6

Augustine and the Life of Martyrdom

As he was arguing for a reconfiguration of martyrdom as cause-based, Augustine was also crafting and positing models for how his contemporaries could achieve that martyrdom, describing what a life of martyrdom would look like and helping his audience enact it through his rhetoric. Éric Rebillard has correctly noted that Augustine “promoted Christians who adhere to their Christian identity as their unique principle of action to the status of martyrs.”¹ But this evaluation does not capture the sheer effort Augustine put forth to induce his contemporaries to adopt this mentality, to become martyrs. Those efforts (and their fruits) are the focus of this chapter.

To fully understand Augustine’s revaluation of martyrdom, we need to flesh out what this martyrdom would have looked like (or, what Augustine thought it could look like). How did he expect that a martyrdom based on intention and interior orientations would manifest in action, if at all? What would all this have felt like for a parishioner who took Augustine’s lessons to heart? What type of experiential reality was Augustine advocating?

These questions are important to answer because (as I noted in the Introduction), although we can never know how many of Augustine’s contemporaries took up the challenge or succeeded in it, we can learn much about the bounds of their spiritual realities, worldviews, and ideational experiences from determining what their spiritual aspirations could plausibly be assumed to be. That is, if Augustine thought that the life of martyrdom would appeal to his contemporaries and described and “sold” it in such a way as to satisfy himself that he would be persuasive, we can glean from that an understanding (still murky, of course) of the spiritual horizons of Augustine’s contemporaries.

And just who were these contemporaries? Was Augustine aiming to inculcate the life of martyrdom across Christian society broadly, across all classes, or was this something reserved for the elite? Though there have been arguments that Augustine’s sermons were exclusively or primarily attended by the North African elite and, more importantly, that those elites were Augustine’s primary intended audience, to whom and for whom Augustine was aiming his sermons,² we can presume a far broader audience for his message. To begin with, as Leslie Dossey and others have shown, there were occasions, particularly feast days, where Augustine was addressing a more diverse and socially variegated audience.³ On these occasions, as I show elsewhere, there are clear indications that Augustine is addressing a non-elite audience.⁴ In these sermons, Augustine makes the same exact arguments about living martyrdom as he does in sermons clearly directed to more elite audiences, which indicates a reassuring (for the historian) continuity of message on this topic across all classes. Finally, we now know that Augustine was preoccupied with “mobilizing popular culture,” as Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliviera argues, via multiple means outside of the delivery of the sermons themselves, including through the circulation of pastoral pamphlets intended to be read in public settings outside the walls of the church and by crafting his sermons in a “journalistic” style with sensationalist content that lent itself to circulation among the masses as rumors.⁵ Thus we can say with some confidence that Augustine did intend this life of martyrdom to be attempted by and adopted by people from all social strata.

This chapter thus proceeds in two movements. The first seeks to describe and illuminate the life of martyrdom that Augustine advocated. To do this, I offer a “guided tour” of one particularly illustrative sermon, followed by some examples from Augustine’s other sermons that enhance and diversify this picture. The second focuses on the persuasive means that Augustine employed to help his audiences achieve the martyrdom he described. I have separated this movement into two somewhat artificially distinct sections: one on rehearsing the life of martyrdom; and one on Augustine’s making martyrs through rhetoric. This structure reflects my heuristic aim more than any real distinction between the two: all of the work Augustine is doing to be persuasive on this point is rhetorical. But I wanted to highlight the ways in which he strove to have his audiences rehearse the life of martyrdom so that they could enact it fully; I also wanted to identify the ways that Augustine used standard rhetorical tools to amplify his arguments and their persuasive capacity.

THE LIFE OF MARTYRDOM

Augustine’s depictions of what I am calling the life of martyrdom are scattered throughout his Sermones ad populum—sometimes as brief as a single sentence of reminder or exhortation; sometimes in compact but evocative imagined scenarios or appeals to universal human experiences (that is, experiences that Augustine assumes to be universal to humanity); and sometimes in extended explanations, which routinely include concatenated examples populated by dialogues that can best be categorized as role-playing. The picture that emerges from these ubiquitous snippets is remarkably coherent. A Christian living the life of martyrdom would perceive herself as continually engaged in combat, as if in an arena, under siege from demonic forces of temptation. To meet this challenge, the martyr must cultivate scorn for the world, prioritizing God over all, following the duties and commands God has set out for her. Bound up in this contempt for the world is an all-permeating humility, such that one recognizes one’s own fallibility and the need for God’s guidance and grace. The life of martyrdom, then, can be described as a balance of tensions: a worldview that weaves together confidence in God, humility about one’s own abilities, and constant vigilance for the threats and temptations of the world; in which one always feels watched by God even as one devalues the sight of humans; in which duties and affections must be maintained for God’s sake, but with God’s call they must all be abandoned; and that comprises a constant struggle against sin but also a constant feeling of peace, in the knowledge that the fight is how one attains to martyrdom and salvation.

The Life of Martyrdom in Sermo 335K, “On the Birthday of a Martyr”

To illustrate as fully as possible both the experiential dimensions of the life of martyrdom and the ways Augustine presented it to his audiences, I would like to offer a “guided tour” of Sermo 335K, which is, almost in its entirety, dedicated to illustrating the life of martyrdom. The sermon, whose dating and delivery context are uncertain, memorializes a recently deceased cleric by describing his way of life—both categorizing it as martyrdom and encouraging his contemporaries (the parishioners listening to this day’s sermon) to strive for their own martyrdoms by following his example. The cleric is, intriguingly, anonymized in the extant manuscript (referred to as “the blessed N”), suggesting that the sermon may at some point have been used as a template for other sermons.⁶ The sermon alternates between direct advice to the audience and descriptions of the behavior of the cleric or other exemplary figures. By examining these varied exhortations we can see the worldview that Augustine was attempting to advocate and how he sought to advocate it; we can also (I hope) better imagine what it might have felt like to hear it and, even, attempt to adopt it. By analyzing the sermon in the order of its own internal progression and by, at times, quoting Augustine at length, I hope to convey some of the flow and feeling of Augustine’s advocacy—to borrow a musical analogy, I hope to better capture some of the tone, timbre, and crescendo of Augustine’s arguments as they affected and washed over his audience—so that we can more closely approach the ideas his audience would have heard and how they would have heard them. It is only by attending to this experiential aspect, I think, that we can achieve a sense of the weight that the words and the depiction of martyrdom they encoded would have held for Augustine’s audiences, and it is only by acknowledging Augustine’s craftsmanship in cultivating this experience that we can ascertain the extent to which conveying the life of martyrdom was fundamental to his pastoral goals.

The sermon opens with two comments salient to anyone contemplating martyrdom or even mortality. First, Augustine reminds his audience that, though everyone in attendance is present to commemorate the cleric, they are really present to honor God: “For when a servant is rightly honored, he is honored in the name of his Lord.”⁷ An audience familiar with Augustine’s homiletic habits might expect this redirection of praise from humans to God, but for any newcomers, this subversion of celebrand would signal both Augustine’s position on proper martyr veneration and his views on the extent to which God is at the helm of all successful human endeavors. Second, Augustine asserts, twice in quick succession, that death is a neutral phenomenon in itself—a simple separation of spirit and body that is good for the good and bad for the bad—and that, to make death a good thing, one must live well: “The departure from the body is, for each and every human, as s/he was in the body.”⁸ Augustine is here showing why the death of a good person is worth celebrating: it is a remarkable feat to live in such a way that one need have no fear of death. But he is also, at the same time, encouraging his audience to adopt a good life so they might share in that same freedom from fear. With these two paired introductory postulates, Augustine is priming his audience for the paradoxical framework of the martyrial mindset: the martyr must strive to act in such a way as to live a good life on God’s terms and, at the same time, be mindful that God is in full control of one’s ability to do so; martyrs must also maintain focus on their actions in this world while scorning this world on behalf of the next. Even though Augustine has not yet mentioned martyrdom in this sermon, he is already preparing his audiences to accept the tension-filled dialectic it requires.

Augustine then moves to a more particular discussion of “the blessed N,” adducing a martyrial framework to introduce him. Rather than first speaking of the cleric himself, Augustine describes the apostle Paul and his dilemma (as related in Phil. 1:22–24) about whether to “cast off and be with Christ” or to “remain in the flesh” and so do what God deems “necessary.”⁹ Paul had to remain in the flesh, Augustine argues, because so many people needed Christian instruction; Paul was acting as the agent, the architect, “who knew how to establish a foundation most skillfully in the hearts of those believing in Christ.”¹⁰ At last transitioning to the subject of the sermon, Augustine declares that “the blessed N,” too, served humanity in this capacity, “dispens[ing] the word and the sacrament of God for as long as his Lord desired.”¹¹ With this comparison to Paul, Augustine renders “the blessed N” a reflection of the apostle—both of them doing exactly what God deemed necessary for as long as God willed them to do it. Augustine and his audience considered Paul a martyr, and Augustine emphasizes (here and elsewhere) that Paul had the appropriate understanding of death—he knew it was the “better part,” as it would release the soul into Christ’s presence, but he also knew that the only thing truly to be desired was to do God’s will, to do the necessary things to which one is called. Since “the blessed N” had lived the life God needed him to, Augustine suggests, he would have had no cause to fear death; like Paul, he had prioritized a life of service. Augustine concludes this discussion with a turn, once again, to the audience, enjoining them to the same path: “Life must be loved, while the judgment must be feared. Choose here what you should love, and avoid what you must fear: for no one avoids the judgment by fearing, but by living well.”¹² What had been a commentary on the lifestyles and choices of holy men (the apostle Paul and “the blessed N”) is now an exhortation for everyone in the audience to choose how to live their own lives while keeping death perpetually in view. That the audience is supposed to internalize the lessons Augustine gleans from Paul and “the blessed N” is thus explicit.

With his attention squarely on those present in his audience, Augustine then advises them, at length, that this life is really a contest, fought on a “public” stage (a theatrum), with God as one’s audience, coach, and co-combatant:

Here, therefore, is the contest: this life is a theatre, with God watching. Here is the fight, here is the conflict with all the vices and especially with prince of the vices, just as if with Goliath. For the Devil provokes the soul just as if to single combat. He is defeated when one stands firm, but in the name of the Lord, not by the strength of fighter.¹³

This evocative summation of human life as not just a battle against sin but also as a spectacle for which God has a “ringside seat”¹⁴—a single combat in which one takes on none other than the “Goliath” of the Devil himself and must, like David, rely on God’s strength to achieve a victory—creates a universal and impersonal ideal for Christian life—a model, described aphoristically in the third person, to which anyone might aspire. But Augustine then personalizes it, switching to the second person singular and placing each and every one of his audience members individually in the position of combatants who must search their hearts and retrain their minds and their senses in order to compete well:

Therefore, whatever evil and illicit thing has been suggested to your heart, whatever malign desires have arisen from your flesh against your mind, those are the darts of those enemies, who are provoking you to single combat. Remember that you are fighting! The enemy is invisible, but so too is your protector invisible. You do not see with whom you contend, but you believe in him by whom you are protected. And if you have the eyes of faith, you see him indeed: for every faithful person sees with the eyes of faith the adversary daily provoking him.¹⁵

Augustine expects his listeners to search their hearts, their desires, their minds, and their senses so as to be perpetually mindful of the combat in which they are engaged—this is not some abstract goal, some unattainable ideal: this is something he expects of “you” (yes, you!). YOU, Augustine demands, must cultivate the eyes of faith. Augustine is not just advocating a broad mentality shift toward thinking of oneself as engaged in continual combat; he is also putting his listeners on the spot, demanding that they adopt this mentality.

And Augustine continues on to offer guidance for adopting this new mentality, advising his audience to look to biblical exemplars. He offers the example of David as one who is victorious in single combat, but he also uses David’s example to teach his listeners how to rely on Scripture. David slays Goliath, just as the Christian must slay the Devil. But David slays Goliath by selecting five smooth stones from the river and hurling one of them at him—that is, as Augustine explains it, David relied on the word of God that had been presented to the Israelites: the five books of Moses. That it took just one of these stones to fell the foe is proof, for Augustine, of David’s reliance on grace—another lesson for his audience.¹⁶ And why were the stones smooth? To signify, Augustine says, David’s own “smoothness”: “because he was meek, because he was gentle; because he was obedient.”¹⁷ With this Davidic exemplum, Augustine impresses on his audience members just how many ways and on how many levels the Bible must inform their own self-understanding as they move through the world.

Augustine concludes the sermon with an extended plea for his audience members to adopt this combat-conscious worldview. He begins, as we saw before, by changing grammatical persons in his address to facilitate his listeners’ feeling of being personally called out, personally charged to this mentality of deep introspection in recognition of a lifelong struggle:

No one, my brothers, absolutely no one should engage in combat (confligat) with any vices in his heart (corde suo), and no one should presume upon himself (de se praesumat). Do not be negligent (Nolite esse negligentes) in the fighting, but neither be prideful in presuming. Whatever it is that moves you (te), whether ignorance or desire, come (ueni) to the fight, do not be (noli esse) sluggish, but call upon (inuoca) the watching one who aids the laborer. Thus you conquer (uincis).¹⁸

Augustine asserts the generalizable principle that all humans must extirpate vices from their hearts to battle with the Devil, and then he transitions to a plural imperative (nolite esse!) and finally to a series of singular ones (noli esse! ueni! inuoca!) to expose each individual listener to this challenge. But then Augustine continues, qualifying what he has just instructed:

Or rather, you do not win, because you do not win. Did David win, after all? Attend (attendite) his words, and see (uidete) that he himself did not conquer. For he said, “the fight is God’s.” What is it to say “this fight is God’s” except “God fights through me”?¹⁹

David again becomes Augustine’s vehicle of instruction—giving all credit to God and thus modeling the humility required for the true extirpation of human sin. Once again we are reminded of David’s meekness, gentleness, and obedience. The end result of imitating David in his willingness to be used as God’s tool is the exact end to which Augustine declares “the blessed N” has arrived after his interior battles:

Thus by fighting and confessing him, we reach the end of this life secure, and with the contest completed, we rest in the lap of holy quiet, where rests the blessed N, certainly after grave contests, certainly after admirable battles!²⁰

Lest anyone think “the blessed N” fought his battles in any externally visible arena, Augustine elaborates, once again using “the blessed N” as a pivot point to encourage his audience more generally:

For a man fights, sometimes with no other human seeing. For no other human sees what thoughts lie in your heart (in corde tuo), under what trials you are tested, by which desires you are stirred. Some things entice you, others terrify: what must be feared is that you(s) are seized by the enticements, or broken by the terrors. In this contest what is left but to say: “In the name of the Lord my God I will conquer it”; in this contest what is left to say except: “Not to us, Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory?”²¹

Augustine here is offering up “the blessed N” as a model of someone who has battled silently in his soul, doing everything for the glory of God rather than himself and so struggling invisibly. He also is clarifying for his listeners how they can traverse that same path—threading their way between hopelessness and pride by relying on God and adopting the same sort of humility “the blessed N” showed in subordinating his desires to God’s. “The blessed N” may have wanted, with Paul, to cast off and be with Christ, but, like Paul, he served the community and awaited God’s command to make his exit from this life. And beyond this, Augustine offers them words—biblical words, David’s words—to express what they should be feeling and thinking if they want to succeed like “the blessed N.”

At the end of this entreaty, at the very close of the sermon, Augustine, with one final axiomatic declaration-turned-exhortation, makes explicit that what he has been talking about this whole time is, indeed, a life of martyrdom, recognized at life’s end by the bestowal of a crown:

If you (pl) hold these things fast, holding the law in a milk bucket [like David], you (pl) will be unconquered. Easily will anything that grieves you be laid low, since the one who summoned you (pl) to the fight watches those fighting and helps those laboring and crowns those who conquer.²²

Abiding by the prescriptions for thought and action that Augustine offers here will assure his audience victory over sin and earn them the crown of martyrdom (with God’s help). This “reveal” would likely not have been a surprise to anyone listening to the sermon—Augustine has been making the case implicitly up to this point, but not in a terribly veiled manner. He began his sermon, after all, by pointing out that the manner of one’s life determined not just the meaning of one’s death but also the rewards that would follow, and his evocation of Paul as a comparandum for “the blessed N” reiterates the point that martyrdom is achieved by following God’s will, whatever that might look like. And, of course, his insistence on life as a contest and a spectacle for God’s consumption has established an analogy to the more widely recognized martyrdoms of the arena and amphitheater. So when Augustine makes explicit that this activity will merit a crown, he is underscoring and emphasizing the message his listeners most likely would have already imbibed: that this life is one long martyrdom, where every action and every thought represents a moment in one’s trial.

Even the way Augustine presents this final summation reflects the type of martyrdom his audience will need to cultivate: it is rife with paradox and tension the martyr must navigate. Though Augustine offers his audience agency (by saying “if you hold fast”), he quickly moves to stress God’s role in this: God calls people to the contest, watches the fight, helps the martyrs succeed in the battle, and then offers the crown to the victors. Augustine also juxtaposes the hard labor of holding fast with the easy victory one can count on with God’s help. These seemingly conflicting but simultaneous truths—that martyrdom is both easy and hard, that it is both due to the martyr’s effort and wholly attributable to God—well communicate the martyrial mindset Augustine seeks to inculcate in his audience.

The primary lesson I think we can glean from this guided tour is a picture of this martyrial mindset. A Christian walking through the world with the mentality advocated in Sermo 335K would conceive of every moment and every interaction as weighted with salvific purpose. Their mind would be always trained on God and God’s requirements—serving the world in whatever capacity God calls them to, even if they themselves would prefer to cast off this body now; doing everything with God’s glorification in mind; scorning human standards and humanly constructed values (such as the fear of death) in favor of divine perspective; and looking to God’s Scripture for guidance in everything, including for models to imitate in their struggles and for righteous causae to adhere to. They would envision their world as a stage of conflict, every moment a test, and themselves as holy warriors whose every move is scrutinized by God, the only entity who can truly see. On this point of divine sight, Christians adopting the mentality Augustine describes would feel constantly surveilled, even as they came to mistrust all human sight, aiming instead to see through the “eyes of faith.” Whatever self-aggrandizement might accompany an understanding of oneself as a holy warrior would be tempered by constant humility—the knowledge of one’s own sins and human shortcomings in the face of God’s perfection and omnipotence being starkly foregrounded by the Christian’s continual and absolute reliance on God. They would vacillate between anxiety and confidence (or achieve some sort of workable equilibrium between the two) as they engaged in constant introspection and soul-searching, ever vigilant for any attacks by temptations that, like beasts in the arena, are continually lying in wait.

We cannot, of course, assume that any of Augustine’s parishioners really experienced the world like this or that they adopted a life of martyrdom along these lines. As Éric Rebillard has shown, Augustine was continually trying to get his contemporaries to consider Christian identity “the only identity of possible significance,” but he achieved little discernable success.²³ If we read through and beyond Augustine’s own words to see the views of those he opposes, “we come to realize that Christianness was not the common frame of interpretation for everyday experience.”²⁴ The general Boniface, for instance, whom Augustine had persuaded not to enter a sacred retirement on the death of his wife so that he could (chastely and humbly) continue the military ventures that would safeguard the Christian community of North Africa, shortly afterwards abandoned his resolve and chose instead to remarry, an act of concupiscence (according to Augustine) compounded by the fact that his new wife and the people she brought to Boniface’s entourage were “heretics.”²⁵ Despite the intention Augustine imputed to him to “seek nothing from this world but those things necessary for sustaining life for [himself and his kin], cinched in a belt of supremely chaste continence and protected, among corporal arms, more strongly and securely with spiritual arms,”²⁶ Boniface had reverted to worldly loves and worldly decision-making, much to Augustine’s dismay. And we also know from Theo de Bruyn that Augustine’s discourse, though intended to be totalizing, was not always so: Augustine encountered continuous objections from numerous directions when he suggested that Christians should not be unsettled by the sack of Rome in 410.²⁷ All we can say is that this is what Augustine advocated—this is how he thought Christian identity could and should work, and how he thought martyrdom could and should look.

A Broader Look at the Life of Martyrdom

Reading across Augustine’s sermons, we see him advocating the life of martyrdom again and again, sometimes briefly and sometimes at greater length, sometimes partially, sometimes fully fleshed out, and in sermons that cover any number of topics; the inescapable impression this ubiquity leaves is that this really is a worldview upon which Augustine insisted and with which his various audiences must have been familiar. A regular attendee of Augustine’s sermons at the basilica in Hippo would have heard him speak so often about the different components of the life of martyrdom—that life is one long struggle in the arena; that the world and its values must be scorned in favor of God; that the martyr must be humble and rely on God even while fighting the continuous battle against sin, for which God is a constant spectator and helpmeet—that it would likely have seemed omnipresent. Indeed, just as Augustine called for constant mindfulness, the frequent occurrence of these themes in his sermons would have supported that mindfulness.

The idea of life itself as a protracted struggle against demonic opponents in God’s amphitheater appears frequently in Augustine’s sermons, often prominently featured as the linchpin or culmination of whatever argument Augustine is making.²⁸ In a late-career sermon on the topic of answered and unanswered prayers, Augustine, making the case for trusting in God’s judgment, asks petitioners to examine the depths of their own hearts and to question their own motivations for their desires. This self-searching, Augustine argues, will result in the realization that we are all immensely fallible and cannot truly know what is best for us—that no matter how peaceful our outward lives may be, there will still be an inward contest we need to fight:

However much he has accomplished, even if a person were to have peace from those who are in his home and outside it, he will have a war within himself—within himself a contest must be fought, and neither will he finish waging the contest, with that one watching who is prepared to help the laboring and to crown the conquering.²⁹

This mental model of a constant, subtle, and inescapable contest one can never disregard, in which one is perpetually scrutinizing oneself and being scrutinized by the eyes of an all-seeing spectator, appears as the culmination in this sermon of Augustine’s recommendations for how to orient oneself toward God’s will—a placement that signals just how central this mental scenario is to the worldview that Augustine advocates.³⁰

Similarly, scorning the world to prioritize God and God’s perspective is a frequent and frequently emphasized theme in Augustine’s advocacy for the life of martyrdom. Even though the world was created by God and ought not to be disparaged, as Augustine reminded a Carthaginian audience in 401, one’s love must always be directed at the Creator rather than the things created. Explaining 1 John 2:15–16’s admonition not to love the world, he enjoins his audience to shape their lives by valuing the right things: “Let your love shift: break off your ties from creatures, and fasten them to the creator. Change your love, change your fear: for nothing makes good or bad lives other than good or bad loves.”³¹ Our misguided attachment to the world itself is what lays us open to temptation, what distracts us from our focus on God, and what determines the character of our lives. Once again, we are seeing Augustine call for a shift in his listeners’ worldview that would have a dramatic impact on the way the listeners would perceive themselves and others. And this shift is, once again, tied to the life of martyrdom: Augustine offers this advice as a way of helping his listeners tread the “narrow and strict” (angustam . . . artam) path of “scorn for pleasure and tolerance of suffering” that Christians must walk if they want to imitate the martyrs.”³² His advice is further linked to the life of martyrdom by his characterization of life as a contest or struggle:

Anyone engaged in the struggle must know that they are struggling against the whole world; let the one fighting against the whole world conquer these two things, and he conquers the world. Let him conquer whatever entices; let him conquer whatever threatens: for pleasure is false and pain is temporary. If you want to enter through the narrow gate, close the gates of desire and fear: for it is through these that the tempter himself tries to derail the soul.³³

Having the appropriate scorn for the world and its “realities” of pain and pleasure is key to enacting the life of martyrdom. The Christian seeking martyrdom must not only strive for the goal or “gate” of the salvific prize but also must pre-emptively close off “gates” that give entry to the adversary. The life of martyrdom is not simply about attaining the crown at the end of one’s struggles; it is about erecting defensive and offensive fortifications—an all-consuming apparatus of world-defining lenses—that will make such a struggle possible.

The effect of these world-scorning preparations in the life of a Christian would be to place imagined and variously enacted barriers around different aspects of her life. A martyrially minded Christian hearing the news of Rome’s sack in 410 would be able to respond with equanimity, answering any defeatists or doubters with the simple mantra of “Be patient: God wills it.”³⁴ No matter how much her friends might lament the tragedy, blame Christianity for Rome’s suffering, or rail against God for willing the city’s defeat, the Christian enacting the life of martyrdom would take a God’s-eye view, trusting that God “wants you to bear what he wants. Bear what he wants, and he will give you what you want.”³⁵ In other words, salvation is to be found in aligning oneself with God’s will rather than with passing human desires. Augustine nudges his audience toward a life of martyrdom here by helping them reframe their desires: Yes (he seems to say), you wanted Rome to thrive. But isn’t salvation what you really want? As he offered in an earlier sermon that describes the life of martyrdom: “You should not desire what is fleeting, and you should not fear what fades and dies in time.”³⁶ The reach and effect of such a mindset can be seen in some of the hypotheticals that Augustine offers (and that we have seen already in Chapter 5)—a person with this mindset would be immune to peer pressure and would speak out about Christianity at any dinner party; she would scoff at threats from powerful men or family members trying to control her actions; he would shake off the brokenhearted pleas of his friends and family as they sought to dissuade him from martyrdom.

To reiterate, scorning the world does not, for Augustine, entail placing physical barriers between the would-be martyr and the world in which they live; the primary fortifications constructed by the martyr aiming to scorn the world are internal, reshaping and recasting the martyr’s interior world such that the martyr’s whole experience of the world is altered. We can see this in an undated sermon celebrating the feast day of unnamed martyrs, as Augustine tries to explain that the martyr’s battle has always been, first and foremost, an interior one:

Look. I am telling you how the enemy used to approach the martyr. He would arrest him, and bind him, and drag him to a judge. The judge would say to him: “Deny Christ if you want to live.” But he would not deny [Christ], because he wished to live. How, therefore was he fighting within himself in the first place? Because the sweetness of his life was saying, “Deny!” But that one would not listen, and instead would confess Christ. Conquering the sweetness of life within, he would conquer the persecutor outside.³⁷

Even in a setting of official, state-sponsored persecution, the martyr’s primary enemy is not the persecutor but the temptation he would have felt to give in to “the sweetness of his life.” So, too, for a Christian struggling with his desire for another man’s wife (the example that Augustine uses next to illustrate “those who fight even now,” who recognize that they are warring against sin and seek a crown of martyrdom³⁸), the first and most important battle is the one he fights against his own desire, even before the question of acting on his inclinations presents itself. To underscore this point, Augustine includes a dialogue of resistance not between the martyr and the woman with whom he would like to sin but between the martyr and the vice of concupiscentia.³⁹ Thus the Christian with good ways of living “fights, every day, within his conscience, so that he might seek a crown from the one who sees it, when he conquers.”⁴⁰ The internal battle, the conflict seen only by God, is the central contest that must be won to achieve martyrdom: it is both the crucible and the staging ground of martyrial identity.

Key to this martyrial identity is humility. Even as he encourages would-be martyrs to conceive of themselves as combatants in a contest against demonic forces, Augustine reminds them that part of winning this contest is not relying on oneself to win it: pride is the martyr’s enemy. As we saw in the last chapter, Augustine was concerned that those praising the martyrs would give credit to the wrong quarter, praising the martyrs rather than God. His teaching on grace, then, as regards the martyrs, was (to borrow Anthony Dupont and Nicholas DeMaeyer’s phrasing) that “martyrdom is in fact exclusively the work of God, for which, in consequence, only He may receive the credit.”⁴¹ The would-be martyrs, then, just like the martyr-venerating crowds, ought not arrogate any credit to themselves: they must be sure that their causae are not derailed by pride in either their will or their accomplishments. Indeed, in Sermo 285, Augustine blames pride (or “presum[ing] upon their own strength”⁴²) for the martyrs Castus and Aemilius initially denying Christ.⁴³

Augustine reminds his audience, time and again and in many different ways, to cultivate a habitual attitude of humility, attributing all victories (and, indeed, all movements toward the good) to God. For example, in four sermons Augustine juxtaposes the aspiration for martyrdom with a reminder of the (rather deflating) Psalmic tenet: “every man a liar” (Psalm 116:11).⁴⁴ His object in each case is to show that whatever good emerges from us, whatever truth we speak, is divinely (rather than humanly) generated; this is a chastening and humility-infusing corrective for anyone attempting to attain martyrdom. For another fairly typical elaboration of his thinking on humility, we can look to Sermo 4. As he is winding down this lengthy and wide-ranging sermon on Jacob and Esau, Augustine reminds his audience that persecution never stops, and he offers the example of the sickbed martyr as someone who has understood what is at stake in the daily struggle against temptation. He concludes:

Why have we said these things, brothers? So that when you are celebrating the birthdays of the martyrs, you might imitate the martyrs and thus not think that occasions for martyrdom can be lacking from you, because there are no such persecutions now. For even now the daily persecutions by the Devil are not lacking, whether through suggestion or through some annoyances of the body. You must only know that you have a commander, who has preceded you into heaven. He gave you a path which you can follow; affix yourself to him. Do not, when you conquer, credit yourself, in pride, as if you had struggled through your own strength. But rely on that one who gave you strength to conquer, because he himself conquered the world. And you will ever be crowned and depart from here a martyr, if you overcome all the temptations of the Devil.⁴⁵

Augustine wants his parishioners, as they set out to imitate the martyrs, to imitate their mindsets, their knowledge that the Devil is the Christian’s daily persecutor both in and out of the arena. All the martyr has to do is to follow the path of Christ, to know that they have a commander and a path forward if they are attentive to his model and obedient to his command—this is about God’s glory, not one’s own. Augustine’s last instruction, the glue for this whole mentality, is that the martyr should never mistakenly suppose that it is by their own strength that they are victorious. Departing from this life as a martyr is possible for anyone who surmounts these insidious temptations.

Such mastery is predicated on a thoroughgoing mentality shift that is well illustrated in a sermon Augustine offered to visiting dignitaries at Carthage in 401. According to Hill’s reconstruction of events, Augustine had been rather unwillingly roped into preaching: he was present in Carthage for the summer and had been preparing for the impending conference with the Donatists when Bishop Aurelius (perhaps at the behest of Roman legates in town for the conference) compelled him on short notice to give a homily for Lawrence’s feast day.⁴⁶ Under such circumstances, Augustine opted to speak about martyrdom more generally—about what it truly consisted in and how martyrs should properly be venerated and imitated. After defining martyrdom as “following the path of God, enduring, loving one’s enemies, and praying for them,”⁴⁷ Augustine addresses the congregation to encourage them in their own martyrdoms:

In the same way, dearest ones, since persecution (as I have said) is never lacking and the Devil either lurks or rages, we ought always to be prepared, heart fixed on the Lord, and, however much we can, among those annoyances, trials, and temptations, pray for strength from the Lord, since we are in ourselves small and insignificant.⁴⁸

In this one brief passage we see Augustine’s call to conceive of one’s life as an arena in which we are continually besieged by the Devil; to have our hearts “fixed on the Lord” and so scorn the allurements and irritations of the world; and to be humble, always mindful of our own weakness. The three precepts are bound up together in one attitude of perpetual preparation—the Christian living a life of martyrdom is always on her toes, always at the ready both to tackle threats and to seek out guidance from God.⁴⁹

The life of martyrdom that Augustine advocates, therefore, is an all-consuming mental shift that he recommends all his parishioners attempt to adopt. It is, for Augustine, the ideal Christian life. Martyrdom is still exceptional, but only because the same perpetual and pervasive battle that makes martyrdom continuously possible is also, by virtue of the enemy’s perpetual and pervasive assault, very difficult to overcome, requiring a lifetime of undiminished vigilance and obedient trust in the will of God. This is why, to return to Rebillard, Augustine “promotes Christians who adhere to their Christian identity as their unique principle of action to the status of martyrs”⁵⁰: it is a difficult and arduous task. Nonetheless, Augustine makes achieving the life of martyrdom more accessible to his audiences by depicting it in its ideal form so often and so thoroughly in his sermons—Augustine has lent it substance and reality in his audience’s imaginations, making it more likely that a pious Christian could achieve it.

REHEARSING THE LIFE OF MARTYRDOM

Augustine’s advocacy for the life of martyrdom takes many forms. Beyond the admonitions, prescriptions, and evocative descriptions we have already seen, Augustine also employs various rhetorical structures and devices to teach his audiences about the life of martyrdom and to train them to adopt it. While some of his more subtle exertions will be the subject of the next section, here I want to focus on the singularly overt rhetorical technique of role-playing, in which he rehearses with his audience the behaviors and attitudes of those enacting the life of martyrdom as a way of generating a new, lasting, and embodied martyrial reality for his listeners.⁵¹

Augustine gave his audiences ample opportunity to mentally rehearse the life of martyrdom, but nowhere more emphatically and repetitively than in Sermo 81, preached at Hippo in 410. In this sermon, which centers on the Gospel of Matthew’s warnings to avoid scandals (18:7–9), Augustine offers situation after situation in which a stumbling block is placed before the Christian seeking to live a life of martyrdom. Augustine addresses his audience members directly, in the second person singular: “Love the law of God, and there will be no scandal for you.”⁵²

“But here comes your wife,” Augustine interjects, building on the direct address he has just established, “persuading you to I know not what evil.”⁵³ Note that Augustine has here merged the audience he is addressing with the invented character of his dialecticon or prosopopoeia—Augustine’s idealized version of his audience becomes identified with the hypothetical martyr he is conversing with.⁵⁴ The martyr’s wife is attempting to thwart his relationship with God, asserting and foregrounding the martyr’s earthly (rather than spiritual) ties. Augustine’s solution to the dilemma of being tempted by one’s beloved wife is to instruct his martyr to cast her off.

You love your wife, just as it is fitting for a wife to be loved: she is your limb. But if your eye scandalizes you, if your hand scandalizes you, if your foot scandalizes you, now you have heard the gospel, cut it off, cast it away from you.⁵⁵

Addressing the aspiring martyr in the second person, Augustine pauses to acknowledge and call to mind the affective dimension of this dilemma—you love your wife. This recognition heightens the hearer’s embroilment in Augustine’s role-play, such that his eventual advice to cut her off as you would a diseased body part is received with the appropriate gravitas and resolve. But, in a tacit acknowledgment of the monumental action he is asking of his listeners, Augustine offers them a brief reprieve from the spotlight, turning to the example of Jesus in the Gospels rebuking Peter and calling him “Satan.” He notes that, just prior to this incident, Jesus had praised Peter and, according to Augustine, claimed him as one of his limbs. The analogy is, therefore, a direct one—your wife is to you as Peter was to Jesus—and Augustine offers it explicitly as a lesson for how the martyr should live.⁵⁶ “Thus,” Augustine concludes, returning once more to directly addressing his individual audience members, “he will be a scandal to you, whoever attempts to persuade you of something bad.”⁵⁷

The next “whoever” that Augustine conjures to help his audience rehearse their martyrdoms is a friend⁵⁸ who sees you in distress and suggests, with “perverse benevolence,”⁵⁹ that you do something immoral to extricate yourself. Maybe a powerful man, Augustine offers, wants you to lie for him and, for justice’s sake, you refuse. The powerful man, enraged, puts pressure on you, and your friend, hating to see you in dire straits, comes along and says, “I beg you, do what was told to you; what’s the big deal?”⁶⁰ In this scenario, where the martyr is willing to suffer for the cause of justice but is being tempted to turn back by a well-meaning but misguided friend, Augustine not only employs the second-person singular to render the situation immediate and enactable; he also uses the ipsissima uerba of both the tempter (the friend) and the martyr (you) to offer the hearer a script for how to respond. In the sermon, Augustine offers the dialogue interspersed with interpretive and explanatory commentary, as well as the occasional emendation. To illustrate this as clearly as possible, I have rendered the extended dialogic section⁶¹ of the sermon as a script for a play or a screenplay, with Augustine’s non-dialogic insertions as annotations or directorial commentary and some of my summary notes listed at right:

Dialogue	Directorial Commentary	Notes
Friend: Do what he says. Martyr: What? Friend: What he wants you to do. Martyr: But it is a lie; it is false.
Friend: Haven’t you read, “Every man a liar?” (Ps. 116:11)	Now this is the scandal. He is your friend; what are you going to do? He is an eye, a hand: cut him off, and cast him away from you. What does this mean: “Cut him off, and cast him away from you”? DO NOT CONSENT. That’s what “Cut him off, and cast him away from you” signifies: “Do not consent!”	Augustine locates the scandal in your friend’s using Scripture to try to persuade you to do something immoral.
	. . . . Do not consent: turn him away from your ears. Perhaps he will return, corrected. But how will you do what I say, cut him off, cast him away, and, perhaps, correct him? Tell me, how are you going to do it? He wanted to persuade you to lie, using the law.	Augustine then compares your friend to a diseased limb that you must cut off, and then reiterates what he had said above about the martyr’s wife: “You love him/her, but you must cut her/him off and cast her/him away.”
Friend: “Say it.”	Maybe he’s too much of a chicken to say, “Tell a lie.”
Friend: Say what he wants. Martyr: But it is a lie!
Friend: “Every man a liar.”	(as an excuse . . .) And against this, you, brother, counter:
Martyr: “The mouth that lies kills the soul.”	Pay attention: this is not a light thing you have heard, that “The mouth that lies kills the soul.”
Martyr: What can that powerful enemy, who oppresses me, do to me, such that you should pity me, and feel sorry for my condition, and not wish me to be in dire straits; when you would wish me to do evil? What does that powerful man do to me? What does he oppress? The flesh.	“The body,” you say, “he oppresses”: Indeed I say, he is killing you.
Martyr: How much more mildly is that one dealing with me than if I were to lie? He kills my flesh: I kill my soul.
Martyr (or Augustine): The angry powerful man kills the body: the mouth that lies kills the soul. He kills the body; it is about to die, even if it isn’t killed. But the soul that iniquity does not kill, truth receives for all eternity. Save, therefore, what you can save: let perish what at some point must perish.		It is unclear whether or how much of these next lines are lines of dialogue for the martyr or commentary by Augustine.

Augustine’s “screenplay” actually continues beyond this, as he offers the martyr more specific language to dismantle his friend’s scriptural claims and then offers a script for yet another scenario: what a person should say if tempted to blame Christianity for Rome’s destruction.⁶² But the dialogue and commentary presented above should suffice to illustrate Augustine’s commitment to getting his audience to embody the role of the martyr. He plays on the emotional ties one has to one’s friends, building on them and rendering part of the martyr’s role instructive: if you do this martyrdom right, there is a chance your friend could be corrected, too. The actor, thus, has several “motivations.” Augustine puts each individual audience member on the spot, demanding that they each tell him how they will accomplish what he asks. And then he gives them precise words, answers he himself supplies, with which to counter the tempter. By first demanding something from his audience and then supplying that very thing, Augustine is entangling the audience’s self-awareness with the performance desired. To further this entanglement, Augustine moves from a prescriptive dialogic format in which he highlights his personal distance from the martyr’s speech (that is, he informs the audience of the appropriate “lines” by stating “You say . . .”) to one in which it is difficult to discern who is speaking (that is, whether it is Augustine or the scripted martyr), modeling the fusion of identities he seeks to effect in his audience. By offering both the words one should say and the rationales one would have for saying them, Augustine is generating a complete mental and verbal template for a martyr to follow, and by exercising this in a dialogically structured sermon, he is making imaginative demands of his audience that will result, if they are attentive, in their rehearsing their own martyrdoms—Augustine is essentially offering his audience the opportunity and the means to role-play.

Another technique Augustine used to help his audience rehearse their own living martyrdoms was to offer iterations of the life of martyrdom in a variety of grammatical persons. We have already seen Augustine conjuring the life of martyrdom in the third person (in the description of “the blessed N” in Sermo 335K and in the exhortative, anonymous, and universalizing “anyone engaged in the struggle must know . . .” of Sermo 313A⁶³). We have seen it in the second person (exhortatively in, for example, the “Choose here what you should love, and avoid what you must fear” of Sermo 335K⁶⁴ and descriptively in the same sermon’s “You do not see with whom you contend, but you believe in him by whom you are protected”⁶⁵). And we have seen the life of martyrdom depicted as well in the first person, as we just saw in Sermo 81.

In Sermo 65, however, we can see an especially emphatic rehearsal, as Augustine offers three distinct first-person role-plays—that is, he offers three accounts of living martyrdom that operate on different registers all while retaining the use of the first-person. He opens with an exhortatory “we” as he enjoins his audience to act in the same way as the martyrs: “Let us fear, that we may not fear: let us fear prudently, lest we fear groundlessly. The holy martyrs . . . did not fear by fearing, since by fearing they scorned humans.”⁶⁶ He then moves to a dialogic “I,” where he has supplied the threatening words of a persecutor and the first-person response of the martyr: “I am not afraid, because I am afraid. What you threaten, you cannot do if [God] doesn’t will it; he is impeded in doing what he threatens, however, by no one.”⁶⁷ Finally, Augustine asserts his own personal “I,” interrupting the martyr’s speech (already in the first person) to say: “I speak the words of the martyr.”⁶⁸ By pointing this out, Augustine is putting distance between the “I” of the performance and the “I” of the performer, reminding his audience that he is not the martyr whose words they are hearing. But in so doing he is also asserting, paradoxically, a conflation of his personal “I” and the “I of the imagined martyr—by his own phrasing, it is he who is speaking martyrial words. This conflation is further enhanced by what follows: a long, first-person reflection in which the identity of the speaker (that is, whether it is Augustine or his imagined martyr) is unclear. Not only, then, is Augustine offering his audience the means to rehearse martyrdom; he is also is rehearsing it for himself at the same time.

All of this repetition and variegated reiteration serves the pastoral and rhetorical function of conditioning Augustine’s audiences to enact the life he describes: this is rehearsal for real life so that the audience members will not only cultivate these habits of thinking but will have practiced what they should say and think when confronted by the world’s temptations. By engaging his audience in this imaginative role-playing, Augustine is helping them habituate into the role of the martyr.

MAKING MARTYRS THROUGH RHETORIC

Beyond overt exhortation and offering the opportunity for role-playing and rehearsal, Augustine employed countless other techniques both to persuade his readers to attempt the life of martyrdom and to make it more achievable for them. Augustine’s extensive use of rhetorical strategies to illuminate and induce the life of martyrdom is an indication of his wholehearted investment in advocacy for such a life and such an understanding of martyrdom. Because Augustine’s sermon stylistics have been so well addressed elsewhere,⁶⁹ my aim in this section is not to be exhaustive but, rather, to offer a representative sampling of the sorts of rhetorical tactics Augustine habitually used to promote the life of martyrdom.

It may be helpful in this analysis, though, to remain mindful of a few features of the sermons under discussion. Many of these sermons were delivered on feast days for one martyr or another. This means that they were given as addenda to the stories of martyrs, which the congregation would have heard read aloud only moments prior; recreating that lost intertext is not within our power. Additionally, we know that these sermons were given extemporaneously, recorded primarily by designated but not infallible secretaries, edited after the fact by Augustine himself in several cases, and edited long afterwards by subsequent clerics in search of inspiration—and so our grasp on what the original rhetorical decisions might have been is occasionally tenuous.⁷⁰

Nonetheless, there are repeated rhetorical choices to which we can point that offer strong evidence that Augustine did indeed engage the full force of his rhetorical arsenal in order to advocate for the life of martyrdom. A few of the more frequent techniques Augustine employs to make his case are repetition, parallelism (both grammatical and conceptual), “improvisational” interruptions and exclamations that render the monologue dialogic, and vivid rhetoric, including ekphrasis. I will also highlight one case study—that of the sickbed martyr—to show one way that Augustine’s persuasion could progress.

Augustine often used repetition to drive home his points and make them both memorable and influential. When he intoned, “Many, therefore, go to martyrdom on a sickbed: many indeed,”⁷¹ Augustine began and ended with multi, signaling the point he was attempting to make, namely, that this sort of martyrdom was so common that it deserved the same attention as more visible forms of martyrdom and that, because this type of martyrdom existed, martyrdom was both accessible to more people and more ubiquitous than Augustine’s audience may have previously thought. Augustine’s triple repetition of potueris in his injunction to “preach Christ, therefore, wherever you can, to whomever you can, and however you can”⁷² serves a similar function, highlighting the repeated word and idea (“You can!”) and instilling the overall concept in his audience’s mind and practice. Augustine’s message is that the martyrial consciousness is totalizing and difficult to cultivate, but it is nonetheless possible. When making a case for the interiority of martyrdom, stressing that God judges the martyr’s heart and that it is the heart that is crowned, Augustine repeated the syllable cor five times in quick succession: facit magnam uictoriam, nemine uidente, in corpore inclusa; pugnat corde, coronatur in corde sed ab illo qui uidet in corde (“He achieves a great victory, with no one seeing, enclosed in his body; he fights in his heart, is crowned in his heart but by the one who sees into the heart”).⁷³ This clever use of repetition offers a striking reminder and “call to attention” for Augustine’s audience members—the importance of the heart as the locus of martyrdom would be hard to miss, even for a less attentive congregant.

Parallelisms serve to highlight the concepts Augustine wants his audience to absorb, but they also have the additional impact of expanding the audience’s imaginary, establishing links between stories and concepts that can then prove useful to members of the community as they tackle daily life (much as was saw Prudentius doing in his rendering of the child martyr’s mother in Peristephanon 10). We saw such parallelism in Sermo 318 (discussed in the last chapter), where Augustine invokes Joseph as a masculine parallel to Susannah, even as Susannah is being called upon as a martyrial parallel and a parallel to anyone tempted to adultery. Within this conceptual parallel, Augustine uses repetitive grammatical or syntactical parallels to aid in emphasis:

On the one hand she had as false witnesses those very same men to whom she was unwilling to consent, lest she sin; on the other he has that woman, the very one to whom he did not consent . . . She was freed, and he was freed . . . Thus they struggled to the point of blood—she against sin (that is, against adultery), and he against the same sin.⁷⁴

The grammatical parallels highlight the conceptual ones, helping the audience accept them more fully, remember them more clearly, and fold them into their moral makeup more thoroughly.⁷⁵ We see a similar dynamic when Augustine is drawing parallels between the Babylonian boys in the furnace and the Maccabean martyrs: “Ask about the fire: They did not suffer. Ask about the will: They were crowned.”⁷⁶ The parallelism here draws attention to the difference in the stories (and the difference in the audience’s expectations of the martyrs) but ultimately helps reconcile the two, since the operative distinction—whether they had the will to martyrdom—is the same, as is their reward. By expanding the repertoire of Christian martyrial comparanda, these conceptual parallels help make martyrdom seem more accessible to Augustine’s audience, while the grammatical parallels work to make those conceptual parallels even more memorable.

Augustine also makes extensive use of dialogic rhetorical constructions in these explications and illustrations of the life of martyrdom. For example, as we see with his gloss of the Babylonian martyrs’ words to Nebuchadnezzar and with his reiteration of Paul’s emphasis on caritas, Augustine would interrupt his readings of biblical quotations to comment on them to his audience, explicitly drawing them into his reading, forcing them to focus on the same points that he was focusing on:

“God is powerful enough,” they said, to pluck us from your hands: “but if not”—there are the resolved chests, there is the stable faith, there the unshaken courage, there the sure victory—“But if not, let it be known to you, king, that we do not worship the statue which you have set up.”⁷⁷

“If I give,” as Paul says, “all my possessions to the poor, and hand over my body so that I might burn”—There are the martyrs! But look what follows: “But if I do not have love, it is of no use to me.”⁷⁸

This self-interruption (indicated in bold) is not only pedagogically effective as an attention-arresting pace-changer but also demands that the audience accompany Augustine through all of his logical moves. By pausing, too, it affords the audience the time to catch up with Augustine’s logic, should they have slipped behind at any point. Bringing his audience with him, Augustine the pedagogue is reminding his listeners that they are a necessary part of his oratory, that they, too, must be biblical readers themselves, drawing knowledge from Scripture. It isn’t enough for Augustine to tell them what to do; they need to be engaged themselves in the project of attending to and learning from Scripture.

With similar effect, Augustine frequently interrupts himself to answer the questions he anticipates his audience having. Granted, this is a controlled “dialogue,” so Augustine may have been attempting to forestall other questions rather than to address his audience’s accurately anticipated concerns.⁷⁹ Nonetheless, the effect is to produce a multivocal text and the illusion of participation, both of which would have made these arguments more compelling to a congregation. To draw some examples from passages we have already seen:

They themselves are perfect, who struggled against sin up to the shedding of blood. What is “against sin”? Against the great sin: against denying Christ.⁸⁰

Temptations do not stop. Fight, and the crown is prepared for you. When? Look, so that I might recount . . .⁸¹

Why have we said these things, brothers?⁸²

These disruptive questions give the impression of an audience-inclusive dialogue, but in fact they help Augustine clarify the points he himself is trying to make, offering signposts to his audience about why he is progressing in the pattern he is.

The exclamations and rhetorical questions Augustine inserts into his sermons further enhance their dialogic feel. The questions provide invitations for engagement and call for specific answers: “Will we deny that they are martyrs, because the flame did not burn them?”⁸³ “No!” the audience would supply, vocally or mentally. “Aren’t martyrs witnesses of Christ, and don’t they offer testimony to the truth?”⁸⁴ “Yes!” the audience would agree, responding to the bishop’s nonne. The exclamations, in contrast, invite the audience to mirror Augustine’s emotions and judgments, rather than supply their own:

“For your sake we are being put to death all day long.” O good cause! “On account of you we are being put to death all day long.” For that reason fruitfully, for that reason happily, because “for your sake.” Because there is a good cause, that’s why there is a crown.⁸⁵

Augustine’s emphatic and emotional reaction here to Paul’s quote not only conveys a sense of urgency and importance but also highlights the part of Paul’s statement that he wants his audience to focus on. It is the cause, not the dying, that is the source of merit. We see exclamations used in a similarly directive fashion when Augustine relates his astonishment at the seemingly paradoxical triumph of a sickbed martyr who has just refused “pagan” remedies: “You see the athlete of God, you hear the athlete of Christ! O man, sick and healthy! O [man], weak and strong! O, [man] lying in bed and reigning in heaven!”⁸⁶ What we are able to observe is not the full extent of what is divinely true, Augustine is reminding us, and with this triple interjection of seemingly disparate facts—that the man is both sick (in body) and healthy (in salvation); weak (physically) and strong (spiritually); and lying in bed (corporally) and reigning in heaven (his soul in ascent)—Augustine emphasizes both what we are supposed to notice and the awe that we are supposed to feel regarding it. In making such exclamations, then, Augustine models for his audiences both the emotions and the evaluations that he wants them to cultivate vis à vis martyrdom.

Finally, Augustine uses vivid rhetoric, including many ekphraseis, to make the life of martyrdom a reality for his audiences. For example, he uses sensory language extensively, asking his readers to “see” and “hear” when he describes these martyrs. The example of the sickbed martyr is introduced in Sermo 328, for example, by a doubled ecce: Augustine asks his audience to “look” at this one potential instance of temptation, interrupts himself to make clear that this is but one of countless possible temptations a martyr might encounter, and then returns to the sickbed martyr with another “look!”⁸⁷ In Sermo 4, which features another sickbed martyr, Augustine simultaneously cultivates his listeners’ agreement and their visual participation by commenting, “certainly you see how many things the Devil suggests.”⁸⁸ And we have already seen how, in his exclamations in Sermo 335D, Augustine centers the visual and auditory realms: “You see the athlete of God! You hear the athlete of Christ!”⁸⁹ Augustine’s use of sensory cue words in these settings marks them as moments during which he was aiming for heightened sensory experiences among his listeners.

Ekphrasis, too, plays a role in Augustine’s persuasion. In Sermo 335D, delivered in Hippo on the feast day of some unspecified martyrs, Augustine recounts the trials of a sickbed martyr who refuses to “seek out soothsayers, send for astrologers, or hang illicit remedies around [his neck]”:⁹⁰

He, however, who says: “I will not do it”—with a friend suggesting it, even a muttering neighbor or nearby servant girl, sometimes even his own dematricula— who says, “I will not do it, I am a Christian! God prohibits this. They are sacraments of demons. Hear the apostle: ‘Do not become companions of demons!’” Let him be answered by that one who suggests: “Do it and you will be healthy! That fellow and that other fellow did it. What? Are they not Christians? Are they not faithful? Do they not go to Church? And nonetheless they did this and they are healthy. That one did it and he was immediately healed. Do you not know him? Because he is a Christian, a faithful one. Look, he did it and he’s healthy.”

That sick man, however, because he does not love the health common to men and beasts, says: “If that one was saved in such a way, I do not want to be saved in that way. For he is able to save me, to whom it was said: ‘men and beasts you will save, Lord, just as you, God, have multiplied your mercies.’”

You see the athlete of God! You hear the athlete of Christ! O man, sick and healthy. O [man] weak and strong! O [man] lying in bed and reigning in heaven!⁹¹

Between the visual and aural cue words scattered throughout, the concatenated suggestions of who the specific tempter might be, and the extensive use of direct speech, it is clear that Augustine hoped to bring this martyr’s plight “before the eyes” of his audience. Strikingly, though, the person who is offered the most speaking time, the person who is rendered most visible by this ekphrasis, is the tempter rather than the martyr. It is the tempter whose positionality is most emphasized and whose speech is most vivid. It seems, indeed, as if Augustine is attempting not only to convince his audience of the validity of the sickbed martyr’s martyrdom but also to highlight the reality of temptations in the lives of his parishioners and thus facilitate their becoming martyrs themselves.

Further evidence of this—that is, further evidence that Augustine sought in this sermon to make his audience members into martyrs—is that there are, in fact, two sickbed martyr narratives depicted in this same sermon. The first, the one quoted above, is entirely in the third person. The second, which appears at the end of the sermon, is recounted largely in the second person:

Therefore, do not say (nolite dicere) that there are no persecutions, because temptations never cease. Restrain yourself (uos) from illicit things, therefore: from amulets, from incantations, from astrologers, from soothsayers. When you (pl.) are ill, do not seek any such things, and do not retreat from God, lest you perish. But you (s.) can say with the apostle: “When I am weak, then I am powerful.” You (s.) are lying on a bed and you are an athlete of God. You do not move your limbs, and you are seeing battles through to the end. The fever doesn’t recede, and your faith goes before you to God.

But look! A neighbor, and a friend, and a servant girl, and even, as I have said, your dematricula, bearing wax or an egg in their (s.) hands, and says: “Do this and you will be saved! Why prolong your illness? Use this amulet. I heard someone invoke the name of God and the angels for it, you will be safe. To whom will you entrust your widowed wife? To whom will you entrust your young children?”

But he says: “I refuse, because I am a Christian.”⁹²

Augustine moves in this passage from second person plural exhortations directed at his whole audience to a very specific, singular “you” that actually enacts the sickbed martyrdom. It is even more detailed than the first: the tempter’s hands are full and their rationales extensive. They even attempt to muddy the waters by claiming that the amulet is somehow blessed within a Christian context. Still, the martyr, now again in the third person singular but relaying the precise dialogue any future martyr should use, resists: “I refuse.”

And just in case his audience has failed to pick up on the parallel, Augustine makes explicit that the sickbed martyr is analogous to the martyr of the arena:

Hear the word of the martyr! See if this is not what the pagan was saying: “Sacrifice, and you will live!” . . . Those ones conquer in a game (ludo), that one conquers in a bed; those ones by a killer, that one by a seducer.⁹³

The sickbed martyr’s struggle is the very same struggle faced by the arena martyr. By giving this example for his audience to hear re-enacted, Augustine is creating a spectacle for them to see, much as he claims the martyr acta read before the sermons were meant to do. Augustine explicitly configured those acta as visual spectacles, akin to visiting the arena.⁹⁴ Now, by depicting the acta of his sickbed martyr in this ekphrasis, Augustine is adding his newly created spectacle to whatever spectacle had already been read for the feast of the martyrs his parishioners had come together to celebrate, with the same imitative goal. Augustine is employing the full force of his rhetorical skill to convince his congregation that living martyrdom is not only real but accessible.

As I discussed in the previous chapter, these sickbed martyrs were among Augustine’s most fully developed examples of living martyrs. And they are, indeed, frequent sites for Augustine’s considerable exercise of the rhetorical techniques outlined above. But I want to hone in on one aspect of their persuasive capacity: the logical work they do to persuade listeners that martyrdom can be achieved without death, spectacular or otherwise.⁹⁵ In other words, Augustine uses these sickbed martyrs to correct his parishioners’ assumptions about how visible martyrdom has to be. By presenting martyrs whose victories are invisible as akin to the martyrs of the arena whose torments and triumphs were not just visible but spectacular, Augustine makes clear that there is no qualitative difference between the two. But once the audience has accepted that martyrdom can be invisibly achieved, the door is now open for Augustine’s audience to accept the idea of martyrs who continue to live on in the world. By establishing the similarities of the sickbed martyr to the martyr in the arena, Augustine shows that their heroism is truly equivalent; by emphasizing the differences between the arena martyr and the sickbed martyr, he highlights the ways in which the principle of non poena sed causa might obviate the need for any poena at all. The precise ways in which the sickbed martyr troubles the model of the arena martyr lead the audience to conclude that the Devil is always tempting us, that the true victory is wholly internal, and that martyrdom might well be achieved in spectacularly unspectacular ways, with no particular fanfare or external manifestation.

For example, the arena martyr’s “athleticism” and torments are visible—seen and documented by other humans—while the sickbed martyr’s athleticism is logically present but “invisible” (or at least not readily legible as athleticism). Once we have established the possibility of invisible athleticism, the visibility or invisibility of the living martyr’s athleticism becomes irrelevant, and we can imagine a martyr who appears to be going about his daily business but is, in reality, in constant combat with the Devil. As a second illustration, we can look at the struggles of the martyr: the arena martyr is engaged in a life-and-death struggle, with physical death a near-certainty, while the sickbed martyr is engaged in a life-and-death struggle, where physical death is a possibility but spiritual death is the real threat. The living martyr is also engaged in a life-and-death struggle, but physical death is present only on the imaginative horizon—the death most keenly threatened is spiritual death. Again, once we have introduced an emphasis on spiritual death as the true death to be feared, the martyr’s physical death becomes irrelevant. This substantiates the legitimacy of the living martyr and, in the process, redefines the experience of even the arena martyr as being based on something other than physical death. To illustrate this relationship as clearly as possible, I have represented a point-by-point comparison in Table 6.1.

Table 6.1 Comparison of arena martyr, sickbed martyr, and living martyr characteristics
Arena martyr	Sickbed martyr	Living martyr
Physical Persecutor, usually inspired by the Devil	Devil himself as Persecutor, with Pagans or Pagan-leaning Christians as tempters	Devil himself as Persecutor, temptations from every side, no physical tempters needed
Pagan antagonist	Pagan or Pagan-leaning Christian antagonist	Unspecified antagonist
Visible “athleticism”: torments are seen by others	Invisible “athleticism”: torments either not seen by others (in case of paralytic) or seen by others but not acknowledged as “contest”	Varied visibility of torments
Life and Death struggle, with physical death looming	Life and Death struggle, with physical death a real possibility; spiritual death also threatened if the martyr capitulates	Life and Death struggle, with spiritual death a real possibility and physical death present on the imaginative horizon
Adherence to cause at the expense of physical life	Adherence to cause at the possible expense of physical life	Adherence to cause without regard for possible expense of physical life (threat not imminent)

The passion of the sickbed martyr thus helps Augustine move martyrdom beyond the sickbed: if the sickbed martyr can struggle to the point of death invisibly, with no one but God aware of his crown, why couldn’t other Christians struggle against sin invisibly, in other contexts?

We see exactly this progression from arena to sickbed to life as a martyr in Sermo 306E. Augustine begins by discussing martyrs who suffered in the arena, arguing that their real victory was over sin, temptation, and their own weakness—this, he argues, was the real “wrestling against sin up to the shedding of blood” advocated in Hebrews 12:4.⁹⁶ The mindset of the martyr is paramount, for “God does not delight in the shedding of blood: he has many hidden martyrs.”⁹⁷ To show how one can have such a mindset (animus . . . martyris), even in the absence of official persecution, Augustine then offers the passio of the sickbed martyr.⁹⁸ And, finally, he concludes the sermon with an example of a living martyr: a man who refuses to give false evidence in court, even after being threatened by a powerful man. As Augustine explains, “You should consider yourself a martyr if you struggle.”⁹⁹ The construction of the sickbed martyr was thus an important tool for Augustine in moving his audience from the familiar to the unfamiliar, acting as the perfect stepping stone to forms of martyrdom that would depart even further from the audience’s customary understanding and did not, in fact, involve death.

The life of martyrdom, then, was not a doctrine that could simply be asserted or even one that Augustine could rely on logical argument to inculcate in his audience. It was a pivotal, urgent message that the preacher needed to argue persuasively and compellingly so that his congregation would be sure to adopt it wholeheartedly. This is why he used this vast array of rhetorical techniques, marshaling the full force of his rhetorical skill to make the case that his audiences could aspire to martyrdom but did not need to aspire to death.

CONCLUSION

Augustine had a clear idea of what the life of martyrdom would look like. He outlined it repeatedly for his audiences, and he used an array of rhetorical tools to help them achieve it.

The life of martyrdom, for Augustine, consists in a thoroughgoing perceptual shift in which martyrs understand themselves to be engaged in a constant battle against demonic forces of temptation who work from without and within to challenge the martyr; this battle must be fought with constant vigilance, accompanied by personal humility and trust in divine guidance and grace. Affectively, the life of martyrdom is a life of productive tensions: feeling surveilled by God even while human sight and human standards lose significance; following one’s duties and respecting one’s affections all while listening for God’s call to abandon them; and constantly struggling and striving while, at the same time, experiencing a unique peace borne of reliance on God and the knowledge that, should God will it, you will be crowned. And Augustine rehearsed this life with his audiences, offering them a template for their own martyrdoms and even, at times, modeling for them how to abide by it while also engaging them in his re-enactment. He also used repetition, grammatical and conceptual parallelism, dialogue-generating interjections, and vivid rhetoric to cement his depictions.

What we are seeing, then, is Augustine’s attempt to call for a worldview shift in his audiences. This shift would not appear to be actionable or visible in the day-to-day world—there are no behaviors that need to be adopted, no “to-do” list on which to tick boxes. But it would nonetheless have had a profound impact on the way Christians experienced the world and, as such, would filter out into their every action and interaction. Indeed, the adoption of the life of martyrdom might be so sweeping that the Christian’s entire life and all their relationships might be transformed without any of their daily acquaintances being made aware of the shift. It is the opposite of a spectacular martyrdom, but no less pivotal for the spread of a certain form of Christianity. As I noted above, the martyrially minded Christian would have absorbed the news of Rome’s defeat with equanimity and a reminder that nothing happens outside of God’s will; any personal reversals of fortune would be processed similarly. The reach and effect of this mindset would thus be vast, no matter how subtly incorporated into the martyr’s daily life. Immune to peer pressure and societal judgments, scornful of any pleas that they feel would displease God, constantly scrutinizing themselves and others for the presence of demonic temptations, the martyr’s interior world would be vastly different than before.

Due to the internal and generally unobservable nature of this living martyrdom, we cannot know how many of Augustine’s listeners adopted it. But there is evidence that the idea was well-received by Augustine’s fellow clerics and that they, like Augustine, felt that this would be a feasible argument to make to their own audiences. To begin with, we can consider the text history and anonymization of Sermo 335K, with which we began this chapter. The sermon was edited and published by Lambot in 1949 from a single manuscript: an eleventh-century compilation originally from Fleury. The manuscript contained a treatise by Jerome along with six sermons attributed to Augustine and appears to have been somehow related to the Fleury Homiliary, which itself appears to have been copied in the eighth century from far older materials; Lambot thinks this manuscript may reflect a similar trajectory.¹⁰⁰ Too small a collection of sermons to be considered a homiliary on its own, the group nonetheless appears to have been purposefully collected for imitative purposes, as each sermon shares the theme of celebrating saints. What is particularly notable for our purposes is that the title of this sermon in the manuscript is “In Natale Unius Martyris,” (“On the Birthday of a Martyr”). It was Lambot, and no prior copyist or reader, who insisted that the honorand did not meet the criteria of martyrdom and who changed the title, in his edition, to “In Anniversario Depositionis Episcopi,” which is now the title by which it is most commonly known.¹⁰¹ It was, therefore, not until 1949 that “the Blessed N” lost his title as a martyr; this is a clear example of modern scholarly biases obscuring a late ancient account of martyrdom. Moreover, the anonymization of the bishop in question is itself evidence that the sermon was used and intended to be used as a template: the “N” of the “The Blessed N” quite likely signifies “nomen”—as in, the homilist would be expected to insert the name of his intended honorand in that spot. Even if the “N” is simply a redaction of the bishop’s name, this indicates that the sermon would not have been intended simply for reading or historical edification but as a model to be imitated. In other words, this sermon, which not only asserts that the long-serving cleric had achieved martyr status without persecution but also encourages others to follow his model, was read and copied with the understanding that this man was a martyr from Augustine’s day through to the eleventh century at least, preserved in a fashion that indicates it was indeed intended to be preached.

We can glean a similar lesson from Sermo 303, which was included by Migne in his collection of Augustine’s Sermones ad populum but which has long been considered of dubious authorship—Hill notes that the Maurists had no manuscripts of it, indicating that Migne probably used an early printed edition of uncertain provenance.¹⁰² The first half of the sermon is a homiletic retelling of Lawrence’s martyrdom, after which the preacher asserts that “the heavenly rewards are promised not only to the martyrs, but also to those following Christ with unwounded faith and perfected charity.” Such a person is “honored among the martyrs.”¹⁰³ Then the sermon transitions to a lengthy, verbatim quote from Cyprian’s Ad Fortunatum, which includes the assertion that “in persecution, it is soldiering, in peace, it is constancy that is crowned.¹⁰⁴ Hill thinks it most likely that a later compiler, like Bede or Alcuin, stitched together the relevant Cyprian quote with what he thought was a short Augustinian sermon. If Hill is correct about the text’s composition and in his further suspicion that none of this sermon is actually Augustine’s, we are presented with the exciting prospect of not one but two reception contexts in which “Augustine’s” formulation of living martyrdom was affirmed: the original sermon author, who shared Augustine’s views about what constituted martyrdom and who could count as a martyr, and the later compositor, who thought that the claim to martyrdom without death needed some more patristic support and found it in Cyprian.

Beyond these more tenuous and speculative assessments, we can see a firm legacy for Augustine’s life of martyrdom in the work of Caesarius of Arles, born in Gaul forty years after Augustine’s death. Caesarius was an admirer of Augustine, and particularly of his preaching—both its style and its substance. Not only did Caesarius model his own homiletic endeavors on Augustine’s, he actively sought to disseminate Augustine’s sermons (and others that he saw as similarly edifying, including his own) as widely as possible: he collected, copied, and circulated sermons for wider use, even asking others to copy and share them broadly.¹⁰⁵ Caesarius’s emphasis on homiletics was rooted in his belief (shared with Augustine) that preaching was not only a pastoral duty but also an effective tool for cultivating lay Christian piety, community, and transformation; he consequently advocated that priests (in addition to bishops) be trained and encouraged to offer sermons, and even argued that deacons should be allowed to read sermons from homiliaries in the absence of a priest or bishop.¹⁰⁶ It is significant, then, that living martyrdom features so prominently in Caesarius’s sermons. Of the roughly 240 sermons that survive from Caesarius’s collections covering a vast range of topics, nine include explicit advocacy for living martyrdom. Of these nine, two contain extensive quotes from Augustine (including one which is Augustinian in its entirety and is openly attributed to him), and the other seven are, though written by Caesarius himself, deeply indebted to Augustine’s sermons.¹⁰⁷ In these sermons, even though the words are Caeasarius’s, we can clearly see Augustine’s influence: Caesarius reminds his audiences that “‘martyr’ is the Greek word, and in Latin it is called ‘witness’”¹⁰⁸ and often talks of the ways that martyrdom can be earned through non-fatal struggles:

Let no one say, dearest brethren, that the contests of martyrs are not possible in our times; for peace has many martyrs of its own. For, as I have frequently posed to you, to quell anger, flee lust, shepherd justice, scorn greed, and humiliate pride—this is a large part of martyrdom.¹⁰⁹

Caeasarius even adduces the sickbed martyr several times and at length.¹¹⁰ It is clear that Caesarius was impressed by Augustine’s idea of living martyrdom and, more importantly, was convinced that it would be useful to his efforts to Christianize Arles and to create his ideal community of Christians throughout Gaul.¹¹¹ That he thought his contemporaries would be receptive enough to the idea of the life of martyrdom that it would be worth preaching to his own audiences as well as those beyond his own locality is a strong endorsement of a more general late ancient sense that such a spirituality would be widely feasible, and corroborates the idea that Augustine could have expected his own audiences to receive it well.

Taking the life of martyrdom seriously as a form of martyrdom, historians can acquire a clearer picture of the type of Christian spirituality Augustine was hoping to instill and his level of investment in cultivating it. Most importantly, we can also gain a clearer sense of what types of spirituality were imaginatively possible in Augustine’s milieu. Whether or not his parishioners adopted the life of martyrdom Augustine advocated, acknowledging the existence and persistence of this homiletic ideal of living martyrdom helps us more vividly understand the late ancient experience of Christianity.

Notes

1. Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities, 74.

2. Ramsay MacMullen, “The Preacher’s Audience (AD 350–400),” The Journal of Theological Studies 40, no. 2 (1989): 508–509. See Éric Rebillard, “Sermons, Audience, Preacher” in Dupont and Boodts, Preaching in the Patristic Era, 88.

3. Rebillard, “Sermons, Audience, Preacher,” 89. Dossey, Peasant and Empire in Christian North Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 149–153.

4. Fruchtman, “Social Martyrdom in Augustine’s sermons” (forthcoming). See also Fruchtman, “Augustine’s Homiletic Process of Inventio: Class Status and the Case of Social Martyrdom,” in The Invention of Augustine: Argumentative Strategies in Early Christian Rhetoric, eds. Rafel Toczko and Adam Ployd (Leuven: Brill, Mnemosyne Supplements, 2022).

5. “Communication and Plebeian Sociability in Late Antiquity: The View from North Africa in the Age of Augustine,” in Popular Culture in the Ancient World, ed. Lucy Grig (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 310–316.

6. For the provenance of the manuscript, see Cyrille Lambot, “Sermons inédits de s. Augustin pour des fêtes de saints,” RB 59, no. 1 (1949): 55–81. For further discussion and a note about the title, see also below, [240].

7. Augustine, Sermo 335K, 1 (PLS 2, 817): Seruus enim quando recte honoratur, in nomine domini sui honoratur.

8. Sermo 335K, 1 (PLS 2, 817): Talis autem unicuique homini est depositio corporis, qualis fuit in corpore.

9. Sermo 335K, 2 (PLS 2, 818): Audistis apostolum dicentem: quid eligam ignoro. Compellor autem ex duobus, concupiscentiam habens dissolui et esse cum christo: multo enim magis optimum; manere autem in carne necessarium propter uos.

10. Sermo 335K, 2 (PLS 2, 818): Quia uero multi erant aedificandi, tenebatur architectus, qui nouerat fundamentum christum in cordibus credentium peritissime collocare.

11. Sermo 335K, 2 (PLS 2, 818): Ita et beatus — dispensauit uerbum et sacramentum dei quamdiu dominus uoluit.

12. Sermo 335K, 2 (PLS 2, 818): Amanda est uita, timendum iudicium. Hic elige quod ames, deuita quod timeas: nemo enim uitat iudicium timendo, sed bene uiuendo.

13. Sermo 335K, 3 (PLS 2, 818–819): Hic ergo certamen est, haec uita deo spectanti theatrum est: hic pugna, hic conflictus cum omnibus uitiis et maxime cum principe uitiorum, tamquam cum golia. Diabolus enim animam prouocat quasi ad singulare certamen. Uincitur cum stat, sed in nomine domini, non in uiribus bellatoris.

14. Thanks to Hill (Sermons III/9, 265) for this wonderful and apt image!

15. Sermo 335K, 3 (PLS 2, 818–819): Quidquid ergo mali et illiciti suggestum fuerit cordi tuo, quidquid malignae concupiscentiae obortum fuerit aduersus mentem tuam ex carne tua, tela illius sunt inimici, qui te prouocat ad singulare certamen. Memento te pugnare. Inuisibilis est hostis, sed inuisibilis est et protector tuus. Non uides cum quo confligis, sed credis in eum a quo protegeris. Et si habes oculos fidei, et illum uides: omnis enim fidelis uidet oculis fidei aduersarium cotidie prouocantem.

16. Sermo 335K, 3–4.

17. Sermo 335K, 3 (PLS 2, 819): quia mitis erat, quia mansuetus erat, quia subditus erat.

18. Sermo 335K, 6 (PLS 2, 820): Nemo, fratres mei, prorsus nemo confligat cum aliquo uitio in corde suo et de se praesumat. Nolite esse neglegentes ad pugnandum, sed nec superbi ad praesumendum. Quidquid illud est quod te mouet, siue de ignorantia siue de concupiscentia, ueni ad pugnam, noli esse segnis, sed inuoca spectantem qui adiuuet laborantem. Sic uincis.

19. Sermo 335K, 6 (PLS 2, 820): Aliter non uincis quia non tu uincis. Numquid enim dauid uicit? uerba ipsius attendite et uidete quia non ipse uicit. Ait enim: pugna dei est. Quid est dicere: pugna dei est haec, nisi, deus per me pugnat.

20. Sermo 335K, 6 (PLS 2, 820): Sic pugnando et illum confitendo, securi finimus hanc uitam, et finito certamine, in gremio quietis sanctae requiescimus, ubi requiescit beatus—, utique post grauia certamina, utique post admirabiles pugnas.

21. Sermo 335K, 6 (PLS 2, 820–821): Pugnat enim homo, aliquando alio homine non uidente. Non enim alius homo uidet in corde tuo quas cogitationes pateris, sub quibus suggestionibus pericliteris, quibus concupiscentiis stimuleris. Alia blandiuntur, alia terrent: metuendum est ne a blandientibus capiaris, ne a terrentibus frangaris. In isto certamine quid restat nisi dicere: in nomine domini dei mei superabo eum; in isto certamine quid restat dicere nisi: non nobis domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam?

22. Sermo 335K, 6 (PLS 2, 821): Si haec teneatis, legem in situla lactis habentes, eritis inuicti. Facile prosternetur quidquid uobis obluctatur, ut ille qui uobis certamen indixit spectet certantes et adiuuet laborantes et coronet uincentes.

23. For the quote, see Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities, 75. For the resistance, Augustine faced in his attempts, see 78–91 in particular.

24. Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities, 91.

25. Epistula 220.4.

26. Epistula 220 (CSEL 57, 433): tu autem nihil ex hoc mundo quaereres nisi ea, quae necessaria essent huic uitae sustentandae tuae ac tuorum, accinctus balteo castissimae continentiae et inter arma corporalia spiritalibus armis tutius fortiusque munitus.

27. Theodore de Bruyn, “Ambivalence within a ‘Totalizing Discourse’: Augustine’s Sermons on the Sack of Rome,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 1, no. 4 (1993): 405–421.

28. For more instances of Augustine offering descriptions of human life as an arena or theater or stage/location of combat/contest (certamen), see Sermones 53A, 12; 94A, 2; 155, 1–3; 306C, 3 and 5; 313A, 2; 315, 10; and 344, 1.

29. Sermo 61A, 7 (CCSL 41Aa, 288): Quantumcumque profecerit, etsi quis pacem habeat ab eis quae intus uel quae foris sunt, in se ipso bellum habebit, in se ipso certamen acturus est, nec desinet agere certamen, spectante illo qui paratus est adiuuare laborantem et coronare uincentem.

30. See also Sermo 64, 1.2, which uses emphatic repetition to instill the belief that the contest (agon/certamen) has been ordained (proposuit) by God.

31. Sermo 313A, 2 (MiAg 1, 67): Amor tuus migret: rumpe funes a creatura, alliga ad creatorem. Muta amorem, muta timorem: non enim faciunt bonos et malos mores nisi boni uel mali amores. Thanks to Hill for the idea of using lives/loves to capture Augustine’s mores/amores wordplay.

32. Sermo 313A, 1–2 (MiAg 1, 65): Agitur de martyrum gloria. Facile est martyrum sollemnia celebrare; difficile est martyrum passiones imitari. Angustam, ut dicere coeperam, et artam christianorum uiam duae res faciunt: contemptus uoluptatis, et tolerantia passionis.

33. Sermo 313A, 1–2 (MiAg 1, 65–66): Quisquis ergo confligit, sciat se cum toto mundo confligere; et confligens cum toto mundo haec duo uincat, et uincit mundum. Uincat quicquid blanditur, uincat quicquid minatur: uoluptas enim falsa est, poena transitoria. Si uis intrare per angustam portam, claude portas cupiditatis et timoris: his enim temptat ille temptator ad euertendam animam.

34. Sermo 296, 8 (MiAg 1, 406): patiens esto; deus uult.

35. Sermo 296, 8 (MiAg 1, 406): Ferre te uult quod uult: ferto quod uult, et dabit tibi quod uis.

36. Sermo 94A, 5 (MiAg 1, 254): ut non cupias quod praeterit, et non timeas quod in tempore deficit et perit. That this is at the heart of martyrial struggle can be seen in 94A, 2 and 4.

37. Sermo 335J, 1 (PLS 2, 839): Ecce dico uobis quomodo ueniebat inimicus ad martirem. Et adprehendebat eum, et alligabat, et ad iudicem perducebat. Iudex dicebat illi: nega christum si uis uiuere. Sed ille non negabat, quia uolebat uiuere. Quomodo ergo prius intus pugnabat? quia dulcedo uitae huius dicebat: nega. Ille non audiebat, et confitebatur christum. Uincens intus uitae dulcedinem, uincebat foris persequutorem.

38. Sermo 335J, 2 (PLS 2, 839): et nunc pugnant qui pugnant, et qui agnoscunt pugnam desiderant coronam.

39. Sermo 335J, 3.

40. Sermo 335J, 4 (PLS 2, 840): Qui autem contradicit ipsis malis amoribus, fit christianus bonis moribus. Et pugnat cottidie in conscientia, ut ab illo qui illud uidet petat coronam, dum uicerit.

41. DeMaeyer and Dupont, “A Study of Augustine’s Theology of Martyrdom.”

42. Sermo 285, 4 (SE 56, 84): de suis uiribus antea praesumpserunt et ideo defecerunt. See also Sermo 335E, 6 and Sermo 4, 37.

43. Sermo 335E (PLS 2, 784): Noli extolli ne perdas quod accepisti. Ideo enim tua patientia est, quia habes illam, si tamen habes illam. Ideo tua quia habes, non quia a te ipso habes. Quid enim habes quod non accepisti? On the martyr not taking credit for their own victories, see also Sermo 4 (CCSL 41, 48): Noli, cum uiceris, per superbiam tibi tribuere, quasi de uiribus tuis luctatus fueris. Sed praesume de eo qui dedit uires ut uinceres, quia ipse uicit saeculum.

44. See Sermones 81, 4–6; 260E, 2; 328, 2–3; 335E, 3–5.

45. Sermo 4 (CCSL 41, 48): Quare ista diximus, fratres? Vt quando celebratis natalitia martyrum, imitemini martyres, nec putetis ideo uobis deesse posse occasiones coronae, quia modo desunt tales persecutiones. Nec modo enim desunt quotidie persecutiones a diabolo, siue per suggestionem, siue per molestias aliquas corporis. Tu tantum scito te habere imperatorem, qui iam praecessit in caelum. Dedit tibi uiam qua sequaris, tene te ad illum. Noli, cum uiceris, per superbiam tibi tribuere, quasi de uiribus tuis luctatus fueris. Sed praesume de eo qui dedit uires ut uinceres, quia ipse uicit saeculum. Et semper coronaris et martyr hinc exies, si omnes tentationes diaboli superaueris.

46. This, Hill explains, would account for Augustine’s begrudging and cursory acknowledgment of Lawrence; it would also explain the “rambling and in many ways rather bad” sermon (Hill, Sermons III/9, 333n1).

47. Sermo 305A, 4–5 (MiAg 1, 58–59): Martyres unde coronati sunt? credo, uiam dei ambulando, tolerando, inimicos etiam suos diligendo, pro eis obsecrando. Haec est corona martyrum, hoc meritum martyrum.

48. Sermo 305A, 4–5 (MiAg 1, 59): Proinde, dilectissimi, quoniam persecutio, sicut dixi, numquam deest, et diabolus aut insidiatur aut saeuit, semper parati esse debemus, corde fixo in domino, et, quantum possumus, inter istas molestias, tribulationes, temptationes, orare nos fortitudinem a domino, quoniam per nos ipsi parui et nulli sumus.

49. Also, see Sermo 315, where the temptation to be overcome in the battle within the martyr’s heart is anger.

50. Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities, 74.

51. For an excellent discussion of the “imaginative demands” of this type of preaching, see Ellen Muehlberger, Moment of Reckoning: Imagined Death and Its Consequences in Late Ancient Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 69–80. Augustine asks his hearers to participate in the reality he is creating for them, inducing distension in his audiences to ensure that these realities linger. See also Andrea Nightingale, Once out of Nature: Augustine on Time and the Body (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

52. Sermo 81, 3 (PL 38, 501): dilige legem dei, non tibi erit scandalum.

53. Sermo 81, 4 (PL 38, 501): Sed occurrit uxor, nescio quid mali persuadens.

54. Dupont and Boodts, “Augustine of Hippo,” 186 and Catherine Conybeare, “Augustine’s Rhetoric in Theory and Practice,” in Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies, ed. Michael J. MacDonald (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 309.

55. Sermo 81, 4 (PL 38, 501): Diligis eam, sicut oportet diligi uxorem: membrum tuum est. Sed si oculus tuus scandalizat te, si manus tua scandalizat te, si pes tuus scandalizat te, modo audisti euangelium, amputa, proiice abs te.

56. Sermo 81, 4 (PL 38, 501): Prorsus docuit te dominus, qui tibi uiuendi exemplum praebuit, et quid sit scandalum, et quomodo caueatur scandalum.

57. Sermo 81, 4 (PL 38, 501): Scandalum ergo tibi ille erit, qui tibi mali aliquid suadere coeperit.

58. Or, Augustine says, someone who loves you, like a father, brother, son, or spouse (Sermo 81, 4 [PL 38, 501–502]: Uidet enim te amicus tuus, qui te diligit, uicissimque a te diligitur, pater tuus, frater tuus, filius tuus, coniux tua). Nonetheless, the stand-in noun for this person through the rest of the passage is amicus, so that is the relationship I am highlighting.

59. Sermo 81, 4 (PL 38, 501): Et intendat charitas uestra: fit hoc plerumque, non maleuolentia, sed peruersa beneuolentia.

60. Sermo 81, 4 (PL 38, 501–502): Accedit amicus, qui non uult te esse in pressura, non uult te esse in malo: rogo te, fac quod tibi dicitur; quid magnum est?

61. The following dialogue and commentary is a rendering of Sermo 81, 4–5 (PL 38, 502): Forte et iste amicus tuus, quia uidet te christianum, de lege tibi uult persuadere, quod putat te debere facere. Fac quod dicit. Quid? hoc quod uult ille. Sed mendacium est, falsum est. Non legisti, omnis homo mendax? iam iste scandalum est. Amicus est, quid facturus es? oculus est, manus est: amputa, et proiice abs te. Quid est, amputa, et proiice abs te? noli consentire. Hoc significat, amputa, et proiice abs te, noli consentire. Membra enim nostra in corpore nostro consensione faciunt unitatem, consensione uiuunt, consensione inuicem connectuntur. Ubi dissensio, ibi morbus aut uulnus est. Ergo membrum tuum est: diliges eum. Sed scandalizat te; amputa eum, et proiice abs te. Noli consentire; auerte illum ab auribus tuis, forte correctus rediet. Quomodo facturus es hoc quod dico, amputaturus, et abiecturus, et eo fortasse correcturus? Quomodo facturus es, responde. De lege uoluit suadere mendacium. Ille enim ait, dic. Et forte non ausus est dicere, dic mendacium: sed sic, dic quod uult. Tu dicis, sed mendacium est. Et ille, ut excuset, omnis homo mendax. Et tu contra, frater, os quod mentitur, occidit animam. Attende, non est leue quod audisti, os quod mentitur, occidit animam. Quid mihi facit inimicus iste potens, qui me premit, quia miseraris me, et miseret conditionis in me, et non uis me esse in malo; cum uelis me esse malum? Quid mihi facit potens iste? quid premit? carnem. Corpus, dicis tu, premit: dico ego, perimit. Quanto mitius me cum agit ille, quam ego si mentitus fuero? Ille occidit carnem meam: ego occido animam meam. Iratus potens occidit corpus: os quod mentitur, occidit animam. Corpus occidit; moriturum erat, etsi non occideretur: animam uero quam non occidit iniquitas, in aeternum excipit ueritas. Serua ergo quod seruare potes: pereat quod quandoque periturum est.

62. Sermo 81, 7–8.

63. Sermo 313A, 1–2 (MiAg 1, 65–66): Quisquis ergo confligit, sciat se cum toto mundo confligere.

64. Sermo 335K, 2 (PLS 2, 818): Hic elige quod ames, deuita quod timeas.

65. Sermo 335K, 3 (PLS 2, 818–819): Non uides cum quo confligis, sed credis in eum a quo protegeris.

66. Sermo 65, 1 (CCSL 41Aa, 375): Timeamus, ne timeamus, hoc est: prudenter timeamus, ne inaniter timeamus. Martyres sancti, propter quorum sollemnitatem hoc ex euangelio recitatum est, timendo non timuerunt, quia Deum timendo homines contempserunt.

67. Sermo 65, 2 (CCSL 41Aa, 376–377): “Non timeo, quia timeo. Tu quod minaris, si ille nolit, non facis; quod autem ille minatur, ut faciat a nullo impeditur.”

68. Sermo 65, 2 (CCSL 41Aa, 376–377): uerba martyris dico.

69. See Dupont, Preacher of Grace; Dupont, Gratia in Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum, 3–23; and Pellegrino, “Introduction,” 13–137. The classic treatment of Augustine’s rhetorical style is José Oroz Reta, La retorica en los Sermones de S. Agustin (Madrid: Libreria Editorial Augustinus, 1963). Scholarship on this topic continues to expand at breakneck speed through the diligent and insightful work of the scholars involved in Ministerium Sermonis series of colloquia whose proceedings are published by Brepols Publishers.

70. See Éric Rebillard, “Sermones,” in Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 773–792, here 790–791; and Pellegrino, “Introduction.” For Latin sermons in this era in general, see Dupont, Boodts, Partoens, and Leemans, Preaching in the Patristic Era; for information on the state of research on Augustine’s sermons, see Boodts, “Navigating the Vast Sermons.”

71. Augustine, Sermo 286, 7 (PL 38:1300): multi ergo ducunt martyrium in lecto: prorsus multi.

72. Sermo 260E, 2 (MiAg 1, 503): praedicate ergo christum, ubi potueritis, quibus potueritis, quomodo potueritis.

73. Sermo 328, 8 (RB 51, 19): et facit magnam uictoriam—nemine uidente, in corpore inclusa; pugnat corde, coronatur in corde sed ab illo qui uidet in corde.

74. Sermo 318, 2 (PL 38:1439): et illa habuit falsos testes eos ipsos, quibus consentire noluit, ne peccaret; et ille eam ipsam, cui noluit consentire . . . liberatur illa, liberatur et ille . . . et illa ergo contra peccatum, id est contra adulterium, et ille contra tale peccatum, usque ad sanguinem certauerunt.

75. Stanley P. Rosenberg, “Orality, Textuality, and the Memory of the Congregation in Augustine’s Sermons,” Studia Patristica 49 (2010): 169–174.

76. Sermo 296, 5 (PL 38:1355): interroga ignes, passi non sunt; interroga uoluntatem, coronati sunt.

77. Sermo 296, 5 (PL 38:1355): potens est deus, dixerunt, eruere nos de manibus tuis: sed et si non – ibi sunt certa pectora, ibi stabilis fides, ibi inconcussa uirtus, ibi secura uictoria – sed et si non, notum tibi sit, rex, quia statuam quam statuisti non adoramus.

78. Sermo 138, 2 (PL 38:764): si distribuero, inquit, omnia mea pauperibus, et tradidero corpus meum ut ardeam. iam ipsi sunt. sed uide quid sequitur: charitatem autem non habeam, nihil mihi prodest. ecce uenitur ad passionem, ecce uenitur et ad sanguinis fusionem, uenitur et ad corporis incensionem: et tamen nihil prodest, quia charitas deest. adde charitatem, prosunt omnia: detrahe charitatem, nihil prosunt caetera.

79. Actually, not an unusual tactic for Augustine: his letter (194) to Sixtus (PL 33:874–891; PLS 2, 359) is rife with answers to questions that skirt the real qualms his opponents had about the possibility of free will.

80. Sermo 318, 2 (PL 38:1439): ipsi sunt perfecti, qui aduersus peccatum usque ad sanguinem certauerunt. quid est aduersus peccatum? aduersus magnum peccatum: aduersus negationem christi.

81. Sermo 328, 8 (RB 51, 19): non cessant tentationes. pugna et corona parata est. quando forte? ecce, ut aliquid commemorem.

82. Sermo 4, 37 (PL 38:52): quare ista diximus, fratres?

83. Sermo 296, 5 (PL 38:1355): negabimus eos martyres, quia eos flamma urere non potuit?

84. Sermo 128, 3 (PL 38:714): martyres nonne testes sunt christi, et testimonium perhibent ueritati?

85. Sermo 299F, 4 (PLS 2, 791): quia propter te mortificamur tota die? O causa bona: propter te mortificamur tota die. Ideo fructuose, ideo feliciter quia propter te. Quia causa bona, ideo corona.

86. Sermo 335D, 3 (PLS 2, 778): uides athletam dei, audis athletam christi. O uirum aegrum et sanum. O infirmum et fortem. O in lecto iacentem et in caelo regnantem.

87. Sermo 328, 8 (RB 51, 19): ecce, ut aliquid commemorem . . . ecce ergo ut aliquid dicam: aegrotat forte aliquis uestrum.

88. Sermo 4, 36 (CCSL 41, 47): Videtis certe iam quanta diabolus suggerit.

89. Sermo 335D, 3 (PLS 2, 778): uides athletam dei, audis athletam christi. Later in this same sermon, while configuring the sickbed martyr now in the second person (that is, by acting as if a member of his audience is now the martyr in question), Augustine presents the tempters by saying: ‘But look! Here are your neighbor and your friend and your servant’ (Sermo 335D, 5 [PLS 2, 780]: Sed ecce adstat uicinus et amicus et ancilla, etiam dixi, forte dematricula, ceram uel ouum manibus ferens et dicit), and he concludes this passio by commanding his audience (with the martyr once again relegated to the third person) to ‘Hear the word of the martyr!’ (Sermo 335D, 5 [PLS 2, 780]: Audite uerbum martyris).

90. Sermo 335D, 3 (PLS 2, 778): sortilegos quaerunt, ad mathematicos mittunt, remedia inlicita collo suo suspendunt.

91. Sermo 335D, 3 (PLS 2, 778): qui autem dicit: non facio – suggerente amico, et mussitante uicino aut uicina ancilla, aliquando et dematricula ei – qui dicit: non facio: christianus sum; deus prohibet hoc; sacramenta sunt daemonum; audi apostolum: nolo uos socios fieri daemoniorum, respondetur illi ab illo qui suggerit: fac et sanus eris; ille et ille fecerunt. quid? non sunt christiani? non sunt fideles? non ad ecclesiam currunt? et tamen fecerunt et sani sunt. ille fecit et continuo sanatus est. illum non nosti quia christianus est, fidelis? ecce fecit et sanus est. ille autem aeger, quia non amat salutem hominibus iumentis que communem, dicit: si ille inde saluus factus est, ego inde saluus fieri nolo. ille enim me saluum facere potest cui dictum est: homines et iumenta saluos facies domine sicut multiplicasti misericordias tuas deus - uides athletam dei, audis athletam christi. o uirum aegrum et sanum. o infirmum et fortem. o in lecto iacentem et in caelo regnantem.

92. Sermo 335D, 5 (PLS 2, 780): Nolite ergo dicere non esse persecutiones, quia non cessant temptationes. Abstinete uos ergo ab inlicitis rebus, a ligaturis, ab incantationibus, a mathematicis, a sortilegis. Cum aegrotatis, non talia requiratis et a deo non recedatis, ne pereatis. Sed dices cum apostolo: cum enim infirmor, tunc potens sum. In lecto iaces et athleta dei es. Non moues membra et peragis proelia. Febris non recedit et fides ad deum praecedit. Sed ecce adstat uicinus et amicus et ancilla, etiam dixi, forte dematricula, ceram uel ouum manibus ferens et dicit: fac hoc et saluus eris. Quid prolongas tuam aegritudinem? fac hanc ligaturam. Ego audiui qui nomen dei et angelorum ibi inuocat et eris sanus. Cui dimittis uiduam coniugem tuam, cui teneros filios? At ille: non facio, quia christianus sum.

93. Sermo 335D, 5 (PLS 2, 780): Sic moriar ne de hoc permoriar. Audite uerbum martyris. Uidete si non hoc est quod dicebat paganus: sacrifica et uiues. At ille: non facio. O merita martyrum numquam recedere. Illi in ludo, iste in lecto uicit, illi ab interfectore, iste a seductore. Sed non uincitur, protegente illo qui pro illo pependit in ligno.

94. See Sermones 280, 1; 274, 1; 275, 1; 277A, 1; 300, 1; 301, 1; and 301A, 7. See also Dearn, “Polemical Use of the Past” 314; and, in addition, Diane Fruchtman, “The Passio of the Sickbed Martyr and Augustine’s Definition of Martyrdom,” Studia Patristica 97, no. 14 (2021): 49–60.

95. The following section is adapted from and, in some passages, borrows from Fruchtman, “Augustine and the Passio of the Sickbed Martyr.”

96. Sermo 306E, 2.

97. Sermo 306E, 6 (Dolbeau 18, 214): Ipse animus esse debet martyris, non enim deus fuso sanguine delectatur: multos habet martyres in occulto.

98. Sermo 306E, 7–8.

99. Sermo 306E, 11 (Dolbeau, 218): Ergo martyrem te putas, si certas.

100. Lambot, “Sermons inédits,” 56. Note that Lambot takes issue with all of the titles of the three genuinely Augustinian sermons in the MS, collectively using this as reason to discard those original titles. In the other two cases, Lambot at least attempted some gymnastics to justify the titles, but in the case of this sermon, his only comment is: “ne contient pas la moindre allusion à une fête de martyr.” The sermon does, indeed, include mentions of a celebrated day, so the only thing missing is a martyr who died in persecution. The eleventh-century manuscript is Médiathèque municipale d’Orléans 60(57); the eighth-century Fleury Homiliary is Médiathèque municipale d’Orléans 154(131).

101. Indeed, Saxer sees the lack of martyrial title as the primary indication that Augustine did not consider this bishop a martyr. “L’évêque commémoré n’est pas martyr, sinon Augustin lui en aurait donné le titre” (Victor Saxer, Morts, martyrs, reliques en Afrique chrétienne aux premiers siècles: les témoignages de Tertullien, Cyprien et Augustin à la lumière de l’archéologie africaine [Paris: Beauchesne, 1980], 158).

102. Hill, Sermons III/8, 315n1.

103. PL 38, 1394: Non solum martyribus praemia promittuntur coelestia, sed etiam integra fide et perfecta charitate christum sequentibus. Nam inter martyres honoratus est . . .

104. PL 38, 1395: in persecutione militia, in pace constantia coronatur.

105. William E. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles: Making a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 231–232; Mary Magdeleine Mueller, Caesarius of Arles: Sermons I (1–80), The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation Series 31:1 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1956), xix–xxiii, which includes a lengthy quote from Morin.

106. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles, 10, 230–232.

107. Sermones 41, 47, 52, 173, 184, 214, 215, 218, and 225. Sermo 173 is openly attributed to Augustine.

108. Sermo 52.1 (CCSL 103): martyr graecus sermo est, et latine dicitur testis. Compare this to Augustine’s Sermo 328, which reads: martyr enim, uerbum graecum, latine testis dicitur. Caesarius makes similar statements in sermones 47.2, 225.2, and 226.1.

109. Sermo 41.1 (CCSL 103): Nemo dicat, fratres carissimi, quod temporibus nostris martyrum certamina esse non possint: habet enim et pax martyres suos. Nam, sicut frequenter suggessimus, iracundiam mitigare, libidinem fugere, iustitiam custodire, avaritiam contemnere, superbiam humiliare, pars magna martyrii est. See also Sermones 47, 52, 184, 218, and 225. Caesarius also considers the world to be an arena of demonic temptation and trial, just as Augustine had (see Sermones 151 and 207).

110. See Sermones 52 and 184.

111. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles, chapters 6–8; Lisa Kaaren Bailey, “Scripture in the Sermons of Caesarius of Arles,” Early Medieval Europe 26, no. 1 (2018): 43–44.