellinck, Patristique et Moyen Age, II, p.180.

16

449

M. VESSEY

...or something else?

All this happened along time ago. Thefact that Iwish to register today, in the interests offinally slipping these ancient disciplinary moorings, is that Mandouzes introductory summons
to his fellow scholars in Oxford in1959 took for its point
ofdeparture the point ofnon-arrival ofan already decades-long
experiment in recasting patristics as aspecies or sub-class of
literary history.It was an experiment that, as would by then
have been clearly apparent, had more or less exhausted itself by
the end ofthe Second World War.17 There would not be any
literary-historical alternative topatristics.There has not been
been. Instead, there has been (ever more) patristics...and the
recurrent prospect or promise of...something else.
There is something else about Mandouzes Oxford plenary
that is still worth underlining at this late stage, obvious though
it may be.His call to order that day was self-consciously that
ofaclassically trained Latin philologist with apost in aFrench
secular university (Strasbourg at the time, Algiers before that,
Paris later in his career), for whom the actual or potential aporiai
ofprofessedly literary approaches to the Church Fathers held
acharm that they could not have had for Fr.de Ghellinck, despite
the latters formidable qualifications as aLatinist and medieval
literary historian.
In the end, as from the beginning, de Ghellincks Introduction et complments ltude de la patristique were strictly that:
elements ofapropaideutic that, even when complete, must still
have yielded before the plenitude ofthe theological science
to which it was meant to lead the way. Thebalanced terms
ofhis higher-order title, tudes dhistoire littraire et doctrinale,
named not only acomplementarity but also asupersession:
17B. Altaner, Der Stand der patrologischen Wissenschaft und das
Problem einer neuen altchristlichen Literaturgeschichte, in Miscellanea Giovanni
Mercati, I=Studi eTesti, 121, Citt del Vaticano,1946, p.483-520, marks
the nec plus ultra. See further H.C.Brennecke, Patristik oder altchristliche
Literaturwissenschaft? Eine historische Leitwissenschaft der protestantischen
Theologie in Deutschlands am Beginn der20.Jahrhunderts, ZAC/JAC,
15(2011), p.7-46; M.Vessey, Literature, Patristics, Early Christian Writing,
in The Oxford Handbook ofEarly Christian Studies ed.S.A.Harvey, D.G.Hunter,
Oxford,2008, p.42-65, in partic.p.49-55.

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literary history, whether as aprojected history ofauthors,

styles and genres or an actual history ofbooks, was still
apreludefor the time being, and in de Ghellincks book
to the history ofdoctrine. Thethird volume ofPatristique et
Moyen Age, as originally advertised on the flyleaf ofthe second,
was to have opened with aprogram ofdogmatic readings in the
fathers and been followed by another ofspiritual readings.18
Granted, Andr Mandouze in Oxford in1959 did not appear
to diverge by so much as ahairs breadth from the theological
tradition ofpatristics. On the contrary, he made delighted play
with all its tropes. Having begun his lecture in the footsteps
ofde Ghellinck, he concluded it in the same style, repeating
aquotation already made by the latter from Bossuets Dfense
de la tradition et des saints Pres, in order once more to link
the present company ofpatristicians across the centuries to the
Fathers themselvesthose who, in the words ofthe bishop
ofMeaux, had received the original spirit ofthe Christian
religion from its very source.19 Yet, for all that, and even
though his text would serve in due course as apreface to the
by-then canonical divisions ofStudia Patristica (sc.Editiones,
Critica, Philologica, etc.), Mandouzes lecture is ex professo not
an introduction to any discipline ofpatristic studies then or ever
existing. While one cannot easily put afinger on it, there is
an element ofdmesure in his own observance ofthe rules
ofplenary patristic discourse, awitting excess offidelity to the
tradition, that we may have to call rhetorical if we do not call
18 In the event, the third volume(Brussels and Paris, 1948) was subtitled
Une dition patristique clbre and had for its subject the Maurist edition ofthe
works ofAugustine.
19 Mandouze, Mesure, p.19:
Cest ici quil faut en fin de compte aller
jusquau bout de lhistoire, de lhistoire que nous ne pouvons quitter un instant, qui
nous relie aux Pres et qui relie les Pres entre eux, nous faisant remonter
ce que Bossuet appelait cette pure substance de la religion...de cet esprit
primitif que les Pres ont reu de plus prs et avec plus dabondance de la source
mme(my italics).For the citation ofBossuet, Mandouze acknowledges
De Ghellinck, Patristique et Moyen Age, III: Une dition patristique clbre, p.105
(see previous note). Theclose interrelation ofMandouzes general reflections on mesure et dmesure in patristics and his special concern with scholarship
on Augustine is already apparent from this train ofcitation.For the circumstances in which he prepared his text for Oxford in1959, see his Mmoires, I,
p.309-311.

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M. VESSEY

it literary. As Professor ofLatin at the Sorbonne in later years,

Mandouze was alegend among students for his ability to turn
texts ofclassical French authors into any one ofseveral classical
Latin idioms. He could have rewritten Bossuet in the style
ofCicero or Augustine, standing on one leg. Bossuet, in any case,
was not his only confrre in Oxford that day. As Jean Cocteau,
on being elected to the Acadmie Franaise in1955, had
answered the question What is poetry? with La posie, cest
autre chose (Poetry is something else), Mandouze offered up
his own anti-disciplinary definition ofpatristics: La patristique,
cest autre chose (Patristics issomething else).20
Even then, none ofthe Oxford delegates that year could have
been absolutely sure that he or she had heard this speaker assert
in so many words that patristics was not the discipline that they
were all already practising, in supramillennial continuity with
the Fathers. Mandouzes definition by deferral was perfectly
traditional in its deference to the original spirit ofthe Christian religion. Its patrologocentrismto borrow aterm soon to be
made current by Jacques Derridawas still ofan audibly classical
tenor. Inany case, whatever it was that Mandouze was heard to
have said that day, it did nothing to trouble the apostolico-patristic succession from that Oxford conference to the next, in1963,
when plenary speakers, catching the mood ofthe Second Vatican
Council, would open and close proceedings with serene
reflections on Tradition and Authority in the Early Church
(J.N.Bakhuizen van den Brink) and Les Pres de lEglise et
lUnit des Chrtiens (Jean Danilou).

Augustines for our time

We have arrived at the backward horizon ofthis years
(ante-dated) patristic half-centenary.1963: adate too early for
20 Mandouze, Mesure, p.19.Variants ofCocteaus mot were also applied by Mandouze to other things he held dear: e.g., Mmoires, I, p.43 (Lcole
Normale Suprieure, rue dUlm), p.60(marriage); cfr. A.Mandouze, Augustin
prfacier dAugustin, in Saint Augustin.Confessionstr.L.de Mondadon,
Paris,1982, p.11-25, in partic.p.17, 22(the Confessions).Cocteaus speech
can be read at http://www.academie-francaise.fr/discours-de-reception-dejean-cocteau.

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the living memories ofmany here but one that already saw our
scholarly fathers and mothers hard at work.Some ofthem
were among the zealous young whom Peter Brown speaks ofas
being everywhere at that years Oxford patristic conference.21
Brown was there himself, though you would not know it
from perusing the Augustiniana ofthe published proceedings.
His paper on Augustines attitude to religious coercion appeared
the next year in the Journal ofRoman Studies, alongside an article by Alan Cameron on The Roman Friends ofAmmianus
and another by Ramsay MacMullen on Social Mobility and
the Theodosian Code.22 That should strike us in retrospect as
adisciplinary alibi ofthe same order as Mandouzes rhetorical
othering ofpatristics alustrum earlier.
Mandouze, we have noted, was aclassical (Latin) philologist,
one whose personal avocation for late Roman social and religious
history was consecratedas he himself poignantly relates in the
first volume ofhis Mmoiresby the experience ofliving in
the land ofAugustine. Brown, his younger by ageneration and
ahistorian by training, was already in1963 ahighly innovative
historian ofthe religions and societies ofthe later Roman Empire,
unawed by classical (or any other) philology but appreciative
ofthe intermittently useful labours ofphilologists. In1967,
Faber and Faber published his Augustine ofHippo, alife as lively
as any ever written so long after its subjects death and awork
raised on so airy ascaffolding offootnotes as almost to bely the
solidity ofits authors erudition.23 Mandouzes Saint Augustin.
Laventure de la raison et de la grce appeared the next year from
Etudes Augustiniennes: 800 densely printed, large-format pages,
many ofthem trailing only the slenderest thread ofnarrative
across acarpet mosaic ofsecondary reference.24 The contrast,

P.Brown, Introducing Robert Markus, Augustinian Studies, 32(2001),

p.181-187, in partic.p.182.
22P.Brown, St.Augustines Attitude to Religious Coercion, Journal
ofRoman Studies, 54(1964), p.107-116; repr.in his Religion and Society
in the Age ofSaint Augustine, London,1972, p.260-278.
23P.Brown, Augustine ofHippo: ABiography, London,1967; new edition
with an epilogue, Berkeley, LosAngeles, 2000.
24A.Mandouze, Saint Augustin.Laventure de la raison et de la grce, Paris,
1968.
21

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M. VESSEY

which few scholars ofAugustine can have missed but fewer seem
to have marked, conceals apowerful complicity ofpurpose even
as it reveals adeep-seated difference in approach. With good
reason, Browns scholarly oeuvre as awhole has lately been an
object ofintense methodological reflection on the part ofhis
fellow historians, who have been encouraged in this by his own
occasional retractationes ofparts ofit.Mandouze, whose complementary thesis, defended alongside his Saint Augustin in1968,
was aRectratatio retractationum sancti Augustini, and whose mentor
and friend Henri-Irne Marrou inaugurated the genre ofthe
modern scholarly (Augustinian) Retractatio with his1949 postscript to the reimpression ofhis Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture
antique(1938), was an instructively reflexive scholar from early in
his publishing career. He also wrote two extraordinary volumes
ofmemoirs before his death in2006.25
Reading or rereading Brown and Mandouze on Augustine
and late antiquity,26 in the light ofeach other, almost fifty
years after their Augustine-books appeared, may help us define
the present scholarly epoch with respect to long traditions
ofthe Fathers as scriptores.27 What, in particular, can Mandouzes
Augustine tell us about our times in the history ofthe books
ofthe Fathers?

25
See n.7 above.Mandouze first met Marrou on the day ofthe latters
oral defence ofhis thesis on Augustine: Mandouze, Saint Augustin, p.38;
Mmoires, I, p.43. His own Retractatio retractationum S.Augustini remains unpublished; Mmoires, II,p.81-82.
26Mandouzes adoption oflantiquit tardive as aperiod-concept postdates his1968 thesis on Augustine, where the latter still appears as un enfant
de cette fin de sicle qui, en un certain sens, est aussi la fin dun monde et
lannonce de cet ge nouveau quon appelle le Moyen Age(p.50). Athreshold
for the new usage among French scholars is marked by H.-I.Marrou,
La civilisation de lantiquit tardive, in Tardo Antico e Alto Medioevo. La forma
critica nel passagio dellantichit al medioevo(Roma, 4-7 aprile1967), Accademia
Nazionale dei Lincei, Quaderno, no.105, Rome,1968, p.384-394; repr.in
H.-I.Marrou, Christiana Tempora. Mlanges dhistoire, darchologie, dpigraphie
et de patristique, Rome,1978, p.67-77.
27For fuller discussion ofBrowns early work, in this connection, see
M. Vessey, The Demise ofthe Christian Writer and the Remaking of
LateAntiquity. From H.-I.Marrous Saint Augustine(1938) to Peter Browns
Holy Man(1983), JECS, 6(1998), p.377-411.

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Other times: Augustines Confessions as aliterary text

Andr Mandouze once told aclassmate ofmine, Augustin, cest
comme le mariage: cest pour la vie.28 The life ofAugustine
that he meant to render would be at once alifes work (his own,
among other works ofan eventful life) and the life ofaliterary
and historical figure wrested back by huge effort from the forces
oftradition(s) that threatened otherwise to overwhelm it.
Mandouze prepared his readers to expect that he would take hold
ofthe accumulated bibliography on Augustine and wring its
neck.29 In less menacing terms, his aim was to make acritical
traversal ofAugustinian scholarship and mythography, on the way
back to Augustines own text(s) and context(s).
It was an operation that he had demonstrated in miniature
but already on agrand scale in apaper given at the international congress held in Paris in1954 to commemorate the sixteenth centenary ofAugustines birth. Thepaper was devoted to
The Possibilities and Limits ofthe Method ofTextual Parallels,
as that method had been applied to the scene ofthe ecstasy
ofOstia described in Book9 ofthe Confessions, by Pierre Courcelle, Paul Henry, and others interested in tracing Augustines
sources. By pushing the latest, most technically ambitious
philologico-philosophical exegesis ofAugustine to its limits,
then alittle further, Mandouze meant to restore (as he put it)
the literary originality ofAugustines text. For only by respecting the letter ofthat text in its linear, temporal sequence
could areader begin to measurewith Augustine the mystic,
according to Mandouzethe gap between human philology
and the ineffable philology ofthe biblical God...30
Augustin, cest autre chose.If anyone was qualified to speak of
Mesure et dmesure de la Patristique by the end ofthe1950s,
28
Ashort memoir ofhis was more tentatively entitled: A.Mandouze,
Cohabiter avec Augustin?, in Saint Augustin ed.P.Ranson, [Lausanne,Paris],
1988, p.11-21.
29 Mandouze, Saint Augustin, p.30. See also p.28, n.1.
30A.Mandouze, Lextase dOstie.Possibilits et limites de la mthode
des parallles textuels, in Augustinus Magister.Congrs international augustinien
(Paris, 21-24septembre1954), 3vols., Paris,1954-1955, I, p.67-84, in partic.
p.83-84. Theessence ofthe analysis would be subsumed in Ch.12 ofthe
authors Saint Augustin(Rencontres avec Dieu).

455

M. VESSEY

it was the philological scholar ofAugustine that Mandouze had

set himself to be.Before it could be anything else, patristics
or patrology was bound to be akind ofphilology: Editiones,
Critica, Philologica (to cite the rubrics ofStudia Patristica).
Thehazard ofany philology, for the philologist Mandouze
considering the case ofAugustine, was that it had the power
to multiply collateral texts in ways that were likely to distract
the eye from the literary economy ofthe ultimately singular text
ofprimary reference, and hence risked nullifying the morethan-literary effects that such atextprecisely in virtue ofits
imputed literarinessmight be supposed to work in the reader.
Mandouzes practical solution to the problem was to appeal
from those many texts through those many texts to that singular
text and its (not always textually substantiated) context.31 Is that
not what philology, at least in one ofits modern kinds, has always
done? Perhaps. But Mandouzes sense ofthe specifically literary
claims ofatext such as Augustines Confessions was rare for the
time within the company ofAugustinian and patristic scholars.
Aglance back at early volumes ofStudia Patristica confirms
as much.
His treatment ofthe Ostia scene for the1954 congress was
certainly sui generis in the miscellany ofpapers collected in the
first section ofAugustinus Magister under the rubric ofHistoire
littraire (to be followed by Philologie et critique, Sources,
and then by the far more numerous philosophical and theological
contributions).Introducing the whole, the editor had noted
how even the critical and historical pieces engaged directly
with questions oftheory (i.e.theology) and ofdoctrine.32

31 Cfr. H.-I.Marrou(with the collaboration ofA.-M.LaBonnardire),

StAugustin et laugustinisme, Paris,1955, p.180: la tche que nous est fixe
devient ds lors facile dfinir(tienne Gilson en1930, Maurice Ndoncelle
ou Andr Mandouze en1954 lont bien vu): en appeler sans cesse de laugustinisme, de tous les augustinismes, saint Augustin. Marrou cites an interview
with Mandouze in LActualit religieuse dans le monde, November 1,1954,
on the appearance ofthe first two volumes ofAugustinus Magister. Echoing
the title ofJoseph Malgues1933 novel about amodern French Catholics
crisis offaith, the piece was headed: Le vritable Augustin ou le matre est l.
For the moment inMandouzes lifewhich was also that ofthe outbreak
ofhostilities in Algeriasee his Mmoires, I, p.226-227.
32F.Cayr, Prface, in Augustinus Magister, I, p.vii.

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LA PATRISTIQUE, CEST AUTRE CHOSE

Like all such tropes ofeditorial plenitude, this one opened itself
to its own questions.Mandouzes sense ofthe literary quality
ofAugustines Confessions may indeed have been theoretically
inseparable for him from Augustines sense ofGodand, more
particularly, from Augustines sense ofGod speaking in him.
That did not, however, make his essay acontribution to the history
ofdoctrine.How could it have been? Abstracting Augustine
from the latter-day historyor histories ofdoctrine, releasing
him from the competing Augustinianisms ofaftertimes, replacing
him and his texts in their own place and time, so that they could
be known and read again in the present, with as much as possible
oftheir original dmesure still intact... that was the scholarly wager
ofMandouzes personal aventure de la raison et de la grce and the
rationale for the formidable mise en page ofthe work published
under that sub-title by Etudes Augustiniennes.33
The speaker who summoned Cocteau to his aid in Oxford
did indeed bring adistinctly mid-twentieth-century literary
sensibility to bear on the writings ofAugustine. While no text
ofRoland Barthes or Grard Genette could have found its
way into the bibliography ofthe theses that he defended in the
summer of1968 in aSorbonne under siege from anti-government protesters, Mandouzes remarks on the Confessions at the
beginning ofhis Saint Augustin would already have primed his
reader for awork ofstructuralist literary theory such as Philippe
Lejeunes Le Pacte autobiographique.34 Bibliographical presuppositions and methodological postulates was the impeccably
precautionary sub-title for the introduction to this aventure
augustinienne, and in no time its author was shoulder-to-shoulder
again with de Ghellinck, not only for that scholars view ofthe
laicisation ofpatristic studies but also for his account ofthe
Maurist edition ofthe works ofAugustine, in the eventual third
33 The first side heading in Saint Augustin(p.12) is Mesure et dmesure
des tudes augustiniennes.Three pages later the author observes that pure
patristicsin the sense ofascience that would be entirely disinterestedmust
be as elusive as pure poetry.
34P.Lejeune, Le Pacte autobiographique, Paris,1975.Lejeune finds no
autobiography before Rousseau, though his bibliography includes E.Vance,
Le moi comme language.Saint Augustin et lautobiographie, Potique, 14(1973),
p.163-177. Mandouze proposes his own pacte autobiographique in Mmoires,I, p.7-14 (Entre de jeu).

457

M. VESSEY

volume ofPatristique et Moyen Age.35 For all that, there is no

mistaking the distance already travelled by Mandouze apart
from de Ghellinck.Both men were indefatigable students of
the history ofthe books ofthe Fathers.Only one ofthem set
the end ofthat studyfor the time beingas ashared literary
experience. To re-apply the terms in which the orator introduced Bossuet at the end ofhis1959 plenary: this was the way
that Mandouze had found, as ascholar ofLatin literary texts
by vocation, to go jusquau bout de lhistoire, to the very limit
ofhistory, ahistory that we cannot leave behind for amoment.36
Rhetorically satisfying as it might be to end again at that
point, it would be unfair to the memory ofAndr Mandouze
and not only because his own, extraordinary literary historical
jusquauboutisme seems always to have brought him back to a
traditional assurance ofcontinuity with the Fathers. There is
also the risk ofstaking too much on latter-day imputations of
literariness.37 Mandouzes literary sensibility, moreover, had at
times adistinctly documentary cast.38

Other places: the Donatist files

Rejecting out ofhand, for the work ofasingle author at so late
adate, the task ofproviding an adequate summa ofwhat could
be known about Augustine, Mandouze proposed instead the
model ofamap:

Mandouze, Saint Augustin, p.15, n.2-3.

Above, n.19. Mandouze was responsive from an early stage to Marrous
reflections on Augustine and the Christian sense oftime and history, which find
their fullest expression in H.-I.Marrou, Thologie de lhistoire, Paris, 1968.
37 See further M.Vessey, Literature, Literary Histories, Latin LateAntiquity,
in Sptantike Konzeptionen vonLiteratur.Notions ofthe Literary in LateAntiquity
ed.J.R.Stenger, Heidelberg, forthcoming, p.19-31.
38 Anotable feature ofhis Mmoires is the steady reference to documents
ofhis own past, chiefly ofhis own composition.Each volume is equipped
at the end with achronological list oftextual milestones(jalons textuels) for
the period in question. As he explains it(I, p.10), his sense ofthe limitations
ofhis Mmoires was confirmed by the two outstanding experiences ofhis
scholarly career, namely the elusive trace ofalife in his study ofAugustine and
the intransigent exactitude offacts in the compilation ofthe Prosopogographie de
lAfrique chrtienne(303-533).
35
36

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LA PATRISTIQUE, CEST AUTRE CHOSE

Ibelieve [...] the moment has come to try to put together

several kinds ofitineraries to facilitate access to Augustine.
This means providing equipment for orientation: instruments,
maps and ultimately areal atlas for use by the enthusiast
(lamateur eventuel) in preparing for the long, difficult and
wonderful journey ahead.This book does not pretend
to be such an Augustinian Atlas, but it would like to contribute to it.39

His book would be aguide, picking its way through carefully

selected and presented textual topoi on the way to what was to be
seen in the endwhich, in the event, was Augustines mystical
vision ofGod, the goal set by Mandouze for his doctoral research
more than aquarter ofacentury earlier.
Extending the topographical figure ofthought, he went
on to give an account ofthe books method, consistent with
his1954 paper on The Possibilities and Limits ofthe Method
ofTextual Parallels:
We refer here to places (lieux) because the documents used
are texts, but what these texts in fact express are moments
in apersons life and developing thought. Thelimitations
ofour linear existence oblige us to use literary expedients
if we want to convey acharacters spiritual complexity
(la densit spirituelle dun personnage). Theauthor ofthe
Confessions knew this well enough and did not wait for the
cinema or the modern novel before employing flashbacks
in order to reveal, by disconcerting his readers in this way,
the uncertainties and riches oflived experience (la dure
vcue).40

Readers ofPeter Browns Augustine ofHippo were by this

time relishing their history in the future tense, as Augustines
cinematic flashbacks became Browns flashforwards.Mandouzes
readers would take adifferent and in some ways more arduous
route. Extrapolating from Augustines hints, Mandouze constructed the narrative ofhis Saint Augustin as asuccession
ofthree superimposed or interlocking stages ofconfession.
Each ofthe three main parts ofhis book contains four chapters.
Mandouze, Saint Augustin, p.31.
Mandouze, Saint Augustin, p.32.

39
40

459

M. VESSEY

Only the two middle chapters ofthe middle part (Confessio

fidei) ofthis text-bound topography have toponyms in their
titles: Metamorphosis ofRome (Chapter6), Africa ofthe
Lost Sheep (Chapter7).For all its disclaimers, Mandouzes
guide was also already an atlas, with the meridian ofits
meticulously projected planar Augustine running between
Rome and Africa.41 Meanwhile, independently but under
the impress ofsome ofthe same prior scholarshipnotably
in the matter ofDonatism Brown was completing the series
ofstudies that appeared in1972 as Religion and Society in the
Age ofSaint Augustine. Thesecond and third sections ofhis book
are likewise headed Rome and Africa.42
In Browns view as in Mandouzes, the articulation ofthose
two more-than-toponyms in respect ofAugustine and the
wider world ofthe late Roman Empire raised critical questions
ofhistorical perspective.They were literally questions about
what could be seen, then and now.More precisely, they were
questions about the kinds ofhistorical seeing that written materials,
duly transmitted, made possible and impossible.What came first
to the view ofthe parties arguing one side or another ofthe
case ofDonatus, in Augustines time as in the late twentieth
century, was acollection or dossier ofmore or less authentic,
more or less datable documents.
For Mandouze, who, in1961, as aprominent actor in recent
events, had published his own collection ofdocuments entitled
La Rvolution algrienne par les textes, the option ofassimilating
the Donatist cause to anti-colonialist movements in the contemporary Maghreb was at once obvious and obviously mistaken,
another instance (however potentially anti-Augustinian) ofthe
unhistorical Augustinianizing against which he had set his face.
Theword colonialism appears on only one page ofhis book,
41 The design is made explicit at the beginning ofCh.7: Eussions-nous
russi sur ce point [viz.in satisfying critics ofAugustines attitude to Rome]
que nous ne serions pas plus avan: au centre de lunivers augustinien et lassigant
pourtant de toute part, lAfrique pose derechef un problme, non point simplement analogue, mais bien autrement difficile(p.332, my italics).
42P.Brown, Religion and Society in the Age ofSaint Augustine, London,
1972. Thearticles and reviews in Part 2(Rome) and Part 3(Africa) originally
appeared between1961 and1970. References to them below are to the1972
volume.

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LA PATRISTIQUE, CEST AUTRE CHOSE

entre guillemets at the end ofaparagraph. Thenext paragraph

begins: Asfor the dossier itself, all the documents (pices) have
been scrupulously inventoried by Paul Monceaux in his Histoire
littraire de lAfrique chrtienne.43 In aparallel passage, noting how
the Roman Empire had been put on trial by recent books on
Donatism, Brown would contrast the picture ofan Africa ofthe
inland plateau, made newly visible by modern archaeology,
with the more familiar one ofan Africa of[Christian Latin]
literature, dominated by Carthage and by the Roman cities
ofthe Mediterranean seaboard, home ofAugustine.44
Mandouzes focus in Saint Augustin remained firmly on the
latter scene.As he saw it, recent epigraphic finds had supplemented without substantially altering the picture presented half
acentury earlier by Monceauxs dossier:
This tableau allows us to glimpse, first ofall, an Augustine
who is not closed off by his own genius or shut up in his
august personage but intimately part ofahistory and amilieu.
Here he is in real life (en situation), inseparable from alocal
setting oflong date.45

It is here, exactly at the mid-point ofMandouzes book that

readers ofhis Saint Augustin were (and are) most likely to find
common ground with adepts ofBrowns Augustine ofHippo.
Thecritical questions ofhistorical perspective or optique with
which Mandouze was grappling in those pages, having lived
for years in Augustines Africa and spent hundreds ofhours
visiting and guiding students round its Roman and early
Christian sites, were the ones that also engaged Brown in the
studies that went to make up the Africa section ofReligion and
Society in the Age ofSaint Augustine and helped pave the way
43
Mandouze, Saint Augustin, p.338, citing(n.3) L.Duchesne, Le dossier
du Donatisme, Mlanges de lcole franaise de Rome, 10(1890), p.589-650,
as the inspiration for the inventory in(vols.4-7 of) P.Monceaux, Histoire
littraire de lAfrique chrtienne, 7vols., Paris,1901-1923.
44 Brown, Religion and Society, p.239(my italics). Inanother ofthe early
articles in the Africa section ofthe collection he observes that the ecclesiastical life ofthis province is exceptionally well-documented and has been the
subject ofexcellent monographs, citing Monceauxs Histoire littraire as basic
(p.303, n.2).
45 Mandouze, Saint Augustin, p.338.

461

M. VESSEY

for Anglophone students to afresh and vivid consciousness ofthe

worlds oflate antiquity.How did Augustine fit into the wider
cultural landscape oflate Roman Africa, as it was then newly
coming to be seen? What might be the consequences ofthat
resighting for longer histories ofChristianity and ofWestern
civilization?46
It is true that we experience some difficulty in fixing an
image ofAfrica in the time ofAugustine, Mandouze conceded:
Africa does not let itself be easily photographed.47 The difficulty ofreconciling different modern accounts ofChristianity
and local culture in late Roman Africa (the title-phrase ofone
ofBrowns articles) arose in large part from the nature ofthe
documentation. Thedossier transmitted to aftertimes was itself
adocument ofcontested transmission:
The figures in this African tableau were first and foremost
actors in adrama [...].Each ofthe two groupsthe
Catholic like the Donatistconsidered that the others
were the traitors, traditores. To have handed over or given
up sacred books or liturgical objects to the police officers
ofpagan Rome [...], was that not tantamount to consenting
once more to hand over, give up, betray Christ? [...]
The subtle ambiguity ofaLatin word served, moreover, to
symbolize the tragic ambiguity ofthis situation. As traditio
was already the ecclesiological concept par excellence,
privileged guarantee ofthe universal Church, traditio was at
46Note esp.Religion and Society, p.246: It may perhaps be shown that
Donatismfor all its local powerwas part ofawider revolution, provoked
by the rise ofChristianity, in the Latin world; and that the history ofthis
African schism is relevant not only to the rise ofIslam in the south, but to the
development ofmedieval Latin Catholicism in the north.
47 Mandouze, Saint Augustin, p.339.See too the remarkable passage in
A.Mandouze, Encore le Donatisme, LAntiquit Classique, 29(1960), p.61-107,
concluding atrenchant review ofJ.P.Brisson, Autonomisme et Christianisme
dans lAfrique romaine de Septime-Svre linvasion vandale, Paris, 1958: Jecrois
devoir ajouter en terminant que je mesure le privilge singulier de ceux qui
il est donn de voir lAfrique. Chronologie, thologie, conomie, realia de
toute sorte eussent en effet trouv comme par enchantement leur vraie place,
si la grce de cette terre africaine, la vertu de ses sites et la grandeur de ses
ruines, romaines et chrtiennes, avaient pu, par le miracle dune rencontre
bouleversante, dune contemplation inlassable et dune fidelit devenue instinctive, confrer lauteur de cette belle thse [sc.Brisson, who wasblind] toutes les
vertus mystrieuses de lantique vocable mrit par quelques-uns des plus grands
Romains: celui dAfricanus(p.107).

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LA PATRISTIQUE, CEST AUTRE CHOSE

the same time, in fourth-century Africa, the word denoting

the scandal ofaschism that rendered the guilty party unfit
to lay claim to gospel faith and apostolic continuity.48

How could Mandouzes meditations on Augustines dealings

with the Donatists not have formed an essential background to
his reprise at Oxford in1959 ofde Ghellincks plenary discourse
ofthe history ofChristian books? At the bottom ofthe Donatist
crisis, on his reading ofthe sources, lay the failure ofboth sides
to recognize the reality oftheir situation. Intheir polemics over
tradition, they had lost sight ofthe historyand ofageography
tooquils ne pouvaient quitter un instant.
Needless to say, it was Augustines failure, betraying itself
in apolemical dmesure proportional (!) to his apostolic zeal,
that was heaviest with consequence.49 An error ofperspective
runs the headline for the page on which Mandouze sought
to put his finger on the flaw. Committed as Augustine was to
acertain exegesis ofthe history and eschatology ofthe Scriptures an exegesis specified by Brown in1963/64 as embodying
the Prophetic viewpoint50 he had been constrained to overlook the strictly political, economic and social problem represented by the separatist communion ofthe Donatists.51 Preoccupied as he was by the vision ofan eternal city, he had
neglected the temporal dimensions ofthe problem in hand.
If ever there was aserious error committed by Augustine, that
was where it lay and it was first ofall an error ofperspective.52
Andr Mandouze never professed to be an historian except by
avocation. There is no useful comparison to be made between
his account ofAugustines error ofperspective in dealing
with the Donatists and the wide-angled views ofthe Christian
diffusion ofLatin Roman culture in North Africa and ofthe
synergy ofecclesial and imperial structures ofauthority within

Mandouze, Saint Augustin, p.339, 340-341.

Mandouze, Saint Augustin, p.334.
50 Brown, Religion and Society, p.266-267(in the article subsuming his
Oxford paper of1963).
51 Mandouze, Saint Augustin, p.374, n.5, citing an earlier study ofhis own.
52 Mandouze, Saint Augustin, p.374.
48
49

463

M. VESSEY

which Brown would locate the same issues.53 And yet for all
that, there is astriking affinityindeed, asymmetryin the
two mens respective senses ofthe perceptual limits imposed
by apre-constituted dossier ofthe histoire littraire de lAfrique
chrtienne.
One need expect very little from [...] the ecclesiastical sources
ofthe Latin Empire [...] in terms ofintellectual content, Brown
cheerfully affirmed in the article encompassing his1963 Oxford
paper, as apreliminary to re-reading some ofthose sources in
search ofAugustines attitude to religious coercion. Attitude to,
not doctrine of.... For, he suggested,
we may make some progress in understanding Augustines
ideas if we treat them as an attitudethat is, as placed
alittle lower than the angels ofpure Augustinian theology,
and alittle higher than the beasts ofthe social and political
necessities ofthe North African provinces.54

There in anutshell was the almost infinite space that the same
author would open for fellow students oflate Roman history
in Augustine ofHippo: ABiography.It was also the space-time
of Saint Augustin.Laventure de la raison et de la grce, even if
the author ofthat work took asomewhat steeper flight-path
through it.

Patristics, literary history Num tertium quid?

It is now possible to coordinate the contrasting but complementary mesures en dmesure oftwo ofthe founders ofwhat passes
as current for (or instead of) patristics in the early twenty-first
century: on the one hand, an Oxford-trained historian who
always begins again with the documents, however poetic his
own readings ofthem may appear to some;55 on the other,
aclassically-trained Latinist and littraire who also proved to be,

In the essays in Part 3(Africa) ofReligion and Society, in the first instance.
Brown, Religion and Society, p.261.
55 E.g.A.Murray, Peter Brown and the Shadow ofConstantine, Journal
ofRoman Studies, 73(1983), p.191-203, in partic.p.202.
53
54

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LA PATRISTIQUE, CEST AUTRE CHOSE

time and again, an exemplary documentaliste.56 The matter

ofDonatism, in which issues oftradition and authority above
all, ofthe authority oftexts and/or documents of(the) tradition
come to the fore as nowhere else in early Western ecclesiastical
history, was all but preordained for their rendez-vous.
As aconference (collatio) atCarthage in411 announced
the final defeat ofthe Donatists, adjudged by the imperial
commissioner Marcellinus not to have carried their case on the
basis ofdocuments produced and recited before him in the Baths
ofGargilius, so conferences at Oxford in1959 and1963 can
now be seen as marking acritical step towards the dismantling
ofaplenary and traditional literary history ofChristianity. That
threshold may appear more sharply in retrospect if we take one
more sighting, this time on awork ofscholarship still in progress
acentury ago.It has already loomed large in this account.
For Vincent ofLrins, writing barely ageneration after the
event and nearly hypnotized by the written legacy ofAugustine,
the suppression ofDonatism was the anchor (quod ubique!)
for atext-, document- or (let us say) scriptum-assured master
narrative ofthe providential unfolding oforthodoxy per tempora
et loca.57 For Peter Brown, reckoning up new resources for
the study ofAugustine four decades after he began reading his
way through the Complete Works [...] in the wide pages ofthe
monks ofSaint-Maur, the most precious single addition to that
stock was the Prosopographie de lAfrique chrtienne, completed
in1982 under the editorship ofAndr Mandouze, areferencework minutely observant ofthe times and places ofindividual
Christians living in those Roman or once-Roman provinces,
but without entries for Augustine and several other major figures
from the Histoire littraire de lAfrique chrtienne.58 For Mandouze

56
Mandouzes own term in Mmoires, I, p.341, used with reference to his
La Rvolution Algrienne par les textes.
57Vinc.Lirin., Comm.4,2(CC SL 64, p.150).
58 Brown, Augustine ofHippo, rev.edn., p.483: Here we have nothing less
than the collective biography ofAfrican Christianity in the age ofAugustine.
Ihad barely dared to dream ofsuch awork in1961. Prosopographie chrtienne du
Bas-Empire, I: Prosopographie de lAfrique chrtienne(303-533) ed.A.Mandouze,
Paris,1982; for the relation ofthe prosopography to Monceauxs Histoire
littraire, see the editors remarks on p.15.

465

M. VESSEY

himself, aconference-session on the Africanity ofAugustine

held in Algiers in2001 would present an opportunity to correct
an error ofperspective compounded by Monceauxs readiness
to create aliterary oeuvre for the schismatic Donatus, even in
the absence ofany extant text attributable to him.59 Is there
aperspective available to us now, in which these data would
come into asingle focus?
De Ghellinck listed Monceauxs Histoire littraire de lAfrique
chrtienne among the major landmarks ofthe previous halfcenturys progress in patristic studies.60 It was the sole example
as it will always be the modern prototype ofaregional, not
to say proto-national, history ofancient Christian literature,
albeit incomplete. No fewer than four ofits seven volumes were
sourced from or otherwise devoted to (historical) documents
and (literary) texts relating to the Donatist controversy. Thelast
was dedicated to Saint Augustine and Donatism.61 The sixth
had laid out the Donatist Literature in the Time ofAugustine.
Thefifth covered earlier Donatist writers, hitting its stride with
Donatus himself: With Donatus the Great, the literature properly
so-called ofDonatism begins.62 The fourth constituted the core
ofthe dossier (Documents on the History ofthe Schism) and
had opened with amanifesto:
Christian Africa ofthe fourth and early fifth centuries produced acurious polemical literature that is all its own: the
Donatist and anti-Donatist literature.This vast domain,
in which the genius ofthe Africans gave itself free rein,
has been almost completely ignored by modern criticism.
Historians ofLatin letters have doubtless seen it only as material for theology or documents for history [...] Nonetheless

59
A.Mandouze, Augustin et Donat, in Saint Augustin.Africanit et universalit, Actes du colloque international Alger-Annaba, 1-7avril2001(Paradosis: tudes
de littrature et de thologie anciennes, 45.1-2) ed.P.-Y.Fux, J.-M.Roessli,
O.Wermelinger, 2vols., Fribourg,2003, I, p.125-139, addressing une erreur
de perspective concernant la transformation dune impossibilit purement
contingent de coexistence en un antagonisme fondamentalement irrmissible
(p.125).
60 De Ghellinck, Patristique et Moyen Age, II, p.45.
61 Monceaux, Histoire littraire, VII, p.3.
62 Monceaux, Histoire littraire, V, p.99(my italics).

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LA PATRISTIQUE, CEST AUTRE CHOSE

[...], it has seemed right to us to accord aplace here, indeed

alarge place, to this polemical literature, which will be seen
to lack neither originality nor interest.63

These lines ofMonceauxs should now be read in conjunction

with his preface to the work as awhole, in which he situated the
task ofhis literary history with respect to other scholarly vocations.In sum, he recorded,
while profiting from previous studies and rendering full
justice to each, we came to arealization that, from our
point ofview, the subject-matter was new in almost all
its aspects. Having consulted historians, theologians and
philologists, we find ourselves confronting original texts
and documents (en face des textes et documents originaux).
Our aim has been simply to understand, to explicate, and
to appreciate these documents and these texts. Hence our
inquiry has automatically assumed adouble form: it begins
with philological critique, to end in literary critique.64

More than acentury on, it would be easy to miss the element

offunambulism in this preface.Aclassical philologist who had
come ofan age in anew era ofliterary criticism and ethnocentric literary history, with astudy ofthe classical pagan
literature ofAfrica (entitled Les Africains) already to his credit,
Monceaux was staking out the ground for, as he put it, une vritable histoire de la littrature chrtienne dAfrique, one that would take
full account ofthe works ofwriters such as Tertullian, Cyprian
and Augustine, without being acontribution to theology or any
other ecclesiastical science.
As it turned out, the main methodological challenge ofthis
new-style literary history did not lie at any intersection of
literature with theology but instead along the line dividing
(and not dividing) texts from documents in the case of abody
ofwritings characterized by Monceauxto distinguish it from
the past-oriented literature ofpagan African authorsas allof
action, always preoccupied with the present or the future, and

Monceaux, Histoire littraire, IV, p.3.

Monceaux, Histoire littraire, I, p.vi.

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for which fine language (le bien dire) was now nothing other
than aform ofaction.65 As he further explained in his preface:
Historical documents occupy afairly large place in our work.
Our thought in expanding its framework in this way was not
only to render service to archaeologists and other scholars
who often have to cite these items without always being
able to ascertain their value beforehand.Indeed, we initially
meant to confine ourselves to literary works in the strict sense.
However, we quickly realized that one cannot, without misrepresenting it, arbitrarily isolate aliterature ofaction, since
in this case the insertion ofcontemporary documents is necessary
for an understanding ofliterary works, and the most literary
ofthose works are at the same time documents ofhistory. Anonymous treatises, letters, transcripts ofproceedings, conciliar
acts, inscriptions, martyr actswe have omitted nothing,
since all ofthis serves to illuminate the literature (puisque de
tout cela sclaire la littrature).66

There is more than alittle irony in Monceauxs special pleading for apresent-minded, forward-looking literature ofaction,
when so much ofthat reputed literature, at least from the midfourth century onwards, takes the form ofadogged contestation ofdisputed pasts.If the strictly literary texts ofthis African
Christian corpus were indissociable from their contemporary
(datable, placeable) documents, was that not because it waslike
other ancient Christian literatures, even if pre-eminently so
among themalso aliterature oftradition?
There is no need for us to resolve that dilemma at this date.
There may be some value, however, in recognizing how skilfully it was managed by Monceaux at the time. As de Ghellinck
would show in1947, the romantic-historicist classical philology
ofthe late nineteenth and early twentieth century (as represented
supremely by Wilamowitz) created formidable problems for
students ofancient Christian writings, not least because ofthe
freight ofdocumentsthat is, oftexts not manifestly literary
according to aesthetic criteriathat were transmitted as part
of patristic tradition. Thenon-appearance ofthe third volume
Monceaux, Histoire littraire, I, p.i-ii.
Monceaux, Histoire littraire, I, p.iii(my italics).

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ofAdolf vonHarnacks history ofpre-Nicene Christian literature, which was to have traced the internal development ofthe
literature whose extant documents were inventoried and
dated in the first two, was only the most graphic symptom
ofageneral difficulty.67 Since Monceauxs Histoire littraire de
lAfrique chrtienne also remained incomplete, arrested at the point
at which it would have had to absorb the oeuvre ofAugustine
from beyond his direct dealings with the Donatists, it is impossible to say what model it might ultimately have provided for
an extended literary history ofChristian writings that could
no longer be mistaken for apropaideutic to theology. By stopping where he did, in the immediate aftermath ofthe heavily
documented events at Carthage in June411, Monceaux left
later historians and literary scholars with an invitingly open
literary dossier.
Alittle over fifty years ago, by separate routes, Andr Mandouze and Peter Brown came back to that juncture at the end
ofMonceauxs unfinished narrative ofthe literature ofearly
Christian Africa, near the beginning ofVincents projected
plenary discourse ofthe Fathers aplace and time close to
the practical limits ofboth patristics and literary history as they
have been known. Guided by the lights ofthese two modern
scholars among others, we have our own chance to intervene in
the same zone. Theoutstanding challenge can perhaps be put as
follows: Is there alanguage, existing this side ofpure poetry and
the ineffable philology ofGod, in which patristic philologists
could now at last speak without equivocation about texts/documents that, from the moment oftheir genesis in late antiquity,
have also been documents/texts?
Could we invent it, that might still be something else again.

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Abstract
Patristics, being defined by writings attributable to Church Fathers,
has in recent times been pursued as aphilological science. Philology,
however, is adivided house and its divisions are writ large in patristic
and para-patristic scholarship. Whereas philology always deals with
written texts in the broad sense ofthat word, some ofthose texts
prove in practice more literary (hence, even, more textual), others
more documentary. Seventy years ago, the most lucid methodological reflection on patristics as adiscipline left its fate suspended
between literary and theological vocations. While that dilemma is
long past, the ambivalence ofpatristics between literary/textual
and historical/documentary regimes ofphilology continues to be felt.
Theworks oftwo exemplary scholars who intervened in the Oxford
patristic conferences of1959 and1963 offer insights into the methodological problem and, between them, avantage-point from which we
might yet respond to it.

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