Understanding The Medieval Meditative Ascent: Augustine, Anselm, Boethius, & Dante

UNDERSTANDING THE M E D I E VA L M E D I TAT I V E ASCENT Robert McMahon UNDERSTANDING THE M E D I E VA L M E D I TA...

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UNDERSTANDING THE M E D I E VA L M E D I TAT I V E ASCENT

Robert McMahon

UNDERSTANDING THE M E D I E VA L M E D I TAT I V E ASCENT Augustine, Anselm, Boethius, & Dante

The Catholic University of America Press Washington, D.C.

Copyright © 2006 The Catholic University of America Press All rights reserved The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standards for Information Science—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984. ∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McMahon, Robert, 1950– Understanding the medieval meditative ascent : Augustine, Anselm, Boethius, and Dante / Robert McMahon. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8132-1437-5 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8132-1437-8 (alk. paper) 1. Devotional literature—History and criticism. 2. Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo. Confessiones. 3. Anselm, Saint, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1033–1109. Proslogion. 4. Boethius, d. 524. De consolatione philosophiae. 5. Dante Alighieri, 1265–1321. Divina commedia. I. Title. BV4818.M36 2005 248—dc22 2005007734

CONTENTS

Preface

1. The Meditative Ascent: Paradigm and Principles Ascent and Return

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The Interior Journey: Human Being as the Epitome of Being / 9 The Hierarchy of Being and Analogy / 13 Foreshadowing and Fulfillment / 22 The Meditative Ascent and Philosophical Content / 29 Numerological Structure / 34 The Pilgrim Figure / 44 Habits of Understanding / 53 Summary / 59

2. The Unity of Meditative Structure and Texture in Augustine’s Confessions

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Meditative Structure: Return to the Origin / 67 Meditative Texture and Pilgrim Figures / 77 Paradigm at the Climax: Book 13 / 97

3. A Moving Viewpoint: Augustine’s Meditative Philosophy in the Confessions Moving Viewpoint in the Small / 112 Moving Viewpoint in the Large: Books 2 and 8 / 119 Analogy: Friendship and Conversion / 131 Analogy and Reconfigured Understanding: Memory and Conversion / 142 Coda: The Hermeneutics of Meditation / 156

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4. Meditative Movement in Anselm’s Proslogion

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Structure of the Ascent / 165 Patterns in the Ascent / 174 Prayer and Understanding / 185 Reconfigured Understandings / 195

5. Recollecting Oneself: Meditative Movement in The Consolation of Philosophy

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Structure of the Ascent / 214 Metamorphoses of the Circle / 226 Diagnosis and Cure: Recollecting Oneself / 236 Numerological Structure / 249

Bibliography

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Index

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PREFACE

T H E W O R K S treated in these pages—Augustine’s Confessions, Anselm’s Proslogion, Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy, and Dante’s Commedia—are not the preserve of scholars in any single field. They are studied and taught by historians, philosophers, and theologians, as well as by specialists in literature and religious studies. Moreover, unlike most works from late antiquity and the Middle Ages, they are not the preserve of specialists. They have long been available in English translations. They are often taught to undergraduates in Western civilization and humanities core courses. Hence they are often taught by professors with no expertise in medieval studies. In addition, the Confessions and the Commedia are read by truth seekers outside the academy, and contemporary interest in “the perennial philosophy” may well lead readers to the other two as well. In short, these works transcend their times of origin and continue to speak to a wide variety of readers. The present book attempts to speak to all parts of this audience by asking some fundamental questions about these works that specialists have tended to slight. These questions may be termed “literary,” for I learned to ask them by studying Dante’s Commedia. Dante’s poem imaginatively elaborates the tradition of the medieval meditative ascent, as it does so much else, and I hope to show how its literary and philosophical patterns illuminate the Confessions, the Proslogion, and The Consolation of Philosophy. The “literary” questions I pose to these works generate some new considerations affecting the philosophical, theological, and historical issues bruited by scholars. I intend to show how each of these works has been carefully designed by its author and how this literary form reveals the au-

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thor’s designs upon the reader. The meanings engendered by the work are part and parcel of its literary structure and strategies. Hence the following chapters ask and answer certain recurring questions: How does this book “work”? What are its strategies, and how are they designed to move a reader? What are the stages in this meditative ascent to God, and how are they related to one another? The literary unfolding of a work is not a merely neutral framework that contains meanings through explicit statement. Rather, this unfolding is itself meaningful. In other words, each of these works is simultaneously literary and philosophical, and its philosophical meanings cannot be separated from its literary structure. (I use the word philosophical to mean both “philosophical and theological,” for the two are not separate in these works.) In each, a given philosophical discussion receives much of its particular character by the stage of the ascent in which it occurs and the literary style of its expression. A meditative ascent is a literary-and-philosophical unity. It is intended not merely to be read through but also to be meditated upon. Hence its meanings derive not only from what is said but also from what is implied, such as the relations between the unfolding stages of the ascent. Scholarship tends to separate “the literary” and “the philosophical” in these works, rather than understanding them as working together. For example, literary study of the Confessions tends to focus on patterns of imagery and allusion in Books 1–9, while philosophical analysis tends to discuss issues in Books 10–13. “Memory” is a long-standing topic in Augustine studies, and when students of this topic turn to the Confessions they typically focus on Book 10 because it contains an extended discussion of memory. Now it seems obvious that a philosopher interested in Augustine on “memory” should attend to the passages where Augustine discussed it. But an understanding of the work’s literary structure as a meditative ascent would broaden and complicate the issue. For the Confessions progress from an autobiographical record of memories, in Books 1–9, to Book 10

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on memory. Books 1–9 display Augustine’s memory in act. They also contain some explicit reflections on his use of memory to confess in God’s presence. In short, what Augustine had to say about “memory” in the Confessions was by no means confined to its explicit discussion in Book 10. Yet because scholars tend to separate “the literary” from “the philosophical,” they have not used Books 1–9 to study Augustine on memory. My subject, then, is the literary and philosophical unity of these works: in each case, how “literary” structure and strategies shape its “philosophical” meanings. Because specialists have often neglected this unity in their pursuit of specific problems, I hope to show them some new things about works they know well. Because a work’s literary structure and strategies prove fundamental to its character, I hope to bring nonspecialists toward a coherent understanding of each work as a whole. I assume only that a reader has some familiarity with the work under discussion and desires to understand something more about it. Certain features distinguish my treatment of these works. First, the meditative ascent proves to be a genre and structure for the work as a whole. The Christian-Platonist “ascent of the soul,” for example, has been much studied by Augustine scholars, in the Confessions as in other works. Yet they have been reluctant to recognize that the Confessions as a whole unfolds as an ascent, though it has been pointed out. In the present book, the Christian-Platonist ascent is not simply a local topic, theme, or structure within a work but the master pattern that governs the whole. Because the master pattern in each case is a Christian-Platonist ascent, it proves to be no rigid construct imposed on recalcitrant materials, but rather a flexible and open form inherent in the author’s worldview. Understanding the master plan clarifies the work and opens it up to new understandings. In each case, I show how this literary pattern functions and what it implies for the philosophical understanding of various passages.

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Second, each of these works proves to be a journey. This journey character is not well understood, in my view, even when it is explicitly noted. For example, in his “Preface” to the Proslogion, Anselm states that he wrote the work “under the guise [sub persona] of one struggling to raise his mind to the contemplation of God.” Although scholars have duly noted this movement in the work, few have studied it carefully. Perhaps the overwhelming attention they pay to the so-called ontological argument, in Chapters 2–4, has kept them from seeing how the rest of the work reconfigures the understandings reached there. Here again, the “literary” pattern of the ascent as a whole affects the “philosophical” meaning of different passages in it. Third, each of these works contains at least one pilgrim figure making a journey, and in every case this figure is an “I,” for each presents itself as autobiographical. The journey is not being made, in a third-person narrative, by Everyman or Redcrosse or Christian. Rather, the “I” speaks for himself. He may retell events that he has experienced in the past, as do Dante and Boethius, or he may speak in the present, as does Anselm—and Augustine does both. The “I” in these works has so impressed readers over the centuries that they have generally identified him with the author, even though they recognized that Dante’s journey is allegorical and that Boethius’s Lady Philosophy is an allegorical fiction. Today we distinguish more carefully between Dante the poet and Dante the pilgrim, Boethius the author and Boethius the prisoner. All the same, the “autobiographical” character of these pilgrim figures continues to appeal to readers, for it involves us more deeply in their journeys. Fourth, each of these works is meditative, not only explicitly but implicitly. Their explicitly meditative character is well understood. The Confessions proves to be an inquisitio veritatis, an “inquiry seeking the truth” on various issues, as Augustine poses questions, hazards answers, mulls them over, and prays his way toward understanding. The Proslogion, too, is a prayerful quest for truth, and The

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Consolation of Philosophy, in a somewhat different way, meditates on various themes as these recur in Philosophy’s instruction of Boethius. Their implicitly meditative character, however, has hardly been studied. One characteristic of these meditative ascents is their tendency not to remark on the relations between their various stages. Augustine did not describe Books 1–9 as “memories,” nor did he say that because the power of “memory” enables individual memories, its exploration in Book 10 proves a higher stage in his ascent. Rather, he left the relations between Book 10 and Books 1–9 for the reader to discover by meditating upon them. In other words, the ascent proves meditative not only in its explicit style but also in its implicit structure. The meditative ascent invites the reader to meditate on it, in order to understand it more fully, for it implies meditative meanings by its very structure. Philosophers have studied these works for their explicit teaching on various topics. But Augustine’s philosophical achievement in the Confessions as a whole surpassed what the work explicitly states on various issues in its parts. The work as a whole contains implied, or meditative, understandings in addition to its explicit, doctrinal statements. Finally, for this reason each of these works unfolds as a spiritual exercise in two different respects. First, the pilgrim figure in each work undertakes the effort to explore various issues, at various stages of his ascent. His spiritual exercise is explicit at each stage, and readers participate in it insofar as they labor to understand what the work is saying. This labor, naturally, may range from following the text, to interpreting it in one’s own words, to ruminating on its movements and their implications. But, second, each work as a whole invites readers to the further spiritual exercise of meditating on what is implied by its structure as a Christian-Platonist ascent. By definition, a meditative ascent is written from a moving viewpoint. It invites us to discern its stages, to understand their ascending relations with one another, and to reflect on what these relations imply. In a meditative ascent, “everything that rises must converge,” for its

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goal is a vision of Unity. The convergence of its various strands is never elaborated fully. The authors left that spiritual exercise for the reader’s meditation. In short, by treating each work as a literary and philosophical unity, I hope to open it up to new understandings and clarify some existing scholarly debates. A meditative philosophy goes beyond its explicit doctrines. These doctrines are true, as far as they go, but they only represent stages along the way, unless they occur at the climax of the ascent. Sometimes they are explicitly revised at higher levels, but most often they are implicitly reconfigured. Scholars have not explored the implied understandings in these works because they have not understood how the structure of the meditative ascent creates them. This structure is best illustrated by Dante’s Commedia. Because the principles governing its literary and philosophical unity are well understood, Chapter 1 repeatedly draws on Dante’s poem to illustrate the structure and implications of the meditative ascent. Hence Dante appears in my subtitle, even though he does not receive a separate chapter. Chapters 2–5 then use these principles to explore the structure and implications of the Confessions, the Proslogion, and The Consolation of Philosophy. The Commedia elaborates the details of its meditative ascent more fully than its predecessors. Nevertheless, all four works are governed by the same principles because all seek a similar kind of literary and philosophical unity. The differences between them are obvious. The present book explores their common ground. One Christian-Platonist ascent, Bonaventure’s Journey of the Mind to God, is given little attention here because it does not achieve the same kind of literary and philosophical unity. For one thing, it does not have a pilgrim figure. Bonaventure was directing an ascent, not making one himself. The first word in his title, Itinerarium, means “road map” as well as “journey,” and the book does not narrate a journey but rather sketches a map to be followed by a reader

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experienced in meditation. For another, it is not clear to me that Bonaventure used the ascent to create implied understandings, in the way that Augustine and Anselm did. Although he made the structure of his ascent explicit, his road map is so sketchy that I do not find clearly implied meanings in the relations between it stages. In short, Bonaventure’s Itinerarium, though illustrating a ChristianPlatonist ascent, departs significantly from the literary and philosophical genre being studied here. The present book has been written for nonspecialists as well as specialists, and I must ask each to be patient with the different needs of the other. By “nonspecialist,” I mean a nonmedievalist, perhaps a scholar in another field who teaches one or more of these works. On the one hand, the chapters are intended to be clear and coherent expositions for the nonspecialist. Insofar as this is successful, specialists may find a point belabored, but it should not be obscure. On the other hand, nonspecialists may find that parts of this book go beyond their interests. It deals with some long-standing scholarly debates, and its attempt to open up new ways of understanding these works may exceed a nonspecialist’s familiarity with them. I have tried to help both kinds of readers by dividing each chapter into sections, with subheadings. They will not have to read far in order to know whether the section interests them. Chapter 1 describes the literary and philosophical structure of the meditative ascent and what it implies, at least as far as this book is concerned. It is the essential preliminary for the chapters that follow. Much of it will be new to nonspecialists, and though specialists are familiar with the exitus-reditus scheme, they are not familiar with all its implications. After assimilating Chapter 1, the reader may go directly to whatever chapter most interests him or her and expect to understand it. Chapters 2–5 apply the ideas of Chapter 1 to specific works, with two chapters on the Confessions because of its length and complexity. The sequence of chapters moves from Augustine to Anselm, rather than to Boethius, because the Proslogion, like the

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Confessions, unfolds as a prayer from beginning to end. This literary strategy is not well understood, and so I have linked the works using it in successive chapters. Many friends have contributed to this book in various ways, and it is a joy for me to mention them here. Robert M. Durling’s course on the Commedia aroused my interest in the Christian-Platonist ascent in my first year of graduate school, more than twenty years ago. In the course of directing my dissertation, he spoke with me often about Augustine, Boethius, and Dante, sharing his thinking and writing generously. I have lived so long with his ideas about the Christian-Platonist ascent as a literary form that I cannot say what I have taken from him and what I may have added on my own. More recently, I am grateful for Todd Breyfogle’s friendship, conversation, and encouragement. I tried out these and other ideas orally with Todd, who did much to help me winnow them. This book was written in no small part because he found my thinking on Augustine and Anselm valuable. Todd also read the manuscript carefully, making many suggestions for improvement of its manner and matter, which I have tried to take. Several friends contributed to this work in other ways. I am grateful to Glenn Hughes, James Olney, Paul Olson, Zdravko Planinc, and Greg Schufreider for giving me their books, from which I learned a great deal, and to John Protevi for his Augustine bibliography for holdings in the Louisiana State University library. Glenn Hughes and Zdravko Planinc also encouraged this work from its beginning some years ago, and conversations with Jim Babin, Ellis Sandoz, Mary Sirridge, Stuart Warner, and David Walsh helped to shape it. None of these good people, of course, is responsible for whatever misinterpretations and infelicities may remain. Such things of darkness I acknowledge as my own.

UNDERSTANDING THE M E D I E VA L M E D I TAT I V E ASCENT

CHAPTER 1

THE MEDITATIVE ASCENT Paradigm and Principles

T H E M E D I T A T I V E A S C E N T enacts an interior journey: the return of the soul in this life to God, the Origin and End of all things. It is based on the exitus-reditus scheme of Christian-Platonism: just as all things come forth (exitus) from God, so do all things, and especially human beings, return (reditus) to him. The immortal soul’s return is necessarily accomplished after death, when it comes to judgment. But the meditative ascent enacts an interior journey in this life, because the soul longs for loving communion with its Divine Source. “Seek God and ye shall live,” writes the Psalmist, and the pilgrim on the meditative ascent seeks that more abundant life in the presence of the living God. The meditative ascent is both the interior journey and the written work conducting it. As a meditative journey, it is not a mystical rapture: it progresses by stages of philosophical and theological discourse, and it arrives finally at a discursive vision of divine things. It is understood that God can abbreviate the ascent whenever he wills by seizing the soul into his presence with a sudden influx of grace. But though mystical raptus can be described, after a fashion, it is nondiscursive and not a journey. Mystical grace is God’s work, not ours. Nevertheless, God’s grace is understood to be continually present in the meditative ascent, which implies the dialectic of human seeking and divine drawing. The Divine Presence is not only the End of the meditative quest but also its Origin, however obscurely felt. As Jesus tells Pascal in the Pensees, “You would not seek me if

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The Meditative Ascent

you did not possess me. Therefore be not troubled.”1 God is present in every stage along the way. “Meditative ascent” names both the journey itself and the written work describing it, both the form of the quest itself and the literary form narrating it. Dante’s Commedia is the best known and most obvious instance of this ascent, because the pilgrim’s journey proves exterior as well as interior, and the poem retells it. According to its fiction, Dante the pilgrim began “far from God,” having lost his way in a dark wood, but his journey culminated with a vision of God in the spiritual radiance of Heaven. So, too, the poem retelling this story follows this movement. The journey took place in the past, while the retelling of it—the poet’s “singing” of his poem—takes place in the present, following the sequence of the journey. The pilgrim’s journey to God purports to have been divinely willed and guided, chiefly through three intermediaries: Virgil, Beatrice, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Hence, though God himself appeared only at the end of the journey, he was present from its beginning in Dante’s guides and in the grace enabling it. The pilgrimage itself had three main stages—Hell, Purgatory, and the heavens—each a distinct realm, and the Commedia, concomitantly, has three distinct parts. As Dante the pilgrim traveled through these realms, he was educated about evil, vice and virtue, love, God’s ordering of the universe, the Trinity, and so on. In this way, his exterior journey proved also to be an interior one, as his intellect and will were prepared for the vision of God. Similarly, the poem records this education in its “original” sequence, so that readers may receive, as far as possible, the same education as Dante the pilgrim. After the pilgrim experienced the divine vision at the climax of his journey, he returned to earth to write the poem that narrates it. The Christian-Platonist ascent thereby proves the form of the pilgrim’s journey in the past and the poet’s retelling of it in his poem. 1. Blaise Pascal, Pensees, translated by A. J. Krailsheimer, number 929, p. 320; see also p. 324.


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A meditative ascent, then, unfolds in stages, and each stage represents a level of discourse. In Dante’s Inferno, for example, speeches tend to be relatively brief and filled with dramatic tension. Longer discourses do not appear until the Purgatorio and the Paradiso, and then on philosophical and theological topics, where there is no dramatic tension. In this way, Dante progressively heightens the style and the subject of the Commedia in each of its parts.2 Hence, to understand a Christian-Platonist ascent as a whole, we must first grasp the distinguishing features of each level. These are necessarily explicit in its central themes and key words. Second, we must understand how the levels are related to one another and to the journey as a whole. These relationships are never stated fully: they are left for the inquiring reader to discover. In other words, the meditative ascent is deliberately constructed so that a full understanding demands not merely our reading, but our meditation. This literary strategy, and the kinds of interpretation it demands, have not received the attention they deserve. The distinguishing features of each level may be discovered by reading, but discovering the relations between the levels demands something more. Meditation cannot be separated from reading, for it may be called “intensive reading.” More accurately, meditation implies rereading, and may be defined, for our purposes, as “deeply reflective rereading.” A major distinguishing feature of a stage, like “memory” in Book 10 of the Confessions, will be noted on a first reading. But only a reflectively inquiring rereading will show us the place of Book 10 in the ascent as a whole, and how it relates to what came before and what comes after. This point may be illustrated more fully by considering the pattern of light and darkness imagery in the Commedia. Hell is dark, 2. For a more detailed analysis of how a level of discursive style reveals the moral level of Dante’s characters, see Marcia Colish, The Mirror of Language: A Study in the Medieval Theory of Knowedge, rev. ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), pp. 207–20.

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and the souls there experience its darkness eternally, that is, constantly and forever. The mountain of Purgatory is on the surface of the Earth, and so the souls there experience the natural light and darkness of day and night. The souls in the Empyreal Heaven experience the supernatural light of God’s presence eternally. There is an obvious progression here, from eternal darkness to natural day and night to eternal light. Since darkness is the absence of light, the progression moves from the defective to the perfect. Nowhere does Dante remark explicitly on this pattern, much less comment on what the quality of light in each realm means. These topics are left for the reader’s meditation. A meditative ascent is necessarily written from a moving viewpoint, for it progresses to stages ever “higher”: to more comprehensive categories, or to more fundamental considerations. Hence, what is true at one stage is qualified by the new viewpoint emerging at a higher stage.3 Key words, for example, acquire new meanings: Virgil’s discourse on “love” in Purgatorio 17–18 offers a breadth of perspective missing from “love” in Inferno 5, when spoken by the adulteress Francesca.4 Often, however, the differences in meaning are more subtle: “memory” means something slightly different in Confessions 11.27–30, where the subject is “time,” than it did in the exploration of memory in Book 10. The meditative ascent is not like an argument composed of a single set of coherent statements. Rather, each level is like a set of coherent statements, and the whole journey proves an ascending sequence of these sets of statements. 3. I take the formulations in this paragraph from Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, edited by Frederick E. Crowe and Robert Doran, in Collected Works, Vol. 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), pp. 17–19. Like a meditative ascent, Insight was written “from a moving viewpoint” in order to foster the reader’s self-development. 4. All my references to and quotations from Dante are taken from La Divina Commedia, edited and annotated by C. H. Grandgent, revised by Charles S. Singleton (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972); all translations are mine.

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The set of statements at each level is explicit, but what the relations between stages are, and how the sequence works as a whole, is left to the reader’s meditation. Moreover, the moving viewpoint in the work lends it a kind of dramatic structure: it progresses from level to level climactically (Greek climax, “ladder”). Like the finale of a literary work, and unlike the structure of most arguments, the end is unforeseen, and thus surprising. We cannot see where the meditative journey is going until we arrive at its end, though in retrospect we can understand it as a coherent whole. This dramatic quality is further emphasized by the narrative voice of the pilgrim figure. Like Dante the pilgrim, Augustine, Anselm, and Boethius all seek, ask questions, inquire and reflect, suffer perplexity and anguish, give thanks and praise, and so on, as part of their meditative journeys. These dramatic movements in a pilgrim’s voice involve the reader in the quest emotionally as well as intellectually. The meditative ascent, then, is written from a moving viewpoint, in its structure of ascent from stage to stage and in the textures of its narrative voice (or the voices of its characters). In this way, the reader is moved, by feeling and thought together, along the pilgrim’s way. These considerations will be developed and illustrated over the rest of this chapter. They provide the framework for exploring the works by Augustine, Anselm, and Boethius over the rest of this book. This framework emerges from the paradigm of the exitus-reditus scheme: the meditative ascent enacts an interior journey, the return of the soul to God, the Origin and End of all things.

Ascent and Return Let us consider the paradigm implied in the key terms “ascent” and “return,” both of which are images. An ascent, by definition, involves movement “upward,” to higher and higher levels. A return necessarily involves movement “back.” God is the goal of this ascent and return, and he is traditionally imaged as “above” us, for he is

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perfect, and prior to us, for he creates all things. According to this image paradigm, then, the “ascent to God” is also a “return to the Origin,” where movement forward is simultaneously upward, to higher levels, and backward, to earlier states or conditions. The imagery is best illustrated by Dante’s Paradiso. The poem is set in the geocentric universe, where the Moon, the Sun, and the other stars move around the stable Earth, each on their spheres. As Dante the pilgrim ascends successively to the spheres of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, and so on, he is met by souls who come down from Heaven to teach him. His forward movement proves an upward and “backward” movement toward God, the Origin of all things, for the divine energy quickening the creation pours down into it from above. In the course of this ascent, Dante encounters three of his “fathers” and each successive one is earlier. In Paradiso 15, he is greeted by Cacciaguida, a crusading knight of the twelfth century and the first nobleman in Dante’s lineage. In canto 26 he speaks with Adam, the biblical father of us all. Finally, in canto 33, he sees God, the Original in whose “image and likeness” we are made. Each of these is not only earlier in time but also progressively greater as a “father.” Dante’s ascent to what is “prior” and “higher” proves an image of his growth in knowledge. Because the heavenly spheres of the Paradiso are arranged concentrically around the Earth as their center, as the pilgrim moves higher he encompasses more of the universe beneath him. Concomitantly, as he ascends to higher, more comprehensive spheres, he is given higher, more comprehensive visions about the divine order of things. Most of these visions are discursive, but they lead toward and culminate in Dante’s vision of God in Paradiso 33. Thomas Aquinas’s discourse on the Creation (13.52–87), for example, is surpassed by Beatrice’s discourse sixteen cantos later (29.13–36): she treats the same issues in briefer compass by using more general categories, and her primary subject, the creation of the angels, is earlier and higher than his, the creation of

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Adam. Beatrice’s discourse is further surpassed, in brevity and comprehensiveness, by the pilgrim’s vision of God, when he sees all the possibilities of being existing in a “simple light” (33.90), “bound with love in a single volume” (33.86). But what does this language of “higher” and “prior” mean for thinkers who do not give us images, as Dante does? The sense of these terms may be illustrated by the movement in the Confessions from autobiographical memories, in Books 1–9, to memory, in Book 10.5 First, logically, memories imply the power of memory: memory is logically prior to memories. Second, for Augustine, the power of memory actually preexists the memories it contains. Though a modern thinker might argue that the accumulation of memories creates the memory, Augustine believed that memory was an innate human capacity: human beings acquire memories because they first possess the innate power we call “memory.” In short, there can be no memories without memory. Memory, then, is prior to memories both logically and ontologically. Hence, memory also proves “higher” than memories because it governs and contains them. The various kinds of memories we have depend upon the nature of memory itself. As a preexisting innate capacity, memory is oriented to certain kinds of activity, and this orientation enables it to do some things, and not to do others. Obviously, the memory is fitted to remember: it does not fashion objects and it cannot (by definition) predict the future, though it may be used in the process of fabrication or prediction. The memory contains its memories and thus orders and recollects them. The power of memory is higher than its memories because it controls their acquisition and contains them for recall. Paradoxical though it may sound, memory is higher than mem5. Kenneth Burke points this out in The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), p. 124. He sets out his understanding of “the Platonic dialectic” in the Confessions most fully on pp. 141–57.

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ories because it is their ground. “Ground” is an image of foundations, while “higher” implies an upper level. But in the paradigm governing the meditative ascent, God is the highest End and the ultimate Ground, or Origin. Hence, “higher” also means “deeper, more fundamental.” Because the way forward is simultaneously the way upward and back, progress to higher and higher levels involves the movement of discourse to ever deeper, more fundamental considerations. In sum, memory is higher and deeper than memories because it governs them as their ground, prior to them both logically and ontologically. Thus, the Confessions’s movement from memories, in Books 1–9, to memory, in Book 10, marks a progress to what is higher, deeper, and prior. This directionality is furthered in Book 11, where the subject is “time.” Time is prior to memory, logically and ontologically, for time is the precondition for memory: there can be no memory without time. Because time is prior to memory, it is also “higher”: time, as it were, contains memory and thereby proves a more comprehensive aspect of created being. Hence time is deeper than memory, for it is the ground of memory. Because memory is based in time, one cannot fully understand memory without understanding time. As the Confessions progresses from memories to memory, and from memory to time, it ascends meditatively, in a return to the Origin, to principles of being steadily higher, deeper, and prior. This progress is never explicitly remarked in the work. Augustine left it for the reader’s meditation. The “return to the Origin” of being ascends through ever higher principles of being, for principles are “firsts,” etymologically and philosophically, and God is the First. Memory is a principle of memories, and time is a principle of the power of memory. Hence, in this ascent to principles, “the last are first, and the first are last”: what comes later in the narrative is actually prior in reality. God is the End, or goal, of the journey and the Beginning of all things. The return to the universal Principle thus necessarily passes through a

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series of principles steadily higher and prior: more fundamental, more universal. The Christian-Platonist ascent thereby enacts, in its literary form, a version of Jesus’ eschatological reversal of earthly priorities: its meditative movement to the last things that are really first aims to awaken the eschatological perspective in the pilgrim soul.

The Interior Journey: Human Being as the Epitome of Being From this perspective, we can begin to understand the character of the interior journey. It proves no mere traveling in the inner realms of psyche and spirit. Rather, it has direction: to ever more fundamental constituents of our being. “Higher” and “prior” mean “deeper”: the interior journey is a journey into the interior. As we gradually penetrate the depths of our being, we come closer and closer to the Ground of being, and so we encounter reflectively, at each stage, more fundamental aspects of all being. In the ChristianPlatonist tradition, we cannot plumb the depths of being by looking outward. To encounter the living God, we must turn inward. As Augustine put it, “Do not go abroad. Return within yourself. In the inward man dwells Truth.”6 The return to God depends on this return into oneself. To be sure, Christian Platonists recognized the evidence of God’s glory in creation, for the visible world mirrors the invisible things of God, “even his eternal power and divinity” (Rom 1:20). Nevertheless, the meditative ascent demands a conversion: the pilgrim turns away from things outside him (extra se) to those within him (intra se), and with proper guidance and grace he eventually comes to the Divine Presence above him (supra se). This pattern underlies every meditative ascent in the Christian-Platonist tradition. Though visi-

6. Augustine, Of True Religion, Introduction by Louis O. Mink, translated by J. H. S. Burleigh (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1959), 29.72, p. 69.

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ble evidence of the invisible God can be found in the beauties of creation, the pilgrim encounters God himself not by looking outward with the senses, but by turning inward with the mind. This pattern is evident in the Commedia. Dante the pilgrim’s journey begins with the first verb of the poem, “I found myself again” (mi ritrovai; Inf. 1.2). This conversion, a self-recognition and a turning toward himself, liberates him from his involvement in the dark wood and so enables him to begin his journey upward, toward the light. This inward turn both eventually leads to and obscurely foreshadows his vision of the risen Christ at the end of his pilgrimage. Because Christ is the pilgrim’s divine Original and resurrection is his predestined end, the pilgrim’s final vision proves his highest self-recognition in the poem. The broad pattern of Dante’s cantiche also embodies the movement from things outside oneself to things inside and above. The Inferno concerns external things—sounds, sights, conversations—with no philosophical discourses directing the pilgrim to look inward. The Purgatorio, however, marks an inward turn not only in its philosophical discourses but in its concern with the imagination in art and in dreams. In other words, while the Inferno is taken up with the things of the senses perceived “outside oneself” (extra se), the Purgatorio also concerns things of the imagination and philosophical reason “within oneself” (intra se). The Paradiso then narrates an ascent into the heavens “above oneself” (supra se) with a series of progressively “higher” theological discourses leading to the pilgrim’s vision of God. Although one turns inward in order to ascend upward, it is understood that the “height” of God’s presence lies in the soul’s deepest interior. Augustine called this inner divine dwelling-place the anima animi, literally, “the soul of the mind,” but, more accurately, “the life-principle of all one’s human powers, perceptual, emotional, and rational.” At one point, the narrator of the Confessions addresses God as “more inward than my innermost and higher than my uppermost” (interior intimo meo et superior summo meo;

The Interior Journey

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3.6.11).7 Interior intimo meo may be freely rendered as “more inward to me than I am to myself.” Because God creates human beings in “his image and likeness,” the Divine Presence is the Ground of every human being: prior to the psychological self formed by experiences, and so deeper and higher than the self. The interior journey is a journey into the interior of the soul, where the divine Original is the living source of the “image and likeness” each human being is. But this interior journey leads to the Ground not only of human beings, but of all created being. It thereby moves to aspects of existence that are gradually more general, comprehensive, universal, and fundamental. We have already seen how Dante’s Paradiso provides an image of this progress in the pilgrim’s ascent to higher, more comprehensive, heavenly spheres, where he is given progressively more comprehensive visions of the divine order. The Confessions, too, as we saw, reflects progressively on memories (Books 1–9), on memory (Book 10), and on time (Book 11). The autobiographical memories are Augustine’s alone, while memory is an innate power of every human being, and time is a constituent of everything in the visible creation. The higher the discursive level, the more universal its exploration: from one man, to all human beings, to all material beings. Just as a mountain hiker’s view of the landscape below increases in scope the higher she climbs, so the philosophical scope of the meditative ascent grows broader as it moves higher. The higher the category of being that the meditation explores, the broader its scope, the more it governs, and the more fundamental, or universal, it is. Now we moderns tend to think of these higher categories of being as mere names for abstractions, but this is not the Christian7. All Latin quotations from the Confessions in this book are taken from Sant’ Agostino, Le Confessioni, edited by Martin Skutella, revised by Michele Pellegrino (Rome: Citta Nuova, 1965); all translations are mine. I have profited by consulting the translations by John K. Ryan and by Henry Chadwick.

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Platonist view. We locate the real in the perceived, the concrete specific thing. An object seems to us more real than the memory of an object, the specific memory is more real than the power of memory, which itself is more real than time. For us, the greater the specificity, the more information is conveyed, the more real the experience. Hence, the higher the category of being, the vaguer it is, and the less real it feels. But for Christian Platonists, the index of reality lies not in perceptual specificity of information, but in universality and what may be called “lastingness.” For us moderns, the water-oak outside my window is more real than the biological idea “wateroak,” but for Christian Platonists the idea applies to more beings and endures far longer than the water-oak outside my window. In other words, when the Confessions moves from memories, to memory, to time, it progresses more deeply into reality. For us, what feels real seems more real than an idea, which is a “mere idea” or “mere words.” But for the tradition of the meditative ascent, what feels real is less real than an idea, because feelings are fleeting and ideas endure. Ideas, in this sense, are Platonic Forms, and these are held to have real and eternal existence in the mind of God. The meditative ascent understands itself not as a movement to ever more abstract and vague categories, but as a journey into reality. It culminates in a discursive “vision of God,” and God is no vague abstraction but the ultimately living Reality. The interior journey, then, penetrates reality because it progresses into the interior not only of the human being, but of all being. This penetration is enabled by the Christian-Platonist understanding of the human being as “the epitome of being.” In this tradition, we humans are unique in creation: we are the only beings simultaneously material and spiritual. The animals below us in the hierarchy of being are material, but not spiritual: they have bodies, but not immortal souls. The angels above us in the hierarchy are spiritual, but not material: they have immortal spirits but lack material bodies. Only human beings participate simultaneously in the material and the spiritual, the visible and the invisible, creation. Hence, according

The Hierarchy of Being and Analogy

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to this tradition, we are the only reflective, discursive intelligences in existence. The animals have their own kinds of intelligence, but because they do not have articulate languages, animal intelligence is neither discursive nor reflective. The angels, being pure spirits, do not need linguistic sign systems to communicate, for they commune with one another and with God by direct intuition. In short, we are the only beings in the visible creation who can reflect upon, and so give voice to, all aspects of being, for we alone participate in matter and spirit, time and eternity.8 Hence, the meditative journey into our own depths leads to progressively more universal aspects of being on the way to encountering the Ground of all being. In sum, the meditative ascent, as an interior journey and a return to the Origin, progresses to levels ever higher, deeper, and prior. It understands itself as a journey into ever more comprehensive, fundamental, universal, and governing principles of being. Though these are necessarily named in categories of ever increasing generality and abstraction, the interior journey understands itself as progressing discursively into ever greater realities, until it arrives at Ultimate Reality. Understanding a meditative ascent involves grasping how this progress is actually worked out. Christian-Platonist authors often did not state the relations between levels in the ascent, but left them for the reader’s meditation.

The Hierarchy of Being and Analogy This sketch for understanding the relations between levels in the meditative ascent needs to be filled out. The Christian-Platonist tra-

8. For fuller treatments, see C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), pp. 152–69; and Patrick Boyde, Dante Philomythes and Philosopher: Man in the Cosmos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 270–95. Modern restatements of this anthropology are argued by Josef Pieper, in Leisure: The Basis of Culture, translated by Alexander Dru, with an Introduction by T. S. Eliot (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Fund, 1998), pp. 82–97; and by E. F. Schumacher, A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), pp. 1–38.

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dition offers two useful models: a philosophical one, “the analogy of being,” and a literary one, foreshadowing and fulfillment in a plot. But because the meditative ascent proves to be simultaneously a literary and a philosophical genre, there is considerable overlap in the interpretive consequences of these two models, and to a great extent they are interchangeable. Nevertheless, each has value and we shall consider both in turn. The ancients held that Being manifests itself in the visible world in different kinds of beings, and these could be ordered on different levels: inanimate things, plants, animals, and human beings. Though a piece of rose quartz, a water-oak, a dog, and a person all possess existence as a fact, they were held to enjoy different powers of existing on an ascending scale. The rose quartz has existence, but not life; a water-oak has existence and life, with its capacities for nourishment, growth, and reproduction, but not locomotion; a dog has existence, life, and locomotion, with the powers of perception and memory needed for survival once a being has locomotion; and a human being has all these powers augmented by “reason” (language, reflective understanding, intuition). Thus there is a Ladder or a Scale of Being (as in a musical scale, a ladder of notes: Latin scala, “ladder, stairway”). The higher levels have the capacities of the lower ones but realized in a more complex way, as animal digestion is more complex than a plant’s assimilation of nutrients. With respect to the fact of existence, then, “being” means the same thing for every existing thing, but, when we consider the capacities that different things have, “being” has a somewhat different meaning. The “analogy of being” is a way of bridging this sameness of existence and differences in capacity.9 Though the analogy of being was 9. For a fuller treatment, see Ralph M. McInerny, The Logic of Analogy: An Interpretation of St. Thomas (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961). Marcia L. Colish, The Mirror of Language: A Study in the Medieval Theory of Knowledge, rev. ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), pp. 142–51, offers a useful brief account.


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explicitly developed in the thirteenth century by Thomas Aquinas, it offers a useful way of thinking about the different meanings that key words have on different levels of discourse. Hence, it can help us to understand what Augustine, Anselm, Boethius, and Dante were doing with their language at different levels in their ascents. Although the first three did not have the “analogy of being” as an intellectual instrument for reflecting on their uses of language, the hierarchy of being was a cultural commonplace, and all three were not only brilliant writers but also sophisticated philosophers of language.10 They knew what they were doing, and “the analogy of being” can help us think about what they actually did. “Analogy” comes from a Greek word meaning “proportion”: all beings share the fact of existence, but higher beings have a greater proportion of being, considered as capacities or powers. This will become clearer by considering what “goodness” means when predicated of beings at different levels. “A good piece of rose quartz,” spoken by a mineralogist, means that this rose quartz is a representative specimen: it illustrates clearly the color and crystalline structure of the rock. “A good water-oak,” spoken by my tree specialist, means that it remains living and strong: the roots will probably hold through the next hurricane. “A good dog” has a goodness more complex than the health of a water-oak—obedience and affection, perhaps even special skills (those of a guard dog, for example, or of a hunting dog, or a herding dog). When we consider the goodness of “a good person,” so many different qualities, virtues, and skills are relevant that it would be difficult to list them all. In all these instances, the meanings of “good” are related, as it were, “proportion10. For Augustine and Anselm in this regard, see Marcia Colish, The Mirror of Language, pp. 7–109. For Boethius, see Henry Chadwick, Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Theology, and Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 108–73; and Jonathan Barnes, “Boethius and the Study of Logic,” in Boethius: His Life, Thought, and Influence, edited by Margaret Gibson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), pp. 73–89.

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ally” or analogously. The beings at higher levels in the Scale of Being have higher degrees of goodness: richer, more powerful, more complex, more difficult to attain, harder to spell out fully in words. When we go on to say that “God is good,” the proportionality far exceeds our understanding. As the Ground of Being, God is the Source of all goodness, and therefore far beyond our comprehension. We finite beings can understand finite goods, but not infinite Goodness. When Christian Platonists affirm that “God is good,” the “analogy of being” argues that the assertion is true, but we do not know fully what it means. God’s goodness is proportional to ours in the same measure that his Infinite Being is to finite being. Now the meditative ascent, as we have seen, mounts to levels of discourse steadily higher, or more universal, until it arrives at a vision of God. The analogy of being provides a model for understanding these levels and their relations: key words have analogous meanings at different levels in the ascent. These meanings are “proportional”: not precisely the same, yet not different. In this light, two interpretive tasks emerge: to assay the different meanings at different levels, and then to describe how they are related. These tasks can be illustrated by considering the meaning of “love” in Dante’s Commedia at three different points, one each in Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Inferno 5 describes the circle of “the carnal sinners” in Hell. Their punishment is to be blown about by a whirlwind, like birds in a fierce storm—an image of the passions to which they surrendered themselves. There Dante encounters Paolo and Francesca, and Francesca tells him of their adulterous love affair. In Francesca’s mouth, “love” points to the romantic passions of the courtly love tradition in Italy: “love” is personified as a godlike power that seizes a “noble heart” and compels a person to fall in love (Inf. 5.100–105). Love enters “through the eyes,” as the perception of physical beauty arouses desire, and nobility of heart compels a response. Francesca’s two speeches are so moving, her self-justification so successful, that


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it is easy to forget that she is being punished for adulterous lust. Generations of readers, caught up by her sense of her romantic tragedy, failed to notice her self-centeredness, her narcissistic sense of her own beauty, and her subtle manipulations of her lover, of Dante the pilgrim, and themselves. In Inferno 5 Dante portrays “love” as lust, glorified by Francesca as romance. In Purgatorio 17–18, Virgil gives a philosophical discourse on love as “the seed” of every human act, whether it merits reward or punishment (Purg. 17.103–5). Clearly, “love” in this context is a word for “desire in general.” Here, at the center of the whole poem, is a discourse on the motive of human acts at a high level of generality. The analysis is derived from Aristotle. The appetitive movement of “love” may be described as a horizontal circle, with three stages: (1) the desirability (goodness, beauty) of an object (2) is perceived and arouses desire in the perceiver, (3) who then pursues the desirable object so as to enjoy it (Purg. 17.127–29, 18.19–33). Desire, described as an “inclination” toward the desirable object, is automatic, or necessary: you cannot perceive an object as desirable without desiring it. The perception of something desirable involves desiring it, by definition (18.49–60). But though desire is automatic, pursuit is not: you can choose to restrain yourself. Between the desire and the pursuit to enjoy comes “the threshold of consent” (Purg. 18.61–63). Francesca and Paolo crossed this threshold when their love moved to adultery. Virgil’s discourse clarifies both the necessity in their loving one another and their culpability in acting upon it. Now Virgil’s philosophical discourse on love is true, as far as it goes, but it only goes so far. As a pagan thinker, Virgil gives a valuable analysis of desire in the context of this world, yet he is aware that his understanding is limited (Purg. 18.46–48). He simply accepts the desirability of objects, for he does not explain it, nor does he account for why human beings desire. From Dante’s Christian perspective, a pagan cannot explain these things because classical

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thinkers did not believe in God’s creation of the world. At most, they imagined cosmic beginnings as a kind of birth process, never as God’s creation out of nothing. Aristotle thought that the universe existed everlastingly. Partly on this basis, Thomas Aquinas argued that God’s creation of the world could not be discovered by reason, but only by revelation. For if reason could have discovered that truth, a thinker of Aristotle’s acumen would have done it. In other words, Virgil’s philosophical analysis of love needs to be completed by theology. The “horizontal circle” of love in Virgil’s analysis is completed, and thereby rendered coherent, by the “vertical circle” of God’s love establishing the goodness of creation. In this understanding, objects are good because they reflect God’s goodness, and every human desire implies the desire for God. For Dante, the Christian Bible reveals that God made the world for human beings, God’s “image and likeness,” and human beings to enjoy eternal life with him. Because the human capacity of desire is oriented ultimately to God, it remains fundamentally insatiable in this world. Hence, also, desire for any particular good implies a longing for the ultimate Good. In Augustine’s famous sentence, “Lord, you created us toward yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you” (Conf. 1.1.1). Dante’s imagery in the Paradiso situates the “horizontal circle” of this-worldly loving in the “vertical circle” of the exitus-reditus scheme and finds the latter within the Trinity. The Father’s Love for the Son through the Holy Spirit creates, sustains, and governs the world, and the goodness and beauty of the universe reveal the goodness and beauty of the Trinity (Par. 10.1–27). In the final canto, Dante sees all the variety of the universe in the single point of the divine Light, “bound with love in a single volume” (Par. 33.86). God is not “outside” the universe: the universe, with all its possibilities of being, exists within God (85–93)! Soon Dante is given a mysterious image of the Trinity: the single point of Light expands into three spinning circles, with three colors yet a single circumfer-


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ence, and the fiery circle (the Holy Spirit, or Love) moves between the other two (115–20). Hence, the vertical circling of cosmic procession (exitus) and return (reditus) lies within the Trinity: the cosmic process proves but a part of the Trinity’s dynamism of love. Finally, in the second circling appears the human form, the risen Christ. Creation is fulfilled in Incarnation and Redemption, when God himself entered the cosmic exitus-reditus to redeem human beings in history. The vertical circling of infinite Trinitarian Love thus proves the Ground of all the circlings of love. Its surpassing manifestation is Christ’s incarnational descent, to life and death, and resurrectional return. Inferno 5, Purgatorio 17–18, and Paradiso 33 lie far apart from one another in the hundred cantos of the poem and in Dante’s journey. Physical distance thereby reflects the semantic differences in the meanings of “love.” Francesca speaks in the first circle of Hell, the underworld below the earth’s surface; Virgil’s discourse takes place well up the ascent of Purgatory, “the highest mountain on earth”; the vision of God in Paradiso 33 takes place in Heaven, beyond the bounds of the universe. The relative physical height at which “love” is considered reflects the relative universality of the discourse, and hence its philosophical depth. Because the stages of Dante’s journey are so clearly marked, the different discursive levels in its exploration of “love” emerge with great clarity. How should we understand these levels and the relations between them? First, they are united in an “analogy of love.” Different as the meanings of “love” are at these three levels, a family likeness links them: their meanings are not radically different. They can be seen to form a Scale, or hierarchy, of forms of love. Indeed, “love” is so fundamental to Dante’s poem that the whole journey may be understood as an ascent on a Ladder of Love. Second, as I have suggested, the higher level clarifies certain details at a lower level. God’s “vertical” love in creating explains why things are lovable “horizontally,” in this world. The Paradiso thereby

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makes Virgil’s discourse on love more fully coherent. Moreover, Virgil’s discourse elucidates Francesca’s insistence that love is automatic, for he qualifies it with this distinction: desire is automatically aroused by the perception of what is desirable, by definition, but we need not pursue the object of our desire. In this way, Virgil’s discourse clarifies what is true, and what is false, in Francesca’s insistence. This is what we would expect from a hierarchy of understandings in a Christian-Platonist ascent: higher levels of discourse, being more universal, have more truth than lower ones. As the image of “ascent” suggests, one sees further, and so understands more, at higher levels: a more comprehensive discourse, by definition, explains details on a lower level. Third, the highest level in the ascent thereby proves the most important. As the most comprehensive and most fundamental discourse, it explains the most. For just as God is the Origin and End of the journey, so the discursive vision of God proves the ground, as well as the climax, of the journey’s record. Because God comprehends all being in the Christian-Platonist ascent, its climactic vision of God simultaneously surpasses, contains, and underlies all its lower levels. In the final canto of the Commedia, Dante sees the Trinitarian Love containing the universe and energizing all its activity. This Love is the Ground of every form of love in the universe of the poem. Hence, every lower love in the work may be fully understood only in relation to the vision of God that concludes it. Francesca does not know that her love for Paolo is grounded in the divine Love, that his desirable goodness reflects the divine Goodness. Hence, she does not know that her desire for Paolo represents, in a distorted way, a desire for God. But a theologically literate reader knows these things, and anyone who reads the whole Commedia becomes theologically literate enough to reflect on Inferno 5 with these things in mind. Nevertheless, the lower levels of a meditative ascent are not simply expendable. The ascent is not like Wittgenstein’s ladder, to be


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cast aside after using it to climb to a new understanding. Virgil’s discourse on love is not repeated in the Paradiso: the new perspectives given there by the images of divine Love do not explicitly incorporate Virgil’s insights on the lower level. The higher level presupposes the lower one and does not replace it. Similarly, Virgil’s discourse does not replace Francesca’s account of love, however sinful it may be. The high level of generality in Virgil’s teaching tells us nothing about deep love between persons. Francesca’s love may be spurious, but at least it proves an image, albeit distorted, of intimate human relationships. Within the poem, her false love for Paolo foreshadows the true love fulfilled in Beatrice’s relationship with Dante. In short, Dante’s lower level perspectives on “love” are not erased or replaced by his higher ones. Even a sinfully distorted perspective, like Francesca’s, has its truth. Understanding on a higher level enables us to interpret it rightly, but not to eliminate it. Characteristically, the author of a meditative ascent does not rearticulate lower level perspectives so as to fit them into a higher level. Rather, he leaves it to the reader to fit the perspectives together into a coherent whole. Virgil’s discourse, though incomplete, remains valid. It is true, as far as it goes. But it does not explain why human beings desire as they do and why things are desirable, and so it needs the perspectives provided by the Paradiso to be fully coherent. Yet nowhere did Dante bring these perspectives together, and he did not do so because he wanted to draw the reader more deeply into the transforming work of his poem. In many different ways, he presented “love” as central to the whole Commedia, but he never developed, in any one place, all the details of a doctrine of love. That task he left for the fit reader. Characteristically, the meditative ascent avoids making explicit the full range of what it would have us understand. It does not aim to develop an exposition, in the manner of Scholastic philosophy. It aims to initiate the reader in ChristianPlatonist meditation. This meditation has a goal: to transform the reader in ways anal-

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ogous to the transformation of the pilgrim. In the course of Dante the pilgrim’s ascent, the meanings of “love” undergo progressive transformation, and this reflects the progressive transformation of his soul. Every first-time reader of the poem witnesses this transformation, and to that extent participates in it. But this participation is rarely deep, and thus hardly transforming. The transforming work of the poem is effected to the extent that readers meditate upon it. In this instance, as we attempt to understand what the Commedia is saying about “love,” we dwell upon its transformations of meaning, and this dwelling allows them to work more deeply upon us. We are involved more deeply in the transformations effected in the poem, and they may thereby effect a transformation in us. Dante wrote for an audience familiar with the meditative reading of Scripture, which was designed to transform one’s life into conformity with Christ. Dante designed the work for the kind of meditation that medieval Christians devoted to Scripture and the Church Fathers, to effect the same kind of transformation.

Foreshadowing and Fulfillment We have seen how the philosophical tradition gives us one model for interpreting the relations between levels in the meditative ascent, “the analogy of being.” The literary tradition offers another, similar in certain respects, “foreshadowing and fulfillment.” Every storyteller knows that the climax of the plot must be set up properly beforehand. Without such preparation, the climax falls apart and the story fails. One way to prepare for the climax is to foreshadow it: early events or images prefigure the ending. Oedipus’s quarrel with the blind Tiresias, for example, reveals his intellectual blindness to his true condition and foreshadows his physical blindness in the final scene. Christian-Platonist writers were especially familiar with this literary technique from their typological interpretation of Scripture. Old Testament persons and events were understood to prefigure

Foreshadowing and Fulfillment

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those in the New Testament. Abraham, Moses, David, and Solomon were all held to be “types of Christ”: each foreshadowed, in different ways, Christ’s saving work in the New Testament. Thus, for example, as Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and toward the Promised Land, so does Jesus lead the spiritual Israel away from the Egypt of sin to the eternal Promised Land of Heaven. Christ’s mission thereby fulfills and surpasses Moses’ work: Jesus is “the new Moses,” enacting a greater exodus for all humankind. Hence, Christ’s mission is more universal and more spiritual than Moses’: the New Testament fulfills the types of the Old Testament on a higher level. Moreover, Christ’s mission itself points to the higher reality of “future glory,” after the Resurrection of the Dead and the Last Judgment: at his Second Coming, Christ “will make all things new” (Rv 21:5), for there will be “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rv 21:1). In typological interpretation, the Bible reveals that history progresses climactically, to higher and higher levels: the Old Testament foreshadows the New, and the New Testament prefigures “future glory.”11 In the nature of the case, a foreshadowing can only be recognized retrospectively from its fulfillment. A novel or drama diversifies characters and incidents, and though all these contribute to the plot only some foreshadow the ending. We read forward, but we understand backward. The fulfillment cannot be predicted by its foreshadowing, for the foreshadowing can only be recognized in light of its fulfillment. The fulfillment must be a new and surprising event, for if the climax is predictable, the story proves a bore. As we read forward, the plot should interest us with surprising turns. In retrospect, however, we should be able to see how the whole plot holds together. In this way, later passages illuminate details in earlier ones. We may distinguish two broad types of foreshadowing and fulfillment. In the first, the foreshadowing is magnified in its fulfill-

11. Thomas Aquinas summarizes the tradition in this way in Summa Theologica I, q. 1, a. 10.

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ment. Odysseus’s overcoming of the Cyclops foreshadows his conquest of the suitors; Moses prefigures and is surpassed by Christ. Here, foreshadowing and fulfillment are of the same kind but on different scales. The second type of foreshadowing, however, involves contrasts, because stories often turn on reversals. Odysseus, disguised as the old broken-down beggar at the door, is revealed to be the lord of the manor and a war hero, slaughtering the juvenile gang that has been plundering his household. In biblical typology, Adam prefigures Christ, though they are opposites: the disobedient first man of the flesh is redeemed by the obedient first man of the spirit (Rom 5: 12–19). In other words, foreshadowing and fulfillment may oppose one another as contrasting types. Fulfillment through reversal, present in many stories, proves particularly important in Christianity, whose crucified prophet is revealed as the Lord of Glory. Indeed, Jesus often spoke of eschatological fulfillment as a reversal of this-worldly priorities: the last shall be first, the humble shall be exalted. Two examples may illustrate these familiar principles. We have already examined one instance of foreshadowing and fulfillment at a higher level in the beginning and end of the Commedia. Its first verb, mi ritrovai, indicates the pilgrim’s suddenly renewed self-recognition: “In the middle of the way of our life, I found myself again” (Inf. 1.1–2). He had lost himself, but then he returned to himself. The final canto of the Paradiso climaxes with the highest selfrecognition possible, the pilgrim’s vision of Christ “face to face” (1 Cor 13:12). Here is a self-recognition both creational and eschatological: Christ is Dante’s divine Origin and End, and in the risen Christ he sees his vocation to glory, what he is called to become. The first verb of the poem thus foreshadows its final vision. Indeed, mi ritrovai foreshadows the whole journey, for Dante is like the prodigal son, who “returned into himself” (Luke 15:17; Vulgate, In se autem reversus), and so consequently returned to his Father. The Christian-Platonist tradition interpreted the parable of the prodigal


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son in relation to the meditative ascent: the son makes the inward turn and then rises in returning to his Father, God. The second example turns on contrasts. In Augustine’s autobiography there are two, and only two, fruit trees: a pear tree in Book 2 and a fig tree in Book 8. The two trees clue us to an elaborate set of oppositions between the two books.12 Book 2, chapter 4, narrates the adolescent Augustine’s theft of the pears, at night, with a gang of friends, for the sheer pleasure of stealing. In the following chapters, the bishop meditates on the perversity of his sin, and finally realizes that he did it to please his friends (2.9.17). Book 8, in contrast, tells the story of his conversion, which is prepared by stories of conversion told to the young Augustine by two friends. It occurred during the day in a garden, after weeping in repentance under a fig tree. In this example, foreshadowing prefigures fulfillment through reversal. The perversion of sin, at night, through the bad influence of friends “according to the flesh,” is countered by conversion to Christ, in the light of day, through the good influence of friends “according to the spirit.” Fulfillment through reversal is particularly vital to the ChristianPlatonist ascent because the ascent often integrates sinful, or erroneous, perspectives so as to correct them. As a perversion of the good, sin appears to be absurd: a distortion so fundamental as to mock goodness and make it unrecognizable. This perspective is true, as far as it goes, on its own level. But a perversion of the good is, necessarily, a perversion of the good: as the meditative ascent achieves a higher level, it reveals the goodness being perverted at the lower level. This recognition is achieved through retrospective contrast: Augustine’s Christian conversion in Book 8 enables a new understanding of his sinful perversion in Book 2. Similarly, in the Commedia, the erotic passion between Paolo 12. See Leo C. Ferrari, “The Arboreal Polarization in Augustine’s Confessions,” Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes 25 (1979): 35–46.

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and Francesca, figured in the whirlwind that torments them, foreshadows Beatrice’s divine eros for Dante, which raises him to the vision of God. In general, images of perversion in Hell are riddling reflections of Christian truths. The whirlwind, an image of sexual passion in Inferno 5, symbolizes God’s love for human beings in Scripture. In the Vulgate, a whirlwind (turbo) clears the Israelites’ path through the Red Sea (Ex 14:21), raises the prophet Elijah into heaven (2 Kgs 2:1, 11), and resounds at the Pentecost (Acts 2:2) before the tongues of flame appear over the apostles’ heads. It is the wind of the Holy Spirit (spiritus, “breath, wind”) acting to save human beings. Thus, in the Commedia the distortions of sexual passion reveal, as though “through a glass, darkly” (1 Cor 13:12), God’s passionate love for human beings, for the divine Love is the ground and goal of all human desire. When the Christian-Platonist ascent represents vices on lower levels, as in the Confessions and the Commedia, it also provides the higher levels whose perspectives enable us to reinterpret the vices correctively, or redemptively. Now it would appear that the models of foreshadowing and analogy work with different materials. Foreshadowing and fulfillment seem appropriate for “literary” events and images, while the ladder of analogies illuminates the “philosophical” use of key terms. These distinctions remain useful as long as they do not become separations. For the meditative ascent is simultaneously literary and philosophical, and we neglect this at our peril. “Literary” surprises, even reversals, often affect “philosophical” passages. Two examples may illustrate this. Book 13, chapter 11 of the Confessions begins “Who can understand the omnipotent Trinity?” (13.11.12). Augustine inquires about the Trinity in the third person. He goes on to correlate the three Persons with being (Father), knowing (Son), and willing (Holy Spirit). He recognizes that being, knowing, and willing are inseparable and yet distinct, and so they offer a model for understanding the Trinity. But he cannot say “whether these three constitute the Trinity, or whether all three are


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present in each Person,” or whether both are true in some mysterious way. He is baffled, and he concludes the chapter by asking, “Who would venture in any way to make a rash pronouncement on the subject?” Yet five chapters later he does make a rash pronouncement on this subject: “Your being knows and wills immutably, your knowledge is and wills immutably, and your will is and knows immutably” (13.16.19). The hesitations and perplexities animating chapter 11 have vanished. He is no longer inquiring about the Trinity, in the third person, but telling the Trinitarian God about Himself. He asserts, briefly and unambiguously, that each Person of the Trinity exercises all three functions. Between these two chapters, something has happened to Augustine. We are meant to understand that a sudden influx of grace has illumined him, transforming his hesitant questions into sure assertions. Within the space of five chapters, and on a profound mystery of faith, the “philosophical” inquiry has registered a “literary” reversal. Foreshadowing also helps us understand the meditative ascent in Anselm’s Proslogion, supposedly a “philosophical” work without “literary” events. In chapter 2, Anselm begins his famous argument by calling God “that than which nothing greater can be thought” (S 101).13 In chapter 15, however, he affirms that God is “greater than can be thought” (S 112). From regarding God as the limit of 13. All quotations from the Proslogion are taken from the Latin edition by F. S. Schmitt, as reprinted in Gregory Schufreider, Confessions of a Rational Mystic: Anselm’s Early Writings (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1994). Schufreider has reproduced Schmitt’s later edition of the Proslogion (Stuttgart [Bad Cannstatt]: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1962), rather than his earlier one in the Opera Omnia, 6 vols., edited by Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, O.S.B. (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1938–1961)—the Proslogion is in Volume 1. The former is printed, not in block form, as prose, but “poetically,” with line breaks and staggered indentations that emphasize the rhythm and musicality of Anselm’s language. The editions are very close; I will comment on one minor change, in Chapter 3. The parenthetical “S” references are to the text in the Opera Omnia, as is common in Anselm scholarship. The English translations are mine,

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thought, the meditation has advanced to a higher understanding of God as beyond the limit of thought. The “definition” in chapter 2, adequate on its own level, now appears retrospectively to foreshadow the affirmation in chapter 15. Then, in the final chapter (26), Anselm declares God to be “joy beyond measure” (S 121) as he meditates rapturously on the “full joy” of the beatific vision (S 120–22). By this point, the meditation has progressed from “thought” to “fullness of joy” (26), from intellectual reflection about God to a foretaste of full divine experience. Retrospectively, then, the God of joy beyond all fullness of our experience, in chapter 26, surpasses the God beyond thought, in chapter 15, which foreshadows it. Though the Proslogion presents itself as a philosophical and theological exploration, its progress to higher and higher levels involves “literary” surprise: the final experience of God as immeasurable joy could not be foreseen on the basis of “that than which nothing greater can be thought.” From this vantage point, we can consider some of the formal similarities between a philosophical ladder of analogy and literary foreshadowing and fulfillment. In both, later and “higher” passages clarify details in earlier and “lower” ones. The story of Augustine’s conversion in Book 8 serves to highlight, by contrast, many details in Book 2. Moreover, interpreting their relations makes both books far more meaningful than each is separately. Yet, as in Dante’s discourses on love, the task of perceiving relations and exploring their meanings is left to the reader. The Confessions provides the clues to show us the way to deeper understandings, but it does not develop them explicitly. Furthermore, in both analogy and foreshadowing, the forward and upward movement is full of surprises: only in retrospect can the relations be noted and explored. The pear theft in Book 2 may foreshadow, but does not predict, the conversion in

though I have profited from consulting those by Schufreider, Deane, and Charlesworth.

The Meditative Ascent and Philosophical Content

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Book 8. Without the book titles and chapter headings provided in modern translations, no reader of Book 10 on memory could foretell that “time” would follow in Book 11.

The Meditative Ascent and Philosophical Content The Christian-Platonist ascent thus fuses literary and philosophical forms. These may be distinguished, but they cannot be separated. Hence, a certain difficulty emerges about the philosophical content of the ascent. (Although the “philosophical” and the “theological” may be distinguished in these works, they cannot be separated, and I use the word “philosophical” as a shorthand for both.) Most contemporary philosophy argues for “positions”: one is said to “hold” a philosophical position and to “defend it.” Similarly, Catholic philosophy, with its heritage of Scholasticism, has understood itself to be “doctrinal,” to teach truths as “securely established” as possible. Indeed, these are ancient understandings: Plato’s Socrates insists that philosophical argument “ties down” true opinions and thereby confirms them.14 The language of “positions” and “doctrines” clearly implies fixity. If philosophical content implies “holding” positions or doctrines, how does the movement implied in an ascent affect this positional content? Moreover, what is the philosophical character of a meditative ascent as a whole? For these medieval authors, a meditative ascent does not intend primarily to “teach doctrines” or “establish positions.” The content of a discursive level should be understood less as a “position” to be “held” than as “a station along the way.” As a station along the way, its discourse is like a position, but as a station along the way, it proves but a temporary platform: a true understanding, but not a final one.15 Every discursive level proves “true as far as it goes,” but it is presented only to be surpassed. To be sure, a discursive level is doc14. See the Meno 97d–98b. 15. I adapt the idea of a “platform of understanding” from Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), pp. 8–12.

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trinal, insofar as it teaches us something, but the doctrine is never final, because the ascent moves on. It proves less “a doctrine,” or “a position,” than “an elucidation.” On a given theme, it may prove the last explicit word in the ascent and, in that sense, be regarded as final. Nevertheless, ultimately there is no “final position” in a meditative ascent, except God, and the infinite Life is not a “position” in any sense of the term. Rather, the ascent culminates in an apprehension of its Ground, and this clarifies earlier levels, if we meditate retrospectively on them. Hence, the last explicit word on any important theme is rarely the final word offered by an ascent, because its highest level implicitly reconfigures its earlier understandings. The final word must be construed by the reader’s meditation. We have already seen such a pattern of reconfigured understandings at work in Dante’s treatment of “love.” Adulterous “love” in Inferno 5 may be Dante’s first extended account of love in the Commedia, but it is hardly his last: it will be explicitly reconfigured in Purgatorio 17–18 and then again in many parts of the Paradiso. At the same time, though Dante’s later and higher treatments of “love” illuminate understandings reached on lower levels of the ascent, these higher understandings do not erase the validity of lower ones. No single passage in the Commedia draws together all that Dante has to say about “love.” Whatever teaching about love his poem contains must be construed by the reader’s meditation. Such an implied reconfigured understanding may also be seen in the theme of friendship in the Confessions. Books 1–9 contain many representations of friendship, with some explicit remarks about the character of true friendship in Book 4. After Augustine turns to explore memory and Genesis 1 in Books 10–13, he does not mention friends or reflect on friendship again. Nevertheless, though the key word is absent, the theme is implied in the allegory of the Church in Book 13. As Chapter 3 will show, Augustine’s treatment of friendship in Books 1–9 implies the Church as the fulfillment of friendship, and his fullest exposition of the Church in the


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Confessions comes in Book 13. This exposition implicitly reconfigures the earlier understandings of friendship not by altering them, but by setting them in a new context. Indeed, because this exposition stands at the summit of the ascent, it represents the fulfillment of every important theme in the work. Augustine did not elaborate these understandings: he left them implied by the structure of the work. In a meditative ascent, everything that rises must converge, though the convergence is rarely made explicit. Augustine left the convergence of friendship, in Books 1–9, and the Church, in Book 13, to be construed by his readers. The meditative ascent demands the reader’s meditation in order to be fully understood. In this way, the philosophical character of the Christian-Platonist ascent as a whole is not doctrinal, but meditative, and this occurs in three ways. First, to understand what the work presents on any significant theme demands meditation, for the ascent rarely conveys its full understanding of an issue in any single place. A treatment on one level needs to be correlated with other levels and understood in light of the ascent as a whole. What Dante had to say about “love” in the Commedia, and Augustine about friendship in the Confessions, are not explicitly stated in any one place. The genre is designed to provoke retrospective rereading. Second, every ascent aims to initiate its readers into certain practices of Christian-Platonist meditation. These differ somewhat in different works, and even in different parts of the same work. Books 1–10 of the Confessions, for example, initiate us into the practices of Christian self-scrutiny, while Books 11–13 teach us how to meditate, prayerfully and philosophically, on Scripture. Anselm’s Proslogion offers another example of theological reflection in and as prayer, while Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy initiates readers into a dialogue with Stoic and Platonist philosophy. Nevertheless, every Christian-Platonist ascent turns its readers away from things outside (extra se) to things within (intra se) and shows them how to make the return journey to things above (supra se). The meditative ascent

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demands more than mere reading. It is constructed so as to lead us to meditate, if we would understand it fully: to reread, reflect, and explore the relations between its parts. This is how it schools us in its practices. Its final word to us is “Go and do likewise.” Third, the meditative ascent thereby proves a spiritual exercise, in two different ways. In one way, its explicit meditative exercises become ours as we read. We follow its journey in quest of truth, its search for God. In order to read it at the literal level, we necessarily ask its questions, explore the answers it explores, pray its prayers, and so on. Merely by reading it we begin to assimilate the forms of meditation it would teach. In another way, the work invites us to the further spiritual exercise of understanding its structure and what it implies. This meditation is designed to deepen our involvement with the work and our understanding of ourselves. We are led to dwell upon the ascent more deeply as we spend more time exploring its designs. By dwelling in the world of the work, we involve ourselves in its vision of truth and thereby appropriate it. At the same time, because the understandings we seek are implied, what we discover proves more questionable. We wind up asking ourselves not only “Did Dante think this?,” but also “Is this true? Do I think this?” In other words, the spiritual exercise of meditating on the ascent leads us more deeply into ourselves, as well as into the work. By questioning its vision of truth meditatively, we become more aware of our own. Whether, in the end, we agree or disagree with it on an issue does not matter. It has engaged us in a spiritual exercise and thereby succeeds in its intention: to further our knowledge of God and of ourselves. Recent scholarship, especially the work of Pierre Hadot, has recovered the role of spiritual exercises in all the schools of ancient philosophy.16 These exercises use meditation, in various forms, to 16. For a brief treatment, see “Spiritual Exercises” in Hadot’s collection, Phi-


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transform a person’s consciousness by dwelling interiorly on a school’s fundamental teachings. For similar reasons, Christians meditated on the Bible, and their practices have also been recovered by scholars. Lectio divina, the prayerful study of Scripture, involved dwelling on a text so as to assimilate its truth. Though the name is associated with the Benedictine tradition, its roots lie in Jewish practices that were adapted very early by Christians.17 The Fathers of the Church practiced lectio divina in fact, if not in name. Hence, when Augustine, Boethius, and Anselm wrote their works as spiritual exercises, they were writing for audiences who knew how to use them. Their readers knew how to explore relations between passages of Scripture and how to dwell meditatively upon them. The present study uses this recovered knowledge in order to show how to explore these works as fully as they were meant to be read. As in lectio divina, the ultimate aim of these spiritual exercises is contemplative: to lead us to a deeper apprehension of God. God is not only the End of the ascent but also its Origin, and therefore its Mover, Guide, and Path. The ascent aims to lead us through words to the Word, through words about God toward the wordless experience of God. Because God is present throughout the ascent, at any losophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, edited with an Introduction by Arnold I. Davidson, translated by Michael Chase (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), pp. 81–125. A fuller discussion may be found in Pierre Hadot, What Is Ancient Philosophy?, translated by Michael Chase (Cambridge, Mass.: Belnap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002). 17. For fundamental texts and practices, see Mariano Magrassi, Praying the Bible: An Introduction to “Lectio Divina,” translated by Edward Hagman, O.F.M. Cap. (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1990), a florilegium of monastic texts with commentary; and Enzo Bianchi, Praying the Word: An Introduction to “Lectio Divina,” translated by James W. Zona, Cistercian Studies Series, no. 182 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1998), which contains the famous letter of Guigo the Carthusian on the four stages of lectio divina, pp. 100–114. For a brief treatment, see Jean Leclecq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, translated by Catherine Misrahi (New York: Fordham University Press, 1961), pp. 15–21.

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point a reader may be sparked by grace into awareness of the Divine Presence. But the normal means to this awareness will come through meditating on larger patterns and meanings in the work. In the Commedia, for example, every form of “love” is ultimately grounded in “the Love that moves the sun and the other stars” (Par. 33.145). When we meditate on the relations between a lower love and the highest Love, our minds are induced to jump the gap between them. The spark ignites, the light goes on, we “get it”—at least sometimes. By orchestrating relations between levels, and inducing us to meditate on them, the ascent aims to quicken our awareness of the Divine Presence as always present. A meditative philosophy aims not only at intellectual insight, but also at ongoing personal transformation, and nothing effects this so deeply as the sense of God’s presence.

Numerological Structure Scholars have long explored the ways in which literary and artistic works in the Christian-Platonist tradition use significant numerological patterns. Dante’s Commedia is perhaps the best known instance, with its perfect number of cantos (100, or 10 3 10) and its many forms of “three” in imitation of the Trinity: three major parts of the poem, three guides for the pilgrim, written in terza rima, and so on.18 Recent studies have shown that Dante’s use of number symbolism proves far richer than we hitherto suspected, extending to ra18. See Vincent Foster Hopper, Medieval Number Symbolism: Its Sources, Meaning, and Influence on Thought and Expression, Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature, no. 112 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938), for the tradition in general and pp. 136–201 on Dante. Emile Male, The Gothic Image: Religious Art in France in the Thirteenth Century, translated by Dora Nussey (New York: Harper & Row, 1972; original publication by Dutton, 1913), pp. 9–14, writes of number symbolism as a fundamental characteristic of medieval art. For recent work in numerological analysis, see the essays in Caroline D. Eckhardt, ed., Essays in the Numerical Criticism of Medieval Literature (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1980), and her Bibliographical Note, pp. 231–32.

Numerological Structure

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diating patterns of “seven” from the center of the central canto in the Purgatorio and even to using certain key words a numerologically significant number of times.19 Dante’s practice of numerology was part of a long tradition, both classical and Christian, that continued for centuries after him.20 The principles underlying this tradition are well known. Pythagoras thought that number was a fundamental ordering principle in the cosmos, and the Platonist tradition honored mathematical studies for this reason, among others. Plato’s Timaeus presents the “likely story” of the cosmos being fashioned according to ordered numbers by a divine Demiurge, or artisan. These are the Pythagorean numbers for the ratios of the musical octave, creating the planetary order that came to be known as “the music of the spheres.”21 In the biblical Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, God is said to have “or19. For the radiating pattern of “sevens,” see Charles S. Singleton, “The Poet’s Number at the Center,” in Eckhardt, ed., Essays in the Numerical Criticism of Medieval Literature, pp. 79–90. Manfred Hardt, Die Zahl in der “Divina Commedia” (Frankfurt am Main: Atheneum Verlag, 1973), offers a broader study of numerological symbolism in the poem. 20. See Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, translated by Willard R. Trask, Bollingen Series 36 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973), pp. 501–9, on “Numerical Composition.” Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez, in their Time and the Crystal: Studies in Dante’s “Rime Petrose” (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), brilliantly draw on this tradition and others to illuminate some of Dante’s lyric poems. 21. For the numerical ratios in the fashioning of the cosmos, see Timaeus 35b–36b; for the harmonious sound of the planetary movements, see Republic 617b–c. Macrobius’s Commentary on the Dream of Scipio 2.1–4 was an important source for the Middle Ages on the harmony of the heavenly spheres; see the translation by William Harris Stahl, Number 48 in the Records of Civilization, Sources and Studies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952). Chalcidius’s translation of and commentary on the Timaeus (up to 53b) communicated the Platonist cosmological tradition directly to the Middle Ages. See Plato, Plato Latinus. Volumen IV. Timaeus a Calcidio translatus commentarioque instructus, edited by J. H. Waszink (London: Warburg Institute, 1962). For the Platonic tradition in the Middle Ages, see Raymond Klibansky, The Continuity of the Platonic Tradition

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dered [disposuisti] all things in measure and number and weight” (11:21). Writers and artists, classical and Christian, often sought to model their work on the work of the best Maker. The divine Being used numbers to impart a beautiful order (cosmos) to the universe, and writers employed numerical principles and numerological symbolism in imitation of him. The literary microcosm was modeled on the macrocosm. The following chapters will analyze the numerological structures of the Confessions, the Proslogion, and the Consolation of Philosophy. In the works we are studying, numerological structures are never ironic, never at odds with the explicit statements of a work. They are always in accord with what a work says and with the tradition to which it appeals. They harmonize with the work’s literary structure, as determined by its division into books and chapters. As one might expect, the significant numbers in the Confessions and the Proslogion are Trinitarian, while those in the Consolation are Platonist and cosmological. At the same time, all three works employ chiastic patterns in their numerological structures, and it would be well to explore here the significant meanings implied by the chiasm. This, in turn, will enable me to address the philosophical significance of numerological structures. Because these implied patterns add nothing to the work’s explicit statements, it may be objected that they are merely literary and without philosophical import. Because I have been insisting that these works are literary and philosophical wholes, this objection must be addressed. A chiasm is a rhetorical pattern, a cross structure, and it may be rendered as A B B A. As a rhetorical scheme in a sentence, it can be contrasted with isocolon, or parallelism: A B A B. “Many are called, but few are chosen” is a parallelism, while “The last shall be first, and the first shall be last” is a chiasm. The word chiasm derives from during the Middle Ages: With a New Preface and Four Supplementary Chapters; Together with Plato’s “Parmenides” in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: With a New Introductory Preface (Milwood, N.Y.: Kraus International Publications, 1982).


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the Greek letter chi or X, for it names a crossing pattern, which may be graphed by contrast with parallelism in the following way: chiasm

parallelism

AB

AB

BA

AB

A chiastic pattern can also occur in a structure longer than the sentence, and then it is known as an inclusio, or a ring structure. The ring is formed because its first element is echoed in the last, its second element in the second to last, and so on. Often the ring structure has a central part, and it receives a certain emphasis by not being echoed. The simplest form of this structure may be rendered as A B C B A. The prologue in the Gospel of John (1:1–18) provides a useful illustration: A B C D C´ B´ A´

1:1–5 1:6–9 1:9–11 1:12–13 1:14 1:15–17 1:18

The Word with God “in the beginning” John the Baptist’s witness The true light enters the world and is rejected by it But those who accept him are born of God The Word became flesh, and we have seen his glory John the Baptist’s witness, confirmed by the evangelist God’s only Son abides in the bosom of the Father 22

The Word who was with God in the beginning (A) has returned to abide with God in the end (A´). John the Baptist’s witness (B and B´) frames Christ’s descent into the world and its rejection of him (C), the positive results of accepting him (D), and his manifestation in the world as flesh and glory (C´). As a whole, the Prologue enacts the movement of the Word’s descent from and return to the Father. Its ring structure imitates the “circular” movement it describes. 22. This pattern is taken from Bruno Barnhart, The Good Wine: Reading John from the Center (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), pp. 47–51. Barnhart argues that the Gospel of John as a whole is structured chiastically, and he explores the interpretive consequences of this insight.

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In sum, then, although the chiastic structure of a work unfolds linearly, it proves both a cross and a circle. This pattern has obvious Christian meanings. Chi is the first letter in the Greek word for “Christ” and a common sign for Christ. As a cross, it signifies the instrument of our salvation. As a circle, or ring structure, it imitates Christ’s descent from and return to Heaven. It also mimes the cosmic pattern of procession (exitus) and return (reditus), inaugurated by the Word’s creation of the world and fulfilled by his Resurrection and Ascension. Christ’s descent and return proves the archetype for our return to God, even as it effects our redemption. Christ is the crossing point where eternity intersects with time in the Incarnation, when God meets humanity in the fullest way. As cross, circle, and sign of Christ, a chiastic structure symbolizes the central mysteries of the Christian faith. Because Christianity continues in the modern world, these symbolic meanings need only be mentioned in order to be understood. But for all the thinkers in the present study, a chiastic structure also had significance in relation to the geocentric cosmos, and this needs to be recovered. In Plato’s Timaeus (36b–c), the Demiurge fashioned the heavenly movements by taking the world soul, dividing it into two circles or motions, and joining them in a chi pattern. These two are called the Motion of the Same and the Motion of the Different. In this way, the cosmic movements of the stars manifest the numerical order and harmony of the world soul. A chiastic structure in a literary work evokes the divine ordering of the cosmos. A brief excursus on the ancient cosmology will make this intelligible.23 In the Ptolemaic cosmos, the Earth stands unmoving at the center and the stars move about it, each in their own spheres. There are seven planets, or “wandering stars” (Greek planetos, “wanderer”), in seven concentric spheres outward from the Earth: the Moon, Mer23. A good brief treatment of medieval astronomy can be found in Patrick Boyde, Dante Philomythes and Philosopher: Man in the Cosmos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 132–60.


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cury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Beyond Saturn, in the seventh sphere, are the “fixed stars” in the eighth sphere, and the primum mobile, “the first mover,” in the ninth and outermost sphere. The “fixed stars” are the constellations and what we call stars today, because they are fixed in their relations to one another: the Big Dipper always looks like the Big Dipper, even though it turns in the sky around the pole. The ninth sphere, the primum mobile, has no stars: it moves in a constant and unvarying motion, and it sweeps all the lower spheres with it. This is the Motion of the Same, moving at a constant speed from east to west along the celestial equator, which is our equator projected into space. (We believe that this occurs because the Earth rotates on its axis at an even pace, once every 24 hours.) Each of the seven planets also has its own “proper motion,” one unique to it, along the celestial ecliptic and (roughly) through the Zodiac. (We believe that this change occurs because the planets revolve around the Sun at different speeds at different distances, and we observe them by way of the Earth’s movement relative to them.) This is the Motion of the Different, in seven different versions, whose intervals reflect the Pythagorean ratios of the octave (Timaeus 35a–36b). The celestial ecliptic is a projection into space of the earthly ecliptic, a circle running from the Tropic of Capricorn, in the southern hemisphere, across the equator, to the Tropic of Cancer, in the northern. Because the Motion of the Same runs along the celestial equator, the crossing of ecliptic and equator forms the chi, or Xpattern, of the cosmic movements. The Sun is the most important star and its movements manifest most clearly the Motions of the Same and the Different of the world soul. Its daily movement, rising in the east and setting in the west, clearly shows the Motion of the Same, and its apparent annual movement along the ecliptic reveals the Motion of the Different. For the Sun rises directly above the Tropic of Capricorn at the winter solstice (December 21), and so that day proves the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere: the Sun moves from east to

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west in a small arc in the southern part of the sky. Conversely, the Sun rises above the Tropic of Cancer at the summer solstice (June 21), the longest day of the year, because the Sun moves from east to west in its longest and highest arc in our sky. When the Sun rises over the equator, we have the equinoxes of spring (March 21) and autumn (September 21). In other words, the annual movement of the Sun along the ecliptic governs the seasons. Just as its diurnal movements, in the Motion of the Same, regulate the hours of day and night, so does its annual motion, in the Motion of the Different, regulate the seasonal rhythm of the year. This is why the Sun has been associated with rule and kingship all over the world, not to speak of divinity. For a Platonist who was not a Christian, these scientific observations have spiritual and moral meanings. They reveal the divine and beautiful order of the cosmos as a heavenly harmony—the music of the spheres, the dance of the stars.24 According to the Timaeus, human beings were made erect so that we could contemplate this cosmic order, whose movements manifest the world soul. Because we have sight and can look upward, we observe the Sun and the stars, and this gives us an understanding of number and time and the power of inquiring about the nature of the universe. This contemplative inquiry is philosophy. It enables us to attune the various, and often chaotic, movements in our own souls according to the intelligence manifested in the order of the heavens (46e–47e). Hence, a chiastic pattern in a Platonist work evokes a rich array of meanings concerning the world soul, the cosmic order, the nature and vocation of human beings, and the philosophical life. This understanding of the cosmos was taken over by Christian Platonists, with the exception of the heretical idea of the world soul. In fact, from an early period Christians associated the chi of the cos24. The ancient tradition on the dance of the heavens is extensive studied in James L. Miller, Measures of Wisdom: The Cosmic Dance in Classical and Christian Antiquity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986).


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mos with its creation by Christ. All things were created by the Word (Jn 1:2), and Christ, as it were, initialed his work with the instrument of salvation, the cross. In this way, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handiwork” (Ps 19:1). John Freccero briefly reviews this tradition to comment on the opening of Paradiso 10: it was widely diffused in the patristic era and continued into the medieval period in Abelard, as well as Dante.25 Like Dante, Augustine, Anselm, and Boethius lived in this Ptolemaic universe and were familiar with the Timaeus tradition, which was a cultural commonplace. Boethius, writing the Consolation as a philosopher rather than as a Christian, referred to it at many points, most famously in III, m. 9, “O qui perpetua mundum ratione gubernas” (“O you who govern the world with perpetual reason”). The chiastic structures in their works, then, evoke Platonist and cosmological meanings, as well as Christian and biblical ones. Because we must labor to recover the former, this distinction seems more important to us than it would have to them. The Christian intellectual tradition had already harmonized the two. In sum, then, the chiastic structure in these works proves both a circle and a cross, even as it enacts the meditative ascent. As a circle, it symbolizes procession and return, creation and salvation, and the circular movements of the heavenly spheres. These, in turn, evoke the still circle of divinity, for the circle is an ancient image of perfection, eternity, stability, and wholeness. As a cross, it symbolizes Christ, the instrument of our salvation, and the cosmic chi where 25. See John Freccero, Dante: Poetics of Conversion, edited with an Introduction by Rachel Jacoff (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 239–41; he cites Wilhelm Bousset, “Platons Weltseele und das Kreuz Christi,” Zeitschrift fur die Neutestamentliche Wisenschaft 14 (1913): 273, on p. 313, n. 50. Chauncey Wood notes that this tradition is relevant to Chaucer, in Chaucer and the Country of the Stars: Poetic Uses of Astrological Imagery (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970), p. 286n. I have shown its importance for a poem by George Herbert, in “Herbert’s ‘Coloss. 3.3’ as Microcosm,” George Herbert Journal 15, no. 2 (1992): 55–69.

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the Motion of the Same intersects the Motion of the Different in the world soul. As an ascent, it fulfills the human vocation as understood by Christianity, imitating Christ’s return to the Father, and by Platonist philosophy as the return to the One. These ideas are so fundamental in Christian Platonism that their full development would extend throughout all aspects of its beliefs. As themes for meditation, they are inexhaustible. Herein lies the philosophical significance of an implied chiastic structure: it resonates with every explicit theme in a ChristianPlatonist ascent, and thereby helps to effect personal transformation in a meditative reader. For an analytic or Scholastic philosophy, meditative resonance seems unimportant. The goal here is the articulation of truth, substantiated and defended by explicit argument. Analytic philosophers craft their works with care, but they devote this care to the logic of their arguments, not to devising numerologically significant deep structures. For a meditative philosophy, however, the goal is personal transformation, and explicit argument proves but one means toward it. A good argument, valuable though it is, does not normally affect the whole soul, the deeper levels of the person. In order to affect us deeply, an argument must not only be acknowledged as true but meditated on—studied, pondered, reviewed, assimilated. Its relations with the rest of the meditative ascent must be explored. As the work’s numerological structure becomes clear, it, too, generate themes for meditation. A numerological chiasm reveals the beauty of the work, its order and harmony, in a new way. This beauty enchants the meditative reader and deepens participation in the work. Deeper participation enables a more profound transformation: as the reader enters more deeply into the perspectives of the work, the work enters more deeply into him. Above all, a chiastic deep structure has so many resonances in Christian Platonism that it works simultaneously to unify and ramify the meaning of a text. Everything in the ascent is related to the circle and the cross, and in manifold ways. Each theme in the work is related to this deep structure, and hence thereby related to every


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other theme. This network of relations is not worked out explicitly: the writer left that task to the reader’s meditation. In other words, a meditative reader could connect any chapter to the symbolism of circle, cross, or ascent, and thereby explore its relations with any other chapter. In this way, possible meanings ramify beyond the work’s explicit statements. At the same time, they are unified by the deep structure of Christian-Platonist symbols. As is well known, the Church Fathers meditated on the Bible in this way, often relating different passages through a central mystery of the faith. Augustine, for example, begins his allegory on Genesis in the Confessions by relating creation and conversion. As the primal chaos heard and heeded God’s forming word, “Let there be light,” so does a convert to the Word receive “the form of doctrine,” for “[God’s] mercy did not abandon our misery” (13.12.13) but, rather, saved human beings. Augustine’s formulation correlates creation, conversion, grace, and salvation. God’s “mercy” coming to save us from “our own misery” also describes the Exodus, the calling of the Patriarchs and the Prophets, and the signal events of the New Testament: Incarnation, Redemption, Pentecost, and the “eternal sabbath” (Conf. 13.35–38) in the final chapters of the Book of Revelation. God’s mercy saving us from our misery becomes the leitmotif of his whole allegory on Genesis 1 as “the creation of the Church” (13.34.49). His allegory alludes to all these meanings in Scripture, because the Church embodies and carries them forward. Yet they are one meaning, and though it can be expressed in many ways, it is inexhaustible.26 The writers studied in this book meditated on the great works in their tradition in this way, and they wrote their masterpieces to be read in this way. They believed that God structured the cosmos and his revelation in the Bible with significant numbers, and they imitated Him in the numerological structures of their works. We have 26. Hans Urs von Balthasar describes this way of meditating on the Bible in Christian Meditation, translated by Sister Mary Theresilde Skerry (San Francisco, Calif.: Ignatius Press, 1984), esp. pp. 21–26.

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long treated the Confessions, the Proslogion, and the Consolation of Philosophy as intellectually rich and powerful. As works of meditative philosophy, they are also inexhaustible.

The Pilgrim Figure As a journey to the Divine Presence, the Christian-Platonist ascent proves a kind of religious pilgrimage. The Confessions, Proslogion, Consolation of Philosophy, and Commedia each contain at least one pilgrim figure: he makes the meditative journey within the work, and the reader is thereby involved in it. We are seized by the plight of Boethius the prisoner or Dante the pilgrim; we sympathize with the anguish of being in prison or passing a long spiritual night in the dark wood. We identify with these figures and are thereby led, emotionally as well as intellectually, to make the journey with them. For we too seek the light that will liberate us from darkness. All this is obvious enough, and fundamental to these works. But certain aspects of the pilgrim figure prove far from obvious, and we must make some careful literary distinctions to remove ambiguities. The issues are by no means “merely literary”: they have philosophical consequences. Since philosophers and theologians tend to be unfamiliar with them, I will proceed slowly and begin with the Commedia, where the issues are clearest. Dante’s poem presents itself as autobiographical, and so scholars distinguish two Dantes in it: the pilgrim making the journey and the poet who has completed it and now retells it.27 Dante the pilgrim does not know what will happen next: he asks questions of his guides throughout the poem, and early on his doubts and fears are so strong that he even considers abandoning the journey. Dante the poet, on the other hand, always knows what will happen next, because he has completed the journey. Dante the poet recalls, in the 27. Charles S. Singleton first argued this distinction in Dante Studies 1: “Commedia”: Elements of Structure (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954). It has since become fundamental to our understanding of the poem.

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present, a journey he made in the past, as Dante the pilgrim. Hence, in the unfolding of the Commedia, Dante the pilgrim and Dante the poet are dialectically related: the pilgrim is on his way in the journey to become the poet who is telling about it. Early on, the two Dantes are vastly different, but as the journey progresses the pilgrim’s knowledge increases, and so he becomes more and more like the poet.28 Similar distinctions inform The Consolation of Philosophy, which also presents itself as autobiographical. We should distinguish between Boethius the prisoner, who speaks with Lady Philosophy, and Boethius the author, who records their discourse. The dialogue between the prisoner and Lady Philosophy has come to an end, and the prisoner has thereby become the author who can record it. Prisoner and author are dialectically related: far distant in mind at the beginning of the work, much closer toward its end. Philosophy has led Boethius the prisoner on a journey of understanding, and Boethius the author, now that he has completed it, narrates its course. The autobiography in Augustine’s Confessions, of course, is the great antecedent being imitated by Dante and Boethius. We should distinguish, therefore, Augustine the bishop, who is recalling his past journey to Christian faith, from the young Augustine, whose story he is telling. Scholars usually call both figures “Augustine” and rely on the context of their discussions to clarify their intention. But the distinction is so important that I shall always call the character in Books 1–9 the young Augustine, or something similar (like the boy Augustine).29 For the young Augustine is by no means the same 28. Dantists do not usually distinguish Dante the poet from Dante the author, though they should. Dante the poet exists within the fiction of the Commedia: he remembers a journey he once made as the pilgrim. Dante the author made the whole story up. 29. I use “the young Augustine” in deference to John J. O’Meara’s fine book, The Young Augustine: An Introduction to the “Confessions” of St. Augustine (New York: Longman, 1980). John Freccero treats the distinction between Augustine

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person as Augustine the bishop: though they are linked by historical continuity, they are quite different in the values they espouse. The young Augustine is not converted to Christian faith until the final chapter of Book 8, and he is not baptized until the middle of Book 9. Theologically, conversion is a death and rebirth, and Augustine the bishop uses this imagery to describe what happened to the young Augustine in his conversion. Hence, there is both continuity and discontinuity between these two Augustines: continuity because they are the same historical person, and discontinuity because the values animating the young Augustine significantly perished in his conversion, when he received “a new life.” The difference between Augustine the bishop, in his piety and chastity, and the young Augustine, the lustful Manichaean careerist, proves especially marked in Books 1–6. Yet even in Book 9 a difference remains, and the distinction is important for clarity. Like the two Dantes, the young Augustine and Augustine the bishop are dialectically related: the difference between them grows smaller in the later books of the autobiography, but it never disappears. When we turn to the Proslogion, we do not find the autobiographical record of a past journey, but we do encounter an “I” praying his way on a meditative ascent. Earlier, I called this pilgrim figure “Anselm,” as scholars normally do, and sketched the movement of his ascent. But a potential ambiguity lurks in this usage. When the historical Anselm wrote chapter 1, so full of prayerful anguish in its longing for God, did he know how he was going to construct the rest of the ascent? If he did, then the anguish was a fiction: he althe bishop and the young Augustine on the analogy of Dante the poet and Dante the pilgrim in Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, pp. 119–35 and 258–71. Literary studies of Augustine and autobiography include Karl Joachim Weintraub, The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); William C. Spengemann, The Forms of Autobiography: Episodes in the History of a Literary Genre (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980); and James Olney, Memory and Narrative: The Weave of Life-Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

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ready knew the happy ending of chapter 26. If he did not know how the ascent was going to progress, then he must have originally composed it in the sequence of our reading, working from chapter 1 on up through chapter 26. But his “Preface” suggests that Anselm discovered his famous argument, in chapters 2–4, before he began the composition of the work. Anselm’s “Preface” points the way to resolving this issue. There he tells us about his struggle to discover “one argument” sufficient by itself to show “that God truly is, and that he is the highest good .l.l. and the other things we believe regarding the divine substance” (S 93). After long and frustrating effort, a sudden inspiration brought him what he had sought and the discovery gave him joy. Hoping to communicate something of this joy to others, he wrote the Proslogion “under the guise [sub persona] of one striving to raise his mind to the contemplation of God and seeking to understand what he believes” (Preface, S 93–94). In other words, before he began to write the work, Anselm knew that it would climax in joy and the contemplation of God. In fact, he constructed the work as a whole to mime something of his own movement from frustrated longing to joy. When he wrote chapter 1, he knew how the work would end. Nevertheless, the anguish in chapter 1 is real, though it does not belong to the historical Anselm, as such, but to the character he created, whom I will call Anselm the narrator. With the sentence quoted above, the historical Anselm distinguished himself, as author of the whole Proslogion, from his praying narrator within it. Sub persona, “under the guise,” uses an image derived from the theater, for persona originally referred to the mask worn by an actor. It is often translated as “in the person of,” which unfortunately mutes the distinction between Anselm the author and his persona, the praying narrator in the work. It also unfortunately mutes the difference that Anselm established between the Proslogion and the Monologion in this regard, for he described the latter as written “in the person [in

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persona] of someone reasoning silently within himself, investigating what he does not know” (Preface, S 93). In persona and sub persona are not the same. Both suggest a distinction between author and persona, yet “sub persona” implies a greater difference. Anselm the narrator in the Proslogion was created by Anselm the author, the historical human being, as his character in the work. Over the course of the work, Anselm the narrator raises his mind up to contemplate God with joy. Anselm the author designed this movement. He did not experience it as such. Historians and philosophers have not noticed this distinction, despite Anselm’s having made it in his “Preface.” It has escaped their notice, I think, because it does not help them answer the questions they pose. They want to know what Anselm thought when he wrote the Proslogion, and the only evidence they have is the Proslogion itself. Also, their scholarship predominantly concerns Anselm’s famous argument in chapters 2–4, which is almost always separated for analysis from the work as a whole. Thus separated, it loses its meaning as a stage in Anselm the narrator’s ascent, and so scholars do not need to distinguish author and narrator. Unfortunately, this lack of attention to the work as a whole and to Anselm’s effort to distinguish himself from his narrator has limited our sense of Anselm’s achievement. Chapter 4 will show how Anselm the author implied more in the work as a whole than Anselm the narrator says in it. Because this distinction is not only unfamiliar to scholars but fundamental to the Proslogion, let us explore it further. Anselm described the work as an alloquium (Preface, S 94), a “speaking to,” an address. Though it begins with the narrator addressing himself, it quickly modulates into prayer, his speaking to God. On the whole, then, the Proslogion unfolds as the narrator’s prayerful dialogue with God. The narrator is the praying voice in the work: he is the pilgrim figure making the ascent. His anguish in chapter 1 is real, for he does not know where his dialogue with God will lead him. The

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author, in contrast, composed the work as a whole. He was the historical Anselm, who designed, drafted, and revised the Proslogion in a process we cannot now recover. By definition, Anselm the author stood at a certain distance from his narrator’s anguish in chapter 1 because he already understood the happy ending in chapter 26. The narrator, however, does not. He feels his anguish acutely, for he is praying in an ongoing present. Hence, we speak of him properly in the present tense: he asks questions, hazards answers, laments, rejoices, and so on. Anselm the author was a historical person, and we must speak of him in the past tense. As the author of the whole work, it contains no surprises for him, by definition. For the narrator, on the other hand, the ascent is full of surprises, for he is gradually raised to a vision of divine things unforeseeable in his anguish in chapter 1. By definition, we always know what the narrator is thinking: at every moment, his consciousness is explicit, for he is wholly utterance. Hence, the narrator is the pilgrim figure in the work, not the author of the whole: we follow the movements of the narrator’s heart—not the heart of Anselm the author—as he prays his way forward. The mind of Anselm the author, however, is not necessarily explicit at any one moment. To be sure, the narrator’s true statements may be ascribed to Anselm the author, too. But Anselm the author comprehended what is beyond his narrator’s utterances—the Proslogion as a coherent whole—and therefore the relations between its parts, or discursive levels. The mind of Anselm in the work as a whole, therefore, exceeded his narrator’s utterances. By definition, the narrator’s mind is wholly explicit in every part of the work. By definition, the mind of Anselm comprehended the implications of the whole. The narrator, then, is the voice speaking in the work; the author, in contrast, wrote the whole of it, and therefore revised it. By definition, a narrator cannot revise his utterance, because he is speaking: he may retract what he has said by saying something more, but he

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cannot erase what he has spoken. The author, however, had all the tools at a writer’s disposal, and we assume that Anselm drafted and revised the Proslogion until it pleased him. Because the narrator speaks the work, it necessarily presents itself as his unrevised—because unrevisable—utterance. Anselm the author, of course, did revise the work, and he shaped it in order to dramatize the movements of the narrator’s heart in his quest for God. The rise and fall of the narrator’s emotions, his struggle to understand, his achievement of new insights—all these unfold “now” in the course of his prayer. Anselm the author orchestrated these movements to create a compelling literary-philosophical work. By definition, the author stood apart from them because he shaped them into the whole. By definition, the narrator genuinely experiences them “now,” as we read: he is the pilgrim figure making the meditative ascent. Anselm the narrator’s spontaneous affects were Anselm the author’s deliberate effects. This distinction between the speaking narrator in the work and the historical author who wrote it may seem odd, but it would not have troubled medieval readers. They would have readily grasped the oral character of its self-presentation, because they would have read it aloud. Scholarship on “orality and literacy” in the Middle Ages has drawn attention to the differences between medieval and modern readers.30 Though today we usually read silently, readers in Anselm’s time customarily read aloud. Even what they called “silent reading” usually involved murmuring aloud, for they needed to hear the words in order to understand them. Because they gave voice to what they read in order “to hear and understand” it, they would have encountered the oral character of the narrator’s praying directly, as modern readers do not. 30. See Ivan Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh’s “Didaliscon” (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); and Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

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Because scholars have not distinguished Anselm the author from his narrator, the work’s subtle and powerful literary strategy has not been fully appreciated. For the narrator’s prayer unfolds in an ongoing present recreated by our reading, and every reader necessarily recreates it. Every reader necessarily prays the narrator’s prayer, whether she believes in God or not. Even more, every reader becomes the narrator: to read the Proslogion at all, we must take on the utterance of its “I.” We impersonate his thoughts and feelings: we may not read aloud and so give voice to them, but we do give our minds to them. We are thereby involved in the narrator’s quest for God, not by identifying with a character like Dante the pilgrim, but because we must become the pilgrim narrator in order to read the work at all. The distinction between Anselm the author and his narrator is crucial, not only to the literary qualities of the ascent, but to the philosophical content of the Proslogion. To be sure, the distinction is not a separation: the narrator’s utterances prove a reliable index to the historical Anselm’s thought. Nevertheless, Anselm and his narrator are distinct figures and should not be identified tout court, as scholars do when they confuse both as “Anselm.” When they do so, they reduce Anselm’s thought in the work to the narrator’s utterances, and this leads them to underestimate the philosophical achievement of the Proslogion as a whole. As a meditative ascent, the narrator progresses through levels of discourse: he does not explore the relations between the levels that the historical Anselm established in the work. Anselm’s philosophical achievement in the Proslogion exceeded his narrator’s statements, and he expected his readers to meditate on the ascent and thereby work out its implications. This distinction, between the author who wrote the whole work and the narrator praying “now” in it, also applies to Augustine’s Confessions. Indeed, Anselm imitated the Confessions by constructing the Proslogion as the narrator’s prayerful dialogue with God in a meditative ascent. This distinction and its consequences for under-

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standing the Confessions will be argued in the next chapter, but the salient points have already been set forth here. We should distinguish the historical Augustine, the author of the work as a whole, from Augustine the narrator, praying his way to understandings in the course of his dialogue with God. Augustine the author implied meanings that Augustine the narrator does not utter. One of these we explored earlier: the ascent from autobiographical “memories,” in Books 1–9, to the power of “memory,” in Book 10. The Confessions does not remark on this ascent because Augustine the narrator is too involved in his unfolding dialogue with God to notice it. But Augustine the author designed it, and he expected his best readers to notice it and reflect upon it. One reason scholars have been reluctant to understand the Confessions as a meditative ascent is that they look for only one Augustine. They identify the mind of Augustine with the voice of his narrator, and so they reduce the philosophical scope of the work to its explicit statements. Hence they do not understand the whole Confessions as a meditative ascent, and so they tend not to explore the relations between its various levels. In contrast, once we grasp the distinction between Augustine the author and his narrator, we begin to explore the mind of Augustine in the work in new ways. I hope to show how this distinction leads to a new sense of the work as a whole and to new kinds of questions for exploring it. In short, the Confessions features two pilgrim figures, the young Augustine and Augustine the narrator. Both were the nonfictional creations of the historical Augustine, the bishop of Hippo. Earlier, I described a dramatic change in the work’s theology of the Trinity, between chapters 11 and 16 in Book 13, and ascribed it to “Augustine,” as is common in scholarship. It should now be clear that the change occurs in the narrator, not in the author. Augustine the author did not change his mind about the Trinity between chapters 11 and 16. Rather, he designed these chapters to reveal a change occuring in Augustine the narrator. Though scholars may find these dis-

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tinctions odd, because unfamiliar, they point to Augustine the author’s complex literary strategies and suggest the rich matrix of meanings they generate. Historians using Books 1–9 as evidence for Augustine’s life may not need to make these distinctions. But they will prove useful for anyone seeking to understand Augustine’s literary and philosophical achievement in the Confessions as a whole.

Habits of Understanding I have been arguing for some unfamiliar literary distinctions and new ways of understanding a Christian-Platonist ascent. To make my case persuasive, I need to do more than show how these interpretive strategies illuminate (say) the Confessions. After all, new interpretations are often dismissed as merely ingenious. To persuade the skeptical scholar of my views, two things need to be shown, one negative and one positive. First, some account must be given for why scholars have not already arrived at these views. The Confessions, for example, enjoys an impressive body of scholarship. If scholars have not heretofore distinguished between Augustine the author and his narrator, it is hardly for lack of intelligence, but for some other reason. This task is negative: to remove scholarly resistance to my views by accounting for it. Second, I need to show that, though modern scholars have largely overlooked these ways of understanding a meditative ascent, the original audience would have used them. This task is positive: to show that Augustine and Anselm would have expected their readers to understand the paradigm and principles I have been describing. My response on both these scores has already been suggested and needs only some elaboration here. Modern scholarship on these works has run predominantly in two veins, historical and philosophical. These two veins often come together, for they have some things in common, but I will treat them separately, using the Confessions to illustrate them. In the first, scholars pose questions oriented toward facts. For example, what were the facts of Augustine’s life? What did he do, and where, when,

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and why did he do it? What was his education like and how did it influence him? What sources did he quote from and allude to in writing the Confessions? How was he influenced by these sources? Is the account of his conversion in Book 8 historically factual?31 Scholarship in this vein has amassed a large body of factual knowledge useful to every serious student of the work. Although historians have by no means been literalist readers of the Confessions, their questions tend to seek literalist, because factual, answers. With this orientation, there can only be one Augustine. Augustine the author and the young Augustine are the same person, and the narrator does not exist, because this persona answers no relevant—that is, historical—questions. In the second, philosophical, vein, scholars pose questions oriented toward doctrines or positions. What was Augustine’s position on “memory” in the Confessions? On the nature of time? On the nature of evil? On the hermeneutics of Scripture? They have no brief against “the young Augustine,” but he does not exist for them, because he did not develop any philosophical views in the work. Subtle and discerning as these scholars have been, their doctrinal orientation has literalist assumptions. They assume that Augustine had a position on a particular issue and that he intended to state it explicitly. To be sure, they recognize certain aspects of the Confessions’s meditative character: some have written beautifully about its inquisitio veritatis, its “inquiry in quest of the truth.” But they tend to see this as merely a literary means to engage readers in the pursuit of philosophical truth. The real philosophical action lies in the doctrinal conclusion and the reasons supporting it. Hence, a scholar in this vein labors to tease out Augustine’s doctrine from the often wandering inquiry. Formed by his study of 31. For recent work, a bibliography, and a view of opposite sides in this long debate, see Henry Chadwick, “History and Symbolism in the Garden at Milan,” in From Augustine to Eriugena: Essays on Neoplatonism and Christianity in Honor of John O’Meara, edited by F. X. Martin, O.S.A., and J. A. Richmond (Washington,


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Scholastic or analytic philosophy, he assumes that Augustine had a position and stated it as unambiguously as he could. He recognizes the work’s meditative texture, its style of posing questions and working toward answers, but not its meditative structure, which implies understandings by the relations between levels of the ascent. A doctrinal philosophy demands explicit positions and arguments. Because it has no notion of implied truths, to be found by meditating on the relations between discursive levels, it cannot seek them. With this orientation, the distinction between Augustine the author and his narrator remains invisible because unthinkable. Augustine’s philosophical achievement in the Confessions is thereby reduced to what it states explicitly. In short, literalist assumptions underlie the prevailing tradition of historical and philosophical scholarship. (Literary interpretation of the Confessions arose more recently and has focused largely on Books 1–9.)32 Scholars have not distinguished between the historical Augustine and his narrator, not for lack of careful reading, but because their assumptions could not admit its relevance. Valuable as their work is, their assumptions have limited our understanding. Now late antique and medieval readers came to these works with different habits of understanding, different questions and assumptions. Indeed, we owe our understanding of these to modern historical research. For one thing, they read these works aloud and so would have readily grasped the oral character of the Confessions and the Proslogion. For another, biblical typology schooled them in the structure of a meditative ascent, for they were used to exploring the relations between levels in a work. Because the Christian Bible unfolded climactically, in a movement to higher and higher levels, it D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991), pp. 42–55; and Leo C. Ferrari, The Conversions of St. Augustine (Villanova, Pa.: Augustinian Institute, 1984). 32. Pioneers of literary interpretation include Leo C. Ferrari and Eugene Vance. I do not regard philological research and quellenforschung as “literary” but as historical.

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was held to have four interpretive levels: literal (or historical), allegorical, anagogical, and moral. The Old Testament allegorically prefigured the New Testament and anagogically prefigured future glory. Literal, historical persons and events in the Old Testament foreshadowed their fulfillment in Christ, allegorically, and their ultimate fulfillment at the end of time, anagogically. Moreover, any text could also be interpreted morally, with respect to the reader’s own life. In short, any moment in the biblical history of salvation could be validly understood in relation to any other moment, to the pattern of the whole, and to oneself. Similarly, in the meditative ascent, earlier levels foreshadow later ones, which fulfill them. Each level must be understood “literally,” in its own right, and also in relation to other levels and to the ascent as a whole. In this way, a reader discovers truths that are never stated in any single place. In the Bible, allegorical and anagogical meanings emerge only from relations between texts, and so can be discovered only by retrospective rereading. So, too, full understanding of a meditative ascent emerges only by meditating on its internal relations. Furthermore, I have argued that each of these works aims to initiate readers into its meditative practices. Its ultimate message is “Go and do likewise,” like the moral interpretation of Scripture. In other words, late antique and medieval readers read the Bible meditatively: they sought to grasp its patterns of internal relations and apply them to their own lives. But they also read meditatively in another related sense: slowly, carefully, memorizing long passages and repeating them often, working to appropriate a work deeply, “by heart.” The monastic tradition called this effort lectio divina, the prayerful reading of Scripture, and every monk was schooled in its practices. A monk, for example, would normally spend a year on a single gospel so as to assimilate it deeply and fully. Meditatio was often linked to chewing and digesting the spiritual food of a text, ruminating upon it, savoring the sweetness of its truth. The “four lev-


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els” of Scripture were central to lectio divina, for the meditating monk applied his text morally, to his own life, and sought its deeper truths of faith allegorically and anagogically. The “sweetness” of meditation was frequently extolled, and the monks explored the relations between various biblical texts with astonishing freedom and acumen. The roots of this tradition preceded Augustine by more than a century, and he was adept at meditating on Scripture in these ways. But non-Christian readers likewise devoted themselves to classical texts with similar habits of understanding. They read, memorized, and meditated on works of classical literature, often interpreting them as philosophical allegories. They drew general moral lessons from them, and applied them specifically to their own lives.33 As Pierre Hadot has shown, non-Christian philosophers also engaged in a variety of spiritual exercises, based on their reading and evident in their writing. In general, late antique and medieval readers had very few books but nourished their minds deeply by meditating upon them. In sum, then, late antique and medieval readers expected to interpret the relations between various parts or levels of a work. They knew that a work’s literal meanings were primary, but not final: the literal meanings provided the basis for meanings and patterns not stated explicitly. These readers knew how to meditate on a work, and the authors we are studying knew how to write for them. For such readers, the historical facts of modern historians were relatively unimportant, as such, compared to the deeper meanings they held for faith (allegory), for eternity (anagogy), and for one’s own life (morality). In their reading habits, also, a philosophical position in a meditative ascent proved not the end of understanding, but a beginning for meditation. They knew that the position, however valu33. For this tradition and a bibliography on it, see Robert Lamberton, Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986).

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able in its own right, was a station along the way, and they knew how to meditate on its relations to levels above and below. Modern scholars may find my treatment of these relations irrelevant to their concerns, which they rightfully define for themselves. But now, at least, they have a brief account of why they have not noticed the literary strategies so important to the present book. The same point can also be made by comparing the current states of biblical and patristic scholarship. Until the 1980s, biblical scholarship was predominantly historical and philological, so much so that source and redaction criticism were often considered to be “literary.” Early in that decade, however, scholars began to publish books in what came to be called “narrative criticism,” employing the techniques of a properly literary criticism to understand books of the Bible as coherent wholes.34 Where historical and philological techniques tended to fractionate a gospel, the new literary study aimed to see it steadily and whole. These scholars distinguished the author of a gospel from its narrator, and sometimes the implied author from the historical one. The techniques they employed led to new understandings, simultaneously literary and theological.35 Their work recovered the design of a book as a whole, how it was designed to work upon its audience. These studies have repristinated not only the books of the Bible but the field of biblical studies. Patristic scholarship, in contrast, has largely ignored these techniques of literary study. Its prevailing methods remain historical and philological and, in philosophy, analytic. The level of scholar34. Pioneering books in this field include Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981); David Rhoads and Donald Michie, Mark as Story: An Introduction to the Narrative of a Gospel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982); and R. Alan Culpepper, Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel: A Study in Literary Design (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983). 35. See Thomas L. Brodie, The Gospel According to John: A Literary and Theological Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 3–76, for an analysis of the differences between different kinds of biblical interpretation and an elegant treatment of John’s Gospel as a whole.

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ship is high—witness the superb commentaries by Joachim Grubar on The Consolation of Philosophy and James J. O’Donnell on the Confessions, Peter Brown’s biography of Augustine and R. W. Southern’s on Anselm, among other achievements. Nevertheless, the prevailing methods of analysis focus on the local and literal level of these works. These methods presume that the author’s meanings can be recovered in this way. My view, in contrast, is that these methods recover only the narrator’s meanings, for the author has implied meditative meanings in the work as a whole, and these can be recovered only by understanding its structure and reflecting on the relations between its stages. Also, although we know a good deal about the methods of literary interpretation practiced by Augustine, Boethius, and Anselm, these methods have not been used by scholars to study their works. As a result, the deeper, meditative levels of the Confessions, Consolation, and Proslogion remain largely unexplored. Although the spiritual value of these works is warmly appreciated, they have rarely been studied as “spiritual exercises,” largely because historical and philological analysis does not ask meditative questions. The present book aims to ask some meditative questions and show how they might be answered. Just as biblical scholars have used new techniques to explore the literary and theological unity of a gospel, so do I employ similar techniques to treat the literary and philosophical coherence of the Confessions, Consolation, and Proslogion. This chapter has set forth the principles of the meditative ascent and explained the rationale to be pursued in the chapters that follow. I do not claim to explore all that needs to be explored in these works. I attempt to chart a new track, hoping that others will follow to develop, and perhaps correct, what is said here.

Summary Let me conclude this chapter by gathering together the principles governing the literary and philosophical structure of a medita-

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tive ascent. As a journey of return to the Origin, the ascent moves steadily “upward” and “back,” to principles of being ever higher and prior, logically and ontologically. Higher principles of being ground, and therefore govern, lower ones: the power of memory, for example, forms the basis of all particular memories. The meditation thereby ascends to levels of being ever more fundamental, more general, more lasting, more universal. Though we moderns may think of these higher categories as “less real,” because vaguer and more abstract, the Christian Platonist found them more real because more comprehensive. They understood the ascent as a meditative journey into greater and greater reality, culminating in Ultimate Reality. This ascent to Reality is both an interior journey and a journey into the interior. By definition, a meditative journey is not made by walking, sailing, or flying, but by reflecting in language. It begins with the inward turn of Christian-Platonist conversion: the pilgrim soul “returns into itself,” away from things outside (extra se) to those within (intra se), and so is led to those above (supra se). It ascends to ever higher levels of being by progressing to higher levels of discourse. But “higher” also means “deeper,” more fundamental: higher principles of “being in general” prove deeper principles of our human being. When the Christian Platonist ascends meditatively, he journeys into the depths of his being and of all being. The interior journey journeys into the interior of reality. To understand a meditative ascent, we must grasp not only its explicit statements on each discursive level but also the implied relations between levels, and especially those with the highest level. The meditative ascent is written with this deliberate literary strategy: we cannot understand it fully without meditating on it. It demands retrospective rereading. Just as God is both the Origin and the End of the journey, so the meditative vision of God at its climax proves the ground of the work as a whole. Hence, we need to understand how successive levels prove higher and prior, logically and ontologi-

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cally. But we also need to understand, in interpretive retrospect, how its conclusion is related to each earlier level as its ultimate ground. In addition to its pattern as an ascent, each of these works is chiastically structured in numerologically significant ways. This structure is implied and can be discovered not by reading alone, but by reflecting on the work as a whole. A chiasm is a ring structure— hence, a circle—and a cross, for the Greek letter chi is an X. The circle and the cross evoke fundamental beliefs in Christian Platonism: procession and return; creation and salvation; the “still circle” of divinity; Christ’s Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection; the crossing of the two cosmic Motions; and the divine order of the heavens. Chiastic structure thereby unifies and ramifies a meditative ascent because each theme is related to it, and through it can be related to all other themes. Like the Bible, and for similar reasons, these works are meditatively inexhaustible. In other words, a meditative ascent is not an argument, though it uses passages of argument. Primarily, it is a journey made through dialogue, and hence a spiritual exercise. Each of these works features a pilgrim figure seeking God, on a journey in quest of truth. None of these pilgrim figures knows precisely where he is going or how to get there, and so his journey is full of surprising insights and discoveries. The journeys all succeed, moreover, because they all unfold as dialogues and each pilgrim figure is guided to some kind of fulfillment. This is obvious in the Commedia, where Dante the pilgrim is guided on his journey by Virgil and Beatrice, and in The Consolation of Philosophy, where Lady Philosophy explicitly teaches Boethius the prisoner. But it is no less true for the Confessions and the Proslogion, where the pilgrim figures pray to God and are guided to fulfillment by grace. The character of the Confessions as a “dialogue with God” has long been recognized, and Anselm took up its principles when he took up its literary and philosophical form. In all of these works, the pilgrim figure should be distinguished from the author, even

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though both have the same name. Anselm the narrator, “struggling to raise his mind to the contemplation of God” (“Preface”), is a different figure from Anselm the author, who orchestrated his meditative ascent. The author designed the meditative ascent to effect, simultaneously, the progressive transformation of its pilgrim figure and its key words. These transformations are recorded in the work, but rarely reflected upon within it: the author left their rationale to be discovered by the reader. In the Commedia, “love” comes to have new meanings at higher levels of the ascent, and these are analogous to the change being wrought in Dante the pilgrim. In the Confessions, “friendship” means something different in the conversion account in Book 8 than it does in the pear theft in Book 2, and this difference indicates a corresponding change in the young Augustine. These differences are registered in the work, but not remarked upon. The pilgrim figure is too involved in his unfolding progress to reflect on the pattern of his transformation. The author, however, understood this pattern, as the design of his work reveals. But he left its rationale to be discovered by the meditative reader, reflecting on the work as a whole. Our meditating on the transformation of its pilgrim figure and its key words is designed to effect a transformation in us. A meditative ascent is a work of transformation: the transformations within the work are designed to work a transformation in the meditative reader. Hence, each of these works proves a spiritual exercise, both explicitly and implicitly. Each pilgrim figure engages in an arduous quest for truth, and we participate in his spiritual exercise by following carefully the story of his quest. In addition, the author of each work invites us to meditate on what its structure implies. What Augustine the author said in the Confessions surpassed the utterances of Augustine the narrator. The mind of Augustine the author can only be discovered by reflecting on the work as a whole. Augustine the narrator prays his way forward and rarely stops to look back. But as

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in life, so in reading: we read forward and understand backward. To understand the author’s intentions in a meditative ascent, we must meditate on it as a completed whole, something its narrator never does. We thereby participate in the spiritual exercise its author performed in designing the work.

CHAPTER 2

THE UNITY

OF MEDITATIVE

STRUCTURE AND TEXTURE IN AUGUSTINE’S CONFESSIONS

A U G U S T I N E ’ S Confessions is not only the earliest work treated in this book but also the longest, the richest, and the most complex. The later works derive from it, because each looks back to the Confessions for one or more of its fundamental literary principles. Boethius and Dante imitated its autobiographical structure and Anselm its prayerful quest for truth. To understand any of these works, we need to grasp its literary genre and structure so as to understand its unity. We can then go on to explore the philosophical implications contained by this unified structure. These implications are properly meditative and, as such, they may well not satisfy our contemporary, analytical sense of what is genuinely philosophical. Nevertheless, writers in late antiquity and the Middle Ages had a somewhat different sense of what “the love of wisdom” entailed, and we must accept their sense of “philosophy” if we wish to understand their achievement.1 1. For any topic in Augustine’s life and thought, one should begin by consulting Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, edited by Allan Fitzgerald, O.S.A., et al. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999); all the entries are well written and have bibliographies. For specific questions about passages in the Confessions, one should begin by consulting the superb scholarship exhibited in Augustine, The Confessions: Text and Commentary, 3 vols., edited with an Introduction and Commentary by James J. O’Donnell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). Colin Starnes, Augustine’s Conversion: A Guide to the Argument of “Confessions” I–IX (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier Press, 1990), is a useful guide to the autobiography,

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The Unity of Meditative Structure and Texture

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In order to understand Augustine’s meditative philosophy in the Confessions, we must first understand the work’s unity, its formal coherence. The present chapter treats this formal coherence in three sections, while the following chapter explores the work’s meditative philosophy.2 The first section describes the Confessions’s meditative structure as a Christian-Platonist ascent, a return to the Origin. The second treats the meditative texture of its literary genre as a prayer, a “dialogue with God.” The final section brings these two themes together and shows how the allegorical interpretation of Genesis 1 in Book 13 provides the paradigm for the whole Confessions. The work is shown to have not merely a unity through its leading themes, as many scholars have argued, but also a plan, a deeply structured formal coherence.3 The distinction between “unity” and “plan” was made by Luc Verheijen in an effort to bring some clarity to the long debate about the formal coherence of the Confessions.4 Verheijen points to several themes and modes of expression running throughout the work, all of which lend it “unity.” This unity derives from Augustine’s “unity while the essays in Kim Paffenroth and Robert P. Kennedy, eds., A Reader’s Companion to Augustine’s “Confessions” (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), cover all thirteen books. 2. Parts of the present chapter are argued, in abbreviated form, in Robert McMahon, “Book Thirteen: Augustine’s Return to the Origin,” in Paffenroth and Kennedy, eds., A Reader’s Companion, pp. 207–23. 3. Brian Stock, Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of the Reader (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), treats meditation in Augustine’s works more widely, but his working notion of “meditation” in that book differs from mine. For Stock, “meditation” is discursively explicit, and synonyms for it would include “reflection,” “rumination,” and “mulling over,” as in the monastic tradition of meditatio. But, in the present book, “meditation” points rather to implied meanings orchestrated by the genre of the meditative ascent, a Christian-Platonist ascent enacted over the whole Confessions. 4. Luc Verheijen, “The Confessions: Two Grids of Composition and Meaning,” a paper presented in 1989 at the Patristics, Medieval, and Renaissance Conference, Villanova University. In Verheijen’s absence, Frederick Van Fleteren presented his paper.

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of soul,” for he was a man with persistent concerns and habits of expression. Yet Verheijen finds no coherent plan in the Confessions. Like other scholars, he acknowledges the large divisions in the work: the autobiography in Books 1–9, Book 10 on memory, and Books 11–13 on Genesis 1. But he finds no plan linking them one to another, unifying the work as a whole by some compelling scheme. This seems to be the scholarly consensus. Frederick Van Fleteren, in his entry on the Confessions for the Augustine encyclopedia, says that “[o]f course, Augustine never intended to write a literary classic— Confessiones may in fact be disunited—and, therefore, search for unity may be vain.”5 In my view, however, the Confessions is constructed according to a plan, one that incorporates its seeming planlessness. The work thereby has a deep formal coherence. In Chapter 1, I suggested that scholars have missed Augustine’s plan in the work because they have not distinguished Augustine the narrator, the voice in the Confessions, from Augustine the author, who designed the work as a whole. Augustine the narrator never comments on his plan for the work because he does not have one: it emerges through the spontaneities of his dialogue with God. But Augustine the author did have a plan for the work, for he designed it as a Christian-Platonist ascent. The formal coherence of the Confessions cannot be understood without grasping this distinction. Augustine’s general plan is sketched out in the following section, but the work’s deep formal coherence emerges only by reflecting on its meditative texture as a “dialogue with God.”6 5. “Confessiones,” in Allan D. Fitzgerald, ed., Augustine through the Ages, p. 228. Pace Van Fleteren, Augustine sets his Confessions against the Aeneid (Conf. 1.13), the literary classic of late antiquity. See Andrew Fichter’s brilliant (and neglected) analysis in Poets Historical: Dynastic Epic in the Renaissance (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 40–69. On Augustine and Vergil more generally, see Sabine MacCormack, The Shadows of Poetry: Vergil in the Mind of Augustine (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998). 6. This chapter abbreviates my book, Augustine’s Prayerful Ascent: An Essay on

Meditative Structure

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Meditative Structure: Return to the Origin The structure of the Confessions works out the implications of its theological anthropology, epitomized in its most famous sentence. Its first chapter declares that God stirs us up to delight in praising Him, because “You have made us toward yourself and our heart is restless until it rests in you” (fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te; 1.1.1). I have translated this literally and awkwardly, to point up certain features. First, “you have made us” obviously alludes to God’s creation of human beings in Genesis 1:26–27. But for Augustine’s readers, the allusion includes “toward yourself” (ad te) because the Latin Bible renders the act as God’s creating humans “toward [his] image” (ad imaginam), rather than “in” it. According to this understanding, Christ alone is the Image of God, and human beings are made “toward” that Image. The human being is an image of this Image, so to speak. We are made “toward” God—in fact, toward the Second Person of the Trinity, God in Christ. Second, Augustine’s “toward yourself” implies an innate inclination in human nature. Human beings are innately, by our very nature, drawn toward God. That is why the human heart is “restless” amid all the goods of the created world. So many things please, but none of them satisfies. Even all of them together would not satisfy the human heart, so swiftly are we wearied by satiety. Augustine experienced in himself and others this inability to find enduring peace, even in great worldly success. He presents the restless heart as an index in this world that human beings are made by and for Someone beyond it. Hence, the Augustinian heart has both an incompleteness, for it is “restless,” and a directionality, toward God. the Literary Form of the “Confessions” (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989). For scholarship on “the unity of the Confessions,” see pp. xi–xv and 40–42; for a more detailed review, see Gennaro Luongo, “Autobiografia ed esegesi nelle Confessioni di Agostino,” Parola del Passato 31 (1976): 286–306.

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Moreover, his phrasing links the individual with all humankind: “our heart is restless until it rests in you” (my emphasis). This restlessness is manifested in every human heart and in the human race as a whole. As is well known, this sentence foreshadows the peace of heart Augustine experienced at his conversion (8.12.29), the eternal rest he hopes for after death, and the eternal sabbath of all the saved at the end of time (13.35–38). In its context, the sentence explains why we delight in worship, and thus implies the Church. The Church, as we shall see, carries Augustine’s understanding of the meaning of creation and the purpose of history. Because we are made “toward” God’s Image, Christ, we find our fulfillment in his Mystical Body, the Church. Hence, creation is not merely an event that happened long ago, to Adam and Eve. Every human being is made “toward God’s image”: the restlessness of every human heart manifests its creation by God. Later in the Confessions Augustine touches on the Divine Presence in human beings even when we are not aware of it. Remembering when the young Augustine sought for God outwardly “according to the sense of the flesh,” the bishop declares that God is “more inward than my innermost and higher than my uppermost” (interior intimo meo et superior summo meo; 3.6.11). Interior intimo meo may be freely rendered as “more inward to me than I am to myself.” The Divine Presence proves more inward than the self because the self is formed by the contents of experience. The inward Divine Presence, however, constitutes the human being as such, as the creature made “toward [God’s] image,” and thereby enables human experiencing in the first place. Similarly, addressing the divine Beauty “ever old and ever new,” Augustine recalls that “[y]ou were within, and I was in the external world, and sought you there,” for “[y]ou were with me, and I was not with you” (10.27.38). He affirms that God is somehow present in actuating the consciousness of human beings, whether we know it or not. The Divine Presence in our nature makes us “restless” for happiness. Our search for “the happy life” (10.20–23) arises from


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our very depths, for we have no earthly experience of the happiness we long for. This happiness is not an object of remembered experience, yet our desire for it quickens all that we do. This longing for we-know-not-what happiness is a longing to experience the Divine Presence—”When I seek for you, my God, my quest is for the happy life” (10.20.29)—and it arises from the Divine Presence within us. For Augustine, God is the source and term, the Origin and End, of all human desire. Because Augustinian desire seeks its fulfillment by moving toward God, simultaneously its “inward” Origin and its “upward” End, the Confessions as a whole is structured as a return to the Origin, a Christian-Platonist ascent. The ascent, let us recall, is based on the exitus-reditus scheme: as all things come forth from God, so do all things return to God. This “return to the Origin” is a meditative movement to principles: it ascends progressively to principles logically prior, and therefore ontologically higher, for Platonist principles are universals, realms of being. Hence, the ascent moves not merely to categories progressively more general, as in our nominalist way of thinking, but to realms of being more universal and real, because they comprehend more of reality. At the same time, the Platonist arrives at these realms “above himself” (supra se) after taking the inward turn, away from things “outside him” (extra se) to the principles of the soul within (in se). The Platonist ascent moves not only “upward” but also “inward,” to universal principles ontologically higher because more interior. In this way, the meditator moves toward the Divine Presence “more inward than [his] innermost and higher than [his] uppermost” (3.6.11). Let us see how this pattern works itself out in the Confessions, first as a progress to what is prior, logically and ontologically, and then as an interior movement.7 The progress from Books 1–9 to Books 10 and 11 was charted in Chapter 1 and so may be merely 7. My treatment of the ascent as a progress to what is prior derives from Kenneth Burke, The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology, pp. 123–24, 141–57; it

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sketched here. After examining certain of his memories in his spiritual autobiography (Books 1–9), Augustine the narrator explores memory, in Book 10, and time, in Book 11. Memories cannot exist without memory, and memory cannot exist without time. Memory, then, is logically and ontologically prior to memories, as is time to memory. Time is the precondition of memory, and thus of memories.8 Book 12 is largely taken up with the narrator’s interpreting “heaven and earth” in Genesis 1:1. He holds that “heaven” refers to the “heaven of heavens,” the “incorporeal creation” (12.8–9), and “earth” refers to the “formless matter” from which the world would be made (12.3–7). Both of these, he argues, exist prior to time, though neither is properly eternal (12.12–13). Before the world exists, there is no time; “heaven and earth,” pure form and pure matter, are the pretemporal constituents of the world. Hence, “heaven and earth,” in Book 12, are logically and ontologically prior to time, in Book 11. Book 13 concludes the work, and it closes by interpreting the seven days of Creation as an allegory for the creation and growth of the Church (13.12–38).9 Summarizing his treatment of the six days in chapter 34, Augustine the narrator begins, “We have seen into [inabbreviates McMahon, Augustine’s Prayerful Ascent, pp. 115–55. Other treatments include R. D. Crouse, “‘Recurrens in te unum’: The Pattern of St. Augustine’s Confessions,” Studia Patristica 14:389–92; and G. N. Knauer, “Peregrinatio animae. Zur Frage der Einheit der augustinischen Konfessionen,” Hermes 85 (1957): 216–48. 8. For the themes of eternity and time in these books, see John C. Cooper, “Why Did Augustine Write Books XI–XIII of the Confessions?,” Augustinian Studies 2 (1971): 37–46; John M. Quinn, O.S.A., “Four Faces of Time in St. Augustine,” Recherches Augustiniennes 26 (1992): 181–231; Roland J. Teske, S.J., Paradoxes of Time in St. Augustine, The Aquinas Lecture 1996 (Marquette, Wis.: Marquette University Press, 1996); Katherin A. Rogers, “St. Augustine on Time and Eternity,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 70 (1996): 207–23; and Mary T. Clark, “Augustine on Immutability and Mutability,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 74, no. 1 (2000): 7–27. 9. The best treatment of book 13 is F. Cayre, “Le livre XIII des Confessions,” Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes 2 (1956): 143–61.


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speximus] these things according to the mystical purpose with which you willed [voluisti] them to come into being in such an order, or to be written in such an order” (13.34.49). Augustine claims that his allegory for the Church reveals the purpose for which God willed the sequential order of the creation, or of the creation story. Odd though Augustine’s allegory and claim may be to us, the fundamental point was entirely traditional. The Shepherd of Hermas affirmed that “[t]he world was created for the sake of the Church,” and Clement of Alexandria explained that “[j]ust as God’s will is creation and is called ‘the world,’ so his intention is the salvation of men, and it is called ‘the Church.’”10 For Augustine, then, the allegory of the Church in Book 13 reveals God’s purpose in creation, or in inspiring its account in Genesis. Since purpose is logically and ontologically prior to act, the Church, as God’s purpose, is logically and ontologically prior to creation. Moreover, as the Mystical Body of Christ, it is understood to be eternal: it preceded the world in God’s mind and will endure beyond the end of the world in the “eternal Sabbath” (13.35–38) of his presence. In this traditional understanding, the Church is the divine origin and the goal of all things. As God’s purpose and goal in creating, the Church is logically prior to and ontologically higher than all created things. Augustine’s meditative ascent can go no further than his vision into the providential order of creation and the Church. His return to the Origin is complete, and his Confessions come to a close. Now let us consider the progressively interior movement of this ascent.11 It proves obvious in the progress from memories, in Books 1–9, to memory, in Book 10, for the faculty of memory proves deep10. See Pastor Hermae, Book I, Vision 2, 4, 1, in Patrologia Cursus Completus, Series Graeca, edited by J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1857), vol. 2, column 899; and Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus 1, 6, 27, in Patrologia Cursus Completus, Series Graeca (Paris, 1891), vol. 8, column 281. 11. I am grateful to Todd Breyfogle for helping me to understand the interior progress of Books 10–12.

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er than its contents. In Books 11, 12, and 13, the interior progress of the ascent emerges in the final chapters. Near the end of Book 11, Augustine concludes that time contains memory as one of its aspects. Discovering that only the present exists, he analyzes time psychologically, as “attention” (attentio; 11.28) in the present to various things: memory is attention to things past; the present is attention to things present; expectation is attention to things future. Attention, then, is necessary to memory, prior to it, and deeper in the soul. That is why its scope extends not only to things past but also to things present and future. From “attention,” near the end of Book 11, the ascent moves to “the will” (voluntas) in the final chapters of Book 12. After treating his own and various other interpretations of “heaven and earth” in chapters 2–22, the narrator begins to reflect on hermeneutic principles. These all turn on the moral disposition (voluntas) of interpreters attempting to understand the intention (voluntas) of Moses and of God in Genesis 1 (12.23.32, 12.24.33, 12.28.38, 12.30.41, 12.32.43). Because Augustine refuses to consider the views of heretics or unbelievers (12.14.17, 12.16.23, 12.23.32), the “rule of faith” governs his whole discussion: all the differing interpretations are true, because the rule of faith excludes false ones. He goes on to develop “the rule of charity”: no exegete should prefer his interpretations to other true ones simply because it is his (12.25, 30–31). Because charity is the end or goal of Scripture, what the Holy Spirit willed when inspiring it, charity should bring concord of the will to exegetes with differing views. Book 12 closes with Augustine praying to conform his interpretation to God’s will in Scripture: “I would say what your Truth willed [voluerit] to say to me, which also spoke to [Moses] what it willed [voluit]” (12.32.43). Now faith and charity are dispositions of the rightly oriented will. Clearly, the directing of attention depends on the will, and right attention depends on a rightly oriented will. The will is a principle prior to attention, more important and powerful because more interior, deeper in the soul.


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The movement from “attention,” at the end of Book 11, to “will,” at the end of Book 12, marks an interior progress. Book 13, as we have seen, closes with the purpose God wills in creation. Obviously, God’s will (voluisti; 13.34.49) is prior to and higher than the will (voluntas) of human beings. At the same time, the purpose that God wills in creation is the Church, to share his life with human creatures made in his image, and this divine desire is stamped by its presence interior intimo within the restless human heart. “You have made us toward yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you” (1.1.1; my emphasis). This formulation points to the Church: not only is every human heart restless toward God, but also a single corporate heart seeks rest in the Divine Presence. In the Church, the divine creation continues in the Divine Providence guiding our restless heart, individually and corporately, toward its eternal rest. In other words, when Augustine recognizes the Church as God’s purpose in creation, at the end of Book 13, he recognizes the deepest aspect of himself. Here is the divine ground of the longing that animates his will (Book 12), his attention (Book 11), and his memory (Book 10). Further inward he cannot go. His innermost is his uppermost, for God is “interior intimo meo et superior summo meo” (3.6.11). In short, as a Christian-Platonist ascent, the Confessions’s end is its beginning. At the literary level, the Church governs the work from its first sentence to its last: as a prayerful dialogue with God, the Confessions enacts the Church throughout. But the Church also functions at the level of universal history: as God’s purpose for creating, the Church is his original intention and ultimate end for the world and human beings. Most obviously, Augustine discovers the meaning of his life in the Church: God’s presence is the origin and end of his “restless heart,” leading him providentially through dissatisfaction with worldly success to Christian conversion. The Providence guiding Augustine’s life and his dialogue with God leads him finally to envision the Providence guiding all human history. Augus-

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tine’s life and Confessions prove, in the end, instances of the Church, the divinely guided universal movement that begins before time and ends beyond it. The allegory of Book 13 thereby completes Augustine’s understanding of his restless heart in his very first chapter. The meditative structure of the Confessions moves to progressively deeper, and therefore more universal, self-understandings. Augustine would have us recognize deeper and deeper aspects of ourselves in this movement and so come to see ourselves as he does, stamped in his origin, longing, and end as God’s. In the Confessions, the Church proves at once the deepest, highest, and most universal form of self-knowledge. As the providential origin and end of the world, the Church is the ground of creation, of Augustine’s restless heart, of his dialogue with God, and of his Christian-Platonist ascent. This ascent over the whole Confessions is never explicitly remarked. Hence, it is not merely a structure but a meditative structure, because it can be discerned only by meditating on relations between the parts of the work. In other words, it cannot be discerned simply by reading the Confessions, but only by reflecting on it retrospectively, as a whole. The “ascent of the soul” not only appears explicitly in certain parts of the work, but is also enacted implicitly over the whole. As an implied structure, it can only be discovered through meditation. Just as Augustine could only understand his journey to the Christian faith after it had been completed by conversion, so we can understand the journey structure of the Confessions only by retrospective meditation on the work as a whole. Within this movement, the autobiography in Books 1–9 enacts, in its own ways, a return to the Origin. For one thing, it tells the story of the young Augustine’s conversion, and as a turning toward God, a conversion is necessarily a return to the Origin. Also, the autobiography moves climactically to gradually deeper, or higher, returns to the Origin: the young Augustine’s experience of God as a spiritual substance (7.9–11), his conversion to faith in the Incarna-


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tion and to chastity (8.12), and his entry into the Church in his baptism (9.6). Each of these proves a return to the Origin by the young Augustine: in his intellect (7.9–11), in his intellect and will (8.12), and in his whole person through the sacraments of the Church (9.6). Book 9 also features his return to the Origin in the meditative ascent of his “vision at Ostia” (9.10), and it concludes with the saintly death of his mother: his earthly origin returning to her divine Origin. Books 1–9 also enact this return in their formal structure as a chiasm. A simple chiastic structure may be represented schematically in this way: A B C B A. This schema clearly shows a movement that enacts a progression (A B C) and a return (C B A). William A. Stephany has shown how this structure functions in Augustine’s autobiography with thematic parallels between Books 1 and 9, 2 and 8, 3 and 7, and 4 and 6.12 Books 1 and 9, according to Stephany, emphasize physical birth and spiritual birth, respectively. Augustine’s narrative of his own life begins with his physical birth (1.6.7) and ends with his spiritual rebirth in baptism (9.6.14). Book 9 also records the baptisms—the sacramental births—of Verecundus (9.3.5), Nebridius (9.3.6), Adeodatus (9.6.14), and Alypius (9.6.14). All except the last are dead when the Confessions is written, and Augustine envisions each as born into eternal life. Also, it may be noted, Book 1 recurrently criticizes the boy’s classical education, while Book 9 begins with the young convert’s decision to give up his profession as a teacher of the classics (9.2) and to immerse himself in the prayerful reading of Scripture (9.4). Let one other set of parallel books illustrate the chiastic pattern 12. See William A. Stephany, “Thematic Structure in Augustine’s Confessions,” Augustinian Studies 20 (1989): 129–42. Independently of Stephany, Frederick J. Crosson also found chiastic structure in Books 1–9.; see his “Structure and Meaning in St. Augustine’s Confessions,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 63 (1989): 84–97, and, more recently, “Book Five: The Disclosure of Hidden Providence,” in Paffenroth and Kennedy, eds., A Reader’s Companion, pp. 71–88.

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of the autobiography. Stephany observes that Books 2 and 8 feature events around a fruit tree in a garden. Both treat the perversity of human will after the Fall, whether inclined toward evil (Book 2) or unable wholly to will the good (Book 8). The two books also feature contrasting roles for friendship: in Book 2 the young Augustine’s companions lead him to sin, while in Book 8 the Christian friendship of Simplicianus and Ponticianus leads to his conversion. In this chiastic structure of thematic parallels, then, the later books rework themes of their earlier ones in a higher, more converted, way. Book 8 returns to, or echoes, the themes of Book 2, but orients them toward conversion of the will, rather than its perversion through sin. Similarly, Book 9 returns to certain themes in Book 1, but they now appear as spiritual rebirth and Christian studies, rather than as physical birth and classical studies. From this perspective, we can chart the curve of Books 1–9 as a spiritual descent over its first half, followed by a spiritual ascent over its second half. Book 5 is the swing-book at the center, as the young Augustine moves away from the Manichaean Faustus in North Africa, in its first half (5.1–7), to Italy and the Christian Ambrose in its second (5.13–14). The young man’s spiritual nadir may be found in the middle of this central book: he deceives his mother, abandons her in North Africa (5.8), and then nearly dies from fever in Rome, yet in the madness of his heresy refuses to be baptized (5.9.16). Only Monica’s prayers and God’s mercy save him from eternal damnation. To be sure, the spiritual descent of Books 1–4 has certain countermovements, such as the young Augustine’s discovery of philosophy, which inflames him with the desire to fly away from earthly things (3.4). Similarly, his spiritual progress over Books 6–9 is countered by his career ambitions (6.6) and his lustful desires (6.15). Nevertheless, the general movement of Books 1–9 is a descent, followed by an ascent, reinforced by thematic parallels in the chiastic structure. In this way, the formal, chiastic structure of parallel or returning themes participates in the progress of the narrative as a return to the

Meditative Texture and Pilgrim Figures

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Origin. We can now see the Trinitarian numerological structure of the whole Confessions. The nine autobiographical books (3 3 3) form a distinct unity within the work. They are followed by Books 10–12, three books of philosophical and exegetical ascent to themes prior in time and progressively more interior. Book 13 contains the allegorical paradigm for the whole Confessions, the Church as God’s purpose for creating the world. We have here a spiraling ascent to unity with numbers evoking the Triune God: 9, 3, and 1. Moreover, Books 1–9 enact a return to the Origin not only as the story of Augustine’s conversion but also in their formal structure as an unfolding chiasm, which may be graphed as “A B C D E D C B A” for the nine books. And since a chiasm is traditionally understood to be a cross-structure, from the Greek letter chi (X), Augustine’s autobiographical return to the Origin is thereby marked with the sign of the cross and the emblem of the name of Christ. It thereby foreshadows the work’s climax in the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ.

Meditative Texture and Pilgrim Figures The whole of the Confessions unfolds in the dynamism of the heart restless toward God (1.1.1) because God is present in Augustine’s heart interior intimo meo (3.6.11), “more inward than my innermost.” The work is not merely “about” Augustine’s quest for God: it enacts that quest in its literary form. We have examined that literary form in its large-scale meditative structure: it unfolds as a Christian-Platonist ascent, a return to the Origin. To grasp the unity of the Confessions, we must also consider its small-scale meditative texture and grasp its relation to Augustine’s ascent over the work as a whole. In other words, the Confessions enacts a religious journey, a pilgrimage, and we want to understand how its meditative structure and texture work to render that journey so compellingly. The most obvious journey in the Confessions is recorded in Books 1–9, the young Augustine’s journey to Christian faith. Be-

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cause these books tell a conversion story, a spiritual autobiography, we do well to distinguish the young Augustine, the character in Books 1–9, from the bishop telling his story retrospectively.13 The difference proves especially sharp in the early books, when Augustine the bishop records and often criticizes the young Augustine’s attitudes and acts. The young non-Christian Augustine was animated by values and impulses that the Christian bishop finds alien to his present self. Although historical continuity unites the young Augustine and Augustine the bishop, they are divided by the death and resurrection of conversion, at the end of Book 8, as it matures through another decade and an ecclesiastical career. Granted, scholarship rarely confuses the two figures: even when both are called “Augustine,” they are usually discriminated by context. Nevertheless, distinguishing the two figures with different names fosters clarity of analysis. The young Augustine is the primary pilgrim figure in Books 1–9: journey imagery is often used for his spiritual regress and progress. These books cover over thirty years of his life and so, as a whole, they record a considerable development. The young Augustine’s pilgrimage to conversion (8.12) and baptism (9.6) has excited readers for many centuries. Nevertheless, the bishop telling this story also proves something of a pilgrim figure. For one thing, he is not recollecting in tranquility events from his past. Rather, he is making his Confessions, inquiring before God into these events, struggling to understand them and himself. Nor does God prove a mere spectator of this struggle, for the bishop insists that God recalls events to his memory (2.7.15) and helps him to understand them (2.9.17). The Confessions shows us the bishop learning about the past events that 13. John Freccero has developed this distinction for Augustine and for Dante in several essays. See his collection, Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, esp. pp. 119–35 and 258–71. On Augustine and Dante, see also Peter S. Hawkins, “Divide and Conquer: Augustine in the Divine Comedy,” PMLA 106 (1991): 471–93; and Paul A. Olson, The Journey to Wisdom: Self-Education in Patristic and Medieval Literature (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), pp. 72–78.


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he recalls. He may not be as dramatic a pilgrim figure as the young Augustine, but Books 1–9 show him making a journey of understanding nonetheless. Augustine’s journey of understanding in the Confessions has long been understood by scholars, who describe the work as a prayer, a dialogue with God. Peter Brown notes Augustine’s originality in making prayer the literary form of so long a work and terms it a “lively conversation.”14 Solignac also calls the work “a dialogue with God” and, arguing that God is present throughout as “an invisible interlocutor,” insists that “[t]hroughout these thirteen books, Augustine allows himself to be taught by God” (his emphasis). G. Bouissou describes the Confessions as “a dialogue in one voice” because “only Augustine speaks—or rather, we only hear his voice—but from his language, his feelings, the tone of his discourse, and in a certain way the reactions of his countenance, we sense the divine replies.”15 Augustine scholars have often recorded their understanding and appreciation of this aspect of the Confessions. But they have not understood its consequences: we must distinguish Augustine the narrator, the voice of the unfolding prayer, from Augustine the author, who designed, wrote, and revised the whole work. Although historians have often observed a disjunction between “events” in Books 1–9 and what actually happened in the young Augustine’s life, they have neglected the disjunction between the narrator in and the author of the Confessions. The work presents itself as a prayer that unfolds in an ongoing present, in which Augustine the narrator is guided by the spontaneities of his dialogue with God. In other words, the work presents itself as though it were 14. Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 166–67. 15. A. Solignac, “Introduction,” Les Confessions, Bibliotheque Augustinienne, vol. 13 (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1962), pp. 12–13; and G. Bouissou, “Le Style,” chapter 7, in Solignac’s “Introduction,” p. 223 (my translation). See also Jose Oroz-Reta, “Priere et Recherche de Dieu dans les Confessions de saint Augustin,” Augustinian Studies 7 (1976): 99–118.

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an oral dialogue with God, recorded in its unfolding. The etymology of its title implies as much: confessio derives from con-fari, “to speak with.” Hence, as an oral and spontaneous prayer, it necessarily presents itself as unrehearsed and unrevised. A dialogue, by definition, cannot be revised by the speakers in it, nor can a genuine dialogue be rehearsed. When scholars call the Confessions a “dialogue with God,” they implicitly distinguish Augustine the narrator, praying orally in the dynamism of that dialogue, from Augustine the author, who designed, wrote, and revised it. Augustine the narrator and Augustine the author thus parallel Socrates and Plato in a Platonic dialogue. On the one hand, the speaking Socrates cannot properly revise what he has spoken: he can only add to it. He may recant, as in the Phaedrus, or rephrase or qualify, but only by speaking further. So, too, Augustine the narrator may correct an earlier statement on, say, the nature of time, not by erasure and revision but only by adding to what he has said. The narrator can and does come to new understandings in his quest for truth, and we see this happening over and over again in the Confessions. On the other hand, we assume that Plato revised his dialogues as he perfected them, and so did Augustine the author with the dialogue of his Confessions. As authors, they encompassed and stood beyond the unfolding quest for truth in their dialogues. There they telescoped and dramatized a process of discovery which they themselves, as authors, had already completed. Augustine the narrator was created by Augustine the author as his persona, his speaking voice. In other words, Augustine the author created his narrator as a literary, and therefore partial, representation of himself. As a literary figure, Augustine the narrator continues to pray the Confessions every time we read it: the work unfolds in a continuous literary present through the dynamism of his prayerful dialogue with God, recreated by our reading. Augustine the narrator is a pilgrim figure: he learns as he prays, for God leads his prayer in directions that often surprise him. By definition, his consciousness


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is explicit in each chapter of the work. He is, as it were, all utterance in the present: what he does not say, he does not think, by definition. Hence, he genuinely journeys in prayer and experiences surprise at new insights as the work unfolds. Augustine the author, in contrast, stood beyond the completed whole, for he designed, wrote, and revised it. He thereby comprehended the often surprising movements of his narrator’s unfolding prayer, and so the Confessions contained no surprises for him, by the definition of “author.” Augustine the narrator’s spontaneous discoveries were deliberately created by Augustine the author. Let us examine one of these. Early in Book 13, Augustine the narrator discovers the Trinity in the opening verses of Genesis, expressing his surprise by using the word “Behold” (Ecce) three times, once at the beginning and twice at the end of the chapter (13.5.6). At the beginning of the chapter, he insists that he is making the discovery only now, in the present, as he reads Genesis 1:2: “Behold, there appears to me, in an obscure way, the Trinity .l.l.l.” Over fifty chapters earlier, he found God the Father and God the Son in Genesis 1:1, interpreting “In the beginning” through John 1:1 to mean “in the Word, in the Son” (cf. 11.9.11). Yet only in Book 13 does he discover the Holy Spirit in the creation story, in “the spirit of God” who “was borne over the face of the waters” (Gn 1:2). He describes the process of his discovery: In the word “God,” who made these things, I was already understanding the Father, and in the word “the beginning” the Son, in whom he made them. And believing my God to be a Trinity, I was seeking [quaerebam] for the Trinity in these holy words and, behold, your “spirit was borne over the face of the waters.” Behold, the Trinity my God, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, creator of the whole creation. (13.5.6)

Augustine the narrator tells us unambiguously that when he found God the Father and God the Son in Genesis 1:1 (11.9.11), he did not think ahead, or read ahead, to “the spirit of God” in the following

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verse until over fifty chapters later, even though he “was seeking” (quaerebam) the Trinity in the creation story. And when he finds “the spirit” there in Book 13, he registers his surprise with three “Behold’s.” We know that the historical Augustine did not feel this surprise because he had commented on Genesis earlier in his career and found the Trinity in its first two verses. In his unfinished literal commentary on Genesis, composed around 391, he also interpreted “In the beginning” as “In the Son” from “God” the Father, and recognized that “the Spirit of God” could be understood as the Holy Spirit, thus indicating the Trinity.16 The historical Augustine, the author of the Confessions, knew this before he wrote Books 11–13, yet Augustine the narrator experiences surprise and joy when he discovers the Trinity in Genesis. To make this disjunction intelligible, we need the distinction between author and narrator. Evidently, Augustine the author dramatized, through the voice of his narrator, a process of search and discovery that he had already completed. He dramatized it in a particular way, through a contrived order, to accomplish certain ends, and one of these is to involve the reader in the drama of Augustine the narrator’s quest for truth in reading the Scriptures. To be sure, Augustine the author made these discoveries himself, in and through his life of prayer. That he made them while he composed the Confessions, in precisely the way Augustine the narrator does, we have no reason to believe. A similar instance may be found near the beginning of Book 2. The narrator complains that, when the adolescent Augustine was “spilt, scattered and boiled dry in [his] fornications,” God was silent 16. De Genesi ad litteram, imperfectus liber, in Sancti Aurelii Augustini Opera, edited by the Benedictine monks of the monastery of Saint Maurus, Primo editio Neapolitana (Naples, 1854), vol. 3: 3.6 (column 111) for the Father and the Son, 4.16 (column 115) for the Spirit and the Trinity, active in the creation of the world.


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(2.2.2). In the following chapter, he realizes that this accusation was incorrect: in truth, God was speaking to him through his mother (2.3.7). Here is an instance of the narrator’s making a discovery in the course of his unfolding dialogue with God: understanding that his earlier accusation against God was wrong, he accuses himself instead (“Wretch that I am”; 2.3.7). At the time the historical Augustine wrote this, he had been a self-examining Christian for over a decade. I cannot believe that he made this discovery about his adolescent “fornications” only when he composed Book 2. Rather, Augustine the author used his narrator to dramatize a discovery he had made some years earlier. We may rightfully assume that the historical Augustine made discoveries as he composed the Confessions, as writers normally do when they work. But since we do not have his working papers, we cannot know precisely what these discoveries were or the stages in which he made them. We do know, however, what Augustine the narrator discovers and how he does so. But we cannot know whether the historical Augustine learned these things while he composed the Confessions or before. Nor can we be sure whether he discovered them in precisely the same stages as Augustine the narrator. It would be historically naïve to equate Augustine the narrator simpliciter with the historical Augustine, the author of the Confessions. We can be sure, however, that Augustine created his narrator as a literary version of himself, and this narrator’s process of discovery through prayer imitates what Augustine practiced over many years. Augustine the narrator should be distinguished, but not separated, from Augustine the author. Augustine the author created this narrator partly to state his views on certain things, partly as an example of prayerful self-examination and the quest for truth. We always know what Augustine the narrator is thinking, because he is a function of what the work is saying at any moment: the narrator’s thoughts are wholly explicit, by definition. Augustine the author, by

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definition, comprehended the total movement of his narrator’s thinking: he thereby implied understandings beyond what the narrator explicitly says. One such understanding I have already set forth: the Confessions as a whole unfolds as a Christian-Platonist ascent, a return to the Origin. Scholars have tended to miss this structure because they recognize only one Augustine in the work, and so they identify the narrator’s voice in the work with Augustine the author’s understanding. They thereby miss larger structures, and the understandings they imply. Since this distinction is unfamiliar in Augustine studies, let us see how it is warranted by the opening of the Confessions. I ask you to imagine yourself in the situation of one of Augustine’s first readers. You do not have your present familiarity with the work, nor does your text have the aids often supplied by editors and translators: no book titles, no chapter titles, no page headings. Hence, nothing advises you of the content of what you are reading except what the text itself says. You are not given a table of contents advising you, for example, that Book 1 will concern Augustine’s childhood or that Book 11 will consider “time,” nor do you know these things from prior readings. Moreover, you live in an oral culture and you are reading the work aloud. Consider, then, how the Confessions presents itself, especially the verb tenses that its “I” uses to characterize his activity: You are great, O Lord, and greatly to be praised: great is your power and to your wisdom there is no limit. And a human being [homo], some portion of your creation, wishes to praise you, a human being bearing within himself testimony to his sin and testimony that you resist the proud. You rouse us so that it delights us to praise you, because you have made us toward yourself and our heart is restless until it rests in you. Grant me, Lord, to know and understand which is first, to call upon [invocare] you or to praise you, and also which is first, to know you or to call upon you. But does one who does not know you call upon you? For one who does not know you might call upon another, instead of you. Or must you be called upon so that you may be


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known? .l.l. May I seek you, Lord, calling upon you [invocans te], and may I call upon you [invocem te] believing in you, for you have been preached to us. Lord, my faith calls upon you [invocat te], which you have given to me .l.l.l. (1.1.1; my emphasis)

The work begins with a voice using a quotation from the Psalms to address God in the present tense. This is entirely traditional, as is using the present tense to describe the relationship between humankind and God. But then a first-person speaker appears: “Grant me, Lord, to know and understand.” He presents himself as a seeker, for he prays “to know and understand.” He asks God questions and works his way toward answers. He does not know what he thinks, and that is why he is praying his way through questions toward answers. We hear him thinking aloud in prayer, all the more so when we read the passage aloud. When he presents his activity in the first person, he characterizes himself as a speaker: he uses forms of invocare, “to call upon,” three times. His emphatic use of invocare makes explicit what he has been doing from the very first sentence: calling upon God. All this activity is taking place “now,” in the present. The text does not offer us understandings already arrived at, in the manner of a treatise. Rather, it gives us a man speaking “now,” praying for God’s guidance as he prays his questions and his tentative answers. We have no idea what he will go on to talk about, because he does not project a subject or a theme. At no point in the opening chapters does he ever say that he will describe his childhood, any more than he projects “the pear theft” at the beginning of Book 2. This voice does not know very well what he will say further on, and the reason is that he is engaged in a dialogue with God. The unfolding of the Confessions emerges in the dynamism of the speaker’s responsiveness to God’s grace. It presents itself as an oral and spontaneous prayer. Contrast the opening of On Christian Doctrine, which Augustine began about the same time as the Confessions: “There are two things

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necessary to the treatment of the Scriptures: a way of discovering those things which are to be understood, and a way of teaching what we have learned. We shall speak first of discovery and second of teaching” (1.1.1).17 This person’s voice is not praying to God, but speaking to readers in the third person. He projects an intention for the work. He is not in the process of discovering what he thinks, like the voice of the Confessions. He is not wondering aloud, asking questions, or groping toward answers. Rather, he has arrived at his insights already and he intends to communicate them. Moreover, he has a plan for doing so: he “will speak first of discovery and second of teaching.” He tells us directly that he knows where the work is going. He also communicates this by declaring distinctions and then explaining them, both here and in the following chapters. “All doctrine concerns either things or signs, but things are learned by signs” (1.2.2); “Some things are to be enjoyed, others to be used, and there are others to be enjoyed and used” (1.3.3). The voice of the Confessions, in contrast, explores distinctions by wondering aloud about them with questions and tentative answers. In short, Book 1 of On Christian Doctrine present itself as a finished work, written and revised according to intentions decided by the author beforehand, while the Confessions presents itself as an oral and spontaneous prayer, in the process of being composed. Even though we know that Augustine abandoned the On Christian Doctrine for almost three decades after composing paragraph 35 in Book 3, the authorial voice at its beginning projects the plan of a coherent work. The Confessions, in contrast, projects no such plan, because Augustine the narrator—not Augustine the author—does not have one. Rather, he is engaged in an oral prayer, a dialogue with God, and like any dialogue, it does not unfold according to a plan. To be sure, Augustine the narrator’s prayer is recorded in writing. 17. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, translated with an Introduction by D. W. Robertson, Jr. (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs Merrill, 1958).


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Nevertheless, this record is presented as spoken by the writer and heard by the reader “now,” in the present tense of its utterance. Augustine the narrator treats this issue most extensively at the beginning of Book 10, where he describes his work as “confession before you in my heart, yet in my pen [stilo] before many witnesses” (10.1.1). The writing, however, records what “I speak” (loquor; 10.1.1): “I do not say [dico] anything to men that you have not heard from me” (10.2.3; my emphasis). Concomitantly, his readers are those who “hear my confessions” (audiant confessiones meas; 10.3.5). They hear, not only because late antique readers read aloud, but also because confessio implies “speaking” from its Latin root, fari. Granted, it was a convention in Augustine’s day that a writer “speaks” to his audience, and the convention endures. But the Confessions’s being recorded in writing does not compromise the oral and spontaneous character of its narrator’s dialogue with God. Unlike Augustine in On Christian Doctrine, the narrator in the Confessions does not project a subject or declare what he is going to treat: no book contains a treatise-style prospectus introducing its argument. At best, one finds a suggestive promise, as at the beginning of Book 8: “‘You have broken my chains .l.l.l.’ I will tell how you broke them” (8.1.1). For the most part, the opening of each book tells us little or nothing about what will come. In Book 11, for example, Augustine the narrator says that he will meditate on Scripture (11.2.3), and he begins with the first verse of Genesis (11.3.5). But he does not say that he will reflect on “time,” as he winds up doing for half the book, because he does not know that he will do so. The question “What is time?” (11.14) emerges through the dynamism of his dialogue with God. The narrator’s consciousness, let us recall, is explicit in his utterance, by definition. What he does not say, he does not think, and he does not think about “What is time?” in Book 11 before chapter 14. Moreover, when he does begin to think about time, he does not yet know the answer he will eventually arrive at: he

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prays his way through preliminary answers before his dialogue with God brings him to a satisfactory conclusion (11.28). Augustine the author, however, comprehended this whole movement, by definition: he knew the narrator’s final position, and he dramatized the narrator’s prayerful progress to it. The Confessions dramatizes its “spontaneity” in another way. Augustine the narrator insists that he is not in complete control of his utterance because God is active in its unfolding. The narrator forgot about his adolescent pear theft, yet God “recalls these things to my memory” (2.7.15). Because “the living remembrance [viva recordatio] of [his] soul is before [God]” (2.9.17), his recollection of his past does not rely on his merely human power of memory. God’s grace, he insists, aids and guides him. He affirms that God leads his prayer in surprising directions. After recalling his baptism in Book 9 (9.6.14), he digresses into mentioning a series of events in Milan (9.7.15–16), before he notices the digression and prays, “From when and to what place have you led my remembrance, so that I should confess also these great deeds to you, which I had passed over in forgetfulness?” (9.7.16; my emphasis). Augustine the narrator was not intending to record these “great deeds,” and he thought he had forgotten them, but God led his memory to record them. These deeds did not involve the young Augustine directly, yet God’s guidance has made them part of the narrator’s Confessions. Here what seems a digression to Augustine the narrator proves a permanent part of his book. He acknowledges that he is not in full control of his Confessions, because the work unfolds as a dialogue with God and God sometimes guides it beyond his ken. The work thereby presents itself as the unrevised record of an oral prayer—unrevised because oral utterance is unrevisable. The seeming digression is not excised but remains in the work, though the work explicitly records it as a digression. In this way, Augustine the author has reminded us that the Confessions unfolds as a dialogue with two partners, even though it proves a “dialogue in one voice.” God’s


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grace always aids the narrator’s prayer and sometimes leads it in surprising directions. We are surprised by the work’s unfolding because he is surprised by it: “Why do I speak of these things? Now is the time, not to put questions, but to make confession to you” (4.6.11). Augustine the narrator is not in complete control of what he is saying because he is in dialogue with God. His digressions remain in the record of the dialogue precisely because the work presents itself as the unrevised record of the dialogue’s spontaneous unfolding. This self-presentation, to be sure, is a kind of fiction, orchestrated by Augustine the author and perfected by revision. Distinguishing the historical Augustine, the author of the Confessions as a completed whole, from Augustine the narrator, the praying voice in the work, enables us to appreciate more fully its meditative texture, the dynamism of its dialogue with God. This meditative texture is filled with surprises for the reader because it is full of surprises for Augustine the narrator, praying in an ongoing present. The entire work, from its first sentence to its last, uses the present tense for the narrator’s activity as he prays. Open it to any page: the narrator is praying “now,” in a literary present, remembering his past life “now,” unfolding his quest for truth “now,” as we read. The Confessions presents itself as the record of Augustine the narrator’s oral prayer, and all its surprises emerge from the dynamism of his dialogue with God. Augustine the author, however, was in full control of the work, by definition; because he stood beyond the completed whole, as its composer and reviser, it contained no surprises for him. In sum, then, the Confessions presents itself as Augustine the narrator’s oral prayer, recorded in writing. As an oral prayer, the work presents itself as unrevised, because unrevisable, and as unfolding “now” in its original order, from Book 1, chapter 1, through Book 13, chapter 38. The order of our reading reenacts the original order of Augustine the narrator’s dialogue with God. This narrator is a literary figure, and he continues to exist in the literary present of our

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reading: every time we read the work, we are reenacting his oral prayer. Augustine the author, in contrast, was a historical person. He designed and revised the Confessions so as to dramatize effectively his narrator’s oral dialogue with God. Augustine the author deliberately created the spontaneous discoveries that his narrator makes through that dialogue. Augustine the narrator’s sudden insights, musing perplexities, digressions, and lack of plan in his Confessions may be felt as spontaneous defects, but they were all dramatic effects designed by Augustine the author. We always know what Augustine the narrator is thinking at any point in his unfolding prayer because his thoughts are explicit in his words, by definition. We never hear directly the full mind of Augustine the author in the Confessions because he stood beyond the work as a completed whole, by definition. What the narrator says may well prove an index to Augustine the author’s views on a subject, especially when the narrator arrives at a resounding conclusion to an inquiry, as he does with time (11.28). Nevertheless, the mind of Augustine the author comprehended the Confessions as a whole and thereby exceeded what Augustine the narrator says in the work. Augustine the narrator, for example, never recognizes that his Confessions unfolds as a return to the Origin, even though Augustine the author designed it as a Christian-Platonist ascent. What do we gain from making this distinction? For one thing, it enables us to hold together the seeming planlessness of the Confessions with its overarching plan as a return to the Origin. Augustine the narrator does not have a plan for his prayerful dialogue with God, for if he did, it would not be a dialogue. At the same time, the whole work clearly unfolds as a Christian-Platonist ascent, designed by Augustine the author. On the one hand, Augustine the narrator does not know where his Confessions is going, for it emerges through the dynamism of his interaction with God. Hence, he makes errors and corrects them, wanders into digressions, muses over perplexities, is led to sudden insights, and so on. The dynamism of his dia-


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logue with God is a drama of the soul. The Confessions appeals to readers because we are caught up into Augustine the narrator’s drama of self-examination and quest and discovery, with all its unforeseen developments and surprising turns. On the other hand, this drama has clearly been dramatized by Augustine the author. He composed it and revised it, orchestrating its movements to render his narrator’s quest for truth as compelling as possible. He also planned its course: the drama of the soul, in the small scale, unfolds as the ascent of the soul, in the large. When scholars recognize only one Augustine in the Confessions, the drama of the narrator’s soul tends to be slighted, and his ascent over the whole is missed. On the one hand, historians seeking the facts of Augustine’s life interrogate the events in Books 1–9, and the drama of the narrator’s soul is irrelevant to their search. Similarly, philosophers and theologians seeking Augustine’s views on some topic tend to reduce the narrator’s quest to arguments for those views. They may appreciate the drama of his quest for truth, but they tend to treat it as philosophically irrelevant in itself. For them, the meditative wandering of Augustine the narrator’s dialogue with God becomes merely a literary way of working through arguments. On the other hand, all these scholars limit the historical Augustine’s views in the work to what it states explicitly. Hence, they do not recognize the design of the whole as a Christian-Platonist ascent because the work never declares itself as one. When scholars recognize only one Augustine in the Confessions, they identify his achievement with that of Augustine the narrator and thereby miss important aspects of the work. Distinguishing Augustine the narrator from Augustine the author, then, may renew our sense of the work’s self-presentation as a prayer. The Confessions does not present itself as merely the historical Augustine’s autobiography, in the first person, plus his treatment of certain philosophical and theological topics, in the third person. Rather, from its first sentence to its last, it unfolds as Augustine the

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narrator’s prayer. The whole work is spoken attentively to God, in the first and second persons. This is an astonishing literary strategy for so long a work, and it has been little explored, perhaps because it has so rarely been imitated by later writers, unlike the autobiography in Books 1–9. The work is not merely framed by prayers or punctuated intermittently by them: every sentence in the work is addressed to God, even the narrative ones. Properly speaking, the “autobiography” is not the historical Augustine’s retelling of his journey to conversion. Rather, it presents itself as the narrator’s self-examination in an oral prayer that is guided by God to surprising memories and understandings. Similarly, Augustine the narrator’s philosophical and theological reflections arise through the dynamism of his dialogue with God, who illuminates his quest for truth. In other words, when we speak of the Confessions as a work of autobiography and philosophy, we miss the originality of its self-presentation. Properly speaking, and from first to last, the Confessions presents itself as a prayer, and this prayer is led by God into what we call “autobiography” and “philosophy.” Moreover, every reader of the Confessions must, of necessity, pray its prayer. There is simply no other way to read it. Every reader impersonates the narrator’s “I” in his dialogue with God. Indeed, every reader necessarily becomes Augustine the narrator making his Confessions. Our reading inevitably recreates the narrator’s dialogue with God in its original unfolding. Hence, readers do not merely hear about Augustine’s Christianity in the work but rather speak it participatively, whether they agree with it or not. It is difficult to gauge the persuasive effect this may have on a reader, but over the course of the work it would seem to be considerable. With this renewed sense of the work as a prayer comes a livelier awareness of the Confessions as a pilgrimage, a journey of faith. We follow more attentively the drama of Augustine the narrator’s quest for truth in dialogue with God. When we seek the historical Augustine’s views in the work, we tend to read past its dramatic unfolding


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as we look for propositional conclusions and arguments. But when we distinguish the historical Augustine from his narrator, we gain two things. First, we can give full weight to the Confessions’s insistence that the narrator is being guided by God in his prayer. Second, we can see that the whole work does unfold according to a plan, designed by Augustine the author and beyond his narrator’s ken. Hence, the Confessions unfolds as Augustine the narrator’s pilgrimage, his return to the Origin. It is not a journey in space, but a journey of soul, and it does arrive at a holy place: his vision of the Church as God’s purpose in creation. Above all, the Confessions presents this journey as being guided by God. Augustine the narrator does not know where his prayer is going, according to the fiction of its self-presentation. But God does, and he guides it on a ChristianPlatonist ascent. This is the premise of the Confessions’s self-presentation: its prayerful unfolding is guided by God as a return to the Origin, beyond the ken of Augustine the narrator. In other words, according to this premise, God plans the structure of the Confessions, for it unfolds according to a providential order completely unforeseen by the praying voice. There is a certain fictionality in this premise: God is the author of the work’s coherence. Augustine the narrator is praying the words in his unplanned dialogue with God, yet God guides them according to his plan: thematic parallels in the chiastic structure of Books 1–9 and the Christian-Platonist ascent over the whole. According to this premise, there is only one Augustine in the work, Augustine the narrator, for Augustine the author does not exist. Naturally, I treat this premise critically. Although the Confessions presents itself as a spontaneous oral prayer, it was designed and revised by its author, the historical Augustine. Nonetheless, I acknowledge a truth in this fictional premise, for without God’s grace and guidance Augustine the author could not have conceived and constructed the Confessions. The work’s self-presentation as a spontaneous and therefore unrevised oral prayer, unfolding providentially

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as a return to the Origin, is a fiction. Augustine the author revised it to heighten our sense of its spontaneity and he, not God, designed its pattern of ascent. At the same time, this fiction has its truth. Augustine would have attributed all his inspirations in the Confessions to God’s grace, and he probably arrived at them just as his narrator does, through prayer. Moreover, he designed the work’s selfpresentation to imitate the providential design revealed in the Bible: all things come forth from (exitus) God and return (reditus) to their Origin. Once we recognize that the Confessions presents itself as providentially guided, we can discern the parallel between the two pilgrim figures, the young Augustine, in Books 1–9, and Augustine the narrator. Just as God led the young Augustine, despite all his moral wanderings, on a journey to the Church, so does He guide Augustine the narrator, despite all his digressions, on a return to the Origin, culminating in an allegorical vision of the Church in Genesis 1. In other words, just as the young Augustine’s life revealed God’s providential guidance, so does the unfolding of the Confessions: its large-scale structure as a return to the Origin emerges not from Augustine the narrator’s plan, but through Providence leading it to fulfillment. In short, the Confessions does not merely tell a story about God’s providential grace in the young Augustine’s life. Rather, its literary form enacts, moment by moment, the dialectic between human freedom and divine grace in its unfolding prayer. Augustine the narrator does not know where his prayer is going, but its course emerges from the dynamism of his dialogue with God and so its course proves providential. The work’s meditative textures feature the narrator’s human freedom, with all its vagaries and varieties of style and mood. At the same time, the narrator is always turned to God in prayer and he insists that God is guiding his prayer. As a dialogue with God, the Confessions unites speech about God with the action of God. The narrator gives evidence of divine grace in his


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sudden illuminations, in thanksgivings for guidance, and so on. In this way, the work does what it says, is what it talks about. A treatise, featuring its author’s control of his argument, can analyze the dialectic between freedom and grace, but cannot embody it. Only the meditative texture of a spontaneously unfolding dialogue with God can embody and enact this dialectic. The Confessions thereby unites indissolubly logos and ergon, content and form.18 As we have seen, the providential course of the Confessions as a whole follows a Christian-Platonist ascent and culminates in an allegorical discourse about the Church as God’s purpose in creation. Like every return to the Origin, its end reveals its beginning. Augustine the narrator has been turning to his Origin at every point in the work, because he has been praying its every sentence. Hence, because he turns to his Origin at every point in the work, God guides his Confessions as a return to the Origin over the whole. The dynamism of its meditative texture as a dialogue with God generates its meditative structure as a Christian-Platonist ascent. Here again form and content are indissolubly united. We know how important “unity” was for Augustine, and yet scholars have often thought that the Confessions lacks it. Their reluctance to see an ascent pattern in the Confessions may be illuminated by comparing the work to Bonaventure’s Itinerarium Mentis in Deum. The Itinerarium is a classic Christian-Platonist ascent, for it highlights this structural pattern in its title and in its unfolding. It does so because Bonaventure is not making the ascent, but directing it. He has already made the journey and has provided a map for others—itinerarium means both “journey” and “map.” Because he does not present himself as making the journey in the process of writing the work, there is no “Bonaventure the narrator” to be distinguished 18. See Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Logos and Ergon in Plato’s in Plato’s Lysis,” in his collection of essays, Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato, translated with an Introduction by P. Christopher Smith (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980), pp. 1–20.

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from “Bonaventure the author” or from “the historical Bonaventure.” There is only one Bonaventure here, and he stands apart from the journey he directs as the author of this map. He presents material that is cogently ordered because already mastered. In his Prologue, he projects the six stages of the forthcoming ascent (paragraph 3) and urges his reader to bring certain attitudes to it (paragraph 4). Its six stages are clearly marked in six chapters. The first section in most chapters reviews part or all of the ascent so far. Certain Christian images are used to feature the patterns in the work: the six wings of the seraph, the six days of creation, the ark in the Holy of Holies (chapters 5–7), and so on. Bonaventure’s Itinerarium thereby highlights its governing patterns. Contrast the Confessions. It does not feature so explicitly the patterns governing its ascent. Its stages are not so obvious as in the Itinerarium. And the reason for this should by now be obvious: the Confessions is so much longer, and its ascent much more diffuse, because Augustine the narrator is making it as he prays his way along. Bonaventure has made the ascent, and so he lays out a plan for it. Augustine the narrator has not made it, and so he has no plan. He is praying his Confessions “now” as we read, and God is gradually leading him on an ascent, as He gradually led the errant young Augustine to conversion, and patiently guides humankind to salvation through his Church. The narrator has no notion that he is making an ascent over the whole work, and we know that he does not know it because his consciousness is wholly explicit in his praying voice. Bonaventure was the author of an Itinerarium, a map. The Confessions, however, is less a map than a territory, not an abbreviated guide to an ascent but a detailed record of the ascending journey itself as it is being made. The historical Augustine wrote it then, A.D. 397–400, but he fashioned it so that Augustine the narrator is always making the ascent now, whenever anyone takes up the book and reads it. Hence, the pattern of the Christian-Platonist ascent in the Con-

Paradigm at the Climax

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fessions is not explicit, for Augustine the narrator does not plan it, and we hear only his voice. The work presents its ascent pattern as emerging through the narrator’s dialogue with God, in the dialectic between human freedom and divine grace. Hence, it emerges slowly and, as we are meant to understand, providentially. Scholars who prefer a deliberately featured pattern, with clearly marked stages, will not find it in there. If a scholar sets the bar for a ChristianPlatonist ascent at Bonaventure’s Itinerarium or Dante’s Commedia, the Confessions will fall below it, and its ascent pattern will be invisible or negligible. In order to grasp both the ascent plan governing the Confessions and its seeming planlessness, we must distinguish Augustine the author from his narrator. The Confessions thereby mimes human experience as Christians understand it: the seeming planlessness in its small-scale movements is taken up into God’s providential structure over the whole. Although human lives and history seem fraught with errors and accidents, Christians affirm that these vagaries are part of God’s plan for his creatures. The Confessions enacts and embodies this dialectic: the local vagaries of the narrator’s prayer are subsumed into its large-scale structure as a return to the Origin. If we think there is only “one Augustine” in the work, we cannot see this structure, because Augustine the narrator never remarks on it. In order to grasp the unity of the Confessions and Augustine’s achievement in designing it, we must distinguish what its narrator says from what its author accomplished. Once we have distinguished them, we can see the Confessions’s unity of texture and structure, planlessness and plan, in the narrator’s turning to God at every moment and his return to the Origin enacted over the whole.

Paradigm at the Climax: Book 13 We have been exploring Augustine’s extraordinary ambition in the literary form of the Confessions. Its meditative texture and meditative structure work together to mime the dialectic of salvation his-

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tory, of human freedom and divine grace, in its process and goal, our return to the Origin. For Augustine, the Church is the supreme embodiment of that process and goal. As we have seen, he considers the Church to be God’s purpose in creating the universe (13.34.49). In that sense, the Church proves a more universal being than the universe itself. Augustine’s allegory on Genesis 1 as the creation of the Church finds all of creation comprehended in the Church as God’s universal saving will. In this understanding, the Church precedes the universe and endures beyond its consummation. Hence, the Church not only exhorts humankind to return to the Origin but also embodies and enacts that movement from time to eternity. Because the allegory of the Church stands as the climax of the narrator’s ascent, it offers the most comprehensive view of the Confessions within the work. The Church, as the providential origin and end of the world, is the ground of creation. Hence, it proves also the ground of the Confessions in both its meditative texture, as a dialogue with God, and its meditative structure, as a Christian-Platonist ascent. In other words, Augustine’s allegory on the Church in Book 13 reveals the paradigm for the Confessions as a whole. In this section, I want to show how it represents the height of the narrator’s dialogue with God and provides the structures governing the work.19 The allegorical climax of the Confessions has not received the attention it deserves, perhaps because it is so difficult to understand. Yet this difficulty gives it a special status within the work: it presents itself as divinely inspired. Several different aspects mark these twenty-seven chapters (13.12–38) as “divinely inspired”—that is, as the product of an influx of grace carrying Augustine the narrator beyond his normal powers. One of these is the radical change in reflecting on the Trinity, which we looked at in Chapter 1. In chapter 11, Augustine the narrator associates the Father with being, the Son with knowing, and the Holy Spirit with willing. He wonders 19. This section abbreviates Robert McMahon, Augustine’s Prayerful Ascent, pp. 22–116.


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whether God is a Trinity because of these three acts, or whether each Person possesses all three acts. He concludes, “Who could conceive such things easily? .l.l. Who could pronounce on them rashly in any way?” (13.11.12). Yet just five chapters later, the narrator pronounces on these issues in the most authoritative fashion: “Your being knows and wills immutably, your knowledge is and wills immutably, and your will is and knows immutably” (13.16.19). He does not inquire into it, pray over it, argue for it, or hesitate in any way. When we consider how laboriously he earlier inquired into memory and time, this sublime assurance is astonishing. He simply pronounces truth, and on the loftiest mystery of his faith! This radical change from chapter 11 to chapter 16 implies that Augustine the narrator is suddenly possessed by the truth, inspired by God. Other indexes of his inspiration include its suddenly new style, pace, and subject. The style is difficult, in part because it is so crowded with quotations from Scripture. The Skutella-Verheijen edition of the Confessions cites 297 biblical references for the allegory as a whole, chapters 12–38. All of Book 12, with 32 chapters, has only 169, and the 31 chapters of Book 11 only 120. This astonishing increase is especially marked within Book 13: chapters 1–11 have 66 biblical references, while chapters 12–27 have 267. Insofar as the number of biblical references proves an index of Augustine the narrator’s divine inspiration, it would seem that he experiences a powerful influx of grace over the first half of his allegory, which gradually tapers off toward the end. Yet the number and frequency of biblical references indicate only one aspect of the difficult new style. It fuses passages from the Old and New Testaments, often juxtaposing them with no explicit connection. It thereby contains leaps of thought, for Augustine the narrator is associating ideas with astonishing rapidity. A reader needs to devote patient and sustained attention to the text in order to reconstruct its implied allegorical logic. The density and difficulty of the new style, so crowded with the inspirations of Scripture, suggest that the narrator is suddenly inspired.

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The pace of his allegorical exposition is also new, much more rapid than that in Books 11–12. Augustine the narrator has been reflecting on Genesis 1 for 72 chapters, since Book 11, chapter 3, and his progress has been quite slow, as he observes at the end of Book 12 (12.32.43). In the 72 chapters before the allegory (11.3–13.11), he has progressed only to Genesis 1:2a. But when he begins his allegorical interpretation, he begins all over again, with the first verse of Genesis, and he moves much more quickly. In twenty-seven chapters, he covers the seven days of creation, thirty-four verses (Gn 1:1–2:3). Actually, he covers much more than that. Augustine the narrator begins with the intention to explore all of Scripture, “from the very beginning, in which you made heaven and earth, up to the endless kingdom with you in your holy city” (11.2.3). Such an exposition would work from Genesis 1:1, through all of the Old and New Testaments, up to the “heavenly Jerusalem” in Revelation 21–22.20 At the end of Book 12, however, he realizes that he must revise his intention, because his exposition has proceeded so slowly so far. He prays to confess more briefly to God, asking him to inspire “something single, true, certain, and good” (12.32.43) to be found in Scripture. That prayer is fulfilled when God inspires his allegorical exposition of Genesis, for there the narrator finds the Church, “something single, true, certain, and good.” Moreover, this new subject for his exposition embraces all of Scripture, and so does the allegory itself. For Augustine, the Church is the custodian of divine revelation: she provides “the rule of faith” for the right understanding of the divine word. In that sense, the Church comprehends all of Scripture. Also, Augustine’s allegory on 20. Pierre Courcelle argued this in his Recherches sur les “Confessions” de saint Augustin, p. 23. John O’Meara thought that Augustine could not have meant something so ambitious, in The Young Augustine, pp. 14–17. I use the distinction between Augustine the narrator and Augustine the author to resolve this debate in Augustine’s Prayerful Ascent, pp. 18–21.


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the creation of the Church finds “all of Scripture” in its very first chapter. The allegory progresses from the beginning of Genesis (13.12) to the sabbath of eternal life (13.35–38) envisioned in the final chapters of the Bible, and it unites quotations from the Old and New Testaments to “reveal” the creation of the Church implied in Genesis 1. Hence, the allegory fulfills the narrator’s original desire to consider all of Scripture, “from the very beginning, in which you made heaven and earth, up to the endless kingdom with you in your holy city” (11.2.3). Augustine the narrator’s dialogue with God culminates in inspired allegory, fulfilling his earlier prayers (11.2.3, 12.32.43) in ways completely unforeseen by him. Augustine the author designed it that way. The scope of this allegory has long been understood. Over forty years ago, Solignac found there “the totality of the creation in its material reality and in its spiritual signification, that is to say, as a figure of the Church and the spiritual Universe of the saints” (his emphasis). This totality embraces not only the range of being, visible and invisible, but also the movement of Scripture from Creation to Apocalypse. Solignac italicized the following formulation: “The cycle of time is, in that way, dialectically perfected: time is opened for us out of eternity by the fiat of the Creator and it is closed in the eternity of the heavenly rest, without ceasing to be governed by the transcendence of the divine eternity.”21 Augustine’s allegory on the Church embraces the totality of being because it embraces the totality of Scripture in its style, subject, and direction. The allegory encompasses the sweep and direction of all time, which proceeds from God’s eternity and returns to it. In other words, Augustine’s allegory on the Church is structured as a return to the Origin, because the Bible as a whole is structured in that way, and the Confessions’s meditative structure as a return to the Origin proves fundamentally ecclesial. “Return to the Origin” 21. A. Solignac, “Introduction,” pp. 23–24; my translation.

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may have a Neoplatonist ring to it, but for Augustine it was a profoundly biblical and ecclesial reality. Within the Confessions, he treated Neoplatonism as an incomplete Christianity, for the Bible encompasses and surpasses the truths taught in “the books of the Neoplatonists” (7.9), and the Church provides a sure way for returning to the Origin, through Christ, “the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6; Conf. 7.18–21). Hence, Augustine would have us understand that the meditative structure of the Confessions is grounded in the Church in the sense of Book 13: God’s intention and goal for creation. The Church, in this understanding, is the fullest earthly embodiment of return to the Origin, and the Neoplatonist return would thereby prove derivative and partial, albeit instructive. Augustine’s allegory on the Church ends the Confessions because the Church is its ground from the beginning: a return to the Origin, by definition, ends with its Beginning. Everything in the narrator’s ascent converges at this peak. His dialogue with God, an aspect of the Church, is providentially guided on a return to the Origin, preeminently enacted by the Church, the only institution divinely inspired. Moreover, at this height of the narrator’s ascent he experiences the heightening of his dialogue with God by being divinely inspired. His style is suddenly inspired to expound spiritually, or allegorically, a new subject in Genesis 1, God’s creation of his divinely inspired Church, which contains “all of Scripture” in its master movement of return to the Origin. To be sure, this allegory is not the only passage presenting itself as “inspired,” for Augustine the narrator has other moments of sudden illumination, for which he gives thanks and praise. But it is the most sustained instance of divine inspiration within the Confessions. A return to the Origin, by definition, ends with its true beginning. The style and subject of Augustine’s allegory heighten and epitomize the Confessions’s meditative texture and meditative structure. In these ways, the allegory in Book 13 proves the paradigm for the Confessions as a whole. But, in another way, it also proves the paradigm for Books 1–9. Augustine distinguishes what may be


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called nine “acts” in the creation story.22 God creates twice on both the third and the sixth days, making eight creative acts in the six days of Genesis 1, followed by the creation of the Sabbath. Augustine counts God pronouncing his work “good” seven times, followed by an eighth “very good” (13.28.43), and the seventh day of rest makes nine acts, all told. Now the sequence of these nine acts in Augustine’s allegory underlies the sequence of the nine books in his autobiography. That is, parallel images and themes link Book 1 of the Confessions and the allegory on God’s first act, Book 2 and the allegory on God’s second act, and so on. I have explored these parallels in some detail elsewhere.23 Here I will simply show that they exist, by summarizing those relevant to Books 5 and 9, before suggesting what this pattern of parallels means. In every instance, the imagery and themes of the allegory prove fundamental to the corresponding book. Nevertheless, because each book is much longer than its corresponding allegory, each book necessarily explores themes and uses images beyond those in Book 13. The parallels between Books 1–9 and the allegory in Book 13 prove significant, but not comprehensive. The allegory is a paradigm for the autobiography, not a mould. Book 5, at the center of Augustine’s autobiography, parallels his allegory on the central act of the creation, that of the “lights in the firmament of heaven” on the fourth day (13.18–19). His allegory on God’s second act, the creation of the “firmament of heaven,” associates it with Scripture (13.15), “a firmament of authority over us,” and he maintains this link in his allegory on God’s fifth act. Just as the stars adhere to the firmament of heaven, so should Christians 22. For the creation story as paradigm for Books 1–9, see Robert M. Durling, “Platonism and Poetic Form: Augustine’s Confessions,” in Jewish Culture and the Hispanic World: Essays in Memory of Joseph H. Silverman, edited by Samuel G. Armistead and Mishael M. Caspi, in collaboration with Murray Baumgarten (Newark, Del.: Juan de la Cuesta, 2001), pp. 179–89. Though but recently published, Durling gave me a copy of this essay in 1982, and my thinking on these issues derives from it. 23. McMahon, Augustine’s Prayerful Ascent, pp. 38–116.

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“appear like lights in the world, holding fast to the firmament of Scripture” (13.18.22). Augustine goes on to link the heavenly fires above to the heavenly flames of Pentecost, when the apostles “were made lights in the firmament of heaven, holding the word of life” and then went forth to preach the gospel to all nations (13.19.25). The creation of the stars is thereby linked with the spiritual or allegorical interpretation of Scripture and with preaching its truth. According to traditional doctrine, the apostles became the first bishops at Pentecost, when they were “annointed” by the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1–4); Peter then gives the first Christian sermon, interpreting scriptural texts allegorically, in light of Jesus’ execution and Resurrection (Acts 2:14–36). Augustine’s allegory implies the ecclesiastical practice of his day: the spiritual interpretation and preaching of Scripture belongs especially to bishops, the successors of the apostles. His allegory also associates the “lights in the firmament” with the gifts of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:7–11), especially the moon with “knowledge” and the sun with “wisdom.” The true spiritual understanding of Scripture proves crucial to Book 5 of the Confessions, which describes the young Augustine’s movement away from Faustus and the Manichees (5.3–7) toward Ambrose and Christianity (5.13–14). Ambrose expounds Old Testament passages allegorically, and his interpretations “in the spirit” revolutionize the young Augustine’s understanding of Christianity. He discovers that “the Catholic faith can be maintained without being ashamed of it,” for passages that were unacceptable, when taken literally, proved illuminating and true through Ambrose’s spiritual exposition (5.14.24). Ambrose’s preaching enables the young Augustine to understand how “the letter kills, but the spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3:6; Conf. 5.14, 6.3–4). Clearly, Ambrose is a true spiritual descendent of the apostles, for like them he interprets the Old Testament allegorically and preaches the true faith. In terms of the allegory in Book 13, Ambrose proves a genuine spiritual luminary because he holds fast to the firmament of Scripture. Hence, the light of his preaching proves brilliant with “the gifts


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of the Holy Spirit,” especially “the word of wisdom” and “the word of knowledge,” the allegorical sun and moon (13.18.23). Faustus the Manichee, in contrast, proves a false luminary, because the Manichees do not interpret the Old Testament spiritually and so they do not hold fast to the firmament of Scripture. In this way, Faustus’s spiritual light is phantasmal, a vain imagination, just like the “corporeal phantasms” of the sun and moon in Manichaean teaching, which shed no light at all (3.6.10). This implied correlation between the Manichaean sage, as a false luminary, and the Manichaean sun and moon, as empty phantasms, is a dry piece of Augustinian wit, but we need the parallels with Book 13 to discern it. Among the Manichees, Faustus was considered a sage, and the young Augustine long looked forward to learning from him how to resolve certain questions (5.6.10). But when they finally meet, Augustine finds him to be of limited attainments, and Faustus soon undertakes studies under his direction (5.7.13)! Book 5 turns on the contrasts between Faustus, the Manichaean false luminary with a pleasing style of speech but no substance, and Ambrose, whose eloquence is filled with the true light of the Catholic faith. The allegory in Book 13 also informs Augustine’s critique of the astronomers: they make true predictions of eclipses, but become puffed up with foolish pride in their knowledge (5.3.4). The critique turns on the etymological link between defectus, “eclipse,” and the verb deficere, “to fail, fall away”: “Out of an impious pride they, receding from you and falling away [deficientes] from your light, can foresee a coming eclipse [defectum] long before it, but their own present eclipse they do not see” (5.3.4; my emphasis). Their pride in predicting a physical eclipse of the Sun leads to their spiritual eclipse. Though Augustine’s general criticism proves clear enough, its details depend on the allegory in Book 13, for these are not made explicit in Book 5. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun, blotting out its light. When astronomers become puffed up with pride at predicting an eclipse, they are putting the moon of their own knowledge (scientia) before

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the sun of divine wisdom (13.18.22–23). “Knowledge” concerns “sensible things,” which vary in their seasons like the changeable Moon and are analogous to the night (13.18.22). “Wisdom” concerns the eternal light of God’s truth, found in Scripture and the Church. Hence, the astronomers’ pride in their own knowledge not only blots out the “sun” of divine wisdom but also darkens the “moon” of their knowledge, for they “do not see their own present eclipse” (5.3.4). The eclipse imagery in Book 5 is both precise and morally instructive, but the precision of its terms can only be discovered by reading it in light of Augustine’s corresponding allegory in Book 13. The correspondences between Book 9 and the allegory on God’s ninth act may be treated more briefly, because they prove more readily grasped. God’s ninth act is the blessing of the Sabbath, which Augustine interprets as “the sabbath of eternal life” with God (13.36.51). The “peace of rest” (13.35.50) is a recurrent theme in Book 9. The book begins with the young Augustine taking a vacation (9.4.12) at Cassiciacum after retiring from his post as a teacher (9.2)—a time of “respite” (9.4.7) and “leisure” (9.4.8). It ends with the death of Monica (9.11–12) and Augustine’s prayer for the eternal rest of her soul with God (9.13). Only two earlier passages in the Confessions record deaths: that of Augustine’s father (3.4.7), mentioned in passing, and that of his friend, explored in Book 4 (4.4–12). In Book 9, Augustine records five deaths: those of his mother, his father (now named: 9.13.37), his son Adeodatus (9.6.14), and his two friends Verecundus (9.3.5) and Nebridius (9.3.6). The last two passages mention the delights of paradise now enjoyed by these faithful souls in God’s eternal sabbath. Book 9 also records five baptisms, the sacramental death and rebirth into the mystical body of Christ that looks forward to life with God in his eternal sabbath. Augustine speaks of his own baptism as a “release from anxiety” entailing “wondrous sweetness” (9.6.14), a foretaste (as it were) of eternal peace. But the keenest foretaste of the


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eternal sabbath comes in the “vision at Ostia” (9.10), when Augustine and Monica ascend beyond all things to hear God’s Word in beatific silence. That chapter ends with Augustine looking forward to the general resurrection on the Last Day. The whole vision, in fact, arises from, concludes in, and is richly informed by the theme of rest in God, “the sabbath of eternal life” (13.36.51). Why did Augustine the author create this pattern of parallels between his autobiography and his allegory on the creation of the Church? What might this pattern mean? Most obviously, it reveals Books 1–9 as God’s creation of the young Augustine, in and for the Church. Perhaps Augustine’s preferred word for the creation, formatio, “formation,” brings out the sense of this more clearly. God’s nine acts in creation are replicated in his formation of the young Augustine as a Christian. Despite the young man’s errors and resistance, God was forming him in and for the Church all the while. In one sense, this meaning simply reinforces what we already know: the autobiography is a conversion story. In another sense, it universalizes the young Augustine’s story in a surprising way: his story replicates, book by book, God’s nine acts in the Creation and the nine stages in his creation of the Church. Scholars often point to the ways in which the young Augustine proves an Everyman, for an act like the pear theft is given universal significance through the narrator’s theological reflection on it. But the parallels with Book 13 indicate a deep structure for the autobiography: it has the same pattern as the universal creation, in Genesis 1, and universal salvation through the Church. In other words, while Augustine the narrator universalizes certain events in the autobiography through theological reflection, Augustine the author universalized the whole of it through its parallels with his allegory on the creation of the Church. These parallels represent a bold labor of self-understanding by Augustine the author. He has integrated, at a deep level, the story of his past with his allegory in Book 13. At this level, the young Augustine’s life recapitulates all that the allegory contains: the scope of the

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whole cosmos, the sweep of all time, the substance of all Scripture, and the meaning of all history, salvation in God’s Church. In other words, Augustine’s autobiography recapitulates universal history, as envisioned in Book 13: its origins, recorded in Genesis; its end, the “eternal sabbath” revealed at the close of Scripture; its meaning, salvation through the Church; and its mode, governed by Providence. According to the premise of the Confessions, these meanings lie beyond the ken of Augustine the narrator but are central to God’s guiding plan for his prayer. Like universal history, these meanings can only be understood retrospectively, from the end, when “everything that is hidden shall be revealed.” In this way, the story of the young Augustine recapitulates the history of salvation, as developed in Book 13. On the analogy of microcosm and macrocosm, we can say that the young Augustine’s microhistory mimes the allegorical macrohistory of salvation. Moreover, according to the Confessions’s self-presentation, both occur in Augustine the narrator’s dialogue with God, unfolding in time. In other words, the Confessions presents itself as a microhistory, guided by Providence. As a whole, it, too, mimes the universal history of salvation, patterned as our return to the Origin. A set of parallels emerges. Just as the young Augustine, unbeknown to himself, was being guided by God to the Christian faith, and just as all human history is providentially governed in ways no one can fully see, so does God shape the narrator’s “Confessions” into patterns beyond his ken. The dialectic between human freedom and providential grace is enacted in the young Augustine’s microhistory, in the macrohistory of salvation, and in the narrator’s dialogue with God unfolding as a return to the Origin. Within the Confessions, all these dialectical parallels prove instances of the Church as God’s intention and goal for creation.

CHAPTER 3

A MOVING VIEWPOINT Augustine’s Meditative Philosophy in the Confessions

T H E P R E V I O U S C H A P T E R explored the deep coherence of Augustine’s Confessions, its unity of texture and structure. This unity lies beyond the ken of Augustine the narrator, for he never remarks on it. According to the premise of the work’s self-presentation, its unity emerges through the dynamism of the narrator’s dialogue with God, according to God’s plan for the work as a whole. Because I view this premise critically, I attribute this plan to Augustine the author. Distinguishing between the narrator and the author allows us to appreciate both the explicit dynamism of the Confessions’s unfolding and its implicit plan, its deep coherence. It also enables us to understand that the work contains understandings beyond what Augustine the narrator asserts. In other words, Augustine the author designed the work to lead readers to insights beyond those achieved explicitly by his narrator. If we think there is only “one Augustine” in the Confessions, we will identify him with the narrator and thereby fall short of the further understandings designed by Augustine the author. In this chapter I want to explore some of these further understandings so as to describe the character of Augustine’s meditative philosophy in the Confessions. By “philosophy” I mean theology as well, all the concerns treated in Books 10–13, even the allegory on the Church. By “meditative,” I refer primarily to understandings implied by Augustine the author. By definition, these cannot be discovered by reading the narrator’s statements but only by meditating

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upon relations between them. In one sense, of course, the Confessions’s meditative character is explicit in its meditative texture: Augustine the narrator wonders, poses questions, hazards answers, searches for the truth, mulls things over, and so on. Because scholars have often commented on this aspect of the work, I say little about it. Characteristically, they attribute it to the historical Augustine as they search the work for his positions or doctrines. In other words, they recognize the work’s meditative style, but they assume that its philosophical substance is doctrinal. In my view, however, Augustine the author designed the Confessions to lead his readers into a meditative, rather than merely a doctrinal, philosophy. The narrator’s doctrinal positions remain important, but they do not constitute Augustine the author’s whole philosophy in the work. Because he designed the work as a Christian-Platonist ascent, it has a moving viewpoint that qualifies the truth character of its doctrinal positions. As stages in an ascent, they remain true on their own levels, true as far as they go. But, as I argued in Chapter 1, none of them is final. Each proves less a position than a station along the way. The only final position in the Confessions is the Church as God’s purpose for creation, and the Church, in this sense, is not “a true position” but a container for all truths. In other words, while Augustine the narrator’s philosophizing in the Confessions has an explicitly meditative style, Augustine the author’s philosophy has an implicit and meditative substance. The rest of this chapter attempts to sketch the character of that meditative substance. The chapter has four sections. The first returns to the Confessions’s meditative texture in order to treat its moving viewpoint in the small. This is the most obvious aspect of its meditative character, and it is best to begin with what is already understood. The following sections explore the work’s moving viewpoint in the large. The second section turns on the relations between Books 2 and 8, perversion of the will through sin and conversion of the will through

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grace. As we saw in the previous chapter, these two books are linked with one another in the chiastic structure of thematic parallels in Books 1–9. This dialectical link, clearly designed by Augustine the author, invites our meditation on what these parallels imply. After sketching out some of the parallels between Books 2 and 8, in the second section I pursue the theme of “friendship.” Book 2 prefigures its fulfillment in Book 8, and Augustine the author thereby implied an understanding of friendship well beyond what his narrator states in the Confessions. The third and fourth sections carry the implications of the Confessions’s moving viewpoint into understanding analogous meanings in the work. In Chapter 1, I showed how a Christian-Platonist ascent creates a hierarchy of analogous meanings: key words have somewhat different meanings at different levels in the ascent. Exploring these meanings is one way to enter into Augustine’s meditative philosophy in the Confessions. The third section explores various meanings of “friendship” and “conversion” in the autobiography against the various levels discriminated by its structure. The pattern of Books 1–9, the young Augustine’s spiritual descent and ascent, provides a grid against which different meanings of key words may be discerned. The fourth section treats analogous meanings of “memory” and “conversion” in Books 10–13. For example, though “conversion” is hardly mentioned in Books 10–12, the Confessions implies a conversion of memory (Book 10), a conversion of time (Book 11), and a conversion of hermeneutics (Book 12). The Church in Book 13 embodies conversion at the highest level, as it does friendship and memory. Indeed, the moving viewpoint of a Christian-Platonist ascent invites us to meditate on how every theme in the work is related to its highest level, which articulates the most universal and fundamental category in the ascent. In the Confessions, that level is the Church as God’s purpose for creation. Augustine the narrator is too caught up in the dynamism of his prayer to reflect on how earlier

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passages relate to later ones. Augustine the author left such meditation for his readers, though he designed the Confessions as a coherent whole to invite it.

Moving Viewpoint in the Small In the previous chapter, we examined the Confessions’s meditative texture as a dialogue with God, with the spontaneity and dynamism of a genuine conversation, even though it is “a dialogue in one voice.” In the course of his quest for truth, Augustine the narrator often makes a discovery that involves some alteration of an earlier view. In such instances, the moving viewpoint generated by the dynamism of his prayer is explicitly marked, usually within a few pages. Let us look at some of these, beginning with the most obvious examples. Sometimes Augustine the narrator explicitly corrects an earlier view. As we saw earlier, he first asserts that God was silent when the young Augustine was scattered in his fornications (2.2.2), but corrects himself some paragraphs later, when he realizes that God had been speaking against his sins through the words of his mother (2.3.7).1 Sometimes he arrives at answers that resolve earlier perplexities. In Book 13 Augustine the narrator has groping questions about the Trinity in chapter 11, and then, in chapter 16, he answers them with complete assurance. Similarly, the narrator’s inquiry into “time” in Book 11 (11.14–28) leads him to gradually fuller understandings. He begins by wondering how the past and the future can be said to exist, since the former has passed and the latter is not yet (11.14.17). Yet as he reflects on how time is measured (11.21–27), he comes to understand time “psychologically”: the past exists in memory, “present attention to things past,” and the future exists in expectation, “present attention to things future” (11.28). In this re-

1. See Sandra Lee Dixon, Augustine: The Scattered and Gathered Self (St. Louis, Mo.: Chalice Press, 1999), for this theme in the Confessions.

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spect, his conclusion resolves his earlier perplexities, and to that extent dissolves them. All these instances illustrate Augustine the narrator’s inquisitio veritatis, his quest for truth, in the form best understood by scholars. The inquiry progresses from partial to fuller insights, and the later insights supersede the former, correcting and completing them. Here, we might say, there is a direct overlap between later and earlier statements, and so the progress of the inquiry is explicitly marked. But there are other instances where later statements do not directly overlap earlier ones, and whether the narrator corrects, or merely modifies, an earlier view remains ambiguous. These ambiguities have proven grist for scholars who debate “Augustine’s view” in the work. These scholars make two assumptions. First, they assume that the work presents the views of Augustine the author, the historical Augustine, directly. Second, they assume that he is philosophizing in a doctrinal manner, aiming at results to be formulated. In my view, however, Augustine the author deliberately created certain ambiguities in his narrator’s views in order to lead his readers to meditate more deeply upon them. Let us consider two cases of this meditative ambiguity in the Confessions. It is well known that when Augustine the narrator reflects on his motives for the pear theft in Book 2, he arrives at two diametrically opposed views.2 At first, he thinks he had no positive motive for the act at all; he only delighted in the wickedness itself (2.4.9). He treats this idea theologically in chapter 6: the theft had no rational motive, in terms of desire for some good, but was purely the perverse act of

2. See William E. Mann, “The Theft of the Pears,” Apeiron 12 (1978): 51–58, esp. pp. 54–57. On the pear theft, see Leo C. Ferrari, “The Pear-Theft in Augustine’s Confessions,” Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes 16 (1970): 233–41; William J. O’Brien, “Toward Understanding Original Sin in Augustine’s Confessions,” Thought 49 (1974): 436–46; and, most recently, Lyell Asher, “The Dangerous Fruit of Augustine’s Confessions,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 66 (1998): 227–55.

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his prideful will. In chapter 9, however, he comes to a radically different conclusion, for he did desire a positive, rational good: the friendship of the boys who stole with him. Which one is true? Because of Augustine’s theology of evil, scholars have tended to prefer the earlier view. Jaroslav Pelikan acknowledges and dismisses the later view with a gesture: “Even though [Augustine] might not have done it without the company of his peer group, who egged him on, it was not their companionship but the theft that he loved.”3 But once we grasp the meditative texture of Augustine the narrator’s unfolding prayer, we must give the later view pride of place. For the narrator prays his way to this selfunderstanding, and he underscores it by repetition and by asserting that God has revealed it to him: “But alone I would not have done it, all alone I would not have done it. Behold, in your presence, my God, is the living memory [viva recordatio] of my soul. Alone, I would not have committed that theft” (my emphasis). And he goes on to lament, “O friendship too unfriendly” (2.9.17). This passage affirms unambiguously that the young Augustine had a positive motive for his crime. The narrator’s final formulation on the young Augustine’s motives for the pear theft would seem to be the true one. It corrects the earlier one insofar as it overlaps with it. But the overlap is not complete, and the relation between the two remains ambiguous. The young Augustine unquestionably had a rational motive for the theft. As chapter 9 shows, it is wrong to say that he loved only the wickedness, a motive purely negative and irrational. Nevertheless, the presence of the rational motive does not eliminate the irrational one. It, too, may have been present. Augustine the narrator, praying in an ongoing present, abandons the inquiry after discovering the rational motive. He does not reconsider his earlier view for whatever

3. Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 78.


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truth it might still possess in the light of his later understanding. Augustine the author left that task to us. He deliberately created the ambiguous relation between the two views and left it unresolved. Why? What did Augustine aim to achieve by this deliberate ambiguity? In my view, he wanted us to meditate on these two views, and thus on ourselves. For we cannot meditate adequately on this ambiguity in Book 2 without meditating on the ambiguities in our own motives. The Confessions, of course, does not direct such a meditation, because Augustine the narrator does not undertake it, but the work does exemplify styles of meditation for us to imitate. Hence, we might well wonder whether a fallen human being could ever have pure motives for any act, even purely evil ones. When the narrator reflects upon his purely negative motives, he does not describe the thrill of rebellion, its felt risk, and the sense of excitement at the possibility of being caught. His language does not develop the pleasure of adventure in the adolescent’s crime, surely a component of it. Also, the negative motive of prideful rebellion and a positive one, like the love of friends, can mix together easily in creatures like ourselves. On the other hand, pride and friendship may not be so different. For we might reflect on the motive of rivalry among the boys (2.3.7), and the young Augustine’s desire always to be the best (1.17.27, 1.19.30), even in shamelessness. The desire for status, a worldly value, always partakes of rivalry with others, and therefore entails the risk of pride, when we succeed, and of envy, when we fail. Are our efforts to do well as teachers and scholars, efforts laudably motivated in themselves, free of pride? More troubling still, can we be sure of our answer, one way or another? In Book 10, Augustine the narrator avers that he simply cannot be sure whether he has made any progress in humility, for “in a man’s contempt for vainglory, he often glories still more vainly” (10.38.63). These and other lines of reflection are opened up by the meditative ambiguity that Augustine the author created in Book 2.

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Another instance of meditative ambiguity, in my view, may be found in Book 10, as Augustine the narrator searches for God in his memory. But Nello Cipriani would disagree, for he finds that the result of this quest is unambiguous: “God is in the memory only from the moment he is known, and not before.”4 And the evidence for his position is solid, for the text clearly affirms, “You were not already in my memory before I learnt of you” (10.26.37; cf. 10.24.35). Cipriani finds this definitive because he assumes that the historical Augustine was philosophizing in a doctrinal manner and that the Confessions presents his views directly. Though Cipriani responds sensitively to the process of the inquiry, for him it seems to be a dramatic way of showing the reasons for the doctrine. When we differentiate between the historical Augustine and Augustine the narrator, however, we can see that the results are not so unambiguous, and that meditative philosophizing differs from doctrinal philosophizing not only in method but also in aim. For in the chapter following the unambiguous assertion that God “[was] not in my memory before I learnt of [him]” (10.26), Augustine the narrator addresses the divine Beauty: “Late have I loved you. And behold, you were within me, and I was outside and there I was seeking you” (10.27.38). This justly famous chapter is quite different in tone from the preceding inquiry. The scholarly tradition tends to see it as a poetic set-piece, written by Augustine and inserted here in Book 10, with little direct connection to his inquiry into memory.5 In my view, however, this chapter bursts forth from Augustine the narrator, who is moved by sudden grace in his dialogue with God. This sud4. Nello Cipriani, O.S.A., article on “memory” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald, O.S.A., et al. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1999), translated by Matthew O’Connell, pp. 553–54, quotation on p. 554. 5. See, e.g., Vernon J. Bourke’s commentary on this passage in Augustine’s Love of Wisdom: An Introspective Philosophy (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1992), pp. 199–200. He does not relate it to Augustine’s exploration of memory, though that is the subject of Bourke’s commentary.


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den grace seems to give him a different understanding: God was in his memory before he learned of Him. At the very least, the chapter unambiguously affirms God’s presence in the young Augustine, even though he did not know it: “You were with me, and I was not with you” (10.27.38). Hence, the question arises, “How shall we understand the relations between chapters 26 and 27 on this score? Does Book 10 say that God is not in the memory before one learns of Him, as chapter 26 asserts, or that God is in the memory always, as chapter 27 implies?” On the one hand, the inward Divine Presence of chapter 27 may not be in the memory, but somewhere else in the mind. On the other hand, Augustine the narrator is reflecting on memory: if this inward Divine Presence is not in the memory, where should it be located? Although God is not in the memory as an object of memory before one learns of him, perhaps the inner Divine Presence enables the power of memory, and so is “in” it in a different sense. Augustine the narrator later reflects on God’s presence enabling his mind as a whole as he searched into the recesses of his memory: “For you are the abiding light which I was consulting in all these things, as to whether they were, what they were, and what value they had” (10.40.65). In this respect, the Divine Presence would be in the memory as its enabling power. The hymn to the divine Beauty in chapter 27, it seems, marks what might be called a conversion of memory within Book 10. Before it, “memory” was defined in relation to its objects, and Augustine the narrator does not find God in his memory until after he learned of him. Within chapter 27 and afterward, however, the narrator recognizes that God was always present within him, and the context argues that God was present in his “memory.” Nevertheless, the narrator does not assert that he was wrong before, as he does in Book 2 when he corrects his lament that God did not warn him against his adolescent fornications (2.2.2, 2.3.7). Hence, this “conversion of memory” within Book 10 is somewhat ambiguous, unlike the one we will examine later.

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The more we respond to the meditative dynamism of Augustine the narrator’s dialogue with God, the less eager we will be to fasten on an explicit assertion as Augustine the author’s position. Book 10 does not actually give an unambiguous answer as to whether God is present in the memory before one has learned of him. Nor is this ambiguity a fault. Augustine the author did not fashion the Confessions as an odd kind of author’s treatise, using an inquisitio veritatis to state and defend doctrines or positions, but as the living record of his narrator’s meditating in dialogue with God. Hence, he deliberately left some issues unresolved, so as to involve his readers in the meditative dynamism of the work. For where the doctrinal philosopher aims to inform readers of his results, the meditative philosopher aims to form readers to the tasks of meditation. He offers his audience an initiation into ways of meditating, by means of an example. Like Socrates in the aporetic dialogues, the meditative philosopher knows that ambiguity spurs attentive students to think for themselves, and that his arriving at a clear result may arrest their thinking. In the Confessions, the historical Augustine created a narrator who meditates on all kinds of questions arising from his past and present life. He fashioned Augustine the narrator as the literary means not merely to inform his readers doctrinally, but also to form them meditatively. The narrator’s neglecting to resolve all the issues he raises was part of Augustine the author’s literary strategy. In short, the Confessions does not directly present the views of the historical Augustine. It directly presents Augustine the narrator praying his way to, and through, various understandings. The meditative dynamism of this process often shows him correcting or qualifying an earlier statement, but whether fully or partially can be hard to say. For the narrator is often so caught up in his dialogue with God that he moves on without resolving the ambiguities he has left behind. Augustine the author has left that resolution to us, if we notice the ambiguities. We are less likely to notice them the

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more we assume that the work presents Augustine the author’s position on some issue. The work records the narrator’s moving viewpoint, the process of his prayerful reflecting. Its meditative texture and ambiguities have philosophical implications and aims, and these were Augustine the author’s: less to inform readers of his positions than to form them in the practices of Christian meditation, through his narrator’s example.

Moving Viewpoint in the Large: Books 2 and 8 In the previous chapter, we examined certain patterns in the Confessions: the Christian-Platonist ascent over the whole work and the chiastic structure of thematic parallels in Books 1–9. Augustine the narrator does not design these patterns because his utterances emerge through the spontaneous dynamism of his dialogue with God. By definition, the narrator’s consciousness is wholly explicit in the work: what he does not say, he does not notice. Augustine the author, however, did design these patterns, and he intended his best readers to notice them and to reflect on their implications. Now one such pattern has often been noticed by scholars—the connection between Books 2 and 8—but they have not ventured far in pursuing its interpretive consequences.6 Because they find only “one Augustine” in the Confessions, they are willing to explore a connection only so far, for they aim, rightly, at faithfulness to his intentions. I share that aim, but I argue that Augustine the author deliberately invited a wider range of reflection than scholars customarily make. In this section, I use the pattern of relations between Books 2 and 8 to show how one might pursue the wider reflections that Augustine designed his work to evoke. Let us begin by reviewing that pattern. In Books 1–9, only Books 2 and 8 feature fruit trees. The fig tree in Book 8 explicitly stands in 6. See Leo C. Ferrari, “The Arboreal Polarization in Augustine’s Confessions,” Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes 25 (1979): 35–46.

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a garden, while the pear tree in Book 2 implies a garden. Hence, both books allude, in different ways, to Genesis 3: the archetypal Garden, where the first sin was committed by eating fruit from a tree.7 The pear theft takes place at night, symbolically appropriate for perversion of the will through sin. The conversion of the will through grace takes place in the daylight. The influence of friends is prominent in both, and the two books implicitly contrast two kinds of friendship, “according to the flesh” and “according to the spirit.” This is how the relations between Books 2 and 8 are normally viewed, as a pattern, a static set of contrasts. But, as I suggested in Chapter 1, we can see their relations in another way, the temporal mode of foreshadowing and fulfillment. Book 2 thereby prefigures Book 8 in the manner of biblical allegory, and we are invited to explore their relations in the same way that Christians meditate on Scripture. For example, Book 8 not only fulfills but also reverses the events of Book 2, as conversion through grace reverses perversion through sin. The biblical archetype for this reversal is found in Romans 5, the contrast between the old Adam, whose disobedience brought death to all humankind, and the new Adam, Jesus Christ, whose obedience brings eternal life. From this perspective, Book 8 reenacts the events of Book 2 on a higher level, a level in right accord with God’s will. The fulfillment in Book 8 proves thereby a higher and truer form of its prefiguring in Book 2. At the same time, we cannot know this on the basis of Book 2 or Book 8 if they are considered in isolation: we must read the two in relation to one another. Moreover, noticing a static pattern of contrasts proves only the first step in exploring what the contrasts mean. The analogy with prefiguring and fulfillment in biblical inter7. The conversion account in Book 8 reverses the Fall in Genesis 3 programmatically, detail by detail. See Robert McMahon, “Autobiography as Text-Work: Augustine’s Refiguring of Genesis 3 and Ovid’s ‘Narcissus’ in his Conversion Account,” Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 1 (1989): 337–66, esp. pp. 341–55.


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pretation invites us to explore the contrasts meditatively. Hence, just as the disobedience and Fall of the old Adam in Genesis 3 comes to have new meanings in light of Christ’s obedience and Resurrection, so does Book 2 come to have new meanings in light of Book 8. Equally, Book 8 also comes to have new meanings in the light of Book 2, just as Christ’s Passion does when interpreted against other passages in the Hebrew Scriptures. In other words, the relation between Books 2 and 8 is dialectical, because the Confessions was written with a moving viewpoint. Augustine the author clearly planned the pattern of contrasts between them, and he thereby invited us to meditate more deeply on what they might mean. The kind of meditation he invited was the kind that Christians practiced when reading the Bible: exploring one passage in light of another generates meanings beyond what either explicitly states. Similarly, the dialectical relation between Books 2 and 8 creates new meanings. Augustine the author thereby created a synergy between the two books, designing a meditative whole greater than the mere sum of its parts. In theory, therefore, any theme of reflection in one book can be applied to the other. Although Augustine the narrator does not pursue it, Augustine the author clearly designed the possibility of pursuit for us. For example, in Book 2 the narrator describes a long list of vices as perverse imitations of God (2.6.13) because “[a]ll men imitate you perversely when they put themselves far from you and rise up in rebellion against you” (2.6.14). We might explore the conversion in Book 8 to see how many of these are being reversed, and in what ways. It obviously reverses pride through the young Augustine’s humble submission to God, and he also abandons his worldly ambition and the “soft endearments of love” (2.6.14). We might wonder how many other vices in the list are reversed in Book 8, explicitly or implicitly. Working out the details would lead us to reflect more deeply on all that the young Augustine’s conversion implies.

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Similarly, Book 8 contains some trenchant reflections on the power of habit and the “two wills” (8.5.10, 8.9–10). We might wonder in what ways, if any, these function in Book 2. Since the habit at issue in Book 8 involves sexual pleasure, we might reflect on the adolescent Augustine’s burgeoning sexuality and boasting of his sexual exploits (2.2–3) as the first forging of those chains of habit from which God frees him (8.1.1). His sexuality is peculiarly linked with rivalry with the other youths, with “worldly success,” implying that more is involved with satisfying sexual desire than physical pleasure. Is some version of the “two wills” at work in this mixture of the “worldly” and the physical? Is some version of it at work in the two motives that Augustine the narrator discovers for the pear theft, the negative love of evil itself (2.4–6) and the positive desire for the friendship of others (2.9)? Clearly, Book 2 has some form of a parallel with the “two wills” in Book 8, but how close the parallel may be, what it means, and how far it goes remains unclear. Augustine the author left its meanings for our meditation, if we notice the parallel and think it important. The same dialectical principle may be applied to imagery as well as to themes. For example, the young Augustine’s conversion features his weeping in repentance underneath a fig tree. The importance of this weeping for his conversion invites us to look for an equivalent in Book 2 and to meditate on what their relations might mean. Now there is no actual weeping in Book 2, though weeping is featured in Book 1 (1.13) and Book 3 (3.2, 11–12). Perhaps, then, this not weeping is significant and proves the dialectical opposite to the repentant weeping in Book 8: the rebellious adolescent boasts of his shameful deeds (2.2–3) rather than weeps over them. Selfassertion and rebellion without tears beneath the pear tree, in Book 2, would be opposed to self-abasement and humility with tears beneath the fig tree, in Book 8. The absence of weeping in Book 2 proves a significant component in its portrayal of sinfulness. If we do not reflect on the parallels between Books 2 and 8, we are not likely to notice how telling this absence of weeping is.


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Although Book 2 has no images of weeping, it does use water imagery to characterize the adolescent Augustine’s sexuality. This imagery forms a dialectical parallel with the weeping in Book 8, and we might wonder what it means. In Book 2, the adolescent Augustine is moved by “youth’s seething spring,” “plunged into a whirlpool of shameful deeds,” and “tossed about and spilt over in [his] fornications” (2.2.2). His youthful passions are “a flood” (2.2.3) and a “sweeping tide” (2.2.4). In Book 8, the young Augustine pours forth copious tears (8.12.28), repenting that his attachment to sexual pleasure has kept him from devoting himself to God. Clearly, the water imagery of adolescent sexuality is opposed by this repentant weeping. That opposition is underscored by its taking place beneath a fig tree, associated with sexuality throughout the Mediterranean world. When Adam and Eve notice their nakedness after they sin, they cover their genitals with fig leaves (Gn 3:7), and a traditional etymology links the fig (ficus) with fertility (fecunditas). In this light, we can explore the dialectic implied by the parallel water images in the two books. On the one hand, there is “something sexual” about the young Augustine’s mortification through tears in Book 8: he is prone, beneath a sexually symbolic tree, giving free rein to his flowing passions. But his sexuality is being converted from a carnal to a spiritual one, linked with Dame Continence, “a fertile [fecunda] mother of children” for God (8.11.27). On the other hand, there is something mortifying about the adolescent Augustine’s sexuality in Book 2. Certainly, Augustine the narrator is mortified by the adolescent’s lying boasts about his sexual exploits, the boy’s fear of shame for not being the most shameless (2.3.7). Though the narrator acknowledges the goodness of the boy’s “one delight, to love and to be loved” (2.2.2), he reproves the character of the loves he then pursued. The adolescent Augustine should have been mortified to boast by lying and to assert his independence by the tawdry vandalism of the pear theft. In one sense, such acts are “natural,” typical of adolescent boys then and today. In another

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sense, they are profoundly unnatural, as Book 2 argues: they are steeped in false values and thereby further alienate the adolescent Augustine from the path to happiness. Through “literary” images, then, as well as “philosophical” themes, Augustine the author created connections between passages in the Confessions and invited us to meditate upon them. Alhough Augustine the narrator leaves the pear theft behind him in Book 2, Augustine the author did not. Rather, he crafted Book 8 as its thematic parallel and opposition. He thereby invited us to notice the connections between the two books and to reflect further on what they mean. Book 2 prefigures its fulfillment in Book 8, in the manner of biblical allegory. Augustine the author has invited us to notice the connections between the two and to reflect on them, in the way that Christians meditate on Scripture. Reading the two books together in this way generates possibilities of meaning beyond what either states. This was Augustine the author’s deliberate literary strategy: he designed the Confessions to be read in this way. If we would be faithful to his intentions in the work, we must be willing to go beyond, and sometimes far beyond, what Augustine the narrator states. I want to venture into that “far beyond” by exploring the theme of friendship implied by the dialectic between Books 2 and 8. Although Book 8 names certain friends, it does not contain any explicit reflection on friendship, as does Book 2 (2.3.7–8, 2.9.17). Hence, the theme of friendship in Book 8 emerges through the implications entailed by its dialectical parallels with Book 2. The friendship in Book 2 may be called “carnal,” “friendship according to the flesh.” It is the false friendship of an adolescent gang, bound together by rivalry in shameless deeds, and the pear theft characterizes it further as a fellowship in crime. The darkness of night thereby proves more than the time setting for the deed, for this friendship is dark in a spiritual sense. Of the “works of the flesh” listed by St. Paul, the adolescent gang exemplifies several: fornication, immod-


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esty, rivalry, envy, contention, and revelry (Gal 5:19–21). Here, indeed, is a “friendship too unfriendly” (2.9.17). The friendship of Book 8, in contrast, proves spiritual. The bad influence of the young Augustine’s gang in Book 2, fostering his moral degeneration, is contrasted by the good influence of friends in Book 8, fostering his conversion. Who are these friends, and in what ways is their friendship “spiritual”? Simplicianus tells the young Augustine about Marius Victorinus’s conversion (8.2) in order “to exhort [him] to the humility of Christ” (8.2.3). Simplicianus thereby proves a spiritual friend by deliberately guiding the young man toward conversion. When Ponticianus, however, relates the conversions of St. Anthony (8.6.14) and the two agentes in rebus (8.6.15), he is not intending to lead the young Augustine toward conversion. Still, he proves a spiritual friend, in some sense, because he is Christian, manifests benevolence toward the young man, and holds Christian conversation with him. Ponticianus speaks in charity, and in that sense he is bound to the young Augustine by the Holy Spirit, which the narrator considers the sign of true friendship (4.4.7). Monica and Alypius also prove to be true spiritual friends of the young man, even though they do not directly foster his conversion itself in Book 8. Alypius immediately follows him into the faith, and Monica greets their news with joy (8.12.30). But they have helped Augustine along the road to faith, as Books 1–6 attest. Augustine the narrator does not have much to say about “spiritual friendship” in the Confessions, beyond the truth that its bond is charity, “the love which is poured forth into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given to us” (4.4.7).8 But this we already knew. Augustine the author, however, had a great deal to say about it, implied in concrete details of character and personal relationship. Monica,

8. See Paul J. Waddell, C.P., Friendship and the Moral Life (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), pp. 97–104, for Augustine’s Christianizing of classical ideals of friendship by means of this chapter in the Confessions.

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Alypius, Simplicianus, Ponticianus, and Ambrose all prove to be spiritual friends of the young Augustine, but in different ways. Anyone who wishes to explore in detail the historical Augustine’s thinking about spiritual friendship in the Confessions has a great deal of material for meditation. It goes far beyond the few explicit discussions undertaken by Augustine the narrator. The dialectical relation between Books 2 and 8 opens a further question about spiritual friendship. In Book 2, the friends “according to the flesh” are physically present with the young Augustine as their rivalry in rebellion urges them into the pear theft. In Book 8, Simplicianus and Ponticianus are also physically present with the young man, fostering his conversion. But, we might wonder, do spiritual friends need to be physically present? In what sense, if any, might the two agentes be considered spiritual friends of the young Augustine? Of course, he has never met them. Nevertheless, Augustine the narrator says that he “was loving them very ardently” (8.7.16), and this is the language of affection and friendship. Evidently, this affection was being poured forth into his heart by the Holy Spirit, for his love, admiring their conversion, entailed his selfrecrimination for failing to turn wholly to God. The young Augustine’s affection for the two agentes leads directly to his conversion. Therefore, it is truly spiritual and may be considered a form of friendship. But, it may be objected, the two agentes do not reciprocate the young Augustine’s affection, and therefore they cannot properly be considered friends. Evidently, considering them as “friends” would require an extension of the notion of friendship, and we might wonder whether this would be warranted and what it might imply. Aristotle’s treatment of friendship (philia) in the Nicomachean Ethics runs from personal friendships to family relations to relations among fellow citizens. The Greek philia embraces all these. Perhaps, on this model, we could extend “spiritual friendship” in the Confessions to include, in certain cases, persons whom the young Augus-


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tine never met. Some of us might allow this extension, while others might find it unwarranted. But the ground for making it is traditional teaching on the Church as “the communion of saints.” Communio (communion) is bolder than communitas (community), for it asserts a union of hearts that transcends time, place, and even death. In my view, Augustine the author invited us to explore this extension of “spiritual friendship,” in Book 8, to persons whom the young Augustine has never met. These would include not only the two agentes, his contemporaries whom he could meet, but also St. Anthony, whose example he follows (8.12.29) and whom he could not meet, for Anthony died in 356, when Augustine was a small child. But this line of reflection entails a more interesting question: Should we consider Augustine our friend? In my view, Augustine the author deliberately implied this question by the dialectic between Books 2 and 8. It may not be a scholarly question, according to the current canons of scholarship, but it is profoundly Augustinian. Augustine the narrator cannot raise it, because the premise of his Confessions requires an indirect relationship with prospective readers, for his direct audience is God (10.2–5). The power of the question lies in its being implied, like the punchline of a joke or the motives of a character in a play—we watch Lear give away his kingdom and wonder why. To pursue such a question leads us more deeply into the work and into ourselves. It can only be answered by meditating on the relevant issues in the work and in our lives. Allow me, then, to pursue this question in the first person. It would be trivial to say that Augustine and I cannot be friends because I have never met him, for I know the narrator of the Confessions better than most people I can be said to “know.” This knowledge arises less through the reported details of the young Augustine’s life than through the narrator’s meditation on them and on the issues raised in Books 10–13. In my view, the praying voice of the Confessions is the persona of the historical Augustine, and not the whole man speaking directly for himself. Nevertheless, Augus-

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tine the narrator reveals “the whole mind” of his historical author in a way unmatched by Augustine’s other works, for the Confessions unveils the processes by which he meditated, prayed, and thought. I grant the distancing involved in any literary, as in any social, presentation of oneself. Nevertheless, the Confessions is a work of bold intimacy, especially for its time, and it has succeeded in evoking my intimacy in return. By working to understand it, I have come to understand myself better. Friendship with another fosters selfunderstanding. I know Augustine better than I know most of my contemporaries, and he has helped me to know myself. That is one index of friendship. It may be objected, however, that Augustine did not know me, and so this relationship lacks the reciprocity of genuine friendship. Moreover, though I have benefited by his goodwill toward his readers in general, he did not intend to benefit me personally, as friends do, nor can I benefit him. These are telling objections. From their perspective, the “friendship” I have with Augustine proves no different than what anyone might claim with any beloved writer. This might tell us something valuable about the power of certain books in our lives, but it does not give Augustine a place beyond, say, Dante or Montaigne. On the other hand, it is not true that I cannot benefit Augustine because he is dead. He asks his readers to remember his parents in their prayers (9.13.37), and he also hopes they will pray for him (10.4.5). Augustine believed in the communion of saints and evidently thought that, after his death, the living could benefit him by their prayers. Moreover, I teach the Confessions regularly to undergraduates and occasionally write about it. In these ways, I care for Augustine’s memory. This would have pleased him, and perhaps it does please him. For if Augustine is a saint and the Church really is “the communion of saints,” then it is not quite true to say that he is dead. The saints are held to live in God, and in the beatific vision they know all that God allows them to know. Augustine believed in


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the saints’ eternal life with God, and he designed the Confessions to climax in an allegorical meditation on the Church as God’s purpose for Creation, ending in the Sabbath of eternal life. According to Augustine, because true spiritual friendship is rooted in the charity poured forth by the Holy Spirit (4.4.7), it can transcend time and space, and even death, for the Church is an eternal communion. In the Church, as Augustine understood it, we are joined by spiritual friendship with people we have never met. But we do not have to believe what Augustine believed to acknowledge that he continues to live, in a qualified way. The historical Augustine crafted his Confessions so that Augustine the narrator continues to pray “now,” whenever we read the work, and whenever we read it, we take up his praying “I” as our own. In this sense, the Confessions proves different from Montaigne’s Essays, for though Montaigne is speaking to us in his Essays, we cannot read the Confessions without praying Augustine’s prayer. In other words, the Augustinian “I” of the Confessions continues his dialogue with God in the present through us. Augustine the author designed this literary strategy to incorporate his readers into the communion of saints. And every reader, regardless of belief, necessarily partakes of that communion, as the Confessions embodies it. The work not only climaxes in the Church but also enacts the Church by its literary form as a dialogue with God. In other words, Augustine aimed to befriend his readers in God. The Confessions directly enacts Augustine the narrator’s intimacy with God and catches readers up into his prayer. It thereby brings readers into intimacy with the narrator’s life and mind. Some readers accept this intimacy and grow into it; others find Augustine unsympathetic and resist. In any event, the Confessions labors to establish spiritual friendship between Augustine and his readers. The narrator does not say so, and the author cannot. Nevertheless, the long history of responses to the Confessions shows how successful Augustine has been at creating a sense of intimacy with his readers.

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In my view, then, Augustine the author designed the dialectical relations between Books 2 and 8 to provoke reflections like these. To be sure, these reflections move well beyond what Augustine the narrator states in the Confessions, yet they do so by following the meditative lines of the work. “Is Augustine our friend?” may well be considered an unscholarly question, but if so, then scholarship is fettered by a philological-historical bias. We cannot be faithful to Augustine the author’s achievement in the Confessions if we are unwilling to pursue its meditative implications well beyond his narrator’s utterances. To some extent, the preceding comparisons of Books 2 and 8 do only what literary interpretation always does: find a pattern and explore its meaning. The pattern need not be based on thematic parallels in the chiastic structure of Books 1–9. The young Augustine’s weeping in Book 8 can be fruitfully interpreted in relation to any other weeping in Books 1–9; the theme of “responding to stories” in Book 8 can be seen to fulfill every earlier account of reading and hearing. In theory, anything that can be related to anything else establishes a pattern to be interpreted. Literary critics of the Confessions have been finding and interpreting patterns for decades. They have not needed my distinction between Augustine the narrator and Augustine the author, nor have they needed the analogy of biblical prefiguring and fulfillment. Yet this distinction and analogy do enable more adventurous reflection, one faithful to Augustine the author’s intentions. The biblical analogy encourages the dialectical study of two passages so that each illuminates the other. It thereby urges us to explore the relations between two passages for all they are worth. Literary interpretation of the Confessions has tended to be cautious, perhaps because it has had to win its way against more traditional scholarly work in philology and history. In my view, Augustine hoped that his work would be interpreted as boldly as Christians read the Bible, and in similar ways. That is something scholars have yet to do, perhaps because such boldness would not be considered scholarship.

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The distinction between Augustine the narrator and Augustine the author fosters such boldness. Scholars who find only “one Augustine” in the Confessions identify him with the narrator and are tethered by what he says. But, I have been arguing, the true measure of our interpreting should be not what the narrator says, but what Augustine the author accomplished in the work as a whole. Augustine the narrator leaves the pear theft behind in Book 2, but the Confessions as a whole does not, and thus Augustine the author did not. Book 2 is present in Book 8, because vital to our full understanding of it. Book 2 is also implicitly present whenever the narrator takes up again one of its central images or themes: water, tree, garden, Genesis 3, sexual desire, the passions, rivalry, the nature of evil, friendship, and so on. Augustine the narrator, whose consciousness is wholly explicit, does not reflect on these recurring images and themes, and he usually does not even notice them. But Augustine the author designed these recurrences and grasped their relations. He thereby implied understandings far beyond what his narrator says. He expected his readers to notice these recurrences and to meditate on them, and the model for such meditation was Christian reflection on the Bible. If we wish to reach up to the historical Augustine’s understandings in the Confessions, we must meditate on its recurrent patterns more boldly than we have.9

Analogy: Friendship and Conversion In Chapter 1, I argued that a Christian-Platonist ascent creates a ladder of analogies, for key terms come to have different meanings on different levels. The Confessions unfolds from a moving viewpoint, and this viewpoint generates new meanings of the same word in different contexts. In a sense, every well-designed literary work gives its key terms new nuances of meaning as its plot develops. A 9. Andrew Fichter’s analysis of the Confessions as a Christian Aeneid is an exemplary instance of the boldness I am urging; see his book Poets Historical, pp. 40–69.

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Christian-Platonist ascent, however, has stages of development that mark different levels of meaning. Its hierarchy of levels enables us to explore a hierarchy of meanings for its key terms. We have begun to see how this works with respect to friendship. Friendship in Book 2, “according to the flesh,” means something different from friendship in Book 8, “according to the spirit.” Book 8 even implies that a kind of spiritual friendship can occur between persons who have never met, thanks to the communion of saints in the Church. Augustine the narrator’s ascent culminates in an allegory envisioning God’s creation of the Church in Genesis 1. As God’s purpose for creation, the Church proves the highest, the most fundamental, and the most comprehensive category of being in the Confessions. Hence the work’s structure as a Christian-Platonist ascent invites us to understand every theme in relation to the Church, as presented in Book 13. For every theme, then, the work creates a hierarchy of analogies, with the allegory in Book 13 at the highest level and a range of meanings and realizations at various other levels. The Confessions invites us to sort out these various levels of meaning and to explore their relations in order to understand Augustine the author’s rationale for treating them as he does. The meditative genre, in other words, tacitly invites readers to meditate on the hierarchy of analogies created by the hierarchy of its ascent. When we attempt this with respect to friendship in the Confessions, certain broad categories emerge. These I will sketch out and then explain how they may be correlated with the structure of Books 1–9. As we saw in the previous chapter, the young Augustine’s story unfolds in a curve of spiritual descent and ascent, with Book 5 as the swing-book in the center. The various forms of friendship can be roughly correlated with the levels of his spiritual development. This sorting out marks the first stage in a meditation on friendship in the Confessions. Such a meditation would lead one to understand more fully not only Augustine the author’s thinking on friendship but also one’s own. This was Augustine’s literary strategy in the Confes-

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sions: he designed the meditative work to foster the reader’s meditation. At the highest level is spiritual friendship, a union made possible by the love poured forth in hearts by the Holy Spirit (4.4.7; cf. Rom 5:5). Here we may distinguish, without separating, spiritual friendship between persons, or friendship in God, from friendship with God. Spiritual friendship between persons occurs most obviously in intimacy between two contemporaries, friendship (as we normally understand it) perfected by charity. Yet the dialectical relations between Books 2 and 8 imply that an analogous form of that friendship can take place between persons who have never met, and indeed even between the living and the dead. The Church, as a communion of saints, unites souls beyond time and death. Both of these forms of spiritual friendship between persons are portrayed in the Confessions in various concrete ways. Friendship with God, however, is portrayed, or rather enacted, on every page. Augustine the narrator’s dialogue with God illustrates concretely an array of meditative practices that embody friendship with God. Augustine the author fashioned this genre as a literary strategy aimed at drawing readers into friendship with God, for every reader necessarily takes on the narrator’s voice and thereby takes up his prayer. The Confessions thereby enacts the Church, from its first sentence to its last, by incorporating readers into its prayer. Although Augustine the narrator never discusses spiritual friendship with God, his utterances do not mark the limit of Augustine the author’s understanding. The friendship of Book 2 may be characterized as carnal and ranked among the various forms of “worldly friendship.” In its worst forms, it is characterized by rivalry, and therefore by pride and envy. In Book 2, this “friendship too unfriendly” proves a communion in shameless deeds. Indeed, worldly friendship seems to partake of some or all of the vices in Book 2, chapter 6, for it involves rivalry with God, the attempt to establish an order of relations different

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from that taught by the Church. “The friendship of this world is fornication away from [God], and ‘Well done! Well done!’ is said, so that a man is ashamed if he is otherwise” (1.13.21). Certainly, fear of shame moves the young Augustine to the pear theft, for “all alone [he] would not have done it” (2.9.17), just as fear of shame and the love of praise spark his boasting of sexual exploits (2.2.7). When worldly friendship is “the friendship of this world,” it is infused by non-Christian values and thereby becomes “fornication away from God.” Yet worldly friendship seems also to include the friendship described so beautifully in Book 4, chapters 8–9, for it is based on the pleasures of this life: “to make conversation, to laugh together, to serve each other in turn with good will, to read together well-written books, to share in trifling and in serious matters,” and so on. This friendship does not partake of rivalry but only of “delight acting as fuel to set our minds on fire and out of many to forge unity” (4.8.13), an allusion to Cicero’s On Friendship.10 Yet because this unity is not forged in and by God, “it is fixed in sorrows” (4.10.15) and doomed to disappointment. The lowest form of friendship in the Confessions is not “the friendship of this world” but Manichaeanism. The Manichees are characterized by “folly” and “madness.” Because they form an antiChurch, their friendship is worse than “the friendship of this world.” According to Augustine the narrator, the Manichees actively distort Christian teaching, whereas the men of “the world” merely ignore it. In this way, Manichaean teaching proves anti-Christian, while worldly values are non-Christian. Though the Manichees understand themselves as highly spiritual, Augustine the narrator characterizes them as worse than worldly, “insanely proud and excessively carnal” (3.6.10). The one instance of Manichaean friendship in the Confessions is 10. Cicero, On Friendship, 98, cited by Chadwick at the end of 4.8.13.

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the young Augustine’s intimacy with the boy who died (4.4), and it is marked by the young Augustine’s insane pride and carnal attachment. The young Augustine led his friend into Manichaeanism, and when the boy falls unconscious in his illness, his family has him baptized. When the boy recovers consciousness, Augustine mocks the baptism, yet the boy defends his new Christianity fiercely. Although the young Augustine is astounded and disturbed, he says nothing, for he feels sure that when the boy should recover, “I would be able to do with him what I would wish” (4.7.8). The young Augustine sees himself as the dominant partner in the friendship, and in his arrogance he intends to dominate his friend’s beliefs. What the boy desires in this regard does not matter to him. Yet the boy dies, “taken away from my madness, so that he might be preserved with [God] for my consolation,” and the young Augustine is plunged into grief. He is entirely dependent on the physical presence of his companion. According to the Confessions, Manichaeaneism does not admit of a genuinely spiritual friendship that endures beyond death. The young Augustine, a worldly careerist and a Manichaean, could feel deeply for another yet not recognize how his friendship was limited by his prideful desire to dominate and by his attachment to physical presence. The insane pride and carnality of the Manichees (3.6.10) are enacted in the young Augustine’s friendship with the boy who died (4.4). Here, then, are three broad categories of friendship in the Confessions, with three categories of community: the Manichees, the world, and the Christian Church. A fourth category of friendship seems to be implied in a fourth category of community, philosophy. Book 7 characterizes the teachings of the Platonists as an incomplete Christianity: they understand and even experience God as a spiritual substance, but they do not believe in the Incarnation (7.10). Hence they perceive the heavenly fatherland from afar, but they do not know the way to reach it and dwell in it, because they do not believe in Christ, “the way, the truth, and the life” (7.20.26).

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The Confessions does not portray a Platonist community or its friendships, yet it seems to acknowledge them by its qualified praise for Platonist philosophy. Perhaps the young Augustine’s preconversion friendship with Alypius could be called “philosophical” (6.7– 16), for it is marked by their common pursuit of truth and good conduct. They almost succeed in starting a philosophical commune, dedicated to the quest for truth and the happy life in modest leisure (otium; 6.14.24). These four forms of friendship can be roughly correlated with the moving viewpoint of the young Augustine’s story in Books 1–9, discussed in the previous chapter. Its first half proves largely a spiritual descent, followed by a spiritual ascent over its second half. The young Augustine grows into shameless deeds (Book 2) and “falls” into Manichaeanism (3.6.10). His nadir comes in the middle of Book 5, when he deceives his mother in order to travel without her to Italy (5.8) and then becomes desperately ill yet refuses to be baptized (5.9). So, too, we see the lowest form of worldly friendship in Book 2, followed by his Manichaean friendship with the boy who died, in Book 4. Conversely, his spiritual ascent begins when he begins to attend Ambrose’s sermons in Book 5 (5.13–14); it culminates in his conversion (8.12), baptism (9.6), and mystical experience at Ostia (9.10). Within this ascending curve, his “philosophical friendship” with Alypius is portrayed in Book 6, and spiritual friendship with Christians he has never met is implied in Book 8. Book 9 directly indicates Augustine’s communion with his dead friends, Verecundus and Nebridius (9.3), and with his dead son (9.6), for he is confident of their salvation. He closes his autobiography by asking his readers to pray for his parents (9.13.37). This request implies spiritual friendship in the highest sense: benevolent acts toward persons whom the reader has never met. Augustine’s autobiography thereby closes with spiritual friendship in the Church, as a communion embracing both the living and the dead. As we saw in the previous chapter, this spiritual descent and ascent in Books 1–9 enacts thematic parallels in its chiastic structure.

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Images and themes on the descent therefore tend to show the young Augustine’s deformation, while their recurrences on the ascent imply his reformation. The dialectic we have explored between Books 2 and 8 illustrates this contrast in some detail. It stands to reason, then, that “friendship” in Books 1–9 should have different meanings, depending on whether the young Augustine is descending or ascending spiritually, and where he is precisely in the curve of the autobiography. In other words, friendship proves an analogous term, and its various meanings can be roughly correlated with the levels of the young Augustine’s development. The correlation is not perfectly aligned, because there are countermovements in each half: the young man’s “conversion to philosophy” (3.4), for instance, briefly counters his descent, just as plans for his career-advancing marriage (6.13–15) hinder his spiritual progress. With respect to friendship, the beautiful portrayal of the pleasures of friendship late in Book 4 (4.8–9) seems somewhat out of place because it occurs while the young Augustine is a Manichee. Its emphasis on reading and conversation, and its allusion to Cicero’s On Friendship (4.8.13), suggests that this friendship is incipiently philosophical. Certainly, this emphasis is echoed in Book 6, when the young Augustine is almost a decade older and plans a philosophical retirement with his friends (6.14).11 The pleasures of friendship portrayed late in Book 4, then, seem to be at a higher level than the pride and carnality of Manichaeanism would warrant. True, the pleasures are confined to this world, and the love of conversation (4.7.13) does not yet include the longing for truth and wisdom so prominent in Book 6 (6.10.17, 6.11–14). Nevertheless, the emphasis on shared pleasures does not have the note of a dominating partner, as does the young Augustine’s “Manichaean friendship” with the boy who died. Now some such sorting of categories is necessary for anyone 11. William A. Stephany, “Thematic Structure in Augustine’s Confessions,” pp. 136–38, treats friendship as a crucial thematic parallel between Books 4 and 6.

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wanting to understand the historical Augustine’s thinking about friendship in the Confessions. Augustine the narrator says relatively little on the topic, but Augustine the author implied a great deal. He constructed Books 1–9 with a moving viewpoint, as a chiastic grid of levels: a spiritual descent and ascent, with thematic parallels linking Books 1 and 9, 2 and 8, and so on. This grid of levels helps interpreters to understand the various forms of friendship by correlating each with the young Augustine’s spiritual development. The grid is implied, and it does no interpretive work by itself, but it functions to help us grasp the analogous meanings of friendship implied in the Confessions. Augustine the author thereby invited his readers to meditate on and evaluate his rationale for situating the various forms of friendship as he did. Augustine the narrator is so caught up in the dynamism of his dialogue with God that he is not aware of its being structured chiastically, nor does he explore the implied relations between the various forms of friendship that he portrays. But Augustine the author knew what he was doing. He tacitly invited us to meditate on “friendship” in the Confessions, and he structured the work so as to assist our reflection. He used his narrator to suggest the range of his thinking but he deliberately refused to make his full thought explicit. In that way, he led us to think more deeply about the work and about ourselves. For we cannot come to grips with what Augustine the author implied about friendship without reflecting on our own understanding of it. The meditative work was designed to lead us into meditation, to know ourselves and God better by way of the Confessions. In theory, then, any key word in the work has different meanings on different levels. A given level provides one index for how to understand its use of the term and, concomitantly, the meaning a key word receives from its narrative and philosophical context helps us grasp the character of the level. The Confessions, however, is structured, not rigidly, but beautifully and flexibly. I do not mean to sug-

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gest that a key word’s meaning is straightjacketed to its level, for Augustine was too subtle a literary artist to limit himself in that way. Rather, I have emphasized the correlation between the analogy of friendship and the structure of Books 1–9 because scholars have often thought that the Confessions was not carefully designed. This structure offers one, but only one, index to the meaning of a word. The structural grid of the Christian-Platonist ascent was designed to foster our meditation on the crucial topics indicated by key words, not to restrict our efforts. Indeed, when we consider a crucial topic like “conversion,” its potential meanings proliferate from a primary sense to many secondary ones. The primary sense of “conversion” in the Confessions is evident in the young Augustine’s conversion to Christian faith and continence in Book 8 (8.12). This “conversion of the will” is prepared for, and thus prefigured, by his “conversion of the intellect” in Book 7 (7.10). In both these instances, “conversion” indicates a fundamental insight or new orientation that has long-lasting effects. But the young Augustine’s decision to become a Manichee (3.6) also had long-lasting effects, and therefore it should be considered as a negative conversion. It occurs in the middle of his spiritual descent, in the first half of Books 1–9, and it accelerates that descent. The effects of this negative conversion, in Book 3, are eventually countered by the dramatic, positive conversions in Books 7 and 8, during the young Augustine’s spiritual ascent. Should we consider the story in Book 2, especially the pear theft, to indicate another negative conversion? On the one hand, the pear theft is presented as a single incident, and the young Augustine is not converted to a life of crime. On the other hand, Book 2 tells us about his adolescent sexuality and refers to his first sexual experiences. It thereby indicates the first forging of the chains of habit that are broken only by his conversion to Christianity and continence in Book 8. In Book 2, then, the young Augustine experiences a conversion to “the flesh” in his new passion for sexual experience. This

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passion is linked with the boy’s love of praise, his rivalry with others, and his desire always to be the best, even in shameless deeds. In these respects, the pear theft also proves symptomatic of his conversion to “the world,” for he heeds these worldly voices and aspires for worldly praise, even as he scorns his mother’s advice urging him to abstain from fornication (2.3.7). The pear theft also alludes to the Fall of Genesis 3, a negative conversion with long-lasting effects, and the Confessions implies that this “fall” in Book 2 leads directly toward his own fall into Manichaeanism in Book 3 (incidi, “I fell”; 3.6.10). In these ways, Book 2 tells the story of a negative conversion to “the world and the flesh.” Now some interpreters may reject the very notion of a negative conversion as an unwarranted extension of a word with properly positive meanings. They would be willing to call the young Augustine’s reading of Cicero’s Hortensius (3.4) his “conversion to philosophy,” but they would not use the word for his fall into Manichaeanism. Others might accept the idea of a negative conversion for the latter, though not for Book 2. They might argue that every growing person experiences the lures of “the flesh” and “the world”; some enchantment by these is natural, and therefore not the new orientation implied by “conversion.” A third group might be willing to extend the term to minor conversions that manifestly prepare for the major ones, whether positive or negative. These interpreters would regard the young Augustine’s listening to Ambrose’s sermons (5.13–14, 6.3–4) as a positive conversion, and perhaps the boy’s self-indulgent reading of the Aeneid (1.13) as a negative one. Would they go so far as to consider the young Augustine’s change of attitude toward Faustus a positive, though comic, conversion? For he begins by eagerly awaiting Faustus as the sage who will answer his doubts about Manichaeanism (5.3.3; 5.6.10), and he ends by taking Faustus on as a student, reading with him only those books Augustine thinks “proper to his abilities” (5.7.13). This “conversion” away from Faustus foreshadows his

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“conversion” toward Ambrose later in Book 5, which prepares for his conversion to Christianity. In other words, what constitutes a conversion? How radical must the new orientation be in order to count as “a conversion”? Augustine the author designed the Confessions to invite these questions because exploring them leads readers more deeply into the work and into themselves. He designed the autobiography so that the conversion account in Book 8 fulfills many earlier moments of discovery, which prefigure it. He thereby led us to wonder whether any of these earlier discoveries might also be considered “conversions,” and why. To answer this question, we must reflect on our criteria for a conversion, and this will normally involve considering our own experience of conversion or of moments akin to it. Such moments may include not only grand events, like realizing one’s vocation or falling in love, but also more subtle ones, like the insight that crystallized a dissertation or reading the right book at the right time. Whatever criteria for conversion we arrive at must then be brought to bear on the Confessions which, in turn, informs and affects our criteria. Augustine the author designed the work to engender meditation on it and on ourselves in this way. In fact, scholarship on the Confessions normally arises from meditation in this way, though its canons involve suppressing the scholar’s self-reflection. In any event, the Confessions continues to work on readers in the ways Augustine designed it to: the meditative work continues to engender meditation on it and on ourselves. One strategy in Augustine’s design involved using key words with a range of analogous meanings, thereby inviting us to sort them out. Because every theme in the Confessions should be understood in relation to the Church, or its allegory in Book 13, we should note the connection between the Church and conversion. The structure of a Christian-Platonist ascent implies that its highest level articulates, as far as possible, its ultimate ground. Obviously, the Church was created by God to foster conversion. Conversion is the purpose of

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the Church, which is God’s eternal purpose for creation (13.34.49). Yet the allegory on the Church in Book 13 not only points up the theme of conversion but also enacts it. In the previous chapter, I showed how the allegory presents itself as inspired: the tone, style, pace, and subject of Augustine the narrator’s exposition of Genesis is suddenly and radically altered in the gap between chapter 11 and chapter 12. The inspired narrator crowds together biblical quotations from both testaments and completes, in twenty-seven chapters, an exposition of the whole creation story, while before it took him seventy-two chapters (11.3–13.11) to reach the edge of verse 3. The narrator’s being inspired by the Holy Spirit enacts conversion and the Church in a heightened way at the height of his ascent. Moreover, his allegorical exposition “converts” the story of creation into the story of the creation of the Church, finding “all of Scripture,” from Creation to Apocalypse, in the story of the first seven days. He begins by treating creation as conversion, for the formless matter of our unbelief receives “the form of doctrine” and we are turned from darkness to light by the “Let there be light” of Christ (13.12.13). Every “day” in his allegory turns on some form of conversion because his subject, the Church, is the fostering mother of conversion in her children. The highest level of Augustine the narrator’s ascent treats conversion in an ultimate way, as God’s universal intention for human beings enacted throughout all history, from Creation to Apocalypse. The allegory in Book 13 thereby takes up the topic of conversion more extensively and enacts it more intensely than any other comparable part of the Confessions, even Book 8.

Analogy and Reconfigured Understanding: Memory and Conversion So far, I have limited my illustration of analogous meanings to Books 1–9 and Book 13, ignoring Books 10–12. The ChristianPlatonist ascent, I have argued, creates a hierarchy of levels, creating a hierarchy of analogous meanings. Because the ascent is construct-

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ed with a moving viewpoint, key words come to have new meanings on different levels, and every key word or theme should be understood in relation to the highest level, its ultimate ground in the work. “Reconfigured understanding” is simply another way of speaking about “analogy” and the dialectic engendered by prefiguring and fulfillment in the Confessions. When a new meaning for a key word or theme emerges, the hierarchy of analogous meanings is altered, and the relations between the various meanings is thereby reconfigured. Likewise, earlier passages come to have new meanings when reread in light of later passages. We notice new aspects of Book 2 when we reconsider it in the light of Book 8, and these new aspects reconfigure our understanding of Book 2. We can recognize a pattern of prefiguring and fulfillment only in retrospect from a later passage, and this recognition reconfigures our previous understanding. I want to show how “memory” in Books 10–13 is reconfigured by the moving viewpoint of the narrator’s Christian-Platonist ascent.12 In his movement from Book 10 to Book 11, Augustine’s understanding of memory is explicitly reconfigured, and so it is well understood. The spatial images so prominent in Book 10, where memory is likened to a storehouse and remembering to a search for objects within it, disappear in Book 11, where memory becomes an aspect in our experience of time: present attention to things past (11.28). But because the structure of Augustine the narrator’s Christian-Platonist ascent is not well understood, scholars have not grasped how memory is implicitly reconfigured in Books 12 and 13. In other words, “memory” has a hierarchy of analogous meanings in the Confessions. Though Augustine the narrator does not re12. For “memory” in Book 10 alone, see Vernon J. Bourke, Augustine’s Love of Wisdom. For memory more generally in Augustine, see John A. Mourant, St. Augustine on Memory (Villanova, Pa.: Villanova University Press, 1979). For Augustine’s thinking about “memory” in relation to his autobiography, see James Olney, Memory and Narrative: The Weave of Life-Writing, pp. 1–100.

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consider “memory” in light of the understandings reached in Books 12 and 13, Augustine the author understood the implications of a Christian-Platonist ascent and expected us to explore them. When we do so, we find that Books 10–13 progressively articulate what is tacitly operative with respect to memory in Books 1–9. This is just what one would expect in an ascent to levels progressively higher, and therefore deeper and more fundamental. The progressively reconfigured understandings of memory in Books 10–13 articulate the ground of memory functioning in Books 1–9. Exploring the analogy of memory on these levels, then, will also enable us to see how the analogy of conversion functions in Books 10–12. Conversion is a crucial theme for the Confessions as a whole, and Augusine the author implied analogous forms of conversion for every stage of the narrator’s ascent. In Books 1–9 memory is not a problem, as it is in Book 10. The problem in Books 1–9 lies in understanding the memories that arise in Augustine the narrator’s dialogue with God. The narrator insists that God is helping him remember events he thought he had forgotten (2.7.15, 9.7.16), and God also helps him to understand them because “the living memory [viva recordatio] of my soul lies before [him]” (2.9.17). At the same time, the narrator’s struggle to understand many of these memories, or certain aspects of them, is amply documented. In Book 10, however, the narrator turns from understanding memories to understanding memory itself. He attempts to understand the ground of his memories in Books 1–9, and this proves problematic, even paradoxical. His identity lies in his memory, but he cannot grasp it: memory cannot grasp itself, the self cannot understand itself fully (10.16–17). He longs for “the happy life” even though he has never experienced it, so “the happy life” is somehow present in memory and not present at the same time (10.20–23). He longs for God and searches for God in his memory (10.23–27, 40). Although Augustine the narrator is praying over these problems, he treats memory spatially, as a storehouse of


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images and ideas to be searched by a human being. The search in Books 1–9, however, was both human and divine. The movement from memory (Book 10) to time (Book 11) marks the narrator’s ascent, for time is the precondition of memory. By the end of the narrator’s inquiry into time, memory has been reconfigured as a psychological aspect of our experience of time (11.28–29). Though the past no longer exists and the future does not yet exist, they do exist in our experience, as memory and expectation. Memory is our present attention to things past, just as expectation is our present attention to things future. The temporal present is enacted in our attention to things present. Only the present really exists, and it exists in our attention, whether to things past (memory), things present, or things future (expectation). This understanding of memory and time articulates the ground of Books 1–9. Augustine the narrator is exploring his past “now,” in the unfolding present of his dialogue with God. We do not read the mere results of an understanding achieved, conclusions with supporting evidence. Rather, we witness the process of Augustine the narrator’s struggle to understand. The work presents itself as his oral prayer unfolding “now,” and so we are caught up in the present drama of his struggle to make sense of his present memories. In the Confessions, the past is never past, but always present. Augustine the narrator enacts that presence of things past in Books 1–9 and reflects on it at the conclusion of his inquiry into time, in Book 11. In the previous chapter, we saw that when Augustine the narrator ascends from time in Book 11 to the pretemporal “heaven and earth” in Book 12, he also progresses from attention (11.28–29) to will (voluntas), or “intention,” in his discussion of hermeneutics (12.23.32, 12.24.33, 12.28.38, 12.32.43). Now the will lies deeper in the soul, as it were, than attention. In Augustine’s understanding, the will proves the ground of attention, for it directs attention. The will is the precondition for our ability to attend to anything at all. To put it differently, we can have no attention without intention,

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and intention is a form of willing. Hence, just as memory is explicitly reconfigured as a form of attention, in Book 11, so is it implicitly reconfigured as a form of willing, in Book 12. Without the will, there could be no attention or memory. Hence, the right use of the will, explicitly discussed by Augustine the narrator at the end of Book 12, implies Augustine the author’s understanding of the right use of memory. In the narrator’s discussion of hermeneutics, he refuses to consider heretical interpretations of “heaven and earth” (12.14, 16, 23). The “rule of faith” therefore implicitly governs his consideration of the different meanings he assembles. As long as different interpretations are in accord with the faith taught by the Church, they should all be considered as true. Even two mutually exclusive interpretations may both have some part of the truth intended by God in the text. Hence, the narrator argues explicitly for “the rule of charity” (12.25.35, 12.30.41). Interpreters should treat all nonheretical views with charity, for love is the end or goal of all Scripture. Their desire for truth should not lead them to the vanity of not loving a fellow Christian who disagrees with their interpretations. The Holy Spirit, God’s love inspiring the Scriptures, made possible diverse true understandings of the same text, and interpreters should accept these in the concord of faith and charity. Right willing, then, is ruled by faith and charity. So, too, do faith and charity govern the right memory animating Books 1–9. In these books, Augustine the narrator recalls and scrutinizes his past life prayerfully, in dialogue with God. His memory is animated by his faith, evident in his profuse allusions to the Bible. His dialogue with God is also animated by charity, with God’s love for him engendering his love for God. The narrator is often acutely critical of the young Augustine, his unconverted past self, precisely because he seeks present growth in charity by understanding rightly his past failures. In other words, the rules of faith and charity in interpreting Scripture, discussed by Augustine the narrator in Book 12, implicitly


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animate his present interpretation of his past, in Books 1–9. In his prayerful dialogue with God about his past, Augustine aims to understand and to love rightly, in faith and in charity. In this light, the reconfiguration of memory in Book 13 proves obvious. God willed (voluisti; 13.34.48) creation and Scripture for the Church, his eternal purpose for humankind. Right memory, animated by faith and charity, is memory in the Church, memory in accord with God’s eternal will. Books 1–9 are in accord with the Church in too many ways to enumerate fully. But the Church is obviously the ground of Augustine the narrator’s faith and charity. Her Scriptures fill his prose, just as his dialogue with God enacts the Church on every page. Moreover, as God’s purpose for humankind, the Church is also the ground of his restless heart: “you have made us toward yourself and our heart is restless until it rests in you” (1.1.1; my emphasis). In this sentence, the plural “us” has a single “heart,” as though all human beings were a single being, fulfilled in Christ, the new Adam. This famous sentence in the Confessions’s first chapter implies the Church, treated in its final book. In the work’s end is its beginning, for its ultimate ground lies in God’s purpose for creating, intimated in its first chapter. The Church, then, is the ultimate form of memory in the Confessions, because it is the ultimate ground of Augustine the narrator’s ascent. From this perspective, we might hazard two analogies: the Church can be understood, in a certain sense, as “the memory of God” (memoria dei), and so, too, can the Bible. Augustine the narrator’s ascent from memory, in Book 10, to exploring the Scriptures, in Book 11, tacitly invites us to reflect on the Bible as a kind of divine memory, made available to human beings through revelation. The culmination of his ascent in the theme of the Church suggests that the Church, too, functions as a memoria dei. Readers today would probably not find these two analogies interesting or fruitful. But Augustine’s contemporaries experienced “memory” as a far more fundamental and exalted use of the mind than we do. A capacious

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memory was not only far more useful in a time when books and writing materials were scarce compared to today, but it was also held to signify moral capacity.13 A modern scholar could labor to reconstruct what the Bible or the Church as “the memory of God” might mean to late antique readers, but they would have felt its resonance directly and found it a fruitful analogy for meditation. In any event, these analogies are warranted by the conclusion of the inquiry into time in Book 11. They are not as far-fetched as perhaps they seem. Moreover, this conclusion tacitly converts the classical and Platonist understanding of time to a biblical and Christian one. In this way, Book 11 enacts an analogous form of conversion at its own level, “the conversion of time.” Exploring this will enable us to see how Augustine the author pointed to the Bible and the Church as forms of “the memory of God.” Augustine the narrator’s inquiry into time begins with the question “What is time?” (11.14.17), but it eventually explores a related one, “What is eternity?”14 Time can be defined only in relation to nontime, and for a late antique thinker nontime indicates eternity, rather than space. Eternity, to be sure, cannot be defined, but it can be understood by analogy, and the most important understanding in ancient philosophy is articulated in Plato’s Timaeus: “time is a moving image of eternity” (37d–e). Here the model is cosmological. Timaeus has been explaining the two movements governing the heavenly bodies in the geocentric cosmos, the Motion of the Same and the Motion of the Different in the spherical universe (32c–37d). Eternity is the still point of the turning world: it remains ever at one, while time is its endlessly moving image (37d–e). Just as a center 13. See Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory, esp. pp. 1–13. 14. See J. F. Callahan, Four Views of Time in Ancient Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1948) and Augustine and the Greek Philosophers (Villanova, Pa.: Villanova University Press, 1967), pp. 74–93; Roland J. Teske, S.J., Paradoxes of Time; John M. Quinn, “Four Faces of Time in St. Augustine”; and Katherin A. Rogers, “St. Augustine on Time and Eternity.”


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point generates a circle, though the center is without dimension while the circle exists in two dimensions, so does eternity generate time, which endlessly moves in circular imitation of eternity’s invisible stillness. Platonists understood the relation between time and eternity on analogy with a geometrical-cosmological model. Augustine, however, converts this understanding to a biblical model. Time remains akin to “a moving image of eternity,” but the new understanding links eternity with Christian Providence. After explaining that past, present, and future time actually lie in our experience of memory, attention, and expectation (11.28.37), Augustine the narrator illustrates these with the analogy of reciting a psalm: I am going to say a psalm that I have memorized [novi]. Before I begin, my expectation is directed toward the whole. After I have begun reciting it, however, whatever I have recited is in the past, and is covered in my memory. The life of the this act of mine is now stretched in two ways: into my memory, on account of what I have said, and into my expectation, on account of what I am going to say. Nevertheless, my attention remains on the present, through which [present] the future is drawn to become the past. The more the recitation advances, the less is held by [future] expectation and the more belongs in [past] memory, until [future] expectation is wholly consumed and the whole completed act will have crossed into [past] memory. And what happens in the psalm as a whole happens in each of its parts and in each of its syllables; so also [it happens] in a longer act, of which that psalm is perhaps a part; so also [it happens] in the whole life of a human being, whose parts are all his acts; so also [it happens] in the whole age of the children of human beings, whose parts are all the lives of human beings. (11.28.38)

The final words state that the analogy holds at a series of levels: not only for a person’s whole life but even for all of human history. Augustine thereby implies that his knowledge of the psalm as a whole is analogous to God’s providential grasp of all human history, and he later makes this connection explicit (11.31.41).

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Just as the narrator’s knowledge of the psalm governs his recitation of it, so does Divine Providence govern history. The narrator’s knowledge before he begins to recite is analogous to God’s eternal knowledge before he creates the world: each has a simultaneous grasp of the whole with all its parts. Once the narrator begins to recite, the syllables he utters are analogous to events in time: material and perceptible, coming into being and passing away (cf. 4.10–11). Just as his recitation is governed, moment by moment, by his memorized knowledge of the whole psalm, so is human history always governed by Divine Providence. The period of the recitation is fixed, as is the period of universal history between Creation and Apocalypse. The closer the narrator is to the beginning of the psalm, the more that remains to be recited. Similarly, the closer we are to the (past) Creation, the more (future) time remains for the world’s existence. At the close of the recitation, the sounding syllables cease, and this is analogous to the end of time, for God not only created the world but has fixed its limit. Just as the narrator begins and ends with his silent knowledge of the psalm as a whole, which governs its recitation, so does all time emerge from and end in the eternal stillness of God, whose Providence governs its unfolding. Here, as in Plato, time is a moving image of eternity, but Augustine’s eternity is Divine Providence, knowing the events of history in intimate detail. Augustine converts “time is a moving image of eternity” into “history is an unfolding image of Providence.” The model for God’s Providence comes from the structure of the Bible, which begins with the creation of the world and closes with its end, when God will “make all things new” (Rv 21:5). In Plato, time proves the image of eternity as the circle is the image of its dimensionless center, or the revolving sphere is the moving image of its axis. The image can be visualized, and perhaps Plato used an armillary sphere, a mechanical model of his geocentric cosmos, when writing the Timaeus. This circular analogy features cycle and recurrence. Augustine’s analogy, however, features linear unfolding, from Creation


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to Apocalypse. Classical recurrence is transformed into Christian history, and classical eternity becomes the loving Providence of a personal God. History is understood on the analogy of a literary work, a vast sacred poem imagined in every intimate detail by its Author, who holds it in his “memory” while it unfolds in time. The Bible is our revealed model for the character and structure of this history under Providence. The narrator’s analogy of a memorized psalm with Providence suggests that the Bible proves analogous to “the memory of God.” When Augustine the narrator progresses from reflecting on memory, in Book 10, to examining the Bible, in Book 11, he ascends from the theme of human memory to that of divine memory. In Book 13, the narrator finds all Scripture and human history implied in the Church, as God’s purpose for creation. Hence, just as purpose directs act, so does God’s purpose in the Church guide all history under Providence. The Church, in its eternal sense, also proves a kind of “memory of God.” These two analogous meanings of memory—the Bible and the Church as the “memory of God”—are implied by Augustine the narrator’s ascent from Book 10 to Books 11–13. We probably find them odd and unfruitful. Augustine’s contemporaries, with their different sense of memory and its value, would have found them odd yet fruitful. Implied by the structure of Augustine the narrator’s ascent, they are directly indicated by his conclusions in Book 11. Since the climax of Book 11 implies a “conversion of time,” we might ask whether Book 10 implies a conversion of memory. I argued earlier that the hymn to divine Beauty (10.27.38) marks this conversion within Book 10. Before it, “memory” is oriented to the things it contains. During chapter 27 and afterward, however, the narrator recognizes God’s presence in his mind as its enabling power. The context implies God’s presence in the narrator’s memory. In my view, Augustine the author invited us to reflect on the possibility of a “conversion of memory” by the very structure of his narrator’s Christian-Platonist ascent.

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In a larger sense, Books 1–9 themselves embody Augustine the narrator’s “conversion of memory.” Although a conversion story logically requires a conversion, mere conversion itself does not guarantee a fully Christian story. As Peter Brown points out, “Had Augustine written his autobiography in 386, it would have been a very different book: different layers of his past experience would have struck the new-fledged Platonist as important.”15 Though Augustine first had to become a Christian in order to tell the story of how he became one, that story could not become fully Christian until his memory grew so imbued with Scripture that he could reflect biblically, as it were, on himself and his past. Augustine, it has been said, wrote not merely in Latin but in psalms.16 In Books 1–9, verses from the Bible, especially from the Psalms, come readily from Augustine’s praying voice. In the years since his conversion, he has filled his memory with Scripture and his life with reflection upon it. He can thereby pray over certain events from his past with a “converted memory,” for he sees them anew in light of his years of meditating on the Bible. Moreover, the memory in act in the Confessions is not a merely human faculty but a divine-human interaction, for God leads Augustine the narrator to recall and understand events he thought he had forgotten (2.9.17, 9.7.16). In other words, conversion in the Confessions is an ongoing process, implied in the Christian-Platonist ascent, not simply a crucial event in one’s life. It requires the continuing dedication of the whole human being. Hence, conversion of the intellect and the will must be completed by conversion of the memory. Memory, intellect, and will subsume the whole mind or soul, the whole human being in properly human action.17 After his conversion in 386, Au15. Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, p. 170. 16. Mary Carruthers, Book of Memory, p. 88. 17. In Augustine’s later work On the Trinity, memory, understanding (intelligentia), and will provide a psychological model for exploring the Trinity, beginning in Book 10.


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gustine was a Christian but he did not yet have the full Christian memory he acquired by 397, when he began the Confessions. Hence, though he had a newly Christian orientation, he did not yet have the Christian self-understanding manifested in Books 1–9. Moreover, that self-understanding is not something fixed and finished, for Augustine the author did not simply record it, in the manner of later autobiography. Rather, he created a persona, Augustine the narrator, praying his Confessions and learning about himself and his past “now,” through his dialogue with God. We see the narrator’s memory and self-understanding recurrently illumined by grace as he prays. The continuing process of the conversion of his memory is manifested “now,” in the dynamism of his unfolding encounter with God. Augustine the narrator not only records his memory of conversion but also manifests the conversion of his memory. Since Book 10 implies a conversion of memory and Book 11 a conversion of time, we should consider whether Book 12 contains some form of conversion as well. There, the conversion we witness is hermeneutical: Book 12 tacitly reconfigures our normal understanding of literal truth in interpreting. According to this understanding, there can be only one true literal interpretation of a biblical text. This one true interpretation may have many component aspects, but they should be mutually compatible. Perhaps different interpreters see different aspects of this one literal truth, but in principle all true interpretations can be reconciled with one another in a larger, coordinated understanding. In other words, mutually exclusive literal interpretations cannot all be literally true, at least in the same sense of “literal truth.” Moreover, the very notion of “literal truth” seems to entail univocal understanding: there is only one true sense of “literal truth,” and there is only one literally true interpretation of a text, however complex its components may be. Because literal interpretation tends toward univocality in its selfunderstanding, it tends to be literalist. This understanding should sound familiar, for it is shared by

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many of our contemporaries. It has recurred, tacitly or explicitly, in recent debates on hermeneutics and literary theory. It is the intellectual spring of acrimony in interpretive debates, an acrimony with a long history in our tradition: the odium humanisticum merely continued the odium theologicum. The interpreter’s love for the truth thereby mingles with his desire for recognition, and the rivalry, pride, and envy it entails. Augustine cuts through this acrimony at its root. Most obviously, he argues that as charity is the goal of Scripture, so differing interpreters should treat one another with charity (12.25, 12.30). But this exhortation is grounded in his reconfiguring of what counts as literal truth, for he is willing to admit that incompatible literal interpretations may all be true, in some sense or other, as long as they are not heretical. He excludes heretical interpretations (12.14.17, 12.16.23) from those he assembles. He recognizes that all those he assembles are true, because they prove consistent with the faith of the Church. He cannot be sure which ones Moses had in mind when writing Genesis 1:1, though he is confident that whatever Moses meant was true and was stated appropriately (12.24.33). A few chapters later, however, Augustine the narrator makes a bolder assertion: Moses grasped whatever truths we have been able to find, as well as those we have yet to find (12.31.42). Yet even if Moses saw but a single true meaning, the Holy Spirit who inspired the text comprehends all its true meanings (12.32.43). Genesis 1:1 has many different true literal meanings, some of which are incompatible with others. In other words, as a literal interpreter of Scripture, Augustine the narrator is not a literalist. His hermeneutics of literal interpretation proves fundamentally ecclesial and open. Whatever the Church does not exclude as heretical is true. Any literal interpretation that does not entail heresy may be considered to be true, however incompatible it may prove with other nonheretical interpretations. The measure of true interpretation is not univocal, internal consistency but


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the faith of the Church. This faith, according to Augustine, is fundamentally open to new understandings of any biblical text, as long as they do not entail heresy. Augustine’s argument implies that there are different true senses of “literal truth,” and these do not need to be defined or regulated. As long as interpreters are rightly oriented in faith and charity, their results are true, however incompatible they may be. The inspiration of Scripture encompasses multiplicity and even dissonance. What it excludes is heresy and uncharity. In sum, then, conversion is not only recorded in various forms in Books 1–9 but also enacted at every level of Augustine the narrator’s ascent. With respect to Book 10, the Confessions manifests a conversion of memory. The final chapters of Book 11 convert Platonist thought on eternity and time, on the analogy of the cosmos, to Christian Providence and history, on the analogy of the Bible. The last section of Book 12 reconfigures the notion of “literal truth” in the interpretation of Scripture: univocal, literalist conformity with the text is replaced by conformity with the faith of the Church, where disparate literal meanings are all true. Finally, as we saw earlier, the allegory on the Church in Book 13 takes conversion as its theme and enacts it intensively, in several different ways. Conversion is enacted in the Confessions, in analogous ways at various levels, because it is taking place in every sentence as Augustine the narrator turns to God in his unfolding prayer. In short, the Confessions is a conversion story, not simply because it tells a story about conversion in Books 1–9, but also because it manifests conversion at every level of the narrator’s ascent and enacts it on every page in his prayer. If we think of conversion in the work as one or more events recorded in Books 1–9, we are tethered to the utterances of Augustine the narrator and we have underestimated the historical Augustine’s thought. We have missed the analogous understandings created by Augustine the author in the moving viewpoint of the Christian-Platonist ascent.

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Coda: The Hermeneutics of Meditation It may be objected that all these forms of “conversion” in the Confessions emerge from uncontrolled interpretation, that this multiplication of analogous meanings merely displays my ingenuity, not Augustine’s thought. To this objection, I reply that the hermeneutics of Book 12 have guided my exploration of the Confessions.18 Though I have multiplied possibilities of meaning in the work, all these meanings prove literal and nonheretical. Analogous meanings are all literal ones; they are not allegorical, moral, or anagogical. Though I have used the analogy of prefiguring and fulfillment in Christian interpretation of the Bible to treat the dialectic between Book 2 and Book 8, every meaning in that context is literal, too. The young Augustine’s significant lack of weeping in Book 2 proves to be as concrete as his weeping in Book 8, albeit not so obvious. The various forms of friendship in Books 1–9, both “worldly” and spiritual, are represented in concrete narrative detail. The question “Is Augustine our friend?” is implied literally by the dialectic of Books 2 and 8, as well as by the literary strategies of the Confessions. In pointing to all these literal meanings, I have not argued any heretical views and have thereby remained faithful to the hermeneutics of Book 12. The various meanings adduced in this chapter emerge by connecting one text in the Confessions with various other texts: different literal patterns create different contexts for different literal meanings. This is precisely how Augustine the narrator finds the different meanings of “heaven and earth” in Book 12. One interpretation, for example, understands “heaven and earth” to express the whole visible universe, whose creation is to be recorded in detail by days (12.17.24). The first verse of Genesis would thereby function as a title for the subsequent story of creation. Augustine the narrator, how18. Taking the allegory in Book 13 as a model would entail a kind of interpretation that none of us could regard as scholarly, even though Augustine offered it as the highest kind of interpretation in the Confessions.

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ever, correlates “heaven” with the “heaven of heaven” which is God’s (12.8–9; cf. Ps 115:16), and so he interprets “heaven” as the invisible universe of the angels. In a univocal and literalist hermeneutics, “heaven” in Genesis 1:1 cannot mean both the visible sky and the invisible angelic creation. But in Augustine’s literal hermeneutics in Book 12, it does have these meanings and several others besides. Augustine himself taught us how he would have the Confessions interpreted by telling us, through his narrator, his aim in writing: “I would prefer to write in such a way that my words would express whatever portion of truth each person could take from these writings, rather than that I should put down one true opinion so clearly that it would exclude all others, as long as there was no false teaching to offend me” (12.31.42). Augustine preferred many true understandings of a particular issue rather than “one true opinion” exclusive of other truths. Modern scholars of Augustine, however, have their roots in philology and history, on the one hand, and Scholastic theology and analytic philosophy, on the other, and so they have tended to seek univocal facts and doctrines in the Confessions. They assume that the historical Augustine wrote the various books of the Confessions directly in his own voice, to express “one true opinion so obviously as to exclude others,” and they aim to discover his view and to explore it critically. In my view, this scholarship, for all its valuable results, has unduly limited our understanding of the work because it does not understand the Confessions’s genre and structure. Scholars’ literalist presuppositions have projected a literalist Augustine. The Confessions itself, in contrast, urges us to look for many different literal meanings in the work. It demands meditative, rather than literalist, interpretation. In my view, Augustine the author exercised superb artistic control over the work, and his grasp of its patterns and their meanings was complete. Nevertheless, from his perspective, as long as interpreters adhere to the hermeneutics of Book 12, they cannot go wrong in reading the Confessions. They might ad-

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duce meanings beyond Augustine the author’s ken, not to speak of beyond his narrator’s, yet as long as these meanings are nonheretical, they are true. The Confessions presents itself as the narrator’s unrevised dialogue with God unfolding in an ongoing present, and though Augustine the author certainly revised it, the work took shape through the author’s ceaseless meditation. In other words, the work’s self-presentation as the narrator’s oral prayer being guided by God “now” proves a figure for Augustine the author’s composition and revision. Augustine would have us understand that just as the Holy Spirit inspired the biblical text and inspires all its faithful interpreters, so does the Spirit guide Augustine the narrator’s spontaneous prayer, for He inspired the author’s composition and revision of the Confessions. Hence, we should interpret it along the lines Augustine the narrator lays out for the interpretation of Scripture in Book 12. In order to do this, scholars need to understand the structure and genre of the Confessions, a Christian-Platonist ascent unfolding “now” in Augustine the narrator’s dialogue with God. The narrator’s conclusions are rightly understood to be Augustine the author’s, but the historical Augustine’s thought in the work far surpasses his narrator’s utterances. Until scholars grasp the distinction between Augustine the author and Augustine the narrator, the Confessions will remain the most underinterpreted great work in our literary and philosophical tradition.

CHAPTER 4

MEDITATIVE MOVEMENT IN ANSELM’S PROSLOGION

I N H I S P R E F A C E T O T H E Proslogion, Anselm describes the

genesis of the work. After writing the Monologion, “a complex sequence of arguments,” Anselm sought to discover “a single argument” sufficient to show “that God truly is .l.l. and the other things we believe concerning the divine substance” (S 93). This effort preoccupied him, and his failure to find this elusive “single argument” eventually made him so desperate that he tried to give it up. One day, however, “in the very conflict of my thoughts,” he discovered what he had been seeking and it gave him joy. Hoping to communicate something of this joy to others, he wrote the Proslogion “under the guise [sub persona] of someone striving to raise his mind to contemplate God and seeking to understand what he believes” (Preface, S 93–94). With these words, Anselm clearly distinguished himself, as author, from the literary persona he created, the praying voice in the Proslogion, whom I call Anselm the narrator. “Sub persona” is an image derived from the theater: “under the character,” even “under the mask.” Anselm the narrator is a dramatic character created by the historical Anselm, the author. Scholars have called both these figures “Anselm” because they examine the work to discover the historical Anselm’s views, and they assume he expressed these fully and directly. I distinguish Anselm the narrator from Anselm the author for two reasons. First, the work presents itself as a Christian-Platonist ascent, a raising of the mind “to contemplate God.” Anselm the narrator

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proves to be a pilgrim figure on a journey, and we want to understand the dramatic structure of his journey. We cannot understand the work, with all that Anselm the author aimed to communicate to us, without understanding its genre and structure. Second, this dramatic structure has philosophical implications. Anselm the narrator’s explicit conclusions may be ascribed to Anselm the author, as scholars have always done. Nevertheless, Anselm the author’s understandings in the work are not limited to his narrator’s utterances. The structure of the work as a Christian-Platonist ascent implies that the narrator’s earlier understandings are reconfigured by later insights. Anselm the narrator does not look back to work out the details, for he is intent on raising his mind to God. Anselm the author left this meditative labor to his readers. If we wish to understand the mind of Anselm the author in the Proslogion, we must look beyond his narrator’s utterances to the reconfigured understandings implied in the work as a whole. Let us review the presuppositions of the work’s genre. Anselm the narrator is a literary figure, praying in an ongoing literary present. Every time we read the Proslogion, he is speaking, and so I describe his activity with the present tense. By definition, his thoughts are explicit at every point in the work. In other words, the consciousness of Anselm the narrator is an inference from what the text is saying at any point. The narrator’s consciousness is inferred not only from what he is saying, its content, but also from how he says it, his tone or manner. Most of the time, for example, he poses questions and works out an analysis, but sometimes he asserts his views through rhetorical questions, as in chapters 5 and 24, and even rises to bold assertions, as in chapters 22 and 23. A different style of assertion indicates a different kind of assertion. He also laments his failure to experience God, especially in chapters 14–18. As the Proslogion unfolds, Anselm the narrator experiences a variety of feelings in his quest for God, from anguished longing to overflowing joy. These feelings are as much an index to his consciousness as his


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thoughts: his style and tone prove as crucial to his quest as his arguments. The work presents itself as spoken in an address—the Preface calls it an alloquium, a “speaking to” (S 94). Most often the narrator is speaking to God, though he occasionally addresses himself. Like Augusine’s Confessions, then, the Proslogion presents itself as an unrevised oral prayer, “unrevised” because an oral work is unrevisable. It unfolds in the ongoing present of its “original composition” by Anselm the narrator, a pilgrim figure praying in his effort to raise his mind to God. This self-presentation is a fiction created by Anselm the author, a writer who designed and revised the work to enact his narrator’s prayerful quest. As a Christian prayer, the narrator’s quest presupposes that God is not only its End but also its Origin, and hence its grace-giving Partner. Like the Confessions, therefore, the Proslogion presents itself as “a dialogue with God,” even though it is “a dialogue in one voice.” We hear only the narrator’s voice, but from the content and tones of his utterance as he journeys on his ascent, we recognize that God responds to his struggle. Anselm the narrator achieves new understandings in the course of his quest; he longs to experience God, and in the end he is led to a foretaste of the beatific vision and its overflowing joy. As he is led to discoveries, his journey to God takes surprising turns. Moreover, we make this journey with him. We cannot read the Proslogion without praying his prayer. Every reader necessarily impersonates Anselm the narrator, and hence we do not merely follow his journey, as in reading a third-person narrative, but we also make it ourselves. The surprising turns in his prayerful journey surprise us as well. Anselm the author, in contrast, was a historical human being, and I write about him in the past tense. By definition, he stood beyond the journey he created: for him, it contained no surprises. He designed and composed the Proslogion in a sequence of operations that is beyond our reconstruction, because his working papers no longer exist. We know the sequence of Anselm the narrator’s “origi-

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nal composition” of the work, from chapter 1 through chapter 26, but we know nothing of Anselm the author’s. We know what Anselm the narrator thinks and feels at every point in his quest; we do not know what Anselm the author thought and felt as he composed, arranged, and revised its various stages. Anselm the narrator is intent on raising his mind to the contemplation of God; Anselm the author intended a literary-philosophical fiction enacting his narrator’s journey. Anselm the narrator’s spontaneous affects are Anselm the author’s deliberate effects. Hence, in the Proslogion, Anselm the author never presented his own understandings directly. What he presented directly was the quest of Anselm the narrator, and the narrator’s understanding of an issue always unfolds as a stage in his quest. To be sure, the Proslogion indicates the historical Anselm’s understanding “that God truly is, and that he is the highest good, needing no other, and which all things need for their being and well-being,” and so on (Preface, S 93). The famous argument in chapters 2–4 was his original composition and is rightly ascribed to him. Yet this ascription lifts the argument out of context and sunders it from the Proslogion as a whole, where it appears as an early stage in the narrator’s ascent to God. This analytical move has a long history. Although it proves useful for certain purposes, understanding Anselm’s achievement in the whole Proslogion is not one of them. My point may be further substantiated by a meaning of the Latin argumentum that scholars have rarely commented on. Anselm presented the Proslogion as the fruit of his quest to find “a single argument [unum argumentum] sufficient by itself to show that God truly exists .l.l. and whatever else we believe regarding the divine substance” (Preface, S 93). Now argumentum meant not only “argument,” in our sense, but also “the plot” of a literary work, “a narrative, story, especially a fable or fictional story,” as well as the story “told” by a work of visual art. This literary line of meaning for argumentum would have been well known from its use in school


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texts, like the Aeneid (7.791) and the Metamorphoses (6.69).1 Indeed, when we combine the philosophical meaning of argumentum as “argument” with its literary meaning as “plot, narrative, story,” we have a more accurate description of the Proslogion. To be sure, it contains passages of argument, of sustained ideational development over several chapters. But it also contains passages dramatizing failure, anguish, supplication, leaps of discovery, joy, and gratitude. The work thereby presents the drama of Anselm the narrator’s philosophical and theological quest. The present chapter aims to understand Anselm the author’s literary and philosophical achievement in the Proslogion as a whole. It unfolds in four sections. The first section, “The Structure of the Ascent,” describes the structure of Anselm the narrator’s ascent over the whole work: the stages of his movement or, if you will, the sequence of acts in the literary and philosophical drama of his quest for God. The second section, “Patterns in the Ascent,” illustrates Anselm’s subtle artistry in orchestrating his narrator’s progress, not only in the content of his thoughts but also in the tones of his utterance. The third section, “Prayer and Understanding,” reflects on the dramatic and philosophical role of certain prayers within the work. Gregory Schufreider has shown in some detail how the long prayer of chapter 1 sets the stage for the famous argument in chapters 2–4.2 I work along similar lines with the narrator’s hymns of praise (chapters 9, 14, and 16) and with his reflection on the failure of his quest 1. See argumentum, definitions 5 and 6, in the Oxford Latin Dictionary, edited by P. G. W. Glare (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 168. In Aeneid 7.791, argumentum ingens refers to the “huge picture” on Turnus’s shield, telling the story of Juno’s revenge on Io. See Virgil, The Aeneid of Virgil: Books 7–12, edited with Introduction and Notes by R. D. Williams (London: Macmillan, 1973). In Metamorphoses 6.69, argumentum refers to the stories told in the tapestries woven by Minerva and Arachne. See Ovid, Metamorphoses, Books I–VIII, with an English translation by Frank Justus Miller, 3rd ed., revised by G. P. Goold, Loeb Classical Library 42 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977). 2. Gregory Schufreider, Confessions of a Rational Mystic, pp. 97–112.

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(chapters 14–18). Together, these three sections clarify the rationale of Anselm the narrator’s ascent over the whole Proslogion. The fourth and final section, “Reconfigured Understandings,” points to Anselm the author’s philosophical achievement in the work as a whole. These understandings are not stated by Anselm the narrator, but instead are implied by Anselm the author’s use of the genre and structure of the Christian-Platonist ascent. I call these implied understandings “meditative,” to distinguish them from Anselm the narrator’s explicit “doctrinal” statements. The historical Anselm’s philosophical achievement in the Proslogion includes yet surpasses his narrator’s statements. The work not only unfolds in a meditative style but also implies meditative meanings. Anselm intended his readers to notice the stages of his narrator’s ascent and then to reflect on how earlier understandings are related to later ones. These relations are not explored by Anselm the narrator, but Anselm the author understood them and deliberately left them tacit. In the Proslogion, he created a meditative work and thereby encouraged his readers to meditate on it. Fortunately or unfortunately, the immense body of scholarship on the Proslogion is largely devoted to the famous argument in chapters 2–4, hardly touching on what follows. The work’s structure as a whole has received little attention, and its dramatic character none at all, for that requires distinguishing Anselm the narrator from Anselm the author. Hence, on the one hand, this chapter points to new ways of understanding the Proslogion. On the other hand, scholars have shown little interest in thinking about the work after chapter 4. Nevertheless, Anselm’s famous argument is itself reconfigured in certain ways by later understandings. These do not affect the question of its logical validity, but they do modify our sense of its character. Every Christian theology implies an anthropology because human beings are understood to be made in God’s image. For this reason, Anselm the author intended chapters 5–26 to affect our understanding of chapters 2–4 because they clarify the God being sought, the narrator who seeks Him, and the fool who rejects Him.

Structure of the Ascent

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Structure of the Ascent The Proslogion proper consists of twenty-six chapters, and these are preceded by a Preface. The chapter divisions and titles derive from Anselm himself, for they are part of the oldest manuscripts, going back to his time. These manuscripts have a list of numbered chapters, with their titles, at the beginning. The Proslogion follows in a continuous text, with the chapter divisions indicated only by numbers in the margins, without their titles.3 The later practice of printing the chapter titles before each chapter was not part of the original tradition. Thus, in these manuscripts the text of the work proper appears as a long, continuous prayer, with the division into twenty-six chapters noted marginally, yet not intrusively. The general pattern of its ascent is well understood. In chapter 1, Anselm the narrator expresses his wretchedness and his longing to experience God’s presence. After twelve further chapters exploring God’s attributes—his maximal existence, highest good, omniscience, omnipotence, and so on—the narrator asks himself, at the beginning of chapter 14, “What have you found?” (Quid invenisti?; S 111) Here is the center of the Proslogion, the beginning of its second half.4 He recognizes that he has found something true and certain about God but he does not experience God—literally, he “does not

3. See Anselm Stolz, “Anselm’s Theology in the Proslogion,” in The ManyFaced Argument: Recent Studies of the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God, edited by John Hick and Arthur McGill (New York: Macmillan, 1967), p. 205. Stolz cites as his source a personal letter from Father Francis P. Schmitt, the editor of the modern edition of Anselm’s Opera Omnia. 4. See R. A. Herrera, Anselm’s “Proslogion”: An Introduction (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1979), pp. 15–28, for his analysis of the work’s structure. He argues on p. 26 that chapter 14 “ushers in a new dimension.” See also Gregory Schufreider, Confessions, pp. 204–30; and Eric Voegelin, “The Beginning and the Beyond: A Meditation on Truth,” in What Is History? and Other Late Unpublished Writings, edited with an Introduction by Thomas Hollweck and Paul Caringella, in The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 28 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), pp. 173–232, esp. 191–200 on Anselm.

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feel” him (non sentis). Twelve chapters later, however, he exclaims, “I have found [inveni] a joy that is full, and more than full” (26, S 120–21; my emphasis). In short, in the middle of the work, he has not found the experience he has been seeking, yet at the end he has found an experience greater than what he had sought. Similarly, the famous proposition in chapter 2—God is “that than which nothing greater can be thought” (S 101)— is surpassed in chapter 15, when the narrator realizes that “[y]ou are greater than can be thought” (S 112). This is further surpassed by the his realization, in chapter 26, that God is greater than can be experienced by all the blessed together in heaven. The Proslogion can be further divided into parts, to clarify its structure more fully: Chapters Title

No. of Chapters

1 2–4 5–13 14–22 23–25 26

1 3 9 9 3 1

Prologue The Famous Argument Reviewing God’s Attributes Reflection on and Renewal of the Ascent Diffusion of the Good: Climax Epilogue

Though some of these divisions can be debated, and so the work could be divided differently, they offer a general description of the whole Proslogion as a coherently planned masterpiece. Scholars generally agree that chapters 2–4 form a distinct part—let us call it “the famous argument.” It is framed as a unit, beginning with a prayer and closing with a thanksgiving, the only explicit “Thanks be to thee” (Gratias tibi; 4, S 104) in the work. Scholars also agree that the opening prayer in chapter 2 projects an aim that is completed, not by the famous argument alone, but only by the work as a whole. The narrator asks God to help him understand “that you are, as we believe, and that you are that which we believe” (2, S 101). At the same time, the argument comprises an important stage in achieving


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this aim, as Anselm the narrator appreciates with his thanksgiving at its end. Because chapters 2–4 stand as a unit, chapter 1 also proves a unit by itself—let us call it the narrator’s “Prologue” to his ascent. Although he begins by addressing himself and commanding himself to seek God, most of chapter 1 is a prayer: the narrator asks God to help him seek and find God. With many echoes from the Psalms, he longs for God and laments his inability to see God’s face. A son of Adam, he laments the Fall that deprives him of the experience of God’s presence, alluding also to “the Prodigal Son” with images of hunger, want, and misery.5 This long chapter closes with his prayer “to understand to some extent your truth, which my heart believes and loves.” His affirmation, “I believe so that I may understand” (1, S 100), prepares the transition to the opening prayer in chapter 2. Between the end of the famous proof, in chapter 4, and the narrator’s asking what he has found, in chapter 14, come nine chapters (5–13) of steady progress in understanding what he believes. Let us call this part “Reviewing God’s Attributes.” He begins by asking, “What are you?” (Quid es?), and answers, with a rhetorical question, that God is “the highest good, alone existing through itself, which made other things out of nothing” (5, S 104). Through this highest good is “every good” (omne bonum), and God is “just, truthful, blessed, and whatever it is better to be than not to be” (5). In the following chapters, the narrator does not merely list attributes but explores them analytically: God is omniscient (6), omnipotent (7), merciful yet impassible (8), and just as well as merciful (9–11). He gives a summary list of nine attributes at the end of chapter 11. In chapter 12, he makes a significant shift to considering God’s attributes, no longer as adjectives, but as nouns, on the basis of His 5. The prodigal son’s return to his father is a traditional image for the ascent of the soul to God. Augustine used it as such in the Confessions; see Leo C. Ferrari, “The Theme of the Prodigal Son in Augustine’s Confessions,” Recherches Augustiniennes 12 (1977): 105–18.

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unique existence “through himself” (cf. 5). The narrator avers not merely that God is living and wise, but that “you are the life by which you live, the wisdom by which you are wise” and so on (12, S 110). In chapter 13 he explores God’s infinity, compared to “created spirits,” for God is uniquely unlimited, in space, and eternal, in time (S 110–11). In sum, chapters 5–13 review several of God’s attributes one by one, as it were. In this way, the narrator makes progress in understanding what he believes about God. Chapter 14, however, begins with the narrator asking his soul, “What have you found?” (S 111), and this self-reflective turn clearly marks the beginning of a new stage in his quest. This part also comprises nine chapters (14–22), and could be titled “Reflection on and Renewal of the Ascent.” As its title implies, it can be further divided, for “reflection” ends and “renewal” begins in the middle of chapter 18, at the center of these nine chapters. For this reason, I will divide chapter 18 into two parts, 18A and 18B: the narrator’s “Reflection on the Ascent” thereby comprises chapters 14–18A, and his “Renewal of the Ascent” chapters 18B–22. In chapter 14, the narrator begins his “Reflection on the Ascent” by criticizing the understanding he has achieved and his failure to experience God. This leads him to a series of impassioned utterances over the next chapters: lament for his failure, praise for God’s greatness, and finally a petition that God assist him in his quest. This petition comes in the middle of chapter 18: “Help me, on account of your goodness, O Lord” (18A, S 114). At the close of this brief petition, the narrator renews his ascent by asking God, “What are you?” (Quid es?; beginning of 18B, S 114). These very words earlier began chapter 5, leading Anselm the narrator to review God’s attributes (5–13). Here they lead him to reflect on God’s “unity,” and his analysis, as Schufreider has shown, proves crucial for the success of his quest.6 The narrator no longer accumulates God’s attributes 6. Gregory Schufreider, Confessions of a Rational Mystic, pp. 213–18.


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one by one, but rather explores their interrelating wholeness (18B). He goes on to consider God’s eternity and transcendence through a series of questions and analyses (19–21), before he resoundingly affirms God’s absolute and simple being and highest goodness (22). Chapter 23 begins a new stage, chapters 23–25. Anselm the narrator turns to the Trinity, presenting his theology of the relations between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This marks a new stage because he turns (as it were) from the One God of the Old Testament to the Three Persons of the New Testament. It begins the final stage of his ascent, comprising three chapters—call it “Diffusion of the Good: Climax.” It was a medieval commonplace that “the good is self-diffusive” (bonum diffusum sui), and chapters 23–25 enact the progressive diffusion of God’s goodness within the Trinity (23) and then to the blessed enjoying the vision of God (24–25).7 While chapter 22 closes with the narrator affirming that God is “the one and highest good” (unum et summum bonum), chapter 23 begins “This good is you, O God the Father; this [good] is your Word, that is your Son” (S 117). Anselm the narrator understands each Person of the Trinity to be “highest good,” in fact to be “every and one and all and alone good” (23, S 117). At the beginning of chapter 24, he commands himself to raise up his “whole intellect” and consider the quality and quantity of the Creator’s goodness (S 117), which embraces and surpasses all the goods in creation; this effort governs chapters 24–25. He names life, health (or salvation, salus), and wisdom (24, S 118) in chapter 24, before he goes on to explore how seven goods of the body and seven of the soul will be surpassed “there,” in the vision of God after the Resurrection of the Dead. (Let us call this first half of the chapter 7. “The good is self-diffusive” is derived from Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, The Divine Names, chapter 4, in The “Divine Names” and “Mystical Theology,” translated from the Greek with an Introductory Study by John D. Jones, Medieval Philosophical Texts in Translation, No. 21 (Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette University Press, 1980).

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25A, S 118–19.) Then he reflects on the quality and quantity of the “joy” (gaudium) that the blessed will enjoy (25B, S 120), and his analysis builds climactically. Each blessed soul will delight in her own joy; each will delight in the joy of the others; each will rejoice even more in God’s joy than in her own and that of all the others; and they all together will so rejoice with their whole heart and mind and soul that they will not be able to contain so much “fullness of joy” (S 120). In sum, the goodness of the Trinity (23) surpasses all created goods (24, 25A) and diffuses such a multiplication of joy that all the blessed together for eternity will not be sufficient to contain its fullness (25B).8 In chapter 26, Anselm the narrator turns to address God again, for in chapters 24–25 he is reflecting in God’s presence, as it were, but not speaking to him. This return to explicit prayer is one mark distinguishing chapter 26 as a separate part of the Proslogion. Another is the narrator’s assertion that “I have found a joy that is full, and more than full” (S 120–21), for his verb tense argues that he made the discovery in chapter 25, while he reflects upon it in chapter 26. In other words, Anselm the narrator’s ascent to God is completed in 25B, and so I consider chapter 26 to be an “Epilogue,” where he reflects on the completed ascent and prays that God will lead him one day to the fullness of joy he has glimpsed. Granted, the two chapters are closely linked, and the narrator frequently uses the cognate forms of “joy” (gaudium) and “full” (plenum) in chapter 26, carrying forward the final words of chapter 25 (plenitudini gaudii; S 120). In this way, chapter 26 conveys the sense of an aftermath of ecstasy, of

8. Paul Gilbert provides an exemplary analysis of ascent patterns in these chapters. See “Entrer dans la Joie: Proslogion XXIV–XXVI,” in St. Anselm: A Thinker for Yesterday and Today, edited by Coloman Viola and Frederick Van Fleteren, Proceedings of the International Anselm Conference, Centre national de recherche scientifique, Paris, Texts and Studies in Religion, vol. 90 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002), pp. 217–43. In the table of contents, the essay has a different title: “L’homme et son destin: Les trois derniers chapitres du Proslogion.”


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the narrator’s standing “on the heights” after the climactic movement of joy in 25B. At the same time, his uses of “joy” and “full” come in reflection upon 25B and in petition that God may lead him and us to fulfill Jesus’ promise “that our joy may be full” (Jn 16:24; 26, S 121–22). In other words, the joy envisioned in chapter 25 reaches its climax there and does not increase in chapter 26. Hence, the final chapter functions as the narrator’s reflective and prayerful “Epilogue” to his ascent. Over the course of the whole Proslogion, Anselm the narrator is led to a fulfillment far beyond his initial aims. “Fulfillment beyond one’s expectations” is a Christian theme of great antiquity, and it is enacted in the dramatic structure of Anselm the narrator’s journey. He begins by wanting to understand (intellegere) what he believes about God (2), but by the middle of the work (14) he is dissatisfied with understanding and wants to experience, or “feel” (sentire) God. Three chapters later (17) he laments the inability of his five senses to experience God. Yet after he apprehends God as the supreme and encompassing good (22–23), he raises his “whole intellect” (totum intellectum; 24, S 117) to apprehend the superabundant goods of the body and the soul in the joy of the blessed (25). These goods encompass, yet far surpass, what the narrator’s five senses desire in chapter 17. Moreover, the separation between “understanding” (intellegere) and “experiencing” or “feeling” (sentire) God in chapters 14 and 17 is more than healed when the narrator’s “whole intellect” apprehends the joy of the blessed. This joy is not merely experienced (sentire; 14, S 111) in the senses but in the narrator’s intima (25B, S 120), literally “in the guts.” He is speaking to his “heart,” cor in Latin, and understood to reside at the physical core of the human body, as its psychological core. (The heart as pump for the blood was a Renaissance discovery, and “the heart” as mere feeling, as distinguished from “the head” or “thought,” likewise came many centuries later.) Anselm understood “the heart” to be located in the region between

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our solar plexus and stomach, and its intima indicate experience in one’s inward depths. In short, when the narrator’s “whole intellect” apprehends the joy of the blessed, his feeling of it is not merely sensible but visceral. The separation between “intellectual understanding” and “experience” is not merely bridged but obliterated as the narrator’s totum intellectum is possessed by visceral joy in the vision of God. Anselm the narrator does not expect or envision such joy until he is possessed by his contemplation of it in chapter 25. His seeking to understand God (2–13) and his desire to experience him (14–18A) are surpassed by his apprehending “the fullness of joy” (25, S 120) of the blessed. We are meant to understand that God’s grace, working in and through the narrator’s prayer, has led him to fulfillment beyond his aims or expectations. At the beginning of his quest, his faith is seeking understanding (1–2), while at the end, his faith has found joy (25B–26). This “fulfillment beyond expectations” in the dramatic structure of the Proslogion is consistent with my division of it into parts. But to understand this consistency, we need to consider the work’s numerological structure. The Proslogion does not feature its patterns, but it has them. Anselm varied the length of his chapters a great deal, one sign that he wanted to have twenty-six of them, no more and no fewer. While I grant that the Proslogion can be divided differently than it is here, one argument for this division lies in the significance of its numbers and pattern. Consider the numbers of chapters and their symmetrical pattern in the far right-hand column of the chart printed earlier: 1 3 9 9 3 1. The numbers all evoke the God being sought by Anselm the narrator, whether as Unity or as Trinity (3, 3 3 3 = 9). Moreover, the total number of chapters, twenty-six, was known to be the numerical sum of the letters of the tetragrammaton, YHWH, the Hebrew name of the One God (Ex 3:14). (If one adds the Preface as a chapter, the Proslogion has twenty-seven chapters, an especially Trinitarian number (3 3 3 3 3).) As a whole, this division has six parts, a number


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indicating creative fullness, from the six days of creation. These six parts look forward to fulfillment beyond the work in a seventh, or sabbatical, part, the eternal joy for which Anselm the narrator prays in the final movement of the final chapter. Its symmetrical pattern, moreover, is chiastic, and so it evokes the name and the work of Christ. The chiasm in the Proslogion is enacted by the pattern of number of chapters in its six parts: 1 3 9 9 3 1. As we saw in Chapter 1, “chiasm” derives from the Greek letter chi, written as an X. It is the first letter of Christos in Greek and, written as a cross, it symbolizes the Cross. The symmetrical structure of a chiasm (A B B A) also suggests the theological and cosmological pattern of “progression and return,” fundamental to the ChristianPlatonist ascent. Christ is understood to be the Word who created the universe (Jn 1:1–3) and the Savior whose death on the cross enables human beings to return to their Origin. In sum, the numerological patterning of the Proslogion is Christological and incarnational: it embodies Trinitarian numerology in a Cross pattern. The numerological significance and Christological pattern of my division is consistent with Anselm’s aim in the Proslogion as a whole: to encompass the full scope of reality, as he understood it. The work clearly seeks to apprehend the whole divinity, both the One God and the Three Persons. The Proslogion as a whole also embraces the scope of the Christian Bible, from Creation and Fall to Apocalypse: chapter 1 explicitly refers to Adam’s unfallen and fallen life, while chapter 25 envisions the eternal life of the resurrected in the heavenly city. In his narrator’s prayers of longing, Anselm the author dramatized the fallen Adam in us yearning to return to God, and in the movement of the work as a whole, he dramatized God’s saving grace leading to fulfillment beyond our expectations. The whole Christian vision of salvation history is enacted in the Proslogion. It thereby enacts the circle of procession and return embodied in the Bible as a whole, as well as in each person’s life. A Trinitarian numerology in a chiastic and Christological pattern is consistent with this enact-

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ment. This numerological structure proves part of the work’s formal coherence as a literary and philosophical masterpiece.

Patterns in the Ascent Anselm scholars generally agree that the Proslogion is a subtle work. Its subtlety is underscored in a new way when we distinguish Anselm the narrator from the historical Anselm, the author. Slight differences of phrasing come to have meaning for the narrator’s progress in his ascent, for if we think there is only “one Anselm” in the work, these differences often seem negligible, because the two phrases are practically synonymous. Similarly, discussion of the “argument” of the work tends to blur these slight differences, for the second phrasing does not introduce a “new idea,” only a variation on something already established. It seems to be a merely rhetorical variatio, for it adds nothing significant to the doctrinal content of the Proslogion, and so it can be ignored. Attending to the narrator’s ascent, however, with its dramatic and philosophical structure, helps us notice such variations. They become significant shifts in meaning. They thereby add to our understanding of the work and our appreciation of Anselm’s artistry. Let three brief examples illustrate my point. In chapter 13 Anselm the narrator declares that because “nothing is greater than you, no place or time confines [cohibet] you” (S 110). By the end of chapter 19, he registers this advance in understanding: “Nothing contains you, but you contain [contines] all things” (S 115). He has advanced in two respects. First, he not only denies the negative but also asserts the positive: not only does nothing contain God (13), but God contains all things (19). The former obviously implies the latter, and if we are thinking about “Anselm’s argument” in the Proslogion, the implication may be so obvious as to be negligible. But the consciousness of Anselm the narrator, by definition, is explicit at every point in the work. What he does not utter, he does not think, and he does not think that God “contains all things” until

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chapter 19. Second, the verb has changed, from cohibere (13) to continere (19). The former has overtones of restriction and restraint; it alters slightly what the narrator utters in the previous sentence, that “no law of place or of time compels [coercet] you” (13, S 110). Because “confines” (13) implies restraint, while “contains” suggests a neutral holding, the narrator’s shift from “nothing confines God” (13) to “nothing contains God” (19) indicates his increased sense of God’s power. All the more so does his recognition that God “contains all things.” In this first example, though the change is subtle, it is registered by a new verb and an additional formulation. My second example is subtler still, for the formulation is exactly the same and the change is registered only by a new context. In chapters 13 (S 110) and 20 (S 116), Anselm the narrator affirms God’s eternity in the same words: “You are always” (semper es). Both of these statements are true, yet their meanings prove rather different. In chapter 13, the narrator understands eternity as “endless time.” Though all “created spirits” are eternal in that they do not cease to be, God’s eternity proves unique because He neither begins to be nor ceases to be (S 110–11). By chapter 20, however, Anselm the narrator has been exploring God’s eternity as “always whole” since the final words of chapter 18. When he affirms that “You are always” in the final sentence of chapter 20 (S 116), then he is articulating God’s transcendence of time— God is “beyond” (ultra) all things, even eternal ones—because he contains all times in his eternal self-presence. The words “You are always” are the same in both chapters, yet their meaning in chapter 20 surpasses that in chapter 13. My final example concerns Anselm the narrator’s sense of God’s self-existence. His first statement comes in chapter 5, in a rhetorical question: “But what are you, but that which, highest of all things alone existing through itself [per seipsum], made all other things out of nothing?” (S 104). He does not return to this theme until chapter 12: “But certainly whatever you are, you are not through another

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but through yourself” (non per aliud es quam per teipsum; S 110). The narrator’s progress is subtle, yet it is marked in three ways. First, he moves from indirect assertion, in a rhetorical question, to direct assertion. Second, his method of addressing God is more direct in chapter 12, from “through itself” (5) to “through yourself” (12). Third, to his positive assertion of God’s self-existence, he adds a denial of the negative, “not through another” (non per aliud). This addition may seem negligible, since existence “through itself” necessarily implies “not through another.” Nevertheless, this addition foreshadows future insights, and thus prepares the way for them. This language returns in chapter 22, where the narrator describes God’s existence non per aliud as existence “proper and absolute” (S 116). He then adapts this language for the Trinity in chapter 23, where the Son is non aliud, “not other,” than the Father and the Spirit is “not other” than the Father and the Son (S 117). Indeed, his climactic assertion of God’s threefold unity uses non aliud language three times: “for each [Person] is not other than [non est aliud quam] most highly simple unity and most highly one simplicity, which cannot be multiplied and cannot be other and other [nec aliud et aliud; S 117].” In the unfolding of the Proslogion, then, Anselm the narrator’s discovery of non aliud language in chapter 12 is not negligible, for it prepares him to treat the Persons of the Trinity in a way that God’s “existing through himself,” alone, does not enable. These examples indicate two ways of recognizing changes in the narrator’s assertions, in content, or vocabulary, and in style, or tone. Because the Proslogion is a literary and philosophical work, these may be distinguished but they should not be separated. Although a change from indirect to direct assertion is clearly a change of tone, the narrator’s adding a denial of the negative to a statement of the positive could be considered a strengthening in tone, or an addition of content, or both. It does not matter how we classify the change. What matters is discerning the movement in Anselm the narrator’s ascent by grasping significant, if subtle, changes. I will illustrate


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these points by exploring two significant patterns in his ascent: the first features the content of a key word, while the second examines the changing style of the narrator’s philosophical analyses. The key word “contains” is actually a family of words and images, as we have already seen. It first appears in chapter 13: “Since, therefore, nothing is greater than you, no place or time confines [cohibet] you, but you are everywhere and always” (S 110). Chapter 19 registers a significant gain in understanding: “Nothing contains you, but you contain [contines] all things” (S 115). Although several things in the intervening chapters prepare for this gain, one is an image of “containing” that does not use the word: “How immense is that which beholds in one gaze [in uno intuitu videt] whatsoever many things have been made, and by whom and through whom and in what manner they have been made out of nothing” (14, S 112). This utterance occurs in a hymn of praise to God’s greatness, and it is the first reference to God’s “unity” (“in one gaze”) in the work. Here, God’s single gaze “contains” in vision all things at once and the Trinity that makes them. Granted, this utterance is brief and undeveloped in chapter 14 because it bursts forth from the narrator in a prayer of praise. Nevertheless, it foreshadows the narrator’s exploration of God’s unity (18B, S 114–15) and his subsequent discovery that God “contains all things” (19, S 115). A crucial change is under way here in the Proslogion. Anselm the narrator is beginning to experience a reversal of perspective: from “God is in all things” to “All things are in God.”9 In chapter 13, the imagery of God’s being “unlimited,” or “uncircumscribed” (13, S 110–11), suggests extension, pervasiveness. He is “everywhere at once” (simul ubique; 13, S 110). Though the narrator understands himself to be reflecting on God, his perspective is dominated by this-worldly experience. By the end of chapter 23, however, his envi-

9. R. A. Herrera, Introduction, p. 27, calls this a “transition from the horizontal level of understanding” to a “vertical” one, locating the shift in chapter 15.

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sions not the world in relation to God, but God in relation to the world. Every single good, which includes every being, is “in” God, or rather, “is” God (23, S 117, my emphasis). Let us see how this reversal of perspectives is effected. The discovery that God “contains all things” (19) is immediately intensified in the first sentence of chapter 20: “Therefore, you fill and embrace [imples et complecteris] all things” (S 115). God does not merely contain them, but fills them, and he not only fills them, but embraces them in love and comprehends them (complecteris implies both). Chapter 21 heightens this assertion, for not only are “all things full of you” but “all things are in you” (S 116). God is growing, as it were, in the narrator’s intellectual vision. Here, God so predominates over “all things” that they are not merely “full of [him]” but are inside him. At the same time, “all things,” in chapter 21, means more than it did in chapter 19, for the narrator has just discovered that “your eternity contains [continet] even the very ages of time” (21, S 116). All things that have ever existed, that exist now, and that ever will exist are not only full of God but also are within God. The conclusions of chapters 22 and 23 heighten this language, as they return to the understanding of God as “highest good” (summum bonum; S 117), first mentioned in chapter 5 (S 104) and not used since (though God is called “every true good” in 18B, S 114). Chapter 22 closes with the narrator’s ringing assertion that “you are the one and highest good, you, wholly sufficient to yourself, needing nothing, whom all things need so that they may be and be well” (S 117). All things are ontologically dependent upon God for both their existence and their well-being. Although this does not use the imagery of “containment” explicitly, it carries forward the earlier insights uttered in that imagery. All things do not merely exist “in God,” as in chapter 21, but are in radical need of God not only for their existence but also for their well-being. This line of thought is further intensified in the final words of chapter 23, where the im-


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agery of containing explicitly returns: God is “that one thing necessary, in which is every good, or rather which is every and one and wholly and alone good” (S 117). Not only is every good in God but God himself is every good! God does not merely contain all goods, because all things depend upon him ontologically, but somehow he is himself all goods. With this assertion, containing imagery proper comes to an end in the Proslogion. It is succeeded by the language of “beyond containment,” and both are coordinated with the narrator’s progress in his ascent. As we have seen, containing imagery participates in the ascent by its gradual intensification: God contains all things (19), fills and embraces them (20), they are in him (21), and he holds them in being and well-being (22). Finally, because God is “the one thing necessary,” he is every possible good, including existence (23, S 117). At this point, the narrator’s use of containing imagery has surpassed itself, and so it is succeeded by the language of “beyond containment,” evident in the work’s climactic “fulfillment beyond expectations.” Toward the end of chapter 25, the narrator insists that “the heart of man will barely hold [vix capiet; S 120] its own joy at its own so great good” in the vision of God, and in chapter 26 he insists that “I have found a joy that is full and more than full” (S 120–21). The ascending movement in chapters 24–25 rings various changes on the theme of “so much more,” and chapter 26 is literally filled with the language of fullness and joy. This joy is so great that it will not enter us but we, rather, will enter it, for we will “enter into the joy of the Lord” (26, S 121; cf. Mt. 25:21). The narrator who commanded himself to “enter into the inner chamber of your mind” (Mt. 6:6) in chapter 1 (S 97) now has a foretaste of entering into God’s overflowing joy. That first entering, into prayer, foreshadows the final one, into joy. With this foretaste of God’s superabundant good, he can go no further, and the work comes to a close. Similarly, containing imagery does its work by preparing itself to be surpassed. Albeit in more complex detail than

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“entering,” containing imagery functions according to the scheme of Old Testament prefiguring and New Testament fulfillment, imitated by the ascent of the Proslogion. The gradual intensification of language in the narrator’s ascent is also registered in the style of his philosophical analyses. Here I draw on two patterns distinguished by Anselm Stolz.10 Stolz rightly insists that the Proslogion was presented by Anselm as an “address” (alloquium, the penultimate word in the Preface, S 94). Some chapters, like chapter 8, are prayers throughout: every sentence is spoken to God. Others, like chapter 7, have a threefold pattern: the opening questions and final conclusions are addressed to God, in the second person, while the philosophical analysis in between has its verbs in the third person. Stolz underscores the importance of the narrator’s return to addressing God in his conclusions: the results of the narrator’s philosophical analysis are thereby used for the contemplation of God, in prayer. This was Anselm’s aim, as stated in his Preface, for he wrote the work “under the guise of one striving to elevate his mind to the contemplation of God and seeking to understand what he believes.” Even when the narrator departs from addressing God, in order to reason philosophically, he returns to God with his results so as to contemplate Him. Stolz’s two patterns provide one index to the intensity of the narrator’s utterance. In general, address to God, in the second person, is more intense than reasoning about God in the third person. By this index, then, chapters 2–13 manifest rising and falling intensities in the narrator’s tone. As Stolz shows in some detail, the threefold pattern informs the famous argument in chapters 2–4: the narrator prays at the beginning of chapter 2, in the middle of chapter 3, and at the end of chapter 4, with analyses in between. His resounding thanksgiving at its end carries forward into chapter 5, where the narrator speaks to God in every sentence. Similarly, the narrator’s 10. Anselm Stolz, “Anselm’s Theology,” pp. 198–204.


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movement from the threefold pattern in chapters 6 and 7 to direct address throughout chapter 8 marks an intensification of his involvement. This intensification may be linked with his change in subject matter, from God’s being omniscient (6) and omnipotent (7) to his being merciful (8). The narrator uses a traditional pun when he asserts that God’s mercifulness (misericordia) saves us in our misery (miseria; cf. 8, S 106).11 God’s mercy touches our neediness more nearly than does his being omniscient (6) or omnipotent (7), and so the narrator speaks to him in every sentence of chapter 8. This intensity of direct address continues throughout chapters 9–11 on God’s justice and mercy. The very brief chapter 12 continues the alloquium, before chapter 13 returns to the threefold pattern, as it differentiates God’s unlimitedness from that of “created spirits.” Nevertheless, the narrator only gives up his speaking to God when considering “created spirits,” for his every reflection on God’s being unlimited and eternal is spoken to God. Hence, there may be some falling off of intensity in chapter 13, compared with chapters 8–12, but the pitch is higher than that in chapters 6 and 7. Because chapters 14–18A are taken up with the narrator’s critical reflection on the failure of his ascent, he does not return to philosophical analysis until 18B. The narrator begins the latter movement by asking, “What are you, Lord?” (Quid es, Domine?; 18, S 114), echoing the first words of chapter 5 and renewing its quest. His movement from exploring God’s unity (18B) to considering the Trinity (23) is marked, first, by speaking to God throughout and, second, by a sudden intensification in style. First, his philosophical analysis does not depart from prayer. Chapters 18B–21 are all spoken to God: the narrator poses his questions to God, works out his analysis while addressing God, and speaks his conclusions to God. His movement is careful, even labored, for it is crowded with questions (three in 18B, two in 19, five in 20), but it is all alloquium. 11. For an example, see Confessions 13.12.13: “for your mercy [misericordia] did not abandon our misery [miseriam].”

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Then, suddenly, his questions are gone: his style is intensified by resounding assertions, and these address the highest things in theology: God’s being (22) and the Trinity (23). We are meant to understand that Anselm the narrator is possessed by sudden grace, giving wings to his insight. He no longer gropes with question and analysis: he proclaims to God “what you are.” Although the first part of chapter 22 gathers together insights won over chapters 18B–21, the narrator brings them together with force and assurance. He also uses new words for new qualities of God’s being, calling it “proper and absolute” for the first time (22, S 116). He concludes the chapter with a ringing affirmation that God is the “one and highest good” (S 117) which all things need for their being and well-being. Chapter 23 continues in this vein, as Anselm the narrator describes to God the nature of the relations between the Three Persons. The narrator is in wholly new territory here. Although he alluded earlier to the Three Persons, he has not reflected upon them at all. He is not gathering together earlier answers to questions, as in the first part of chapter 22. Rather, he is pronouncing, with sublime assurance, on the loftiest mystery in his faith. Yet in the middle of chapter 23, something curious happens: Anselm the narrator shifts from verbs in the second person, addressing God, to those in the third. When he introduces the procession of the Persons from the “highest simplicity,” he stops speaking to God and begins to describe him. Granted, his language continues to ring with affirmations and becomes, if anything, even more exalted. Nevertheless, the narrator is violating a pattern that has heretofore held throughout the Proslogion: conclusions are spoken to God in prayer. Anselm the author deliberately orchestrated this violation as the climax of his narrator’s utterances about God. How should we understand it? I suggest that this violation actually fulfills the earlier pattern in a surprising way. Stolz insists, with his threefold pattern, that even when the narrator departs from alloquium to engage in philosophi-


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cal analysis, he returns to speak his conclusions to God, using his results to contemplate God in prayer. At the lower levels of his ascent, this return to prayer is necessary. In chapter 23, I would argue, it is not, for Anselm the narrator has been raised by grace to contemplate the Trinity and describe his vision. He reflects on the Trinity in direct address in the first part of the chapter, yet when he introduces its “highest simplicity,” his vision, as it were, becomes simple and contemplative. This is suggested, in part, by his quotation of Jesus’ statement to Martha, symbolizing the active life, defending Mary, or the contemplative life: “But one thing is necessary” (23, S 117; Lk 10:42). Anselm the narrator, like Mary, is rapt in contemplative attention, albeit one unfolding discursively. The unity and simplicity of his contemplative gaze is reflected in his exalted language for each Person of the Trinity, “most highly simple unity and most highly one simplicity” (S 117). His final assertion in chapter 23 also suggests that he has stopped speaking to God because his vision is caught up into God: “this is that one thing necessary, in which is every good, or rather which is every and one and whole and alone good” (S 117). The difference between “every good” and God is momentarily abolished, and since every existence is a good, the narrator’s existence is not only in God but is, somehow, itself divine. We are meant to understand that he is experiencing a form of the mystical deificatio, “divinization.” An image of God, he is being made more God-like through this intense experience of grace. The narrator’s language, in this exalted vision, does not speak to God yet nonetheless praises him, exulting in his presence. The narrator’s final contemplation of God, in the third person, violates yet fulfills the pattern established in the work, because his contemplation is so exalted. Chapter 23 concludes the narrator’s consideration of God per se. Nevertheless, he remains “in God,” as it were, even though he does not speak to God again until chapter 26. He begins chapter 24 by commanding himself to raise his “whole intellect” (S 117) to con-

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sider the quantity and quality of the Creator’s good by comparing it to created goods. This command governs chapters 24 and 25: these do not address God directly at any point, and they mount climactically not only in matter but in manner. In chapter 24, the narrator compares the Creator’s good to created goods indirectly, for the most part in rhetorical questions. In chapter 25, however, he speaks more boldly: his assertions about the quantity and quality of the “goods” (25A, S 118–19) and “joy” (25B, S 120) of the blessed are detailed and direct. In short, his ecstatic contemplative vision of God as the one necessary good, at the end of chapter 23, is progressively diversified and diffused to human beings, over chapters 24 and 25. In these two chapters, the narrator may be understood as still in God’s presence, as it were, but he does not pray to God directly until the beginning of chapter 26. There, I have argued, he no longer progresses but stands at the summit of his vision, reflecting prayerfully on the “full joy” of the blessed he envisioned in chapter 25. Toward the end of the chapter, his reflection modulates to petition, as he begs God to help him progress daily toward that full and final joy. In short, Anselm the author orchestrated the manner of his narrator’s utterances in harmony with their matter. The way the narrator speaks often proves as valuable an index to his progress as what he has to say. Over the course of his ascent, his manner is varied and intensified in accord with his matter. In this regard, the Proslogion proves as much a literary as it does a philosophical work of art. This attention to tone may seem philosophically negligible to some, but that depends on what one considers philosophy to be or to do. In the house of philosophy, there are many genres besides “the argument,” and in these the ergon, the action of the work, proves as important as the logos, what it states. A speaker’s manner is a crucial element in the philosophical ergon of a work. Socrates’ ironies are not negligible in the Platonic dialogues, and the various attitudes of Johannes Climacus in the Concluding Unscientfic Post-

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script reflect Kierkegaard’s designs on his readers through his design of the work. If we wish to understand Anselm the author’s achievement in the Proslogion, we must attend to the manner, as well as to the matter, of his narrator’s utterances in the ascent.

Prayer and Understanding The foregoing treatment of patterns in the ascent of the Proslogion has largely ignored chapters 14–18A, in which the narrator reflects on his failure to experience God. These chapters do not undertake the kind of philosophical analysis we see in chapters 2–13 and 18B–25. Rather, the narrator wonders why he has not experienced God, and he laments and explores this failure in prayer. These chapters clearly have a dramatic function in the narrator’s ascent, for, by delaying his progress, they create suspense. They also alert us that more is at stake for him than simply “understanding” God. Even though he begins chapter 2 with a prayer to understand God, as far as that is possible, in chapter 14 he laments his failure to experience God. Chapters 14–18A are filled with prayers, often echoing motives of longing from chapter 1. Yet, granting their dramatic function, the question arises, “Do these chapters have any philosophical function in the work?” Indeed, the question may be extended to all of the narrator’s special prayers. By “special prayers,” I mean those passages where the narrator departs from philosophical analysis (in prayer) to praise God in exalted language (9, 14, 16) or lament his failure to experience him (14, 17, 18A). To be sure, these special prayers endow the work with special qualities of devotion, and they also dramatize certain moments in the narrator’s struggle to understand and experience God. Beyond that, however, do they have any philosophical function in the unfolding action of the work? We will need to review the narrator’s final ascent in order to understand how his special prayers relate to it. But my answers may be briefly stated: his special prayers contain the seeds of his philosophical breakthroughs, and

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his recognition of failure proves crucial to his success. In these two ways, the Proslogion enacts “faith seeking understanding” and “repentance” leading to renewal and fulfillment. In the action of the work, worship is essential to philosophical insight and discovery. As in Augustine’s Confessions, the meditative texture of prayer enacts, in the small, the meditative structure of the whole work as an ascent to God. From the beginning, Anselm the narrator attempts “to raise his mind up to contemplate the things of God and to understand what he believes” (“Preface,” S 93). In this formula, worship and contemplation precede understanding and lead to it. Because the narrator raises his mind to God in prayer at every point, he eventually rises through grace to “enter into the joy of his Lord” (26, S 121). Chapters 18B–23 climax in affirmations of God’s goodness, unity, and simplicity, the latter two based upon his wholeness in eternity. We have already seen how chapters 22 and 23 close with God as “the one and highest good” (22, S 117) and “the one necessary” good (23, S 117). Each Person of the Trinity possesses unity and simplicity in the highest degree (23) because God possesses existence “properly and simply” (22, S 116). God’s unity is first explored in chapter 18B, where it is characterized by wholeness and eternity: “you are whole everywhere, and your eternity is always whole.” This wholeness defines God’s unity, for “your life and wisdom and the rest are not parts of you, but all are one, and each of them is wholly what you are and what all the rest are” (18B, S 115). The wholeness of God’s eternity is analyzed in chapters 19–21, through question and answer, before the narrator proclaims his assertions on God’s being (22) and Trinity (23) with sublime assurance. The crucial elements in these analyses are not introduced in them but appear first in Anselm the narrator’s special prayers. His first mention of “unity” in the work appears in chapter 14, and he first uses “simplicity” in the sentence immediately following. He is praising God’s greatness: “How immense is that which beholds in


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one gaze [in uno intuitu videt] whatsoever things that have been made.” He then adds “What purity, what simplicity are there!” (14, S 112). The narrator echoes the phrase uno intuitu videre with respect to his own quest not long thereafter, just after he renews his ascent (18B), and it leads him directly to explore God’s unity. God has many aspects—life, wisdom, truth, goodness, and so on—and the narrator wishes that he could “behold them in a one simultaneous gaze” (uno simul intuitu videre; 18B, S 114). In other words, he first apprehends God’s unity in a hymn of praise (14), and soon after reflects on God’s unity for the first time (18B), hoping to unify his own understanding. The language of “simplicity” returns in the following chapter, where it underscores God’s “whole eternity” and unified being: “You are neither yesterday nor today nor tomorrow, but you are simply, beyond all time [sed simpliciter es extra omne tempus]” (19, S 115). The narrator strikes the same note for God’s being in chapter 22: “You are, properly and simply” (S 116). Then, in chapter 23, he crowds together the various word forms of unity and simplicity to describe each Person of the Trinity as “not other than most highly simple unity and most highly one simplicity” (S 117). In short, Anselm the author orchestrated this movement for his narrator: he introduced words for unity and simplicity in a hymn of praise before the narrator uses them as tools of philosophical analysis. His special prayers lay the groundwork for his philosophical insights. Similarly, God’s wholeness first appears in the narrator’s exalted language in chapter 9, where he praises God as “wholly and most highly just” (totus et summe iustus; S 106) and as “wholly and most highly good” (totus summe bonus; S 107). The narrator uses the word totus (“whole”) for God five times near the beginning of the chapter, three times in close association with summe (“most highly”). Granted, he calls God “the highest good” (summum bonum) in chapter 5, but indirectly, in a rhetorical question. In chapter 9, in contrast, he addresses God directly as “most highly good” (summe bonus) at least

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three times, linking it with God as either “wholly” (totus) or “most highly just” (summe iustus; S 107–8). In other words, God’s preeminence as summus receives its first ringing affirmation in chapter 9, where the language of wholeness is first used for God, also in resounding affirmations. Totus and summus thereby work to define each other mutually. Because “whole” proves a key word in the narrator’s ascent, let us track its progress toward defining God’s “whole eternity” (tota aeternitas; 18B, S 115). The word “eternal” first appears in chapter 9, in the paradox that God, who is “wholly just,” saves those “who deserve eternal death” (S 106–7). The narrator does not use the word again until he reflects on God’s being “eternal” and “unlimited” (incircumscriptus) in chapter 13 (S 110), and he does not use the noun “eternity” until chapter 14 (S 111). In chapter 13, he conceives eternity only as endless time: although “created spirits” are said to be eternal because they do not cease to exist, once they have been created, God is uniquely eternal because he neither ceases to be, nor does he begin to be (non incipis esse; S 110). The narrator does not use the word “whole” for God’s eternity, in chapter 13, though he does us it for God’s being unlimited: “That is indeed unlimited, which is simultaneously everywhere whole” (quod simul est ubique totum; S 110). What the narrator does not say, he does not think, by definition. He understands God’s being unlimited, “simultaneously everywhere whole,” on the analogy of the soul in the body, for “the whole soul” is in each of the body’s members, because the whole soul feels in each of them (S 110–11). He has no comparable analogy of wholeness for God’s being eternal, and so he does not think it. In chapter 13, the narrator conceives of God’s eternity as extensive, everlasting throughout all time. He does not think of God’s eternity as intensive, as “whole” until the final sentence of chapter 18B (S 115). That insight, however, is foreshadowed and prepared for by his next two uses of “whole,” in his hymn of praise in chapter 16. He uses the “O” of praise to address God, “O highest and inaccessible


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light, O whole and blessed truth” (o tota et beata veritas; S 112), and he then tells this Truth, “Everywhere you are wholly present” (Ubique es tota praesens; S 113). “Truth” is traditionally understood to be eternal, and here it is linked with “wholeness” and “presence.” This is the first use of praesens in the Proslogion, and “whole presence” soon animates the narrator’s reflection on God’s eternity. He first calls God’s eternity “always whole” at the end of chapter 18 (S 115), and chapter 19 explores this whole eternity as God’s simplicity, “beyond all time” (S 115). He then analyzes God’s transcending time in the following chapter, and God’s being (praesens) provides the crucial insight: “So, then, you are always beyond [all things, even eternal ones], since you are always present to yourself” (semper tibi sis praesens; 20, S 116).12 God’s eternity and theirs is “wholly present” to God (tota tibi praesens; 20, S 115). The narrator’s praising God as tota praesens (“wholly present,” S 113) in chapter 16 foreshadows his analysis of God’s eternity as tota tibi praesens (“Wholly present to yourself”; 20, S 115) by introducing the key word praesens and linking it with God’s wholeness. In the final chapters of the work, “wholeness” modulates into ecstatic “fullness.” At the beginning of chapter 24, the narrator commands his soul to raise up his “whole intellect” (totum intellectum; S 117) to contemplate God’s goodness. This is fulfilled at the end of chapter 25, when he envisions all the blessed loving God “with their whole heart, their whole mind, and their whole soul” (toto corde, tota mente, et tota anima; 25B, S 120). In the following chapter, this “wholeness” is transformed into “fullness”: the blessed experience joy “with their full heart, with their full mind, and with their full soul” (pleno corde, plena mente, plena anima), for the “whole human being is full” (pleno toto homine) of that joy “which exceeds all measure” (26, S 121). In the previous section, we saw how “containing” imagery prepares the way for its being surpassed in the final 12. Gregory Schufreider has tibi, following F. S. Schmitt 1962. Schmitt 1938 has ibi, recording tibi as a significant other reading.

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chapters of the Proslogion. So, too, the language of “wholeness” is surpassed and fulfilled in the narrator’s joy that is “full and more than full” (26, S 120–21). In sum, the crucial features of the narrator’s final analysis of God are introduced in his special prayers and passages of exalted language. God’s unity (14), simplicity (14), and presence (16) first appear in hymns of praise. His wholeness (totus) first appears in the exalted language of chapter 9, where his being “most highly good” (summus bonus) receives its first wholehearted affirmation. The diffusion of God’s goodness to the blessed uses the language of wholeness for their perfect love, which is fulfilled in their fullness of joy. Chapter 9 also contains the narrator’s first hymn of praise in the work, and it, too, foreshadows the finale of his ascent. The hymn begins “O the depth of your goodness” (O altitudo bonitatis tuae; 9, S 107), and we are meant to understand that Anselm the narrator is suddenly moved by powerful grace. He exclaims “O” four times, praising God’s mercy (O misericordia) and the immensity of his goodness (O immensitas bonitatis Dei; O immensa bonitas; S 107). Only one other special prayer in the work addresses God with the “O” of praise, in chapter 16 (S 112; quoted above). Chapter 9 thereby contains the narrator’s longest and most exalted hymn of praise in the ascent, and its theme is God’s goodness. He draws on the biblical imagery of God as a “fountain” (fons), or source of water, whose abundance gives life. Shortly before his first “O” of praise, he describes a “stream of mercy” as welling up “from the deepest and most secret place of [God’s] goodness.” In the hymn proper, he calls it a river “in full flood” (flumen) nourishing us with “its abundant sweetness and sweet abundance” (9, S 107). Amid this imagery of overflowing abundance, he uses the word “fullness” for the first time in the Proslogion, for the “fullness of [God’s] goodness” (plenitudine bonitatis; S 107). “Fullness” does not appear again until the final words of chapter 25, with “the fullness of joy,” followed by many uses of “full” in chapter 26.


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In its subject, language, and style, then, chapter 9 foreshadows the final movement of Anselm the narrator’s ascent. The noun “goodness” (bonitas) is ascribed to God nine times in the chapter, and he is called “good” (bonus) ten times or more, and “most highly good” (summe bonus) three times. Equally strong affirmations of God’s goodness do not occur again until the narrator’s final words on God’s being (22) and the Trinity (23). Moreover, the narrator does not speak about the abundance of God’s goodness again until chapter 24, and then largely in rhetorical questions. In the following chapter, however, he uses both the language and the style of abundance, as good is added to good (25A) and then joy mounts to joy in fullness (25B). In chapters 24–26, he does not use the water imagery of chapter 9, for he is presenting an analysis, albeit with mounting excitement. Nevertheless, his analysis of the diffusion of God’s goodness reworks the overflowing abundance of chapter 9 as an ascending climax. So far, we have seen how Anselm the narrator’s praise of God prepares for his philosophical breakthroughs and foreshadows the climax of his ascent. His critical self-examination and laments in chapters 14–18A remain to be considered. But because his selfexamination gives rise to hymns of praise, whose effect we have examined, it will be easy to show how the narrator’s recognition of failure proves crucial to his success. The narrator’s self-reflective turn, in chapter 14, soon leads to the hymn of praise where he recognizes God’s unity and simplicity for the first time. His self-criticism thereby leads him to a new sense of God’s greatness. He realizes that he has understood things about God “with true certitude” (14, S 111), yet though he has found God in some respects, he has not experienced God. He has seen God’s light and truth, and so he has seen God somewhat, but not truly, not “as you are” (14, S 111). This leads him, first, to lament the darkness and narrowness of his vision, compared with God’s brilliance and immensity (S 111–12), and then to hymn the greatness of God’s

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light, the vastness of his truth, and the immensity of his beholding all creation “in one gaze” (uno intuitu; S 112). As we have seen, this apprehension of God’s unity is followed by praise for his simplicity—both ideas prove crucial to the narrator’s subsequent analysis. His critical self-examination and sense of his own inadequacy lead him directly to new intuitions about God, which he later develops. Moreover, the contrast between God’s greatness and his own narrowness of vision leads the narrator to a new understanding in chapter 15: God is “greater than can be thought” (S 112). He explicitly revises the formula of chapter 2, where God is “that than which nothing greater can be thought” (S 101). He is led to this new and higher insight by reflecting on his failure to experience God. His sense of his own limits leads him to a new understanding of God. His hymning the greatness of God’s light, in chapter 14, also leads him to a new understanding in chapter 16, and it foreshadows his later analysis of God’s eternity. The newness of his insight is marked by his beginning each of the first three sentences with Vere, “Truly” (S 112). The chapter begins, “Truly, Lord, this is the inaccessible light in which you dwell” (16; 2 Tim. 6:16). With “this” he is referring to something he said two chapters, and seven sentences, earlier: “For how great is that light, from which shines every truth that illuminates the rational mind” (14, S 112; cf. Jn 1:9). The narrator now understands, and emphasizes by his repetition of “Truly,” that “whatever I see, I see by means of” God’s light illuminating his mind (16, S 112). Hence, he does see God. Everything he understands truly about God implies his vision of God. True, his vision cannot penetrate this light so as to examine (pervideat) God himself there. Nevertheless, he understands that he is bathed in the light of God’s presence, even though he does not experience, or “feel,” God (non te sentio; 16). This paradox gives rise, as we have seen, to the “O” of praise—”O highest and inaccessible light, O whole and blessed truth” (16, S 112—and to his insight that this truth is “everywhere wholly present” (Ubique es tota praesens; 16, S 113), foreshad-


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owing his analysis of God’s eternity as “whole” (19–21). As in chapter 14, the narrator’s sense of his limits entails his praise for God’s greatness, and this praise contains the seeds for his analysis to come. In these ways, then, the narrator’s recognition of failure proves crucial to his success, and the second half of the Proslogion thereby enacts the interplay between “repentance” and insight. I put “repentance” in quotation marks because, clearly, the narrator is not regretting any sins. Nevertheless, his self-reflective turn at the center of the Proslogion recalls the prodigal son’s movement of repentance in Luke’s parable: “However, returning unto himself [In se autem reversus], he said, ‘How many hired servants in my father’s house abound with bread, and I here perish with hunger?’” (Lk 15:17). The prodigal son’s “returning unto himself” leads directly to his rising in return to his father: “I will arise [surgam] and go to my father” (Lk 15:18). So, too, Anselm the narrator’s recognition of his failure to experience God, in chapter 14, leads to his ascent to his Father. This recognition rises to anguish in chapter 18A, and his anguish leads him to pray for God’s assistance. He thereby renews his quest for understanding what God is (18B) and, as we have seen, his quest is brought to fulfillment beyond his expectations. So, too, the prodigal son hopes to “abound with bread” as a hired servant, and yet he is welcomed back as a son and given the feast of the fatted calf. The pattern of that parable—repentance and return, culminating in fulfillment beyond expectations—is enacted in the Proslogion. In short, the narrator’s critical self-examination contributes directly to the eventual success of his quest. In this way, the work enacts a fundamental Christian pattern: repentance leads to renewal and fulfillment. Had the narrator merely congratulated himself on arriving at “certain truth and true certitude” (14, S 111) about God, his progress would have been stalled or ended. Instead, his sense of his own narrowness of vision leads him to praise God’s greatness, and his praise contains the crucial ideas that advance his quest. We are meant to understand that God’s grace comes to the narrator not

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only as he pursues his analysis, but even as he laments his failure. In his humility, he is exalted. He does not give up his quest because, even in the midst of failure, God gives him the graces of praise and insight. These graces may be distinguished but they cannot be separated. In chapters 14 and 16, the narrator’s praise of God contains the crucial insights that enable his ascent to succeed. In this way, the Proslogion enacts “faith seeking understanding”—Anselm’s original title for the work (Preface, S 94)—because acts of praise provide insight. We tend to view “faith seeking understanding” as the narrator’s attempt to understand what he already believes, treating the work as a kind of Scholastic analysis, albeit in a devotional style. This onedirectional view regards “faith” as a content already given, which philosophical analysis explores to give “understanding.” But as the Proslogion unfolds, we witness a dynamic interplay between “faith” and “understanding,” as praise itself gives rise to new understandings. “Faith seeking understanding” implies a dynamism in faith itself, an intrinsic movement of “seeking” for insight. Acts of faith during the narrator’s journey, marked by passages of exalted language, enable his philosophical quest to succeed. To be sure, philosophical analysis is necessary to achieve fuller understanding, and we should understand God’s grace to be as active in the narrator’s analyses as in his acts of praise. Nevertheless, “faith seeking understanding” is not merely the theme of the Proslogion but its action. The prayer that opens chapter 2 reminds us that God “gives understanding to faith” (S 101), as he also gives the grace of faith. In the dynamism of the narrator’s dialogue with God, the grace of understanding comes in acts of faith and praise, as well as in philosophical analysis. Hence chapters 14–18A function philosophically, as well as dramatically, in the work as a whole. Indeed, in a work like the Proslogion, as in a Platonic dialogue, “philosophy” and “drama” may be distinguished but should not be separated: what Anselm the author accomplished in the work is not limited to what Anselm the narra-

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tor says. Anselm the narrator never reflects on the role of his critical self-reflection in his progress, nor on what his acts of praise contribute to his understanding, but Anselm the author surely did. The economy of the Proslogion reveals its author’s comprehension of every move in his narrator’s ascent. In other words, Anselm the author’s philosophical accomplishment in the work should be measured not merely by what it says, but also by what it does. This accomplishment included his understanding of the roles of praise and critical self-reflection in the analysis of God. The work reflects this authorial understanding by its action, not in its utterance. If we want to understand Anselm’s achievement in the Proslogion, we need to go beyond his narrator’s utterances to the author’s implied understandings. The dramatic action of the work proves an indispensable key to Anselm’s philosophy.

Reconfigured Understandings Because a Christian-Platonist ascent unfolds as “a return to the Origin,” later and higher stages “contain” lower ones, and therefore sublate them. Earlier understandings are reconfigured at higher levels. In theory at least, nothing is ever lost, ever completely left behind. As we have seen, the language of “wholeness” and the imagery of “containing” come to have gradually heightened meanings in the narrator’s ascent, and finally they disappear. But they disappear only to be fulfilled by higher language at a higher stage, for they are sublated by “fullness” and “overflowing.” Anselm the narrator does not notice this process. He is so involved in the dynamism of his ascent that he never reflects on these sublations. Anselm the author, however, understood them intimately, as their careful orchestration in the ascent reveals. If we want to understand the mind of Anselm in the Proslogion, we must explore the relations between the stages of the ascent. Anselm the narrator does not remark on them; Anselm the author left them for the reader’s meditation. This is too large a subject to be treated in any depth here. What follows should be considered as a sketch, a set of remarks, indicat-

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ing the kind of exploration the Proslogion calls for, as far as I understand it. “Reconfigured Understandings” is simply another way of reflecting on the narrator’s ascent and its implications. In one sense, every time a key word is used at a higher level, its meaning is changed, and therefore reconfigured. This section, however, looks at how higher levels reconfigure earlier understandings without using their key words. The understanding of God’s eternity as “endless time,” in chapter 13 (S 110), is obviously transformed when chapters 19–21 reconsider it as a “whole eternity” (18B ff, S 115). But what happens to “eternity” in chapters 23–26, where it does not appear? What happens to “unity,” so vital to the narrator’s progress in chapters 18B–23, after which it is not used? What happens to praesens? Are they no longer relevant, and so they are merely surpassed, or are they implied in some way we are meant to discover through meditation? The structure of the Christian-Platonist ascent invites us to ask meditative questions like these because it assumes that nothing is ever lost, and everything is fulfilled at its highest level. The meditative ascent invites us to meditate on the rationale of its structure, if we would understand it fully. Such meditation involves us more deeply in the work. Anselm designed the Proslogion to attract this kind of meditation, for it enables the work’s ascending transformation of perspectives to work more deeply upon its readers. Originally, these were monks seeking to transform their lives; their meditating on transformations in the Proslogion was designed to assist this process. They were adept at meditating on foreshadowing and fulfillment in the Bible. Anselm expected them to bring the same skills to bear on his work. The remarks that follow are not, of course, a medieval monastic meditation. But the questions are meditative and, in my view, Anselm implied them by the genre and structure of the Proslogion that he created. I will begin with questions whose answers should cause little difficulty. “Unity” is reconfigured at the end of the work as the unity of


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God becomes the unity of the Mystical Body of Christ in a single word, “joy.” The word “one” (unum) is prominent in the narrator’s resounding affirmations of God as “good” (22) and as Trinity (23): He is “the one and highest good” (22) and “the one necessary” being (23, S 117). The last use of the word comes early in chapter 25, when the narrator commands himself to “Love the one good [unum bonum] in which are all goods—and it suffices” (S 118, my emphasis). He then enumerates seven goods of body and seven goods of soul, all of which are “there,” in the “one good” envisioned by the blessed (25A, S 118–19). This is a rhetorical divisio, enumerating aspects of what is one. He then reflects on the “joy” experienced “where so much good is” (25B, S 120), and this, too, culminates in a unity. He begins by addressing his own “human heart” as “you,” in the second-person singular, but he shifts subtly to the third-person singular (from nullus, “no one,” to quisque, “each”). Then, at the end of the chapter, he shifts to the third-person plural, “they,” yet combines it with the singular so as to form all of the blessed into one being: “Surely they will rejoice with a whole heart, whole mind, and whole soul such that their whole heart, whole mind, and whole soul will not be sufficient [non sufficiat] for the fullness of joy” (S 120). Sufficiat is a singular verb with what appears to be a plural subject, “their whole heart, whole mind, and whole soul.” The unusual syntax affirms, however, that “they” are now so unified as a whole people that a singular verb indicates their joy. Moreover, each is so whole an individual that heart, mind, and soul are fused into unity, indicated by the singular verb. Although the narrator does not use the word “one” or mention “the Mystical Body of Christ,” his final sentence enacts unity, and we know that he is referring to the eternal Church of the blessed. It is the last unity in the Proslogion because it is the final unity in the Christian Bible and Creed. The agency of this unity is “joy.” The blessed “enter into the joy of the Lord” (26, S 121; Mt. 25:21), and the simple unity of the Trin-

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ity (23) thereby communicates its Oneness to them by taking them into Itself. Anselm the narrator refers to “entering into the joy of the Lord” three times in his final chapter (S 121–22), and the last of these comes in his final sentence. Appearing in the final two clauses of the work, it receives particular emphasis: “until I enter into the joy of my Lord, who is three and one God blessed for all ages” (26, S 122). The narrator envisions entering into the Trinity’s own joy. This is not a joy that God has and bestows, as though it were separate from his being, for everything God has, he is. Rather, this joy is the divine life itself and the blessed do not merely receive it, but enter into it. By entering into God’s unity, they are unified—made whole, or perfected—as individuals and as the Mystical Body of Christ. In this way, they are also made eternal, and therefore praesens. The words “eternal” and praesens do not appear after chapter 22, despite their importance in chapters 18B–22. But because everything that rises must converge, in a Christian-Platonist ascent, the work invites us to look for how these ideas are implied in its final chapters. The analysis of the Trinity (23, S 117) elucidates God’s eternal “presence to [himself]” (semper tibi sis praesens; 20, S 116), though the key words are never used. Nevertheless, the relations between the Three Persons clearly show how the Divine Unity can “inwardly” reflect himself so as to be present to himself: the Father generates the Word, and the two are made one by their mutual Love, the Holy Spirit (23). “Eternity” is also implied in the “unity” and “simplicity” of each Person, as well as in the Trinity as a whole (23), for these key words help to define God’s “whole eternity” earlier. Moreover, the eternal life of the blessed, in chapter 25, is reflected by verbs in the future tense describing their good and their joy, and their entering into God (26) confirms it. They become “whole” as individuals and as the Church by participating in God’s “whole eternity” (18B–22), where he is “wholly present” (tota praesens; 16, S 113). By entering into God’s presence, they enter his eternal present. Their


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blessedness, like his, will endure “for all ages” (in saecula; 26, S 122). Nevertheless, the sense of eternity communicated in chapters 23–26 is not that of “endless time,” as in chapter 13, but that of the “whole eternity” (18B, S 115) of God’s presence as “only present being” (tantum praesens esse; 22, S 116). The blessed are so rapt in the overflowing joy of the Lord “now” that an endless future is irrelevant. Now we already knew, from the Christian tradition, that the company of the blessed is held to be “one” and “eternal,” and that eternity is the nunc stans (“the standing now,” or enduring present). Hence, once we know to look for these key ideas in Anselm’s final chapters, we readily find them there. Anselm did not rely on the tradition to do his work for him, but he did orchestrate the ascent to imply the key ideas even without the key words. Nonetheless, the theological tradition makes these interpretive moves familiar, and therefore easy to recognize. So let us test the integrity of the ascent with a more difficult problem. The theological progress of the narrator’s ascent, in chapters 18B–22, hearkens back to themes in chapters 5, 12, and 13. His analysis of God’s omniscience (6) and omnipotence (7) is entirely ignored, and except for his hymn to God’s goodness (9), so, too, is his examination of God’s mercy and justice (8–11). Are these genuinely abandoned, or do they exist in the final ascent under some other form? Granted, they are part of the narrator’s aim to “understand what we believe about [God]” (2, S 101) and so remain a vital part of the work at its lower stage, at least. But the structure of the Christian-Platonist ascent invites us to see whether these understandings at a lower stage are reconfigured at a higher one. Let us consider how God’s omniscience and omnipotence, in chapters 6 and 7, are reconfigured by later understandings. The narrator’s analysis in chapter 13 provides a ground for understanding these earlier chapters, though he does not explore it. Nevertheless, it is obvious that God knows everything (6) because

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he is everywhere and always (13, S 110). Moreover, God is omnipotent (7) because he is “whole at the same time everywhere” (13, S 110, my emphasis). Though God is “uncircumscribed,” he is not diffused in space, like sunlight in air or water in a cloth, because he is not a body. Rather, God is wholly present at once in every place, and this is why he is omniscient and omnipotent. In this way, chapter 13 grounds, and thereby reconfigures, the understandings of chapters 6 and 7. But the analysis of “eternity” in chapter 13 is explicitly revised in chapters 18B–21, and this enables a magnified sense of God’s omniscience and omnipotence. As we have seen, in chapter 13 the narrator understands “eternity” as “endless time.” Not until he reflects on God’s “unity” (18B, S 114–15) does he begin to explore God’s eternity as “whole” (S 115). We saw earlier how, as this exploration unfolds, the narrator experiences a “reversal of perspectives”: from “God is in all things” to “All things are in God.” The former draws on images of extension and gives primacy to the world, while the latter gives primacy to God, who contains all the times containing all things, being beyond them all (19–22). From this perspective, God’s omniscience and omnipotence appear to be much greater than they were in chapters 6 and 7, for the extension of worldly existence in space and time proves a limited witness to the God who contains and surpasses it. In other words, in chapters 19–22 God is much bigger, as it were, than he is in chapters 6 and 7, and the world is, concomitantly, much smaller. The difference may be measured by different views of God’s creative activity as the ascent unfolds. In chapter 5, the narrator asserts, in a rhetorical question, that God “made [ fecit] all other things out of nothing” (S 104, my emphasis). Here God’s creation of the world is a past act. This is true, as far as it goes. But it does not go as far as the conclusion of chapter 22, which implies that God is continually creating all things: “You, wholly sufficient to yourself, needing nothing, whom all things need so that they may be and so that they may


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be well” (S 117). In chapter 5, the world needed God in order to come into existence “in the beginning” but, it would seem, not to exist now. “All things” do not seem ontologically dependent on God until the end of chapter 22. In chapters 5–13, in other words, the world has a kind of independent existence and God pervades it with his knowledge and power. In chapter 22, in contrast, the world is utterly dependent on God in every moment. In chapters 6 and 7, God’s omniscience and omnipotence fill the world. This is true, as far as it goes, but chapter 22 reconfigures it: the world does not exist except in God’s knowledge and power. The “all” in God’s being all knowing and all powerful is much greater in chapter 22 than in chapters 6 and 7. The final chapters of the Proslogion, I would argue, heighten this understanding, as they implicitly heighten every earlier understanding in the work. In chapter 25, we are meant to understand, God gives the narrator a prophetic vision of eschatologically transformed life. Theologically, this is the new creation, the final and perfect one, and therefore the greatest manifestation of God’s omnipotence. Within the Proslogion, chapter 25 is also the greatest manifestation of God’s omniscience and grace, as he gives the narrator a vision of “the life to come” and a foretaste of its eternal beatitude. Here, too, God’s justice and mercy (8–11) receive their highest manifestation in the work. The narrator has prayed and labored ardently for an experience of God, and now he is being granted that experience in his vitals, his intima (25B, S 120). This is his reward for all his efforts, in justice, as it were. At the same time, his experience of “entering into the joy of the Lord” (26, S 121–22) far exceeds anything he could have desired, and this is God’s mercy. There may be other ways in which God’s omniscience and omnipotence are reconfigured in the Proslogion, and certainly other questions can be raised about relations between the stages of the ascent. I am trying to illustrate the kind of thinking that a ChristianPlatonist ascent is designed to engender. Clearly, the more remote

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the stages of the ascent are from one another, the more difficult, and more speculative, the meditation required. Let me turn, then, to the famous argument in chapters 2–4 and consider how it may be reconfigured by later understandings in the work. My remarks do not concern the logic of the argument, the most bruited scholarly issue, but its character or, to be more precise, its characters: the narrator who seeks God, the fool who denies him, and the God who is sought. Every Christian theology suggests an anthropology. Because human beings are held to be made “in God’s image,” statements about the Original often imply understandings about the image, with certain qualifications. In chapter 13, for example, Anselm the narrator reflects on God’s being unlimited and eternal in comparison to those qualities in human beings (“created spirits”). We are “unlimited” insofar as we are not confined to our bodies: the whole soul is present “in each of its members” (13), yet it can imagine and think about things “elsewhere” (alicubi; S 110–11). The human soul can be in two places at once, as it were, while God is wholly present everywhere. Similarly, the human soul is eternal because it has no end, though it does have a beginning, while God has neither beginning nor ending. God is uniquely unlimited and eternal, while human beings are unlimited and eternal in a qualified sense. This analogy opens the possibility of meditating on how God’s later attributes in the Proslogion may be applied to human beings, and with what qualifications. In what sense can a human being be considered “one,” “whole,” and so on? In what ways, if any, does the narrator’s rethinking of “eternity” in chapters 19–21 apply to human beings? We have already seen how the Proslogion answers these questions in its final chapters. Each of the blessed becomes whole and unified in the vision of God, where the threefold “whole heart, whole mind, and whole soul” are given a singular verb (25, S 120). At the same time, all of the blessed are unified in the Mystical Body of Christ and so are made eternal: they “enter into the joy of the


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Lord” and thereby partake of his eternity in a “joy that is full and more than full” (26, S 120–21). Yet we might well wonder, here below and short of the beatific vision, in what sense a human being is “one” and “whole.” Can the narrator reflect on God’s “unity” without being “one” in himself, in some sense? I am arguing that Anselm designed the work precisely to raise questions like this and to leave them unanswered. The movement of the work reveals his understanding that human beings are in via, on the road of a journey, where the final destination is always present to lead us onward yet still ahead before us. A human being, then, is a “unity” and a “wholeness” in progress or, if you prefer, in process. “One” and “whole” thereby prove analogous terms, not only when used of God, but also when used of his images. There are degrees of “oneness” and “wholeness” in human beings, and these do not reach perfection short of the beatific vision. The same point may be viewed from a different perspective. Anselm the narrator remarks on the relationship between the divine Original and himself as image near the end of chapter 1: “You have created in me this your image, so that mindful of you I may think of you [ut tui memor te cogitem], I may love you” (S 100). Yet this image has been so effaced by vices and sins that “it is not able to do what it has been made for, unless you renew and reform it” (S 100).13 In the course of the Proslogion, however, the narrator becomes ever more mindful of God as he ponders God more deeply and is raised up to love him with superabundant joy. In other words, the work gives witness to God’s renewing and reforming Anselm the narrator. The 13. Anselm is implying Augustine’s psychological trinity of memory, understanding, and will, which reflects the original Trinity. See Saint Augustine, The Trinity, translation and notes by Edmund Hill, O.P., edited by John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, vol. 5 (Brooklyn, N.Y.: New City Press, 1990), esp. Book 10. He is also alluding to Augustine’s final prayer in that work: “Let me be mindful of you; let me understand you; let me love you. Increase all these things in me until you have remade me to the wholeness intended” (15.28.51).

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narrator’s growing clarification about God implies God’s gradual purification of him. As the narrator understands more surely that God is one, whole, highest good, and so on, he is himself being remade in higher degrees of unity, wholeness, and goodness. To be sure, he cannot sustain the final vision of joy, and his closing words in the work form a prayer to meditate on it until God brings him to the full reality. Nevertheless, Anselm the narrator has been changed by his ascent: his new understanding of God has renewed the divine image he is. From this perspective, we may reflect on “the fool” in chapters 2–4, who “has said in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Ps 13:1). Scholars generally treat this as merely a biblical tag on which to hang an argument. I intend to show, however, that Anselm the author meant us to reflect on the whole of Psalm 13 in relation to the whole Proslogion. The fool remains a character in the work as a whole, even though he is not mentioned after chapter 4. Nevertheless, just as the narrator changes in the course of his ascent, so should our understanding of the fool. The full dimensions of the fool’s denial of God appear only over the whole course of the Proslogion, though they are explored in their negative sense in Psalm 13. I will limit myself to two remarks. First, according to the Proslogion, as we just saw, our power of thought arises from our being created in God’s image. He created us to be mindful of Him, think of Him, and love Him (1, S 100). Hence, in Anselm’s view, the fool’s denial of God implies a radical denial of himself. The performance of the denial wholly denies its content. The power of thought cannot really contradict what enables thought in the first place, and this is why the fool “could not think it” (cogitare non potuit; 4, S 103, my emphasis).14 He could say it in his heart and perhaps believe it as deeply as he believes anything. But his act of thinking so contradicts 14. Gregory Schufreider, Confessions of a Rational Mystic, pp. 185–87, interprets the impossibility of thinking God’s nonexistence in chapter 4 in a different, though compatible, way.


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the content of the thought that that content cannot truly be thought, in the full sense of cogitare argued in chapter 4. An image cannot deny the existence of its Original without radically denying itself. The formula “that than which nothing greater can be thought” and the ensuing argument are designed, in part, to reveal to the fool his radical “absurdity” (3, S 103). He does not know that his denial of God fundamentally denies itself and himself. The argument attempts to reveal the fool’s self-contradiction and thereby enable him to correct his path in life. Second, he needs such correction. For the fool of Psalm 13 is not some modern atheist, but one whose contempt for God makes him ruthless. Such fools are “abominable in their ways” (Ps 13:1), and “they have all gone astray”: they are “swift to shed blood. Destruction and unhappiness [are] in their ways: and the way of peace they have not known” (v. 3). The ascending path of the Proslogion reveals just how radical the fool’s self-contradiction is, for his denial of God cuts him off from the profound aspirations that animate the narrator’s ascent and are fulfilled in its final chapters. The fool—insipiens, “unwise” and “tasteless”—will never taste the joy of the beatific vision. Nevertheless, the Proslogion implies, he longs for that joy, by his very nature as a human being. As Augustine put it, God “made us toward [himself], and our heart is restless until it rests in [him]” (Conf. 1.1.1). In Anselm’s view, the fool deeply desires to experience the oneness, wholeness, self-presence, and love recorded in chapter 25, and the superabundant Joy that bestows them. The fool’s denial of God denies his innate aspirations to unity, wholeness, and love. He thereby condemns himself to “destruction and unhappiness,” and he is swift to do violence against others because, by his denial, he already commits violence against himself. In chapters 2–4, we see how and why Anselm the narrator criticizes the fool, at that level. Yet Anselm the author’s full critique of the fool emerges only when we meditate on the Proslogion as a whole in relation to the fool in Psalm 13.

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Just as our understanding of the narrator and the fool are reconfigured over the work as a whole, so, too, is our understanding of God in the famous argument. One of these reconfigurations is well understood because the narrator makes it explicit: “that than which nothing greater can be thought,” in chapter 2 (S 101), becomes “[y]ou are greater than can be thought,” in chapter 15 (S 112). In theory at least, every new stage in the ascent fills out and clarifies the narrator’s understanding of God as having “the truest and therefore the greatest being of all things” (verrissime omnium et ideo maxime omnium habes esse; 3, S 103). Every new understanding of an issue implicitly reconfigures an earlier one. I will remark on only three.15 The first reconfiguration is so slight that English translations usually ignore it. It comes in the first sentence of chapter 5 and turns on a single word. In chapters 2–3, God is “that than which nothing greater is able [possit] to be thought.” Chapter 5 changes possit to valet (S 105) which means “can, is able” but also “it benefits,” as in its English cognate “avails.” Thus, with valet, the phrase can be translated “that than which nothing greater avails to be thought.” In other words, it benefits us to think this Being “than which nothing greater can be thought.” The implied notion of benefit subtly introduces the notion of “goodness.” It thereby prepares for the narrator’s characterizing God’s “greatest being” (3, S 103) as “highest good” and “whatever is better to be than not be” (5, S 104). The further reconfiguration in chapter 15 uses both verbs: “but you are something greater than can [possit] be thought. For since it avails [valet] that something of this kind be thought to be .l.l.” (S 112). Valet is usually construed as a simple synonym for possit, and that is

15. Scholars most commonly interpret the argument in chapters 2–4 in light of the earlier Monologion, rather than the later chapters of the Proslogion. See, e.g., G. R. Evans, Anselm and Talking about God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), pp. 39–66; R. W. Southern, St. Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 113–37; and Gregory Schufreider, Confessions of a Rational Mystic, pp. 99–102, 154–61, et passim.


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true, as far as it goes. But in missing the overtone of “it benefits,” the construal apprehends the Proslogion as merely an argument when it is, primarily, a spiritual exercise. The point is crucial. The Proslogion is Anselm the narrator’s struggle “to raise his own mind to the contemplation of God” (Preface). The narrator is engaged in a spiritual exercise, a meditative effort. The famous argument in chapters 2–4 plays a part in this effort, as do the passages of philosophical analysis. But, as we have seen Anselm Stolz insist, they are never merely argument or analysis. First and foremost, they are meditative movements of the narrator’s mind toward God. The narrator’s subtle substitution of valet for possit is no merely rhetorical variatio. He is saying that it benefits us when we attempt to think the Being greater than can be thought. God made us “in his image” in order to do just that (1, S 100). The climax of his ascent realizes this benefit in superabundant joy. Second, this “Joy” is God’s final name in the Proslogion. “The joy of the Lord” (gaudium Domini; 26, S 121–22) is not an objective genitive—the joy that the Lord has—but a subjective one: the Joy that the Lord is. He is “fullness of joy” (25B, S 120) and more than fullness (26, S 121). This joy is the last word in the Proslogion on God’s having maxime esse (3, S 103), “the greatest being.” “Being” has become “joy” and “greatest” is now “full and more than full,” that which goes “beyond measure” (supra modum; 26, S 121). Indeed, although nothing can be greater than “greatest,” “greatest” implies a measure and so is not great enough, for God is “greater than can be thought” (15, S 112). To be sure, God does have “the greatest being,” as chapter 3 affirms. Yet because the narrator’s intellectual vision of God grows over the course of his ascent, “greatest” itself becomes greater and greater. Chapters 18B–26 progressively reconfigure God’s superlative greatness. In this progressive reconfiguration, the Proslogion enacts the familiar truth that all our language about God is analogical and inadequate. God’s being always exceeds whatever predications we make

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of it. However true they are as far as they go, they can never go far enough. Anselm the narrator is so involved in his ascending visions that he does not comment on the inadequacy of his language; Anselm the author implied it in the movement of the Proslogion. Hence, even the narrator’s “ecstatic” (and highly traditional) utterances about the Trinity in chapter 23 should be understood as ultimately inadequate, beautiful though they are. The Trinitarian dynamism of Good (Father), Truth (Son), and Love (Holy Spirit) is reconfigured by the superabundant and transfiguring “Joy of the Lord.” When the narrator recognizes, at the summit of his ascent, that the experience of God ultimately exceeds all measure, all his earlier language is implicitly reconfigured as inadequate. Finally, because the narrator ascends to a vision of God as the Trinity, we have warrant for seeking Trinitarian analogies in the three chapters of the famous argument. This may be considered a merely linguistic game today, but for Anselm and his contemporaries exploring Trinitarian analogies was a common theme for meditation, and the meditative structure of the Proslogion invites it. The argument, in fact, is framed by such analogies. A common name for the Holy Spirit was “the gift of God” (donum Dei), and the Son was commonly called the Word and associated with Truth (cf. 23, S 117).16 These analogues enable us to see how the narrator’s opening and closing prayers in the argument allude to the Three Persons. Chapter 2 opens, “Therefore, Lord [Father], you who give [Spirit] understanding [Son] to faith.” The end of chapter 4 evokes the same analogies: “Thanks be to you, good Lord [Father], thanks be to you, because what I first believed with you giving [Spirit], I now so understand [Son] with you illuminating [Spirit] .l.l.” (S 104). Moreover, the argument itself has Trinitarian and incarnational

16. For the Holy Spirit as “the gift of God,” see Acts 2:38, Rom 5:5, and Confessions 13.7–9.


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analogies. In his “Preface,” Anselm described how, after a long and frustrating struggle, the “one argument” he was seeking came to him in a moment of grace and gave him joy (S 93). Evidently, this “one argument” included the key formula “that than which nothing greater can be thought,” even though the moment of inspiration may well have embraced much more.17 This key formula, then, is a “word,” analogous to the Word, inspired by the Holy Spirit. It unites a physical sound (vox) and a nonphysical meaning (res) when it is rightly understood (4, S 103). This is analogous to the incarnate Word, visibly Man and invisibly God. Moreover, both the Anselmian word and the incarnate Word are engendered by the Holy Spirit and point unambiguously to the Father. For this Spirit-given “word,” when rightly and truly thought (4), unites existence “in the intellect” (in intellectu), analogous to the Son, and existence in reality (in re), analogous to the Father (2). In the famous argument, as in Christian teaching about Christ, a divinely given word is manifested in the world to unite human beings with the Father. From this perspective, the logic of the argument is Anselm’s original contribution to theology, but its truth depends on its deep analogy with the saving truth of Incarnation and Trinity. Contemporary philosophers interested in Anselm’s argument are not likely to find this analogy compelling, and I cannot blame them. By contemporary notions of what counts as philosophy, the analogy is not relevant. But it is relevant to the kind of work Anselm wrote: a meditative ascent by Anselm the narrator, inviting further meditation by the reader. Anselm wrote the Proslogion as a spiritual exercise for meditative readers, and he hoped that they would discover how the argument in chapters 2–4 foreshadows the work’s Trinitarian finale by containing Trinitarian analogies. Because the work is a coherent whole, its beginning foreshadows its ending, and 17. G. R. Evans, in Anselm and Talking about God, pp. 46–49, argues that Anselm’s inspiration was not the key formula of chapter 2 but “an axiom” that entailed it and the rest of the book’s exploration of God.

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Anselm invited his readers to understand the relations between the two. Because everything that rises must converge in a meditative ascent, key words are transformed in the course of the journey. Anselm designed their transformations to effect the meditative reader’s transformation. The interpretations I have argued may be rather distant from the interests of Anselm scholars. Nevertheless, they represent the kind of interpretive work that Anselm expected from his meditative readers when he crafted his meditative ascent. Despite the amount of scholarship on it, the Proslogion as a whole contains unexplored riches. I have tried to show how Anselm the author not only crafted the subtle beauties of its intellectual ascent but also implied understandings by relations between its stages. We have seen how even the same key word comes to have different meanings as the ascent progresses. God “is always” (semper) in chapter 13 (S 110) and in chapter 20 (S 116), yet the latter assertion implies more than the former, because it contains, as it were, the analysis of God’s “whole eternity” in chapters 19–21. Similarly, God is called “the highest good” (summum bonum) in chapter 5 and in chapter 22, yet the narrator makes a significant journey in his understanding between the two, and so the latter proves a concomitantly greater assertion. This change in meanings at different levels is characteristic of a Christian-Platonist ascent. Reconfigured understandings are built into its very structure. They tend to be missed when scholars think of the work as an “argument” written by the historical Anselm. They emerge more clearly when we think of the Proslogion as Anselm the author described it in his “Preface,” as the journey “of one striving to elevate his own mind to the contemplation of God and of seeking to understand what he believes.”

CHAPTER 5

RECOLLECTING ONESELF Meditative Movement in The Consolation of Philosophy

UNLIKE THE Confessions and the Proslogion, which present themselves as ascents unfolding in the present, Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy presents itself as the recollection of a discursive journey that occurred in the past.1 According to its fiction, Philosophy, a mysterious female figure, appeared to Boethius in prison as he was lamenting his fate in elegiac verses, listening to the muses of poetry; she banished the muses, revived Boethius from his stupor, diagnosed his spiritual illness, and provided a discursive therapy to heal him. His dialogue with Philosophy has been completed in the past, and Boethius has recollected and reconstructed it in a written work. The fiction of The Consolation of Philosophy thereby implies two Boethiuses: Boethius the prisoner, who received instruction by Philosophy in the past, and Boethius the author, who has completed her course and recalls it in writing.2 This distinction deserves more attention than it has received be1. On Boethius’s life and works in general, see Edmund Reiss, Boethius (Boston: Twayne, 1982); and Henry Chadwick, Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), more detailed than Reiss yet highly readable. Brief accounts may be found in V. E. Watts in his Introduction to his translation of The Consolation of Philosophy (London: Penguin Books, 1969) and in P. G. Walsh in his Introduction and Notes to his translation (London: Oxford University Press, 1999). 2. This distinction is parallel to that between the young Augustine, in Books 1–9, and Augustine the narrator, recalling events in the past. For other parallels between the Consolation and the Confessions, see Anna Crabbe, “Literary Design in

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Recollecting Oneself

cause the state of the prisoner’s mind at the conclusion of Philosophy’s teaching is unclear. In his last sustained utterance, near the end of the work (V, 3), the prisoner quite misunderstands the relationship between Divine Providence and human free will, and so he concludes that our prayers are unavailing and we are cut off from our Divine Source.3 Philosophy labors to correct these misapprehensions, and her long discourse (V, 4–6) receives but a few brief responses from the prisoner. Hence, when we consider only the past discourse recorded in The Consolation of Philosophy, the quality of Boethius the prisoner’s understanding at the end remains unclear. But when we consider the fact of his recollecting the discourse in its details in order to write the work, we know that Boethius the author has meditated thoroughly on the instruction he received. Although the prisoner’s final understanding may be fragile or partial, the author’s is firm and entire, for he has recreated Philosophy’s dialogue with himself and thereby assimilated it. In other words, this distinction between Boethius the prisoner and Boethius the author proves analogous to the difference between the De Consolatione Philosophiae,” in Boethius: His Life, Thought, and Influence, edited by Margaret T. Gibson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), pp. 237–74, esp. pp. 251–63; Reiss, Boethius, pp. 88–93; and Paul A. Olson, The Journey to Wisdom, pp. 68–71. For Boethius’s sources and influences, Joachim Gruber’s Kommentar zu Bothius “De Consolatione Philosophiae,” Texte und Kommentare 9 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1978), is indispensable, and Friedrich Klingner’s De Boethii Consolatione Philosophiae, Philologische Untersuchungen, No. 27 (Berlin: Weidman, 1921), remains useful, as does Pierre Courcelle’s La Consolation de Philosophie dans la tradition litteraire. Antecedents et Posterite de Boece (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1967). A brief treatment of the work’s legacy may be found in Reiss, Boethius, pp. 154–61; longer accounts include Howard Rollin Patch, The Tradition of Boethius: A Study of His Importance in Medieval Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1935), and Richard A. Dwyer, Boethian Fictions: Narratives in the Medieval French Versions of the “Consolatio Philosophiae” (Cambridge, Mass.: Medieval Academy of America, 1976). 3. All my references to the work and quotations from it are taken from Boethii Philosophiae Consolatio, edited by Ludwig Bieler, Corpus Christianorum, no. 94 (Turhholt: Brepols, 1957).


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reading through the work, on the one hand, and rereading and meditating upon it, on the other. Scholars interested in the thought of the historical Boethius may find this distinction irrelevant to their questions, yet their rereading and exploring the work enacts it. The autobiographical structure of the work—past experience recalled and reconstructed in writing—implicitly calls for the kind of rereading and reflection that scholars have given it. In the course of The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius the prisoner receives the teaching that enables him to become Boethius the author of the work we have read. But he becomes the author not only by having a great memory, but also by meditating on his experience with Philosophy as a whole and thereby grasping its structure and meanings. We will eventually see that the work enacts both an extensive and an intensive recollection, a remembering of the past and a Platonist anamnesis, as the prisoner recovers a sense of his immortality of soul. Scholarship on The Consolation of Philosophy, unlike that on the Confessions and the Proslogion, has long considered it as simultaneously a literary and a philosophical work, coherent as a whole. Not only have its arguments been studied but also its literary and philosophical genres, and how the artistry of its poems figures in the argument as a whole.4 Moreover, accounts of its structure as an ascent implicitly use the principle of retrospective understanding, appeal-

4. For substantial accounts of the whole work, see Reiss, Boethius, pp. 80–153; Chadwick, Consolations, pp. 223–53; and Seth Lerer, Boethius and Dialogue: Literary Method in the “Consolation of Philosophy” (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985). Edward Kennard Rand, “On the Composition of Boethius’ Consolatio Philosophiae,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 15 (1904): 1–28, remains useful. Gerard O’Daly, The Poetry of Boethius (London: Duckworth, 1991), provides a substantial account of the poems and their role in the work. Boethius’s appeal to various genres in the work has been much considered. See Pierre Courcelle, La Consolation, pp. 17–21, on the problem and on the tradition of the consolatio, as well as Gruber, Kommentar, pp. 16–36. In addition to Lerer on dialogue, Boethius and Dialogue, see F. Anne Payne on its Menippean satire in Chaucer and Menippean Satire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981),

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ing to the ladder of cognitive acts in Book V to describe the movement of the work. This body of work enables me to abbreviate my treatment. I will first describe the structure of the ascent on the basis of Philosophy’s explicit program, what she says she is doing with the prisoner. We will then examine the progression of circle imagery, in Books II–IV, with its supersession in Book V. An account of Philosophy’s therapy as properly anamnetic follows, in the third section, for she would cure the prisoner by helping him recollect his immortality of soul, with all this implies.5 Each of these sections uses the principle of retrospective understanding in order to illuminate the pattern as a whole. My final section offers a new account of the numerological structure of The Consolation of Philosophy, based on numbers reconciling solar and lunar motions and embodying Plato’s “divided line.”

Structure of the Ascent The Consolation of Philosophy consists of five books, but the ascent proper does not begin until the beginning of Book II. In the final prose section of Book I, Philosophy diagnoses the prisoner’s illness and describes how she will begin to heal him, but her program of therapy begins in Book II. At the beginning of Books II, III, IV, and V, she describes what she intends to do for the prisoner, and these descriptions prove coordinate with the hierarchy of cognitive acts described in Book V. After reviewing that hierarchy, I will show how it is coordinate with the therapeutic program stated by Philosophy at prominent places in each book. Near the end of the work, Philosophy distinguishes four differpp. 55–85; and Thomas F. Curley, “How to Read the Consolation of Philosophy,” Interpretation 14 (1986): 211–63, esp. pp. 243–53. 5. The first and third sections use some material from my earlier essay, “The Structural Articulation of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy,” Medievalia et Humanistica, n.s., 21 (1994): 55–72.


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ent cognitive acts: sensation, imagination, reason, and understanding (V, 4, 27–39). She links each with a level of being (V, 5, 1–4), and each successive level of cognition sublates those below it, incorporating and surpassing it on a higher level. Sensation (sensus) apprehends a form only in matter, while imagination (imaginatio) can apprehend a form independently of its matter, which thereby enables memory. The higher animals possess imaginatio, for they move about and remember what to seek and what to avoid; sensation alone is possessed by nonmoving creatures, like mollusks. Obviously, imagination incorporates and surpasses sensation, and analogous sublations take place at the higher levels of knowing. Reason (ratio) is uniquely a property of human beings, for we can grasp the universal as well as the individual. Freedom of the will enters in at this level, as Philosophy explained earlier (V, 2, 3–6). The highest mode of knowledge, understanding (intelligentia) belongs only to the divine, for God grasps “the simple Form,” which transcends the boundaries of the created world. Nevertheless, Philosophy labors to raise the prisoner “to the summit of that highest understanding” (V, 5, 12), for it seems possible for human beings to appreciate it by touching it, so to speak, even though we cannot share wholly in it in this life.6 Now in the final prose sentence of Book I, Philosophy describes the prisoner’s illness metaphorically, and her program in Book II continues the metaphor, both of which relate to the level of sensation. The prisoner suffers from a caligo, a cloud or a film, obscuring his vision (intuitum) of the truth (I, 5, 21). The cloud consists of disturbed emotions (perturbationum), “darknesses” that Philosophy must remove so that the prisoner may “recognize the splendor of the true light.” She intends to begin by using a mild remedy, applying “poultices” (fomentis) to his eyes (I, 5, 21). Both her description 6. Elaine Scarry and Thomas F. Curley III have also understood this hierarchy as a structural model for the work. Our similarities and differences are discussed below.

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of an obscuring “cloud” and the remedy of “poultices” appeal to the level of sensation, sight and touch, respectively. So, too, her program for her acts in Book II continues to feature images of sensation. All these instances are not only programmatic but also prominently placed: the first one occurs in the first prose section, and the others occur at the beginning of later prose sections. Philosophy begins with taste: “It is time for you to drink and taste a mild and pleasant medicine which, once it has been assimilated, will prepare the way for stronger drinks” (II, 1, 7). She is clearly describing a metaphorical program, or sequence, for healing. Not long afterward, Boethius the prisoner echoes this imagery, describing arguments she has been using as “smeared with the honey of sweet rhetoric and music” (II, 3, 2). He is using the traditional image of a cup of bitter medicine made palatable by honey smeared on its rim. Philosophy’s reply returns to the imagery of touch: so far her arguments have offered only “poultices” (fomenta; II, 3, 3) for his pain; soon she will use fomenta that “penetrate more deeply” (II, 3, 4). Two chapters later, in the very first sentence, she acknowledges that “because the poultices of [her] reasoning have already descended into [the prisoner],” she thinks “stronger ones” (validioribus) now may be used (II, 5, 1). The imagery of sensation governs Philosophy’s healing program in Book II with explicit statements in prominent places. Book II has healed the prisoner’s vision by removing the “cloud” obscuring it. In Book III, Philosophy intends to direct the prisoner’s vision, and her descriptions of her program works at the level of imaginatio. First, she will show him the “images” (imagines; III, 1, 6) of happiness that delude him, and then she will direct his sight in the opposite direction to see the pattern (specimen; III, 1, 7) of true happiness. Not only do the nouns imagines and specimen imply imagination—the perceiving of a form apart from matter—but so do the verbs Philosophy uses to describe her activity: she will attempt “to sketch [designare] and to form an idea in the mind [informare] with words” (III, 1, 7).


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At prominent places in Book III, Philosophy continues to use the imagery of imaginatio to characterize her discursive activity. Boethius the prisoner’s turning around occurs in prose section 9 which begins the second part of Book III. In its first sentence, Philosophy describes her activity in sections 2–8 as “having pointed out [ostendisse] the form [formam] of lying happiness” to him; now that he “has seen this clearly” (perspicaciter intuearis), it is time “to show him the true form” (vera monstrare; III, 9, 1). The language of perceiving a forma uses the imagery of imaginatio, and it occurs often in Book III. Philosophy earlier projected her program for prose sections 2–8 with this imagery: “You therefore have before your eyes [ante oculos] the form [formam] of human happiness set forth: wealth, honors, power, fame, pleasure” (III, 2, 12). We have seen how she returns to this “form of lying happiness” in the first sentence of prose section 9, and she calls it “the form of false happiness” just before she commands the prisoner to “turn the gaze of his mind in the opposite direction” (III, 9, 24), another image of imaginatio. She explains that he has seen “the images [imagines] of true good” (III, 9, 31), imperfect goods, yet now he begins to intuit the perfect good. In the final three prose sections of Book III, the language of imaginatio continues, yet it must be understood analogically, because it refers to perceiving the form of God. At the beginning of prose section 10, she describes the summum bonum as “the form [forma] of perfect good” (III, 10, 1). Later, she reminds the prisoner that the “full and absolute good” must subsume all the aims of the various goods “as though into one form” (III, 11, 5). She describes God’s governing the universe as bringing its diverse parts together “into one pattern” (formam; III, 12, 5). Book III then culminates in the noble image of the circle. Philosophy’s argument linking “the form of the good itself” (III, 12, 33) with “the form [forma] of the divine substance” (III, 12, 37) has taken the corresponding form of “a wondrous orb of the divine simplicity” (III, 12, 30). Her reasoning has so interconnected the highest good with true happiness and

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the form of the divine substance that its “circularity” imitates the eternal unity of God, which she likens to a sphere. The imagery of imaginatio governs Philosophy’s program in Book III from beginning to end, even though it must be understood analogically after the prisoner’s turn in III, 9. Having cleansed the prisoner’s vision of its obscuring “cloud” in Book II and directed it toward the Divine Source of true happiness in Book III, Philosophy’s final task is to help the prisoner attain it. Attainment is an act of the will, and Book IV unfolds at the level of ratio, the level at which “freedom of the will” (libertas arbitrii) enters into the hierarchy of modes of cognition (V, 2, 3–6). Philosophy declares this task at the end of the first prose section in Book IV: “And because you have seen the form of true happiness, with me showing it just now, and you have also recognized where it lies, I will point out the way [viam] to you which may bear you back home, after running through all the things I think necessary as preliminaries” (IV, 1, 8). Philosophy clearly distinguishes the language of imaginatio for what has passed in Book III, seeing a form, from the language of ratio and free will, the act of journeying “home.” This is the first time in the work that she has used the imagery of acting, as distinct from seeing, for what the prisoner is to do. Her next and final sentence in the prosa emphasizes the imagery of journeying and the act of the prisoner’s mind: “And I will also affix wings to your mind, with which it may be able to carry itself into high heaven, so that, with your anxiety removed, you may return safely into your fatherland by my leading, my paths, and also my conveyance” (IV, 1, 9). Philosophy is not only the guide who points out the road but also the path itself and the way to travel it. This imagery governs the poem that immediately follows. Philosophy describes an ascent on wings that surpasses the visible universe and leads to “the Lord” (IV, m. 1, 19) who governs it; anyone who makes this journey will recognize that “Here is my true fatherland” (IV, m. 1, 25).


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Language related to willing and acting govern not only the imagery Philosophy uses for her therapeutic program in Book IV but also her philosophical themes in prose sections 2–4. Boethius the prisoner complains against the anomaly that, even though a good and omnipotent God rules the universe, the wicked prosper while the good are trodden down (IV, 1, 3–5). Philosophy’s response features the language of “free will”: intention, power, attainment. She argues that only the good are truly powerful, for only they can attain to the true happiness that all human beings desire. The wicked, in contrast, are always weak because, however much they may seem to prosper, they are powerless to attain the true happiness that they seek (IV, 2–3). The apparent prosperity of the wicked, she argues, confirms them in their powerlessness and misery, because their belief in their own success imprisons them in their vices and necessarily keeps them from attaining true happiness (IV, 4). The language of free will inevitably animates her whole discourse in prose sections 2–4, featured in words for “power,” “intention,” “will,” and “attainment”: posse, intentio, velle, perficere, and their cognates and antonyms. Rational free will also emerges in the dramatic action of Book IV, when the prisoner suddenly becomes an insistent speaker: he interrupts his teacher for the first time, initiates prose sections, and even dominates one of them.7 From the time Philosophy began her therapy in Book II, Boethius the prisoner has been the first speaker only three times (II, 4 and 7, III, 11) in twenty prose sections. None of these are marked as interruptions. But in the first sentence of Book IV, the prisoner “[breaks] in abruptly” (abrupi) while Philosophy is “just preparing to speak” (IV, 1, 1). At the level of ratio and free will, ironically, the prisoner freely interrupts his teacher for the first time, moved by his “grief” (maeroris). He is the first speaker

7. Seth Lerer, Boethius and Dialogue, pp. 168 and 217, notes the prisoner’s new assertiveness in Books IV and V.

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again in prose sections 2, 4, 5, and 6, and the first and the third of these may be interruptions, for section 2 begins, “Then I exclaimed” (Tum ego: Papae) and section 5 starts similarly, “At this, I” (Hic ego). In the twelve prose sections of Book III, the prisoner is the first speaker only once, while in the seven prose sections of Book IV he acts as the first speaker in five. In addition, he proves the dominant speaker in IV, 5, something he has not been since his long complaint in I, 4. He raises so many questions that Philosophy’s begins her next discourse, the longest in the work, “as though from a new beginning” (velut ab alio orsa principio; IV, 6, 7).8 Boethius the prisoner has changed suddenly in his dialogue with Philosophy, and this change reflects, among other things, the ascent of the work to the level of ratio and free will. Book V, the final book of The Consolation of Philosophy, proves analogous to the highest level of knowledge, “understanding” (intelligentia). Because intelligentia belongs “solely to the divine” (V, 5, 4), Philosophy’s discourse can only point toward the perfect simplicity of the divine mode of knowledge, not enact or achieve it. Nevertheless, she brings her teaching to a climax and a conclusion with a sustained description of divinely eternal Providence in the final section of the work. After describing intelligentia as the apex of the modes of knowledge in prose section 4 (30–33), she concludes section 5 with an exhortation to “raise ourselves into the summit of that highest understanding” (V, 5, 12). Then, in prose section 6, she defines the divine eternity as “the whole and perfect possession all at once of unending life” (4) and distinguishes it from the “perpetual” existence of the universe (as the ancients conceived it), “unending in time” (12). Philosophy goes on to describe the divine comprehension as transcending all time in its eternal present: “embracing all things as though they were done already, it considers them in its own simple thought” (15). On this basis, she contrasts God’s Provi8. Seth Lerer, Boethius and Dialogue, pp. 204–13, shows how IV, 6, redefines the prisoner’s problems and marks a change in Philosophy’s method.


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dence (providentia) from what the prisoner imagined as foreseeing (praevidentia; 16–24), and defends the “necessary” order of things in a way that includes both human free will and the divine freedom in responding to prayers (25–48). In short, Philosophy attempts to evoke in the prisoner as full a sense of the divine intelligentia as possible and uses it to resolve the problems he raised earlier (V, 3,). In this way, the final sections of the work “raise us up into the summit of [God’s] highest understanding” (V, 5, 12). Book V also proves analogous to intelligentia in Philosophy’s analysis of the whole hierarchy of modes of knowing, from sensation to “understanding” (V, 4, 27–39). This is possible only on the basis of some grasp of the highest mode. According to her description, each higher mode sublates those below it. Hence, when intelligentia “comprehends the Form itself, it also knows the universal of reason and the form perceived by imagination and the sensible material,” without using reason or imagination or having any senses (V, 4, 32–33). This form of knowledge “is superior to the others because by its own nature it knows not only what is proper to it but the other forms of knowledge below it” (V, 5, 4). Philosophy is able to analyze the whole hierarchy of knowledge because she is working analogously to the level of intelligentia, and so she can discuss it and “the other forms of knowledge below it.” Moreover, because intelligentia sublates “reason,” the language of willing and acting in Book IV is sublated in Book V. This occurs most obviously in Philosophy’s discussion of the “freedom of the will” (libertas arbitrii) in prose section 2 and in her defense of divine and human freedom in section 6. Acts of free will are grounded in the freedom of the will, by definition. Philosophy’s defense of human and divine freedom in Book V surpasses her analysis of “power,” “will,” “intention,” and “attainment” in Book IV. This progression from “free will” in action to “the freedom of the will” is analogous to a movement from ratio to its ultimate ground in intelligentia.

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Free will also animates the dramatic action of Book V in the same way it did in Book IV. Book V begins with the prisoner interrupting Philosophy (V, 1, 1), and he is the first speaker also in prose sections 2 and 3. Moreover, he utters almost all of section 3 and all of the poem that follows, something he has not done since his lament in Book I (I, 4 and m. 5). He insists on Philosophy’s answering his questions, even though she regards them as adverse to her goal of leading him back to his fatherland (V, 1, 4–6). The image of the journey “home,” to the realm of God, continues to govern Philosophy’s therapeutic program in Book V. Nevertheless, she feels obligated to answer the prisoner’s questions (V, 1, 1–3) and to counter his serious errors filling prose section 3. How well she manages to lead him “home” while correcting his errors remains a question, to be considered later. Book I remains to be considered, but it is easy to see how it joins Book II at the level of sensation. When Philosophy first appears, the prisoner’s eyes are “blinded with tears” and he is “dumb struck” (I, 1, 13). She describes him as oppressed by “stupor” and “lethargy” (I, 2, 5), for he is oblitus sui, “forgetful of who he is” (I, 2, 6). In these ways, Boethius the prisoner is almost below the level of sensation, as it were. To rouse him, Philosophy resorts to touch, the lowest level of sensation, placing her hand on his breast (I, 2, 5) and then wiping his eyes (I, 2, 6). When the darkness disappears, the prisoner “[drinks in] the sky” (hausi caelum; I, 3, 1), an image of taste. Once thoroughly roused, he utters a well-organized speech of lament and a poem (I, 4 and m. 5), yet Boethius the author subsequently describes it as “barking” (delatravi; I, 5, 1)—that is, nearly meaningless sounds. In these ways, Book I shows us the prisoner’s consciousness at the lowest level, one analogous to sensation. Now Elaine Scarry and Thomas F. Curley III have also argued that the hierarchy of modes of knowledge in Book V offers a structural model for the Consolation as a whole. Although their accounts differ slightly from one another and from mine, I will review them,


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arguing that they offer support for the scheme proposed here. According to Scarry, the movement is sensation (Book I), imagination (Book II), reason (Book IV), and intelligentia, which she calls “insight” (Book V). She diagrams these four books as the base of a triangle, with Book III rising above it, ascending to its peak in III, m. 9.9 Curley’s account envisions a slightly different movement: sensation (Book I), imagination (Book II), reason (Books III–IV), and intelligentia (Book V).10 My account agrees with both in locating sensation in Book I, reason in Book IV, and intelligentia in Book V. The crux of our differences lies in Books II and III. Neither Scarry nor Curley attends to Philosophy’s successive descriptions of her program, as I do. Hence, they do not have a firm criterion for evidence, and so they sometimes argue impressionistically. For example, both find imagination in Book II largely because it contains the famous image of the wheel of Fortune. But, famous though it is, Fortune’s wheel is mentioned only twice, and briefly at that (II, 1, 9; II, 2, 9), hardly sufficient material to characterize all of Book II. Neither Scarry nor Curley notices Philosophy’s use of the language of sensation for her therapy in Book II, nor her persistent appeal to the language of imagination in Book III, seeing imagines of the good and then its true forma. As a result, neither knows quite what to do with Book III: Scarry removes it altogether from the ascending pattern of the other books, and Curley ascribes it to “reason” because there is more reasoning going on in Book III than in Book II. In my view, then, where our accounts agree—on Books I, IV, and V—they offer additional support for the structure proposed here. Where we differ, on Books II and III, my appeal to Philoso9. See Elaine Scarry, “The Well-Rounded Sphere: The Metaphysical Structure of the Consolation of Philosophy,” in Essays in the Numerical Criticism of Medieval Literature, edited by Caroline D. Eckhardt (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1980), pp. 91–140, esp. pp. 108–24. 10. See Thomas F. Curley, “How to Read the Consolation of Philosophy,” esp. pp. 216–19.

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phy’s explicit program offers a firm criterion for evidence, which they lack. Above all, we all agree that The Consolation of Philosophy enacts an ascent, and the key to this structure lies in the final book, at its highest stage, precisely where one would expect it in a Platonist work. When we use Philosophy’s action as the criterion for understanding the structure of the Consolation, we also discover that each of Books II through V has a tripartite structure.11 The first prose section functions as a prologue, where Philosophy declares her program for that book: the first part. In the second part, Philosophy undertakes that program. The third part involves an explicit intensification or renewal of Philosophy’s action, and it occurs at roughly the half-way point in each book. My preceding discussion has dwelt upon the first and second part in Books II–V, though it has also touched on the transition to the third part. The most obvious instance comes in Book III, when Philosophy turns the prisoner away from the imagines (III, 9, 24) of true good in order to gaze upon its true form, elaborated in prose sections 10–12. Because these final three sections are each much longer than the first eight ones, the prisoner’s turning point occurs in the middle of Book III, as determined by its length, not by number of sections. In Book II, Philosophy declares explicitly a new stage in her action, inaugurating the third part at the beginning of prose section 5: “But because the poultices of my reasonings already are already descending into you, I think that now stronger ones should be used” (II, 5, 1; cf. II, 3, 3–4). Because Book II has eight prose sections of similar length, this sentence comes in the middle of the book. In Book 4, Boethius the author observes that Philosophy renews her discourse, in response to the prisoner’s insistent questions, “as though from a 11. For a different analysis, according to different criteria, see Joachim Gruber, Kommentar, at the beginning of each of Books II–V. His analysis of structure is based, not on Philosophy’s action, but on the philosophical content of each book.


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new beginning” (IV, 6, 7). Book IV, 6, proves the longest prose section in the Consolation, and this phrase marks the beginning of Philosophy’s sustained discourse at roughly the midpoint of Book IV. Finally, the third part of Book V occurs at the beginning of prose section 4, the middle of its six sections. The prisoner has dominated prose section 3 and spoken all of the following poem, lamenting that divine foreknowledge makes prayer unavailing and cuts human beings off from our Divine Source. As we have seen, Philosophy is almost the only speaker in prose sections 4–6, as she labors to correct the prisoner’s misunderstandings. She begins her correction, the third part of Book V, at its center. Hence, Philosophy’s therapeutic action on the prisoner provides a criterion for understanding not only the ascent of the work as a whole but also the tripartite structure of each of Books II–V. The ascent also enacts another tripartite structure: the Platonist pattern of turning away from things outside oneself (extra se) to those within oneself (intra se) and so rising to those above (supra se). The crucial turn inward and upward occurs in III, 9. The goods of Fortune are obviously external goods. The prisoner laments their loss in Book I, and Philosophy delivers a sustained critique of Fortune and her goods in Book II. In the first part of Book III, Philosophy reconsiders these external goods at a higher level, with respect to their ends (III, 2–8), adding a consideration of pleasure (III, 7), which is not one of Fortune’s goods. In prose section 9, the prisoner understands that these “mortal and transitory things” (III, 9, 27) cannot bring the enduring happiness they seem to promise. Philosophy thereby turns his gaze away from external things, apprehended by sense and imagination, to look inward and upward toward the highest good, true happiness, and the form of the divine substance, which are one (III, 10–12). This inward and upward turn informs her discourse over the rest of the work. Her discussion of willing at the level of ratio in Book IV emerges from the inward turn in Book III. Her discourse moves upward, when she analyzes Providence and fate in IV,

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6–7, and she fulfills this on a higher level in Book V, in her fullest discussion of the divine intelligentia and Providence. In sum, then, The Consolation of Philosophy is structured according to fundamental Platonist patterns, enacting the turn away from things extra se to those intra and supra in an ascent to progressively higher modes of understanding. The hierarchy of modes of knowledge, in Book V, provides the ground for Philosophy’s therapeutic program as it unfolds in Books II–IV, and it clarifies the level of the prisoner’s consciousness in Book I. The medicinal imagery of Book II refers to sensation, as does the prisoner’s “stupor” and “barking” in Book I; “seeing the form” in Book III enacts imaginatio; the imagery of journeying and the language of willing and acting in Book IV embodies “reason” with its corollary, “free will”; and these are continued in Book V, where the discussion of divine intelligentia, eternity, and Providence is analogous to the highest mode of knowledge. This is another instance of the kind of retrospective understanding we have seen in Augustine and Anselm. The highest level in a Platonist ascent provides a key to the structure of the work as a whole, for it makes intelligible, in a new way, utterances on the lower levels.

Metamorphoses of the Circle The circle is the most obvious imaginative figure in The Consolation of Philosophy. It appears, most famously, in the wheel of Fortune in Book II. But it recurs in “the wondrous orb of the divine simplicity” (III, 12, 30) at the climax of Book III and in the “revolving circles” (IV, 6, 15) of Fate, as distinct from the unmoving axis of Providence, in Book IV. The wheel of Fortune thereby foreshadows the later circle images in the work. More importantly, each subsequent image implicitly reconfigures our understanding of the earlier ones. By exploring these three circle images as a pattern in the ascent, we can understand the work’s forward and upward movement in a new way, seeing how “literary imagery” and “philosophical content” in-

Metamorphoses of the Circle

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teract. At the same time, we will see how later images reconfigure our understanding of earlier ones, interpreting (as it were) backward and downward. This process will be carried into Book V, where there is no circle image, because the level of intelligentia, unlike that of ratio (Book IV), supersedes the need for images in order to understand. Nevertheless, because Book V articulates the most comprehensive understanding in the whole Consolation, it implicitly reconfigures what is conveyed by the circle images on the lower levels of the ascent. Hence, what follows is a sketch of meditative understandings. Boethius the author did not state these explicitly, and so they cannot be discerned by the normal practices of analytic philosophy. Rather, they are implied by the relations between levels in the ascent, and so they can be discerned only by meditation on it.12 Although Fortune is named in Book I, she appears with her wheel only in Book II, and Philosophy refers to it only in the first two prose sections.13 She mentions it first at the end of the first prose section, a place of emphasis. She focuses on the speed and force (impetum) of the wheel as an emblem of Fortune’s constant inconstancy and the inability of mortals to control her gifts: “Would you truly attempt to halt the force of her whirling wheel? O most stupid of all mortals, if fortune [fors] begins to hold firm, it ceases to exist” (II, 1, 19). In her second reference, Philosophy again emphasizes the continual speed of the wheel as she impersonates Fortune, using the royal “we”: “This is our power, we play this game continually: we spin the wheel in a whirling circle, and we rejoice to change the lowest to the highest, the highest to the lowest” (II, 2, 9). The wheel’s speed and its continual whirling correspond to the level of sensation in Book II. There is no rationale to Fortune’s activity, and 12. John C. Magee performs this kind of meditative interpretation in “The Boethian Wheels of Fortune and Fate,” Medieval Studies 49 (1987): 524–33. 13. See Howard R. Patch, The Goddess Fortuna in Medieval Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1927), pp. 147–77, for the tradition on Fortune’s wheel.

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the wheel itself barely emerges as a visualizable image, so rapid and unceasing is its whirling. The circle image in Book III, in contrast, is not a rota (wheel) but an orbis (circle, sphere). Its stability, constancy, and wholeness are emphasized, for it is “the wondrous orb of the divine simplicity” (III, 12, 30). This image is introduced by the prisoner as he begins to summarize Philosophy’s arguments in prose sections 10–12, at the climax of Book III. Her reasonings, he avers, are so circularly interconnected as to imitate “the wondrous orb of the divine simplicity.” Complete happiness is the highest good (summum bonum), which is the highest God; to become truly happy a person must become in some sense divine, for this divine “form of the good” is sought by everything. By this goodness, which is himself, God governs the universe, and so evil has no real existence. And Philosophy, according to the prisoner, unfolded her reasoning from “nothing extrinsic” (III, 12, 31–35). Philosophy immediately confirms that the circular form of her reasoning imitated the intrinsic wholeness of “the form of the divine substance,” which she likens to a sphere, quoting Parmenides (III, 12, 37–38). Just as the divine “sphere” needs nothing extrinsic, being itself the highest good, so her arguments imitated the divine wholeness by developing a series of implications, each of which entailed all the others. This stable orb of the divine goodness illuminates, in retrospect, Fortune’s whirling wheel. The rapidity of Fortune’s wheel imitates, albeit perversely, the stability of God’s goodness. Fortune appears to be a powerful goddess only because human beings value the goods in her control: wealth, high positions, kingship, and glory. But these goods are not only inherently unstable, as Philosophy shows in Book II, but they are not themselves what we humans truly seek, as she shows in Book III. What we truly seek is enduring possession of the good: those who seek wealth aim at self-sufficiency; those who desire high positions seek respect (reverentia); he who desires kingship or association with kings strives for power; aspirants to glory


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want renown (III, 2, 12–20; cf. III, 3–8). Self-sufficiency, respect, power, and renown prove stable forms of the good only in the highest good (summum bonum), God, who unites them all. Wealth, high positions, kingships, and glory point to this highest good, unbeknownst to themselves. They signify the summum bonum, but erring mortals strive after the signifiers, rather than what they signify. Hence, Fortune’s goods promise happiness, but their promise proves false. What we truly seek is participation in the stable orb of the divine goodness, for only that can give us enduring happiness. The mutability of Fortune, so painful in Book II, becomes in Book III a sign that we need to seek our true good in another direction. Fortune’s whirling wheel thereby foreshadows the stable orb of God’s goodness, and even signifies it: the wheel’s rapidity attempts to imitate the divine stability, as a rapidly spinning top stands still. The attempt fails, of course, and so the imitation proves perverse, and thereby instructive. This reconfigured understanding is confirmed by the circle image in Book IV, which unites the two earlier ones. The “wondrous orb of the divine simplicity” becomes the stable center of God’s Providence, around which the moving circles of Fate revolve (IV, 6, 7–22), similar to Fortune’s wheel. In order to understand this complex image, allow me to review the Ptolemaic cosmos and explain Dante’s interpretive elaboration of Boethius’s text in Paradiso 28. This elaboration will enable nonspecialists to return to Boethius’s text with a clearer understanding. The Ptolemaic cosmos is geocentric: the Earth sits, stable and unmoving, at the center of the universe. Around it move the nine heavenly spheres with their stars: the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter Saturn, the fixed stars, and the primum mobile. The primum mobile, “first mover,” imparts its constant movement, the Motion of the Same, to all the spheres below it, carrying them around the Earth once every twenty-four hours. (We believe that this occurs because the Earth rotates on its axis once every twenty-four hours.)

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Because the primum mobile is farthest away from the Earth, its diurnal speed proves the fastest, covering a greater distance every twentyfour hours. Conversely, because the Moon is the closest to the Earth, its diurnal speed proves the slowest. In other words, the closer a heavenly sphere is to the Earth, the slower its diurnal speed in the Motion of the Same, and the farther away it is, the faster it moves. Dante, like Thomas Aquinas and others, believed that the nine orders of angels were the “movers” for the nine heavenly spheres, one angelic order per sphere. The seraphim moved the primum mobile, the ninth sphere; the cherubim moved the fixed stars in the eighth sphere; and so on down to the angels (without a special name) who governed the Moon. But this pattern is inverted, in some respects, when Dante the pilgrim gazes upward in Paradiso 28, and it confuses him, until Beatrice explains it. He sees a luminous central point (God), around which are nine revolving circles of light (the angels) at progressively greater distances. But the speed of their revolutions inverts that of the material cosmos. The circle closest to the luminous center revolves the fastest. The next circle of light revolves somewhat more slowly, but faster than those below it; the circle farthest away from the center moves the slowest. Beatrice explains that Dante is gazing at the dance of the angels around God, and the spiritual order of the cosmos inverts the material order. The seraphim, the movers of the ninth heavenly sphere, are the circle closest to God: they revolve the fastest because they burn with greater love and knowledge of God than the lower and more distant angelic orders. The next circle is the cherubim, movers of the eighth sphere, who imitate the seraphim, as it were, revolving somewhat more slowly, because their love and knowledge of God proves concomitantly less, though greater than the angelic orders farther out. Although the arrangement of the angelic orders is inverted, with God at the center rather than the Earth, their relative speeds remain the same. The seraphim, the closest to God and who govern the ninth sphere, prove the fastest; the cherubim, the second


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closest to God, who govern the eighth sphere, are the second fastest; and so on down the line of the angelic orders. Dante the pilgrim’s vision reveals that movement in the material universe is governed by spiritual causes: the relative love and knowledge of God by the angelic orders who move their corresponding heavenly spheres. Dante’s text, like its Boethian archetype, implies a Platonist understanding of eternity, time, and circle imagery. According to the Timaeus, “time is a moving image of eternity” (37d–e). So, too, does a circle imitate its center, for the whole circle, in two dimensions, is implicitly contained in its dimensionless center point. The center point proves analogous to eternity, “the still point,” and the circular dance of the angelic orders moving the heavenly spheres enacts time, “the turning world.” The angels’ circular movement around the luminous Center symbolizes their (necessarily) imperfect imitation of God. God, the dimensionless and eternal Center, implicitly contains all their motions in time, space, and change. In other words, God’s eternal knowledge encompasses everything that unfolds in the time and space of the material cosmos. In The Consolation of Philosophy, the center is Divine Providence, while the turning circles represent Fate mediating the plan of Providence to the cosmos. Philosophy is speaking. All that the moving circles of Fate enact is implicitly contained in the stable Center of Divine Providence. “Providence is the unmoving and simple form of things to be accomplished; Fate, however, is the moving nexus and temporal order of those things which the divine simplicity has planned to be accomplished” (IV, 6, 13). Fate is subject to eternal Providence, and whatever is subject to Fate, in time and space, is thereby also subject to Providence (14). The circle image that follows proves both cosmological and moral, as so often in the Platonist tradition. Although we are subject to the Fate contained in the temporal movement of the heavenly spheres, Philosophy affirms that we can attain a measure of freedom by cleaving spiritually to the eternal Center:

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“Imagine a series of revolving concentric circles. The innermost one comes closest to the simplicity of the center, and itself forms a kind of center for those outside it to turn around. The outermost circle turns in a wider orbit, and the further it departs from the undivided center point, the greater the space through which it extends. If anything connects and allies itself with the center point, it is brought toward the center’s simplicity and it thereby ceases to spread out. Similarly, whatever moves farther away from the first Mind is entangled in greater chains of Fate, whereas whatever seeks more closely the Center of things is concomitantly freer of Fate. If anything adheres to the firmness of the supernal Mind, it is free of motion and passes beyond the necessity of Fate. As the power of reasoning is toward the intellect, as becoming is toward being, as time is toward eternity, as the circle is toward its center, so is the ever-changing chain of Fate toward the stable simplicity of Providence.” (IV, 6, 15–17)

Three observations are in order. First, this circle image unites the wheel of Fortune in Book II, and the “orb of the divine simplicity” in Book III, and it thereby reinterprets and transforms them. Fortune’s whirling wheel becomes the cosmic revolutions entailing Fate in time, while the “orb of divine simplicity” becomes their Center, symbolizing eternal Providence. Fortune no longer appears as an independent operator, as she does in Book II: she is clearly subject to God. Although the divine “orb” is no longer a sphere, as it was in Book III (12, 37), and is now a dimensionless center point, it nevertheless contains all the revolutions of Fate, which are comprehended in its simplicity as Providence. Book III, in other words, emphasizes the self-containment, the internal consistency, of God as like a perfect sphere, while Book IV presents this divine simplicity as Providence comprehending everything that happens in the universe. In this way, the circle image in Book IV implicitly reconfigures our understanding of those in Books II and III. Second, this circle image aligns Fortune and her sublunary goods with the Moon, and the Moon has a peculiar place in the cosmic movements. It should be obvious that the Moon is the planet


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symbolic of Fortune. Not only is it closest to the Earth, but its movements also govern the tides, and the sea is a traditional image of inconstancy, like Fortune herself. The Moon’s phases make it the most changeable of the heavenly bodies and so, again, like Fortune. In mythology, the Moon is associated with Hecate, a goddess of dark transformations, as sorceress and queen of the underworld—like Fortune, a dangerous goddess. Astronomically, moreover, the Moon is the lowest star, the boundary between inconstant, and often violent, changes below it and the regularity of heavenly movements above it. Also, its own movements are peculiar, for it does not move along the ecliptic, like the other planets. We believe that this happens because the Moon revolves around the Earth, while the Earth and the other planets revolve around the Sun. In any event, the planes of the Sun’s and the Moon’s orbits around the Earth intersect at an angle of 5 degrees, 9 minutes.14 Hence, from the perspective of the divine Center, the Moon not only revolves the furthest away, but its movement proves out of kilter. It is not off-center, for it is still governed by Divine Providence, but its orbit proves nevertheless off-line. Similarly, Philosophy implies, although the movement of Fortune’s wheel is governed by Providence, compared to the movements of the heavenly spheres, it proves so out of kilter that it seems to have an independent motion. As we will see in the final section, this symbolic alignment of Fortune with the off-line lunar movements proves crucial to the numerological structure of the Consolation. Third, therefore, this circle image furthers Philosophy’s reorientation of the prisoner from the earthly to the heavenly, begun in III, 9. God is growing larger in Philosophy’s discourse, as it were, and earthly affairs are becoming smaller. (We saw something similar happen in the Proslogion after chapter 18.) In Book II, Philosophy’s 14. See Robert Lawlor, “Ancient Temple Architecture,” p. 96, in Homage to Pythagoras: Rediscovering Sacred Science, ed. Christopher Bamford (Hudson, N.Y.: Lindisfarne Press, 1980, 1982), pp. 35–132.

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teaching is dominated by the goods of Fortune, and her focus is earthly, or sublunary, those inconstant goods “below the Moon.” After she turns the prisoner around in III, 9, 24 and sings her prayer to God “who rules the universe with perpetual reason” (III, m. 9), she unfolds the implications of “the wondrous orb of divine simplicity” in sections 10–12. The final sections of Book III thereby dwell on the divine sphere, and the earthly perspective largely disappears. Then in Book IV, in the circle image we have just examined, God is the cosmic center, not the Earth. Divine Providence generates the heavenly movements entailing Fate, and the Earth stands at their outermost edge. The Earth only receives the movements of Fate: it has nothing properly its own to contribute to them. God occupies the center of Philosophy’s cosmos and discourse, while Fortune proves only his most distant tributary. In fact, God as Providence comprehends and orders everything that happens in the universe, as the center “contains” the circle. Philosophy develops this point explicitly and at length at the end of the work. She is continuing her effort to reorient the prisoner toward a God-centered understanding of cosmic order, against some resistance on his part. As we saw earlier, he insists on her answering questions that divert her from the course she has planned (V, 1, 1–8). His desire to know whether “chance” (casus) exists (V, 1, 3), for example, shows how influenced he still is by the earthly perspective of Fortune. So, too, do his errors in prose section 3. Philosophy counters these by treating the hierarchy of modes of knowing, in prose sections 4 and 5, as the prelude to raising up his mind “into the summit of [God’s] highest understanding” (V, 5, 12). She defines the divine eternity as “the whole and perfect possession all at once of unending life” (V, 6, 4) and goes on to show how Providence, “embracing all things [complectens omnia] as though they were done already, considers them in its own simple thought” (15). Everything that has happened in the universe, is happening, and ever will happen is known by God in the eternal “now,” all at once


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“in its own simple thought.” Philosophy does not use a circle image, because the level of divine intelligentia has no need of images for understanding, as human reason does. Nevertheless, it is as though she had said that God is both center and circumference of all things, comprehending its all temporal happenings ever in his eternal present. In this way, Philosophy reinterprets the circle image of IV, 6 as she clarifies its meaning. In that image, God seems to reign in the center, even though he rules everywhere. The plan of Providence, situated in the center, is unfolded by Fate through ever more remote circles, as though a king were governing through intermediaries in remote provinces. Because this image represents Providence and Fate spatially, God cannot be both center and circumference, for these exclude each other. Hence, God seems remote from the Earth and the inconstancies of Fortune. But, as the climax of the Consolation makes clear, nothing could be further from the truth. God embraces all things (V, 6, 15) with his “whole and perfect possession all at once of unending life” (V, 6, 4). He does not see all things from a distance. Rather, they are directly present to him now, with all their causes and effects, and so he is intimately present to them. God does not observe all things from far away. Rather, they can be said to take place in him. His knowledge is not like panoramic vision from a distance but, rather, an all-encompassing life. Hence, human beings have free will even as God’s life governs all things, including Fortune, providentially. And so Philosophy, in her final sentence, exhorts the prisoner to good deeds by directing his vision to the God who sees all things, not from afar, but from within (V, 6, 48). In sum, then, this pattern of circle images illuminates the prisoner’s ascent as a gradual reorientation of perspective. First, the wheel of Fortune imagery in Book II is Earth-centered in its values, while “the wondrous orb of the divine simplicity” (III, 12, 30) reorients the prisoner toward “heaven,” God as the summum bonum,

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where alone true happiness can be found. From the latter perspective, Fortune’s wheel enacts a perverse imitation of the divine stability, which is imaged as “far away,” a distant homeland (patria; IV, 1, 8–9) to which one must journey. Second, the circle image in IV, 6 reconfigures the relations between center and circumference: now Divine Providence stands in the center, the circles of cosmic Fate revolve around him, and the Earth lies at the periphery. Fortune thereby proves one of God’s minions in a divinely ordered cosmos, for her wheel proves one of the circles of Fate governed by Providence. Yet this image, because it is a spatial representation, continues to separate the Earth from God, even though his Providence governs earthly events through the intermediaries of Fate. Hence, finally, at the end of the work we learn how the divine Center comprehends all things without intermediaries. God embraces all things with his whole and perfect possession all at once of unending life. No event occurs apart from him, and the Divine Presence is intimately present to every human being. Before, the prisoner was reoriented toward a “distant” Providence at the center of the cosmos. Now that Center embraces him. In God’s life, and nowhere else, he lives and knows and acts. This has always been the case, throughout the whole Consolation and before. Recognizing this truth and its consequences enables him to receive fully the consolatio that Philosophy offers him, to recollect himself.

Diagnosis and Cure: Recollecting Oneself In the final prose section of Book I, Philosophy examines the prisoner and diagnoses his spiritual illness. In Books II–V, she undertakes a therapeutic program to cure him.15 As usual in the Platonist tradition, his illness proves simultaneously intellectual and moral, and so, consequently, does her therapeutic program. That is, 15. This has often been observed. See Edmund Reiss, Boethius, p. 108; Seth Lerer, Boethius and Dialogue, pp. 106–10; and Henry Chadwick, Consolations, p. 227, among others.

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we may distinguish intellectual from moral aspects of his condition and her cure, but we cannot properly separate them. Hence, my formula for his cure, “Recollecting Oneself,” has a double sense. The first is intellectual: the prisoner needs to remember his immortality of soul, with all it implies. It implies, among other things, the human being as the epitome of being, encompassing with his reason the lower modes of knowledge, sensation, and imagination, and being able to apprehend the divine intelligentia (V, 4–6). The second is moral: the prisoner must gain self-possession, self-mastery. In this sense, “recollecting oneself” means to gather together again the powers of one’s will in order to combat the perturbations of wayward emotions. Therein lies true “power” (potentia; III, 5 and m. 5), as Philosophy suggests in many places. But these two forms of “recollecting oneself” entail one another and develop, or are corrupted, together. In this section, I want to review her diagnosis and show how her therapy works to effect the prisoner’s self-recollection in this double sense. Philosophy diagnoses three causes of the prisoner’s disease, in increasing order of gravity. First, although the prisoner believes that God governs the world, he does not know by what means (quibus gubernaculis). Indeed, he barely understands what Philosophy means by quibus gubernaculis (I, 6, 3–8). Second, although he knows that God is the Origin (principium) of all things, he does not know their end or goal (finis). Once he knew, but grief has dulled his memory (I, 6, 10–12). At this point, Philosophy is puzzled: these two forms of ignorance have the power “to dislocate a human being, but not to uproot him wholly from himself” (I, 6, 13), and the prisoner is indeed uprooted. But the cause soon comes to light: the prisoner affirms himself to be “a rational and mortal animal” (I, 6, 14–16, my emphasis). Philosophy now understands “the greatest cause” of his disease: he has ceased to know himself (I, 6, 17). He has forgotten that his mind—mens, the highest part of the soul—is immortal. His condition is indeed grave. His ignorance of the

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means by which God governs the world and of the end of all things is capped by his self-ignorance of his immortality, “great causes not only of disease but even of death” (I, 6, 19). His self-ignorance of his immortality and Philosophy’s cure are foreshadowed in their first encounter in Book I. After Philosophy banishes the muses of poetry (I, 1, 7–12), we learn that the prisoner’s eyes are so blinded with tears that he does not recognize her. Overcome by heavy grief, an emotional “perturbation of mind,” he is stupefied (I, 1, 13–14). Soon she diagnoses his illness as “lethargy” (I, 2, 5), caused by self-oblivion: he is “forgetful of himself” (oblitus sui). This phrase is a Latin idiom for states of semiconsciousness, but here it also indicates the oblivion of self-ignorance. Philosophy wipes the tears from his eyes, “clouded by mortal concerns” (I, 2, 6), and he wakes up. Boethius the author describes his waking as Mentem recepi (I, 3, 1): “I seized back my mind.” But the phrase also means “I received [from Philosophy] mens,” the immortal part of the soul. When the prisoner ceases to be “forgetful of himself,” he regains mens. The rest of the work is foreshadowed here. In different ways, at different levels of the ascent, Philosophy is always trying to rouse the prisoner, to wake him up: to help him recover mens. She counters his emotional perturbations in order to lead him toward selfmastery. She works against his self-oblivion by leading him to recognize his immortality of soul, with all it implies. She wants him to recollect himself, morally and intellectually, as fully as possible. This will involve recognizing his kinship with God and his capacity to apprehend the full range of being, from the material to the divine. Her therapeutic program emerges in two parts. She explains the reason for these at the end of her diagnosis, and the dividing point comes in III, 9, where she turns the prisoner away from images, and toward the reality, of the good. She explains that she must first restore his intellectual vision before she can show him the truth, for

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“the nature of souls is so constituted that, as often as they reject true opinion, they take on false ones, from which arise the darkness of perturbations that confuses their sight.” Hence, she must first “remove the darkness of deceiving emotions so that you may be able to recognize the splendor of the true light” (I, 6, 21). In other words, Philosophy must first remove the prisoner’s erroneous opinions, and this she does by her two critiques of the goods of Fortune, in Book II (1–8) and Book III (1–8). We have already seen how images of “healing the eyes” govern Book II and “directing the vision” work in Book III. Having thus cleared the ground (to change Philosophy’s metaphor), she can sow the seed of truth, and it can grow without obstruction by weeds. Philosophy does not begin to teach directly against the “causes” of the prisoner’s disease until after III, 9, when, for the first time, she turns him around and points him toward “the splendor of the true light” (I, 6, 21), the “true and perfect good” (III, 9, 30), which turns out to be God (III, 10–12). As we will see in the next section, III, 9, stands at the mathematical center of Philosophy’s cure, the thirty-third of sixty-five sections, poetry and prose, in Books II–V. Her efforts to turn around the prisoner prove to be the center and hinge of her therapeutic program. Soon thereafter, in the final sections of Book III, Philosophy speaks directly to the three causes of the prisoner’s spiritual disease, diagnosed at the end of Book I. First, he earlier knew that God governs the universe, but he did not know “by what means” (quibus gubernaculis; I, 6, 3–8); Philosophy teaches him that God governs by means of his own goodness, which is himself (III, 12, 2–22). Second, in Book I, the prisoner knew that God is the Origin (principium) of all things, but he did not know their end or goal (finis; I, 6, 10–12). In Book III, he learns that the end of all things is “the good” (III, 11, 41), which is “one and the same substance” with happiness (beatitudo) and God (III, 10, 42–43). All things seek the good, and therefore they seek some participation in God, who is the Good. In other words, God as the Good is both the Origin and End of all

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things, and because all things seek the good, God governs them by means of his own goodness, in which they necessarily seek to participate. In this way, Philosophy argues explicitly against two causes of the prisoner’s illness. But the third cause was the gravest, his belief that he is “a rational and mortal animal” (I, 6, 14–17), and Philosophy makes no explicit argument for the immortality of the soul, as is well known. Nevertheless, she mentions or implies this truth at least three times in Books II–III. First, in Book II, she reminds him that, in the past, he has been “persuaded and convinced by many demonstrations that the souls of human beings [mentes hominum] are in no way mortal” (II, 4, 28). Second, in the following prose section, she tells him that human beings are “divine by merit of reason” and that we are “like unto God in our souls” (deo mente consimiles; II, 5, 25–26). Hence, when human nature knows its likeness to God, it excels all other things, but when it fails to know itself, it falls below the beasts (II, 5, 29). Finally, Philosophy gives him a “corollary” (III, 10, 22) to her teaching on true happiness (beatitudo): “every happy person, therefore, is god.” Though only one God exists by nature, every truly happy person (beatus) becomes divine by participating in God’s beatitudo (III, 10, 25). Because God’s happiness is his goodness, a person can become truly happy only by being morally good. This participation in God’s happiness and goodness makes a person truly happy and truly good (III, 10, 39–43). This teaching fully implies the immortality of the soul. In the final three prose sections of Book III, then, Philosophy speaks directly to the problems at the root of the prisoner’s spiritual disease.16 But she does not fully resolve them, as the prisoner’s later questions and discourses prove (IV, 1 and 5; V, 1 and 3). His cure cannot be effected merely by argument that shows him where true 16. For the structure of Book III as a whole, and the resolution of the prisoner’s difficulties by an understanding of God, see A. Ghisalberti, “L’ascesa a Dio nel III libro della Consolatio,” in Atti del Congresso internazionale di Studii Boeziani,

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goodness and happiness lie (III, 10–12), for he must also be led to his true homeland (IV, 1, 8–9; cf. V, 1, 4–5). Despite Philosophy’s beautiful arguments describing “the wondrous orb of the divine simplicity” (III, 12, 30), which speak to all the causes of his disease, her achievement remains insecure because the prisoner is still adversely affected by his “deep-seated grief” (IV, 1, 1). This emotional perturbation gives rise to questions that divert the course of the teaching she has planned (V, 1, 4–5). Moreover, she has been given only a limited amount of time to be with the prisoner, and it is now severely constrained (IV, 6, 5), so she is in haste to complete her teaching (Festino; V, 1, 4). Does she succeed in leading the prisoner to his true homeland, in Books IV–V, and thereby effect a cure? We want to understand Philosophy’s attempted therapy and assess its effectiveness against the prisoner’s insistent doubts. Book IV moves the prisoner’s cure forward by resolving certain consequences entailed by the three causes of his disease. She explains these consequences as she restates her diagnosis in Book I, beginning with the most serious cause: 1. Because you are confounded in self-oblivion [by not remembering your immortality of soul], you have grieved that you are both an exile and are despoiled of your own proper goods (propriis bonis); 2. Because you do not know what the end (finis) of things is, you judge worthless and wicked men to be both powerful and happy; 3. Because you have forgotten by what means the universe is governed, you think that these vicissitudes of fortune occur without a ruler (sine rectore; I, 6, 18–19). The first two points are resolved in the first half of Book IV, where Philosophy shows that virtue is its own reward and vice its

Pavia 5–8 Ottobre 1980, edited by L. Obertello (Rome: Herder, 1981), pp. 183–92; and Susan F. Wiltshire, “Boethius and the Summum Bonum,” Classical Journal 67 (1972): 216–20.

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own punishment (IV, 1, 7 ff). With respect to her first point, the good man’s goodness (probitas) is always in his own power, for he cannot lose it except by doing evil. Hence, his goodness is truly “his own proper good.” It cannot be taken away by an outside force (IV, 3, 2–7) and it brings the greatest reward of all: immortal happiness, participation in the divine (8–10). This is what all human beings desire. Only the good are truly powerful because only they achieve the enduring happiness we all desire. Conversely, with respect to her second point, the wicked can never be happy, precisely because they are wicked and therefore do not participate in the divine goodness that brings happiness. Hence, the wicked are never truly powerful, for all their worldly power cannot make them happy. In fact, the wicked are profoundly impotent and frustrated, and their wickedness is their punishment, which they cannot escape unless they begin to be good (IV, 3, 11–12; IV, 4). In short, the good man always possesses the goodness (probitas) that is his own proper good (proprium bonum), and this makes him truly happy, while the wicked man possesses only alien goods that can never make him happy. Philosophy’s third point is addressed at some length in the second half of Book IV, after the prisoner’s questions in IV, 5. As we saw earlier, in response to these she makes a new beginning in her instruction (IV, 6, 7) and expounds the relations between Providence and Fate (8–22). She then sets forth several examples of Providence meting out favorable and adverse things to both good people and wicked, like a wise doctor doing what is best for her patients (23–52). She thereby shows that “order embraces all things” (53) even though it is impossible to expound that order fully (54). In the next and final prose section of the book, she sums up this discussion in the formula “all fortune is good” (IV, 7, 2) and proves it to the prisoner’s satisfaction. By the end of Book IV, he appears persuaded that all the vicissitudes of fortune occur according to the wise plan of a good God. In one sense, then, Philosophy’s therapeutic program is complete by the end of Book IV: she has spoken directly to all three

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causes of his disease (III, 10–12) and to the consequences they entail (Book IV). What does Book V add to this? It provides a fitting climax to her program by completing her cure of the prisoner’s selfforgetful self-ignorance.17 We saw earlier that she rouses the prisoner from his “lethargy” of being self-forgetful (oblitus sui; I, 2, 5–6), by helping him to recover mens (I, 3, 1), and how this foreshadows her whole therapy. Mens refers to the immortal part of the soul, and the gravest cause of the prisoner’s disease lies in his belief that he is “a rational and mortal animal” (I, 6, 14–17). Book V completes his cure by helping him recollect himself as an immortal being in relationship with eternal God. Although Philosophy does not present an argument for the immortality of the soul, she leads the prisoner to a full sense of his immortality by her final discourse in the work. The remedy for being self-forgetful (oblitus sui) is becoming selfpossessed (compos sui). The prisoner’s self-forgetfulness, let us recall, is a disease affecting both his intellect and his will. Full self-possession, in contrast, implies complete self-recollection: the recovery of his self-understanding as an immortal being and of his self-mastery in willing only the good. Philosophy describes becoming selfpossessed (compos sui) as the crucial point (cardo, “hinge”) of highest happiness (II, 4, 23). She makes this point in tandem with the crucial Platonist distinction between things “outside oneself” (extra se) and those “within” (intra se; II, 4, 22). Only the latter are truly “one’s own proper goods” (I, 6, 18). Philosophy’s distinction underlies the difference between the external goods of Fortune and the internal goods proper to one’s immortal nature, which can never be taken away from the good man (II, 4, 23). It foreshadows the argument of IV, 3: the good man is always powerful and happy and like unto God, and his goodness, pertaining properly to his mens, can never be taken away by any outside force. To be compos sui, then, is 17. Donald F. Duclow makes a similar argument in “Perspective and Therapy in Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 4 (1979): 334–43.

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to possess oneself by possessing the goodness (probitas) proper to one’s immortal nature. The phrase compos sui is used only twice more in the work, once negatively, once positively. Later in Book II, Philosophy asserts that worldly power makes no one compos sui who is chained by vicious lusts (II, 6, 18). What constitutes true power proves a central question in the Consolation: Philosophy returns to this theme in the work’s central poem, III, m. 5, “Qui se volet esse potentem” (“Whoever wishes to be [truly] powerful”). What she states briefly in that poem, she argues more fully in Book IV: true power is self-power, self-mastery over one’s wayward emotions, the “perturbations of mind.” True power is possessed only by the good man and never by the wicked, because only the good man can achieve the enduring happiness that all desire. In other words, true power is true selfpossession and can be achieved only through moral goodness. Later, in the work’s final prose section, Philosophy defines God as compos sui in his eternal self-presence (V, 6, 8). Since the prisoner is an animal “divine by merit of reason” (II, 5, 25), he can understand himself as fully as possible only by understanding God as fully as possible. He becomes happy only by participating in God’s happiness (III, 10, 23). He can become self-possessed (compos sui) only by participating in God’s perfect self-possession. This is the crucial point (cardo; II, 4, 23) of the highest happiness he is seeking. In other words, the prisoner’s self-forgetfulness is cured by his recollecting himself in relation to God, which entails an understanding of the cosmic order. Philosophy treats these points most fully in her final discourse (V, 4–6). She leads the prisoner to understand his human nature in the universal context: at the horizon of the animal and the divine, of time and eternity, of matter and spirit, participating in both. She does this by expounding the hierarchy of knowing faculties (V, 4), relating these to the substances possessing them (V, 5), and defining eternity so as to treat God’s Providence (V, 6). She thereby offers him the fullest and highest self-understanding

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in the Consolation. She aims to restore his mens and make him compos sui by revealing God’s presence in his life (V, 6, 48). It completes the cure of his self-forgetfulness by leading him to the fullest selfrecollection.18 She accomplishes all this as she responds to the prisoner’s errors in his final discourse (V, 3). There he argues that divine “foreknowledge” negates our freedom of will, renders our prayers useless, and thereby sunders us from any vital contact with the Divine Source of being. Philosophy’s final discourse reveals that God’s Providence (providentia) proves far more powerful than the prisoner’s conception of divine “foreknowledge” (praescientia) would warrant, and yet it preserves our freedom of will. She corrects each of his errors even as she indicates the breathtaking scope of God’s knowledge. Compared to his argument in V, 3, God’s providential knowledge proves more awe-inspiring, human beings more capable and free, their relationship more intimate and vital, and what is at stake in moral goodness, more profound. Her final sentences exhort him to hope, to pray, and to practice virtue. She turns the eyes of his soul to the Divine Judge discerning all things and ordering them all in His vision. With this mutual gazing of the prisoner and God in mutual self-presence, the work ends. Philosophy’s final discourse refutes the prisoner’s errors in V, 3, yet her very presence refutes them already, though she never says this. The prisoner complains that God’s foreknowledge renders prayers useless, but Philosophy’s presence proves that God answered his need, even though he did not pray for help. The fiction of the Consolation implies that Philosophy is God’s messenger to the prisoner. Although he needed her desperately, he was so self-aban18. Luigi Alfonsi discusses the work in analogous terms, arguing that Philosophy leads the prisoner away from the personal toward the universal. See “Storia interiore e storia cosmica nella Consolatio boeziana,” Convivium, n.s., 3 (1955): 513–21. In a similar vein, see Thomas F. Curley’s remarks in “How to Read the Consolation of Philosophy,” pp. 225–43.

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doned in his grief that he did not seek her. We know this because, when she comes to him in I, 1, he does not even recognize her. He was not looking for her or hoping for her, and we can thereby infer that he did not pray for her advent. Nevertheless, God sent Philosophy to him. Her coming reveals God’s Providence, his care for right order in the cosmos. In this way, the very action of the work argues that God not only answers our prayers, but even responds to our need when we are too bereft to ask. Because the prisoner makes no response to Philosophy’s final discourse, the success of her teaching remains in doubt within the Consolation. Nevertheless, the fact of the Consolation removes all doubt: Boethius the author’s recollecting and recording his dialogue with Philosophy proves how deeply he has assimilated her teaching. This aspect of the work’s fiction deserves more attention than it has received. In order to understand it fully, we should first consider briefly the role of recollection within the Consolation. The prisoner’s ascent comes in two stages and involves two kinds of recollection. The first stage is Books II–III and its form of recollection is remembering by being reminded. The prisoner describes this stage at the beginning of Book IV: Philosophy has reminded him of things “forgotten recently on account of my grief at my injury, nevertheless not unknown a short while ago” (IV, 1, 2). He was not completely ignorant of these things, but had simply forgotten what he once learned. Now, thanks to her teaching in Books II–III, he remembers them again. We might call this kind of recollection “extensive.” The second stage of recollection, in Books IV–V, is properly anamnetic in the Platonist sense, and so we might call it “intensive.” To be sure, all truths in a Platonist work can be said to have an anamnetic character. The Consolation calls our attention to anamnesis explicitly in III, m. 11, and V, m. 3, spoken by Philosophy and the prisoner, respectively. Nevertheless, not only is a Platonist ascent necessarily anamnetic, in its recollective movement toward the Ori-

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gin, but Books IV–V also enact an anamnetic progress in the understandings they present. In Book IV, the prisoner raises a host of questions that he cannot resolve on his own. Philosophy answers them by leading him to truths entirely new for him: not merely the recollection of truths forgotten but the anamnetic recognition of new truths. Later, as she begins her final discourse, she promises to treat certain questions about Providence that no human being has yet fully resolved: “This long-standing complaint about Providence agitated Cicero and was explored by you yourself for a long time, but it has not been carefully and thoroughly explained by any of you philosophers” (V, 4, 1). In other words, Philosophy will lead the prisoner to understandings new for everyone, not only himself. Books IV–V thereby enact an anamnetic progress, from truths new to the prisoner to truths new for us all. Just as the first stage of recollection, in Books II–III, culminates in a treatment of God, so, too, does the second, properly anamnetic stage, in Books IV–V. In a Platonist ascent, the way forward is the way back, to the recollection of our Origin and End. In this way, the prisoner is led to recollect himself: first, by remembering extensively vital truths he had forgotten, and then by an intensive anamnesis of Divine Providence and his relationship to God. Philosophy wants him to understand himself in the fullest possible context, the Providential order of all things, and thereby to acquire the fullest possible self-mastery. She wants him to become fully compos sui, fully recollected in mind and will. Does she succeed? The proof of her success is found not within the Consolation itself, but in the fact of its existence. Within the work, the prisoner makes no response to her final discourse, and so we cannot tell how well he has assimilated it. We have reason to doubt his full understanding because his last discourse in the work (V, 3) proves a carefully argued series of errors. Nevertheless, according to the fiction of the Consolation, Boethius the prisoner has become Boethius the au-

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thor by recollecting, in detail, his past dialogue with Philosophy. This detailed recollection testifies to how fully that dialogue restored his powers of intellect and will. At the end of the original encounter, the prisoner’s powers may not yet be completely restored, and his understanding may yet be imperfect. But the fact that he has recalled and reconstructed her teaching argues for his assimilation of it. In other words, according to its fiction, The Consolation of Philosophy exists not just because the prisoner has a powerfully retentive memory, but also because he has reflected profoundly upon what Philosophy taught. Boethius the author comprehends not only his past errors, as the prisoner, but the visionary perspective of Philosophy herself. His memory is not only retentive but fully recollective in his anamnetic grasp of Philosophy’s teaching. He has not only undergone her instruction, as the prisoner, but also meditated upon it—otherwise, he could not have reconstructed it. Moreover, his superb achievement tells us how to understand the Consolation: not by reading it through, like the prisoner, but by reconstructing it meditatively in our souls, like Boethius the author. As the prisoner becomes Boethius the author of the whole work, he recollects himself in the fullest possible way. He participates in the divine and thereby becomes compos sui. Outside the fiction of the work, we recognize how successfully the historical Boethius achieved self-possession in his trials. We cannot know how distraught by grief he actually was at his imprisonment, or whether for a time he gave himself over to the muses of elegiac poetry as he lamented his fall. The fiction of the Consolation does not assure us of historical facts. Nevertheless, it allows us to infer that the historical Boethius felt his self-possession threatened by his trials, and that he retained it, or regained it, by remembering philosophy. He recollected himself, in part, by reconstructing a life of philosophical study and meditation in The Consolation of Philosophy. The work’s power and beauty indicate how fully the historical Boethius proved compos sui in his imprisonment. One aspect of his


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achievement is the work’s numerological structure, a latent yet elegant design.

Numerological Structure As a carefully designed Platonist work, The Consolation of Philosophy should have a significant numerological structure, but we are not quite sure what it is.19 Its composition in five books has some numerological meanings clearly related to the work as a whole. First, because every whole multiple of 5 ends in 5, the number is “circular” and associated with “return.” “Five” thereby symbolizes “the return of the soul to God,” a recurrent theme in the Consolation and the dramatic and philosophical action of the work as a whole. Second, it also symbolizes love, because it is the sum of the first feminine and masculine numbers (2 + 3). Moreover, Mars is the fifth planet out from the Earth and Venus is the fifth earthward from Saturn, the outermost in the geocentric cosmos, and Mars and Venus were lovers.20 Hence, 5 can also be said to symbolize the “love that rules the universe,” celebrated at several points in the Consolation.21 Finally, according to Macrobius, the number 5 “designates at once all things in the higher and lower realms”: the Supreme God, the Mind emanating from him, the world soul, the celestial realms, and the terrestrial realm. In this way, “the number five marks the 19. Little has been published about the formal structure of the Consolation. Joachim Gruber has discovered the arrangement of various meters around III, m. 9, as their center; see the foldout chart following p. 16 of his Kommentar, with his discussion on pp. 19–24. Elaine Scarry’s proposals do not persuade me, yet they are inventive and deserve more attention than they have received. David S. Chamberlain, “The Philosophy of Music in the Consolatio of Boethius,” Speculum 45 (1970): 80–97, offers a careful discussion of musical references in the work, but no analysis of its formal structure. 20. See Vincent Hopper, Medieval Number Symbolism, p. 102, and Russell A. Peck, “Number as Cosmic Language,” in Eckhardt, ed., Essays in the Numerical Criticism of Medieval Literature, pp. 15–64, esp. 60–61. 21. See Edmund Reiss, Boethius, pp. 152–53; on p. 189, n. 49, he cites five poems celebrating this divine Love: I, m. 5, II, m. 8, III, m. 9, IV, m. 6, and V, m. 3.

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sum total of the universe.”22 This Neoplatonist totality is envisioned in several poems in the work, and its is articulated in its final prose sections by way of the hierarchy of modes of knowledge, culminating in the intelligentia of Divine Providence. In short, 5 symbolizes the totality of being and the circular movement of the soul’s return to God, which manifests the divine love animating the cosmos—all fundamental themes in The Consolation of Philosophy. One would expect that its significant numbers would be cosmological, as is usual in the Platonist tradition, but the prominence of the number 13 gives one pause. On the one hand, several poems in the work appeal to the Timaeus tradition, where the order of the heavens proves the model of the divine ordering of all things in the cosmos. The most famous of these poems, III, m. 9, elaborately enacts the pattern of the world soul it describes in a numerologically significant arrangement of lines. On the other hand, the Consolation as a whole seems not to be structured according to the most important cosmological numbers in the tradition: 7 (the planets), 8 (the starry spheres), 12 (the zodiac), and so on. In fact, 13 proves a significant number in the work, even though it is “the number of illomen” and so not normally used for cosmological order. The work consists of 39 sections of prose (3 3 13) and 39 poems, 78 sections in all (6 3 13). Moreover, Book I has 13 sections, 7 of poetry and 6 of prose, and so Philosophy’s therapeutic program in Books II–V has 65 (5 3 13). Boethius the author thereby indicates that 13 proves a significant number in the Consolation, but what it signifies and how it functions in his whole design has not yet been understood. Seventy-eight is not usually a significant number in the tradition, but it can be recuperated: it is the sum of the whole numbers from 1–12. As such, it can be considered a form of 12 and therefore, like 12, a “perfect number.” Seventy-eight can thereby be considered 22. Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio 1.6.19–20.


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a form of both 12 and 13, and thereby unifies (in some way) meanings of both numbers. I will argue that the numerology of the Consolation “reconciles” lunar and solar movements, associated respectively with Fortune and the God governing the cosmos. Thirteen is the number of lunar months in a year, while 12 is the number of solar months and of the zodiac. Hence, 78, the total number of sections in the work, itself “reconciles” the lunar and solar associations of 13 and 12. There are other problems that a proposal for the numerological structure of the work must confront. The first of these is the asymmetrical distribution of sections across the five books. Consider the following chart: Book

Number of poems

Number of prose sections

Total

I II III IV V

7 8 12 7 5

6 8 12 7 6

13 16 24 14 11

The final and climactic book has 11 sections, a numerological anomaly for a work insisting on a providential order in all things. Eleven, like 13, is not a number associated with order but with disorder, with excess and defect: it exceeds 10 and fails to reach 12, both perfect numbers. Hence, a numerological design for the work will not correspond precisely to its division into books. It will differ somewhat from the ascent structure described in the first section of this chapter, overlapping it in some respects. We will see, however, that the numerological structure is centered on the prisoner’s inward and upward turn in III, 9. In that way, it does correspond with an explicit shift in the action of the work, distinct from its division into books. Another difficulty lies in the work’s two centers. It is often said that III, 9, or III, m. 9, or both, are “the center” of The Consolation of

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Philosophy.23 But though they may be thematically central, they are not the mathematical center of the work as a whole. Its 39 poems have a central poem, the 20th, III, m. 5, and its 39 prose sections have their center in III, 6. The mathematical centrality of these two sections must be acknowledged and incorporated into an understanding of the whole. Book III, m. 5, praises true power, not as extent of rule, but as one’s ability to govern one’s desires and emotions, especially anger, anxiety (“black cares”), and “wretched complaints” at ill fortune. This poem clearly accords with Philosophy’s overriding aim, as described earlier: to bring the prisoner to self-recollection and self-possession. She wants him to become as fully compos sui as possible, and III, m. 5, treats this aim, albeit from a limited perspective. The central prose section that follows it is Philosophy’s critique of gloria (III, 6). Its thematic centrality is not so obvious and will be argued later. The thematic centrality of III, 9, has its mathematical corollary only when we consider Books II–V, Philosophy’s therapeutic program, as a distinct unit. It has 65 sections, and III, 9, is the 33rd of these, their precise center. The poem that follows, III, m. 9, is presented as a prayer “[calling on] the Father of all things” (III, 9, 33) for aid in finding “the abode of the highest good” (III, 9, 32). It thereby inaugurates the second half of Philosophy’s program as a whole. Hence, these sections do prove central to the Consolation both thematically and mathematically, but only when we set Book I aside as a “Prologue” and consider Books II–V as a significant whole in itself. The numerological design I wish to propose features 13 and 19 as key numbers, creating an ascending pattern proportioned according to Plato’s “divided line,” with the turn in III, 9, dividing the low23. Pierre Courcelle and Joachim Gruber understand III, 9 as a turning point from Aristotelian dialectic, prominent heretofore in the work, toward explicitly Platonic themes, prominent in III, m. 9, and III, 10–12. See Courcelle, La Consolation, p. 161; and Gruber, Kommentar, p. 272.


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er from the upper half.24 Because there are 13 lunar months in a year, I understand 13 to represent a reconciliation of lunar and solar movements. Four weeks comprise a lunar month (4 3 7 = 28 days), and 13 lunar months contain 52 weeks (4 3 13) and 364 days, almost a full solar year. In this symbolism, lunar movements symbolize the changeable order of things “under the moon” in the Ptolemaic cosmos, including those on Fortune’s wheel. The solar movements, in contrast, symbolize the cosmic order of the heavens enacting the two motions of the world soul in the Timaeus tradition, celebrated in III, m. 9, “O qui perpetua mundum ratione gubernas” (“O you who govern the universe with perpetual reason”). That poem contains 28 lines, a lunar number, and so itself embodies the reconciliation of solar and lunar movements.25 As I understand it, the number 19 also proves significant in the design of the Consolation. Where 13 symbolizes the reconciliation of solar and lunar movements in the course of a year, 19 symbolizes their reconciliation in the metonic cycle. Today this cycle is perhaps best known in the recurrence of Easter on the same day in a 19-year cycle. Because Easter occurs on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring equinox, it is determined by a combination of solar and lunar movements, and its recurrence on the same calendar date every 19 years represents the reconciliation of solar and lunar movements in a perpetual calendar. But this metonic cycle was known to the ancients, named after its discoverer Meton, an Athenian in the fifth century B.C. He worked out the period of time in which the Moon returns to the same apparent position with regard to the Sun, so that the new and full moons occur at the same dates in the corresponding year of each cycle. This cycle is generated by 24. Myra Uhlfelder told me, in 1981, that she thought Plato’s divided line was crucial to the structure of the Consolation. I have taken this idea from her, but I do not know whether she would agree with the structure outlined here. 25. On 7 and 28 as lunar numbers, see Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio 1.6.48–56.

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the difference between the Sun’s and the Moon’s orbits around the Earth, which intersect at an angle of 5 degrees, 9 minutes. It takes 19 years. I divide the 78 sections of The Consolation of Philosophy into four parts around the central division in III, 9, according to the following pattern: part 1

part 2

part 3

part 4

26 + 19 + 1 + 19 + 13 (I, 1–II, 7) (II, m. 7–III, m. 8) (III, 9) (III, m. 9–IV, m. 6) (IV, 7–V, 6)

Its proportions conform to those in Plato’s “divided line,” which has four sections with a central division, two below and two above: the second and third sections are equal, while the proportions of the first and the fourth cannot be determined.26 Clearly, III, 9 acts as the central division, with 19 sections on both sides of it. Because part 1 contains 26 sections (2 3 13), Boethius’s structure retains the symmetry of Plato’s divided line, with its uncertain proportion between its lowest and highest part. Boethius has not only used the proportion but also adapted the meaning of Plato’s line. Each section of the line is a mode of knowledge. Those below the central division concern visible things: eikasia (knowledge derived from reflections and shadows) and pistis (knowledge derived from physical objects). In the Consolation, similarly, the first two parts (I, 1–III, 8) concern things extra se, the external goods of Fortune, known by sensation and imaginatio. In Plato’s line, the two sections above the division concern intelligible things: dianoia (mathematical objects) and noesis (the Platonic Forms). Similarly, in Boethius, the final two parts (III, 10–V, 6) concern intelligible entities intra se and supra se, known by reason and intelli26. The “divided line” is explained at the end of Book VI of Plato’s Republic (509d–511d). See The Republic of Plato, translated with Notes and an Interpretive Essay by Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968), esp. Bloom’s note and diagram, pp. 464–65.


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gentia: “the form of the divine substance” (III, 10–12), the principles of free will in its acting (IV, 1–4) and its liberty (V, 2), the hierarchy of modes of knowing (V, 4–5), and the relations between freedom, fate, and Providence (IV, 6–7; V, 6). The hierarchy of modes of knowledge in Boethius’s ascent roughly parallels that in Plato’s line. Moreover, there is a fairly close correspondence between this division of the Consolation and the ascent described earlier, where Books I–II correspond to the level of sensation, Book III to imaginatio, Book IV to reason, and Book V to intelligentia. The 26 sections of part 1 (I, 1–II, 7) cover almost all of Books I–II, with only three sections remaining (II, m. 7–II, m. 8), and thereby comprise almost all the level corresponding to sensation. Of the 19 sections in part 2 (II, m. 7–III, 8), 16 are explicitly devoted to Philosophy’s program of showing the prisoner the imagines of true good. Hence, part 2 largely takes place at the level of imaginatio proper. The 19 sections in part 3 (III, m. 9–IV, m. 6) cover almost all Book IV, at the level of ratio, and the final sections of Book III, which enact imaginatio, not properly, but analogically. These begin with a hymn to the divine being who governs the universe according to “perpetual reason” (perpetua ratione; III, m. 9, 1), and they culminate in a summation of III, 10–12, where the plural “reasonings” is used four times to characterize Philosophy’s discourse.27 In this way, part 3 partakes of ratio from beginning to end. Finally, the 13 sections of part 4 (IV, 7–V, 6) cover all of Book V, the level analogous to intelligentia, plus the two final sections of Book 4: these could be considered a bridge passage from ratio, governing Book IV, to intelligentia in Book V. With the proviso of partial overlap and underlap, this numerological division of the Consolation in four parts corresponds to the pattern of ascent according to the division of books. Unusual as Boethius’s use of the numbers 13 and 19 may be, the 27. For Philosophy’s “reasonings,” see rationes (III, 12, 25 and 38), rationum (III, 12, 23), and rationibus (III, 12, 30), all in the latter half of III, 12, the culminating summary of III, 10–12.

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implied lunar and solar symbolism is entirely traditional and accords fully with explicit features in the work’s discourse. In the Ptolemaic cosmos, the Moon is the lowest of the stars, the closest to Earth, and thus the most changeable of the heavenly bodies. Like Fortune, the Moon is constantly inconstant, the heavenly body most akin to the mutability of all sublunary things. Because its movements influence the tides so strongly, it is associated with water, a traditional Platonist image for the chaotic flux of sense experience. Augustine associated the Moon with scientia, the knowledge of sensible things that change, and contrasted it with the Sun as an image of sapientia, the knowledge of things intelligible, divine and eternal wisdom (Conf. 13.18; cf. 5.3). Where the Moon is traditionally linked with inconstancy and its attendant vices, the Sun symbolizes constancy and the corresponding virtues. Just before Socrates explains “the divided line” in the Republic, he uses the Sun as an image to clarify the Good. The Sun is an ancient image of the highest divine power, and in Platonist thought it often symbolizes the Good and the One. The Sun is also an image of rule and good order.28 Its diurnal motion from east to west along the celestial equator, in the Motion of the Same, governs the hours of day and night, and its annual movement along the ecliptic, in the Motion of the Different, governs the seasons of the year. Hence, as the Sun governs the rhythms of all life on Earth by its movements, it manifests most fully “the two motions” of the Same and the Different in the world soul, according to the Timaeus tradition. The Consolation of Philosophy as a whole aims to impress on the prisoner a sense of the divine order in all things, not only in the heavens above but also in the sublunary realm here below. The numbers 13 and 19 represent this universal divine order by their

28. See Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio 1.20.1–8, on these solar traditions.


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reconciliation of the Sun, as symbol for the manifest heavenly order, and the Moon, a symbol for the hidden order of sublunary things. They are cosmic numbers because they are “numbers of time,” but as numbers for complete cycles of time, they symbolize perpetuity and, thus, at one remove, eternity. Thirteen and 19 symbolize perpetual recurrence, the “perpetual reason” with which the eternal God governs the universe (III, m. 9, 1). Thirteen lunar months in a solar year marks the annual reconciliation of Moon and Sun, and 19 years in a perpetual calendar marks a larger pattern of recurrence and reconciliation. Because the four-part numerological structure does not conform to the division of the Consolation into five books, it represents a “hidden” order in the work, much like the order of sublunary things. This deeper and reconciling order cannot be discovered by reading the Consolation but only by rereading it and meditating upon it. In other words, to discover a hidden order like this one must imitate Boethius the prisoner in his work as Boethius the author, recalling and reconstructing his past experience with Philosophy. In this way, her work is more deeply assimilated, and her Consolation more profoundly consoles. I would suggest that the numbers 13 and 19 function significantly in III, m. 9, albeit in a hidden, because oblique, way. In this way, the poem can be said to dance the reconciliation of lunar and solar symbolism. It is well understood that the poem’s 28 lines praise the divine ruler of the universe for 21 lines and close with 7 lines of petition.29 Nevertheless, its first sentence is a long address comprising 9 lines, summarizing the creation as a whole before presenting certain details in lines 10–21. Hence, that first sentence allows a division of the poem into a 9-line introduction and 19 lines developing its consequences, the details of creation (10–21) and return (22–28). From this perspective, the 9 lines (1–9) are analogous 29. For a detailed analysis in English of this poem, see Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez, Time and the Crystal, pp. 11–18, with their notes, pp. 333–36.

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to the cosmos as a whole, with its 9 heavenly spheres, while the 19 lines (10–28) represent the reconciliation of “lunar” change and “solar” changelessness in the cosmic process. The importance of the number 13 to the poem is already well recognized: it introduces God’s formation of the world soul (13–17) as “the center moving all things of the threefold nature” (Tu triplicis mediam naturae cuncta moventem; 13). Hence, though line 13 is not quite the mathematical center of the 28 lines, it names the world soul as a “center” (mediam), before the poem describes the world soul’s division into the motions of the Same and the Different (14–17). This oblique numerology of solar and lunar reconciliation in III, m. 9, is supported by better known aspects of the poem. I have already suggested that 28 is a lunar number because the week comes from the Hebrew calendar, a lunar one. Hence, the usual division of the poem into 21 + 7 lines is also lunar. At the same time, solar imagery lies behind the opening address to God as “O you who govern the universe with perpetual reason.” The perpetual order of the cosmos is manifested most prominently by the Sun, whose daily and annual motions govern the rhythms of life on Earth. Since these two motions manifest those of the world soul, III, m. 9, effects a reconciliation of solar imagery with lunar numerology. I have argued that Boethius indicates, in several ways, the importance of the number 13 for the numerology of the Consolation. Despite the role of 19 in the four-part structure I am describing, 13 remains the dominant partner, for parts 1, 3, and 4 end on sections that are multiples of 13. Part 1 ends with II, 7, the 26th section (2 3 13) of the work, part 3 with IV, m. 6, the 65th (5 3 13), and part 4 with V, 6, the 78th (6 3 13). Hence, we might expect the 13th numbered sections in the work to articulate its major themes in significant ways. To be sure, these themes would also be expressed elsewhere and, in principle, any section of the work can be connected with them. Nevertheless, a survey of the 13th numbered sections shows how resoundingly they strike these themes, especially in the later parts of the Consolation.


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The last three 13th numbered sections articulate the grand philosophical visions of the work. Allow me to review them briefly, in reverse order. The final section, V, 6, is the 78th (6 3 13) in the Consolation and concludes part 4. It offers the work’s fullest resolution of Divine Providence governing the universe and human free will acting in it, with the richest account of God’s eternal knowledge. The 65th section (5 3 13) is IV, m. 6, “Si vis celsi iura Tonantis,” which concludes part 3. This poem describes the divine ordering of the cosmos (1–5), in the heavens (6–18), and on the earth (19–33), which God rules by way of a “common love” (communis amor; 44) animating all things to return to their Source (34–48). Both of these sections clearly concern the divine order of the cosmos, and thus the reconciliation of lunar and solar symbolism implied in the number 13. The 52nd section (4 3 13) is III, 12. We have seen how this prose section summarizes III, 10–12, and climaxes with Philosophy’s circular reasoning, establishing the unity of the highest good, true happiness, and the form of the divine substance. This “vision” of true happiness governs the rest of Philosophy’s therapeutic program in Books IV–V: to lead the prisoner to his heavenly fatherland, his true home. These three sections present majestic understandings of the divine: in itself (III, 12), in governing the cosmos (IV, m. 6), and as eternal Providence embracing all things (V, 6). The first three 13th sections precede the prisoner’s turn in III, 9. Hence, they concern Philosophy’s efforts to reform and restore the prisoner. The 39th section (3 3 13) is III, m. 5, the mathematically central poem of the whole Consolation. As I said earlier, it treats briefly the theme of true power, overcoming adverse emotions, and thereby participates in Philosophy’s aim to make the prisoner compos sui. The 13th section of the work functions similarly. It is I, m. 7, “Nubibus atribus,” the final section in Book I. Philosophy has just completed her diagnosis of the prisoner (I, 6) and this poem begins with two images for his perturbations of soul (1–19)—the sea roiled by storm winds and a river crashing against a boulder. Its final 12 lines explain what he must do to regain his self-possession:

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overcome the four Stoic perturbations of joy, fear, hope, and sadness (20–31). The poem not only reflects Philosophy’s aim of making the prisoner compos sui but also begins her enactment of it. The 26th section (2 3 13) is II, 7, which concludes part 1. It is Philosophy’s critique of gloria (fame, reputation) as a good of Fortune. It thereby connects with the mathematically central prose section of the work as a whole, III, 6, also a critique of gloria. Why did Boethius the author want to emphasize Philosophy’s critique of gloria in these two ways? As I understand the issue, fame is the noblest of the goods and aspirations criticized by Philosophy. In the Homeric tradition, immortality could only be achieved by gloria, “immortal fame.” The philosophical tradition, however, reenvisioned immortality as inherent in the soul, with immortal reward consequent on moral, rather than simply heroic, conduct. Hence, Philosophy’s two critiques of gloria open onto the question of where true immortality lies. We have seen how central this question is to the Consolation. In III, 6, Philosophy touches on this issue in her one reference to “the wise man” (sapientis), who “measures his own good, not by the winds of popularity, but by the truth of self knowledge” (veritate conscientiae; III, 6, 3). The wise man recognizes his immortality of soul and does not seek fulfillment through earthly fame. In the final sentence of II, 7, Philosophy speaks more directly of the immortal soul and its destiny: “If the mind remains conscious of itself when, loosed from its earthly prison, it freely seeks heaven, would it not then scorn all earthly business because, by enjoying heaven, it rejoices in being delivered from earthly things?” (II, 7, 23). In the final sentence of the 26th section, the climax of part 1, Philosophy returns to the central concern of her therapy, pointing to the soul’s ultimate fulfillment after the death of the body. In sum, the numerological structure I have outlined solves several problems in the numerology of The Consolation of Philosophy. First, it acknowledges the thematic centrality of the prisoner’s turn in III, 9, and finds it mathematically central to Philosophy’s therapy in Books II–V. Second, the importance of 13 in this structure also illu-


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minates the role of the mathematically central poem and prose section of the whole work. Its 39th section is the central poem of the whole (III, m. 5), and its 26th section (II, 7), which ends part 1, corresponds with the central prose section (III, 6) in their critique of gloria. Third, the numbers 13 and 19, unusual though they are in the Platonist cosmological tradition, have a thematic meaning fully consonant with it and with the whole Consolation: the reconciliation of “lunar” mutability and “solar” constancy in the providential order of all things. Finally, this numerological structure transcends the division of the Consolation into five books, where the 11 sections of Book V and the 13 sections of Book I prove numerologically anomalous. It thereby proves a latent design, yet one adapting a famous Platonic image, “the divided line,” in its meanings and proportion. This latent design in the work imitates the hidden order of Providence in the sublunary realm, a fundamental theme of the Consolation. If we set aside Book I as a “Prologue” and consider only Philosophy’s program in Books II–V, the numerological division looks slightly different and has some important analogues. Because Book I has 13 sections, the 13th numbered sections reviewed above retain their place and importance as 13s. Let us consider the pattern in this revised division: part 1 p part 2 part 3 part 4 13 + 19 + 1 + 19 + 13 (II, 1–II, 7) (II, m. 7–III, m. 8) (III, 9)(III, m. 9–IV, m. 6)(IV, 7–V, 8)

This symmetrical pattern proves a numerological chiasm: 13 + 19 + 1 + 19 + 13 may be represented chiastically as A B C B A. As we saw in Chapter 1, a chiasm is sometimes called an inclusio or a “ringstructure,” because its ends in an analogue of its beginning. Hence, this structure imitates procession and return. Here is a fundamental Platonist pattern: this circular movement animates all things and governs the processes of the universe. The Consolation celebrates it in many places, among them III, m. 9, which begins part 3, and IV, m.

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6, which concludes it in a 13th section. The chiastic structure of Philosophy’s “divided line” in her therapy of ascent also proves a circle, miming procession and return. The chiasm is also a cosmological figure. In the Timaeus, the demiurge takes the world soul and divides it into two parts, the Motion of the Same and the Motion of the Different, joining them in a chi, an X-pattern. Philosophy recalls this division of the world soul in the central lines of III, m. 9 (13–17): the crossing point of the heavenly motions takes place as the poem crosses its midpoint. Hence, the numerological chiasm of Books II–V dances, insofar as a linear progress can, the chi of the world soul in its two motions. In short, Boethius the author’s “divided line” proves a cosmological figure. This, too, he has adapted from Plato. Although the divided line is explicitly an epistemological image, Plato derived it from the cosmological image of “the golden chain” in Iliad 8.10–27, as Zdravko Planinc has shown.30 There Zeus threatens the gods with punishment if they disobey him: he will hurl the disobedient down to Tartarus, which is as far below the earth as the earth is below heaven (ouranos; 8.16). As in the divided line, there are four elements— heaven, earth, Hades, and Tartarus—with a fixed proportion relating some, but not all, of them, and so no set of proportions emerges for the whole. Then Zeus boasts of his strength. He imagines a “golden chain” let down from heaven to the earth, and all the gods together attempting to pull him down to ground. Zeus insists not only that they could not move him but also that he, whenever he wishes, could pull up them up with all the earth and sea (17–27). Just as Zeus, the greatest god, stands unmoved atop the golden chain of the cosmos, so does the Good, divine and like the sun (Republic 508b–9a), stand metaphorically atop the divided line (509d–11d), for the Good is the source of both the knowledge of things and their 30. Zdravko Planinc, Plato’s Political Philosophy: Prudence in the “Republic” and the “Laws” (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991), pp. 166–69.


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being, although it is itself “beyond being, exceeding it in dignity and power” (Republic 509b).31 Plato has transformed Homer’s Zeus, the most powerful of many gods, into the Good, the Source of every existing thing and of our knowledge of them, whether they are visible or intelligible entities. He has also changed the cosmological image of “the golden chain,” with its four elements and proportional structure, into the divided line, according to which the full range of things in the cosmos, both visible and intelligible, are known. Plato’s divided line unites its epistemological foreground with its cosmological background. The ancients understood this, as Pierre Leveque shows in his meticulous assemblage of ancient commentaries on “the golden chain.” His first chapter reviews cosmological allegories, while his second turns to the link between human beings and higher powers. In Neoplatonist commentary, these spiritual powers prove just as much within us as they do above us, for things intra se lead to and participate in those supra se. Porphyry understood Homer’s “golden chain” to represent the hierarchy of spiritual powers extending from the highest God to the material universe.32 For Macrobius, these powers include Mind and Soul as hypostases emanating from the Supreme God, from whom “even to the bottommost dregs of the universe there is one tie, binding at every link and never broken. This is the golden chain of Homer which, he tells us, God ordered to hang down from the sky to the earth.” In his very next sentence, Macrobius observes that “of all the creatures on earth man alone has a common share in Mind.”33 In other words, the “golden chain” is an allegory not only of the external cosmos, but also of the inner faculties of knowledge linking us with “the Supreme God.” In the 31. The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom. Bloom does not capitalize “the Good.” 32. Pierre Leveque, Aurea Catena Homeri: Une Etude sur L’Allegorie Grecque, Annales Litteraires de l’Universite de Besancon, vol. 27 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1959), p. 56. 33. Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio 1.14.14–15.

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language of The Consolation of Philosophy (V, 4–5), because we are animate beings, we participate in Soul, giving us the powers of sensation and imaginatio, shared by the animals; because we have “a common share in Mind,” we also have ratio and can appreciate intelligentia. In Neoplatonist allegory, the cosmological “golden chain” implies an epistemological one akin to Plato’s “divided line.” In sum, then, the latent structure of Philosophy’s therapy proves a chiastically structured divided line. As the line enacts its epistemological ascent, from sensation to intelligentia, its chiasm imitates a circle simultaneously cosmic, as procession and return, and cosmological, as the chi pattern of the Motions of the Same and the Different. Boethius thereby created an icon for Platonist meditation. As the master plan for The Consolation of Philosophy, every prose section and poem can be understood in relation to it, as a stage in the line of ascent and as a moment in the circularity of Platonist cosmic processes. If one’s understanding of philosophy is limited to argument and analysis, this structure seems negligible. But in a meditative philosophy, aiming at personal transformation, an icon like this resonates with meanings, and meditation on it enables them to be deeply assimilated. As I argued in Chapter 1, this icon unifies and ramifies the meanings of the work: every topic is related to it, and through it any topic can be related to every other one. In this way, The Consolation of Philosophy, as a work for meditation, proves inexhaustible. Clearly, this was Boethius’s aim. In the dramatic and philosophical action of the Consolation, Philosophy labors not merely to inform the prisoner of ideas he has forgotten, but also to transform his orientation and the attitudes causing him to suffer. Boethius the author sought to work analogously on his readers. He structured the work so that it does what it says, enacts what it talks about: it leads us on a “linear” progress that ascends “circularly” back to our Origin. The icon of its latent structure is supposed to work upon sympathetic readers even when they do not perceive it, for their reading


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and rereading dances its movement and it thereby enters into them. Although Boethius hid the design of this icon, it was part of his designs on his readers: because it enacts processes fundamental to the cosmos, as he understood it, he could expect readers to be moved fundamentally by its movement. Nevertheless, Boethius hoped that his best readers would discover this structure and meditate upon it. A more conventional numerology governs the number of sections in which Philosophy proves the leading speaker. There are 70, the number of wisdom (7) multiplied by perfection (10). Three poems are presented as the prisoner’s (I, m. 1, and m. 4, V, m. 3) and one is narrated retrospectively by Boethius the author (I, m. 3). The prisoner’s voice dominates three prose sections (I, 4; IV, 5; V, 3) and Boethius the author narrates one restrospectively (I, 1). When we subtract these 8 sections from the 78 in the whole Consolation, 70 are left over. Since 4 poems and 4 prose sections belong to Boethius, as prisoner and author, Philosophy speaks 35 poems and is the leading speaker in 35 prose sections. According to Plutarch, the number 35 symbolizes harmony, for it is the sum of the first feminine and the first masculine cubes (8 + 27).34 Philosophy’s speaking in the Consolation therefore embodies, numerologically, the perfection of wisdom (7 3 10 = 70) and harmony (35) in perfect balance (35 + 35).35 In this way, then, are Philosophy’s poetry and prose perfectly 34. Plutarch, De animae procreatione, cited by Vincent Hopper, Medieval Number Symbolism, p. 45. 35. Two German scholars, Hermann Trankle and M. Baltes, have argued that the Consolatio is incomplete. See Hermann Trankle, “Ist die Philosophiae Consolatio des Boethius zum vorgesehenen Abschluss gelangt?,” Vigiliae Christianae 31 (1977): 148–154; and M. Baltes, “Gott, Welt, Mensch in der Consolatio Philosophiae des Boethius. Die Consolatio Philosophiae als ein Dockument platonischer und neoplatonischer Philosophie,” Vigiliae Christianae 34 (1980): 313–80. Clearly, my understanding of the work’s numerological perfection argues otherwise. See O’Daly, The Poetry of Boethius, pp. 28–29, for a summary of Trankle’s point and an intelligent response, with which I wholly agree.

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balanced in the work. This is a numerological illumination of her poise as a teacher, one instance of balance in the chiastic design of her therapeutic program. Poetry and prose, literary imagery and philosophical argument, dramatic action and meditative ascent are all beautifully integrated in The Consolation of Philosophy. Its latent numerological structure fits perfectly with its central themes and its movement as a whole. To be sure, there is more to be discovered about these aspects of the work. Nevertheless, whatever we discover will argue the integrity of Boethius’s design in The Consolation of Philosophy and its power as a spiritual exercise, in the tradition of the Platonist ascent, to form the souls of those who would meditate upon it.

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INDEX

Alfonsi, Luigi, 245 allegory, 30, 43, 57, 70–71, 74, 98–109, 120, 124, 132, 141–42, 155–56, 263–64; of the church, 30, 71, 98, 101–2, 109, 142, 155; on the creation of the church in Conf. 13, 101–9, 141–42, 155; on God's fifth act, 103; on God's first act, 103; on God's ninth act, 109; on God's second act, 103 Alter, Robert, 58 Anselm: the author, 47–51, 62, 159–64, 173, 182–87, 194–95, 204–10; the narrator, 47–48, 62, 159–76, 182–83, 186, 190–95, 198, 202–9. See Proslogion Aquinas, St. Thomas, 6, 15, 18, 23, 230 Ascent: Christian–Platonic, ix–xiv, 2–3, 9, 20, 25–26, 29–31, 42, 44, 53, 65–66, 69, 73–74, 77, 84, 90–98, 110–11, 119, 131–32, 139–44, 151–52, 155, 158–60, 164, 173, 195–201, 210; meditative, vi, xi–xii, 1–5, 8–22, 25–26, 29–32, 41–42, 46, 50–65, 71, 75, 196, 209–10, 266; narrator's, 48, 98, 102, 132, 142, 144–47, 151, 155, 162–64, 170, 174–76, 180, 185, 188, 191, 195–96, 199, 205; pilgrim's, 11, 22; Platonic, 226, 246, 266 Asher, Lyell, 113 Augustine; the author, 52–55, 62, 66, 79–158; the bishop, 45–46, 52, 78; the narrator, 52, 62, 66, 70, 79–158, 211; the young, 25, 45–46–, 52–54, 62, 68, 74–79, 88, 94, 100, 104–40, 146, 156, 211; and conversion, 139–55; and friendship, 119–38; and memory, 143–52; and time, 148–51.

See meditative philosophy, Augustine's Author, vii–xii, 21, 29. See Anselm, the author; Augustine, the author; Boethius, the author; Dante, the author Baltes, M. Gott, 265 Bamford, Christopher, 233 Barnes, Jonathan, 15 Barnhart, Bruno, 37 Bianchi, Enzo, 33 Bible, 18, 23, 33, 43, 55–58, 61, 67, 94, 101–2, 121, 130–31, 146–56, 173, 196–97 Boethius: the author, x, 45, 211–13, 222–27, 238, 246–48, 250, 257, 262–65; the prisoner, x, 44–45, 61, 211–13, 217, 220–22, 247, 257. See Consolation of Philosophy Bonaventure, xii–xiii, 95–97 Bouissou, G., 79 Bourke, Vernon J., 116, 143 Boyde, Patrick, 13, 38 Breyfogle, Todd, 71 Brodie, Thomas L., 58 Brown, Peter, 59, 79, 152 Bubacz, Bruce, 269 Burke, Kenneth, 7, 69 Callahan, J. F., 148, 269 Carruthers, Mary, 50, 148, 152 Cayre, F., 70 Chadwick, Henry, 11, 15, 54, 134, 211, 213, 236 Chamberlain, David S., 249 chiastic structure or pattern, 36–42, 61, 75–76, 93, 111, 119, 130, 136–38,

281

282

Index

chiastic structure or pattern (cont.) 174, 261–66 Christ, 10, 19, 22–25, 38, 41, 56, 67–68, 71, 77, 102, 106, 120, 125, 135, 142, 147, 173, 197–98, 202, 209 church, 22, 30–33, 43, 68, 70–77, 93–102, 106–11, 127–29, 132–36, 141–42, 146–51, 154–55, 197. See allegory, of the church; allegory, on the creation of the church in Conf. 13 Cipriani, Nello, O.S.A., 116 circle, 16–19, 38–43, 61, 149–50, 173, 214, 217, 226–36, 262–64 Clark, Mary T., 70 Clement of Alexandria, 71 Colish, Marcia, 3, 14, 15 Commedia, vii, xi–xii, 2–4, 10, 16, 20–26, 30–31, 34–35, 44–45, 61–62, 97; love in, 16, 30–31. See Dante Confessions, 3–4, 10–12, 25–27, 43, 51–55, 61–158 Consolation of Philosophy, vii–viii, xi–xii, 31, 36, 41, 44–45, 59–61, 135, 211–14, 220–27, 231–36, 240, 243–66. See Boethius Cooper, John C., 70 Courcelle, Piere, 100, 212, 213, 252 Crabbe, Anna, 211 Crosson, Frederick, J., 75 Crouse, R. D., 70 Culpepper, R. Alan, 58 Curley, Thomas F., 214, 215, 222–23, 245 Curtius, Ernst Robert, 35 Dante, x, xi, xiv, 2–7, 10–41, 44–46, 51, 61–64, 78, 97, 128, 229–31; the author, 45; the pilgrim, x, 2, 5–6, 10, 17, 22, 44–46, 51, 61, 62, 230, 231; the poet, 44–46. See Commedia; Inferno; Paradiso; Purgatorio divided line, 252–56, 261–64 Dixon, Sandra Lee, 112 Duclow, Donald F., 243 Durling, Robert M., xiv, 35, 103, 257 Dwyer, Richard A., 212

Eckhardt, Caroline D., 34, 35, 223, 249 Evans, G. R., 206, 209 exitus–reditus, viii, 1, 5, 18–19, 38, 69, 94 Ferrari, Leo C., 25, 55, 113, 119, 167, 272 Fichter, Andrew, 66, 131 Fitzgerald, Allan D., O.S.A., 64, 66, 116 foreshadowing, 23–28; and fulfillment, 14, 22–28, 120, 196 Freccero, John, 41, 45, 78 Gadamer, Hans–Georg, 95 Ghisalberti, A., 240 Gibson, Margaret T., 15, 212 Gruber, Joachim, 212, 213, 249, 252 Hadot, Pierre, 32–33, 57 Hardt, Manfred, 35 Hawkins, Peter, 78 hermeneutics, 54, 111, 145–46, 154–57 Herrera, Robert A., 165, 177 Hick, John, 165 hierarchy of analogies, 111, 132, 142 hierarchy of being, 12, 15 Hopper, Vincent Foster, 34, 249, 265 Illich, Ivan, 50 Inferno, 3–4, 10, 16–20, 24, 26; love in, 4, 30. See Dante journey, x, xii, 1–5, 8–13, 19–20, 24, 31–32, 44–46, 60–61, 74, 77–79, 81, 92–96, 160–62, 171, 194, 203, 210–12, 218, 222, 226, 236; interior, 1, 9, 11–13, 60; meditative, 5, 13, 60; narrator's, 162, 171, 194; pilgrim's, 2, 10 Kennedy, Robert P., 65, 75 Klibanksy, Raymond, 35 Klingner, Fritz, 212 Knauer, G. N., 70 ladder, 5, 14, 19–20, 26–28, 131, 214 Lamberton, Robert, 57 Lawlor, Robert, 233

Index lectio divinia, 33, 56–57 Lerer, Seth, 213, 219, 220, 236 Leveque, Pierre, 263 Lewis, C. S., 13 Lonergan, Bernard J. F., 4 MacCormack, Sabine, 66 Macrobius, 35, 249–50, 253, 256, 263 Magee, John, 227 Magrassi, Mariano, O.S.B., 33 Male, Emile, 34 Mann, William E., 113 Martinez, Ronald L., 35, 257 McGill, Arthur, 165 McInerny, Ralph M., 14 McMahon, Robert, 65, 70, 98, 103, 120 meditation, vii–viii, 3–5, 8, 11–13, 21–22, 28, 30–32, 42–43, 57, 60, 65, 74, 111–12, 115, 118–22, 126–33, 138–41, 148, 156, 195–96, 202, 208–9, 227, 248, 264. See ascent, meditative; journey, meditative meditative philosophy, vii, 34, 42, 44, 65, 264; Augustine's, 65, 109–11 Meno, 29. See Plato Michie, Donald, 58 Miller, James, 40 Mourant, John A., 143 moving viewpoint, xi, 4–5, 110–13, 118, 121, 131, 136, 138, 143, 155 narrator. See Anselm, the narrator; ascent, narrator's; Augustine, the narrator; Boethius, the narrator; Dante, the narrator; journey, narrator's numerologies, 34–43, 61, 77, 147, 172–74, 197, 214, 223, 233, 249–66 Oakeshott, Michael, 29 O'Daly, Gerard, 213, 265 O'Donnell, James J., 59, 64 Olney, James, xiv, 46, 276 Olson, Paul A., xiv, 78, 212 O'Meara, John J., 45, 54, 100 Oroz–Reta, Jose, 79 Ovid, 120, 163

283

Paffenroth, Kim, 65, 75 Paradisio, 3, 6, 10–11, 18–19, 21, 24, 30, 34, 41, 229–330. See Dante Pascal, Blaise, 1–2 Patch, Howard Rollin, 212, 227 Payne, F. Anne, 213 Peck, Russell A., 249 Pellikan, Jaroslav, 114 Pentecost, 26, 43, 104 Pieper, Josef, 13 pilgrim, 1, 7, 9–11, 22, 24, 34, 44–52, 60–62, 77–80, 160–61 Planinc, Zdravko, 262 Plato, 35, 80, 95, 150, 254, 262–63. See Meno; Republic; Timaeus prayer, x, xiv, 31–33, 46, 48, 50–51, 56, 64–65, 73–76, 79–114, 119, 128–29, 133, 145–47, 155, 158, 161–67, 170–73, 177–87, 190–94, 203–4, 208, 212, 221, 225, 234, 245, 246, 252 Proslogion, vii, x, xii–xiii, 27–28, 31, 36, 44–51, 55, 59, 61, 87, 127, 147, 159–244, 250–52, 259–61, 264–66. See Anselm Purgatorio, 3–4, 10, 17, 19, 30, 35; love in, 4. See Dante Quinn, John M., O.S.A., 70, 148 Rand, Edward Kennard, 213 reconfigured understandings, 30, 142–44, 160, 164, 195–96, 210, 229 Redemption, 19, 26, 38, 43 Reiss, Edmund, 211–12, 213, 236, 249 Republic, 35, 254–56, 262, 263. See Plato Resurrection, 10, 23, 38, 61, 78, 121, 169, 173 return to the origin, 6, 8, 13, 60, 65–71, 74–77, 84, 90–108, 195 Rhoads, David, 58 Rogers, Katherin A., 70, 148 Scarry, Elaine, 215, 222–23, 249 Schufreider, Gregory, xiv, 27–28, 163, 165, 168, 189, 204, 206

284

Index

Schumacher, E. F., 13 Singleton, Charles S., 35, 44 Socrates, 29, 80, 118, 184, 256 Solignac, A., 79, 101 Southern, R. W., 59, 206 Spengemann, William C., 46 sprirtual exercises, xii–xiii, 32–33, 57–63, 207–9 Starnes, Colin, 64 Stephany, William A., 75–76, 137 Stock, Brian, 65 Stolz, Anselm, 165, 180, 182, 207 Teske, Roland J., S.J., 70, 148 Timaeus, 35, 28–41, 148, 150, 231, 250, 253, 256, 262. See Plato Trankle, Hermann, 265

Trinity, 2, 18–19, 26–27, 34, 52, 67, 81–82, 98–99, 112, 152, 169–72, 176–77, 181–91, 197–98, 203, 208–9 typology, 24, 55 Vance, Eugene, 55 Van Fleteren, Frederick, 65, 66, 170 Viola, Coloman, 170 Virgil, 2, 4, 17–21, 61, 163 Voegelin, Eric, 165 von Balthasar, Hans Urs, 43 Waddell, Paul J., C.P., 125 Weintraub, Karl Joachim, 46 Wiltshire, Susan, 241 Wood, Chauncey, 41

Understanding the Medieval Meditative Ascent: Augustine, Anselm, Beothius, and Dante was designed and composed in Giovanni Book by Kachergis Book Design of Pittsboro, North Carolina. It was printed on 60-pound Natures Natural and bound by Thomson-Shore, Dexter, Michigan.

Understanding The Medieval Meditative Ascent: Augustine, Anselm, Boethius, & Dante

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Boethius (Great Medieval Thinkers)

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Dante: De vulgari eloquentia (Cambridge Medieval Classics)

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Understanding The Medieval Meditative Ascent: Augustine, Anselm, Boethius, & Dante

Boethius (Great Medieval Thinkers)

Boethius (Great Medieval Thinkers)

Boethius

Dante and the Franciscans (The Medieval Franciscans)

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Dante: De vulgari eloquentia (Cambridge Medieval Classics)

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