Why are some things spoken and other things sung? What effect does singing have on the hearer or the singer and especially on their affective and intellectual cognition? This essay, which was originally conceived and delivered as a lecture, asks why it was that Saint Augustine was so ambivalent about singing. It examines both his reasons and his tactics for avoiding singing as well as the ways and the contexts in which he can be shown to have positively embraced it. It argues that both Augustine’s theological reflection and his practice included a role for spontaneous, non-verbal expression in singing, as well as for the more measured poetry of the psalms and hymns that, in Augustine’s day, had already become a part of the liturgy and of corporate worship. 

The incident at Antioch described in Galatians 2:11–14 features in a number of Augustine’s works: Expositio epistulae ad Galatas, his correspondence with Jerome, De mendacio, Sermo 162C, and in De baptismo contra Donatistas. While a few scholars have seen Augustine’s anti-Donatism as a driving force behind all his comments about this encounter between Peter and Paul, this article argues that, while the idea of Peter’s humility is to be found in his commentary, the sermon, one of the letters, and the treatises, Augustine interpreted the scriptural passage in a variety of different ways, depending upon his situation. In the commentary, Augustine wanted to defend the reality of the argument between Peter and Paul because of his belief that scriptural authors would not lie. The same idea occurs in his letters, e.g., Epistula 82, where he adds that his interpretation was supported by Cyprian. Contrary to the aforementioned scholars, it is only in De baptismo that Augustine applies the Galatians passage, which he takes as referring to Peter’s humility, to Cyprian himself as an imitator of Peter. Thus, it is only in this treatise that Augustine seeks to redeem Cyprian from the clutches of the Donatists. A close reading of this variety of interpretation by Augustine contributes to an appreciation of the complexity of his reception of Cyprian, a topic of ever-increasing importance in Augustinian studies.

In this third and final part of this study, the contacts in thought between the glosses in a Budapest MS of the Pauline Epistles and the Liber de Fide are examined further. Attention is given to the developed use of the triad mens-uerbum-sapientia in order to express the notion that humankind, created as imago Dei, bears a “trinitarian” image of the Triune God. Application of this analogy, however, sets the author(s?) apart from other early Christian theologians, something that is especially noteworthy when the Holy Spirit is identified as personified Divine Wisdom. The understanding of the meaning of human death is also examined, particularly given the importance of this topic for the Pelagian controversy. In the Liber de Fide there are two opposing and un-reconciled accounts of the consequences of Adam’s sin, a fact that clearly calls for a reassessment of our understanding of the unity of the Liber while also cautioning against an over-simplistic invocation of its evidence in studies of the history of Pelagianism. By way of a conclusion, attention is drawn to the lack of—not to mention the need for—a more thorough study of the language and background of the Liber de Fide.

This article investigates the new attitude toward the reception and use of Augustine in the early thirteenth century as seen in the works of Helinand of Froidmont and Robert Grosseteste. Both scholars were products of the Twelfth Century Renaissance of Augustine, represented in Peter Lombard’s Sentences, the Glossa Ordinaria, and Gratian’s Decretum. Yet both Helinand and Grosseteste reconstructed Augustine’s texts for their own purposes; they did not simply use Augustine as an authority. Detailed and thorough textual analysis reveals that the early thirteenth century was a high point in Augustine’s reception, and one which effected a transformation of how Augustine’s texts were used, a fact often been obscured in the historiographical debates of the relationship between “Augustinianism” and “Aristotelianism.” Moreover, in pointing to the importance of Helinand’s world chronicle, his Chronicon, this article argues for the importance of compilations as a major source for the intellectual and textual history of the high Middle Ages. Thus, the thirteenth century appears as the bridge between the Augustinian Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, and that of the Fourteenth, making clear the need for further research and highlighting the importance of the early thirteenth century for a thorough understanding of the historical reception of Augustine.