In this paper I will try to come to a fuller understanding of the structure of book nine of Augustine's Confessions, and in particular, to a clearer understanding of his confusion at his feelings over his mother's death (Conf. 9.12.29-9.13.34).(2) Indeed, Augustine's own confusion here is certainly not confined to himself, but has understandably been shared by many of his readers: Why does the highly emotional Augustine, who so freely weeps at the death of his unnamed friend in book four (Conf. 4.4.7-4.6.11), hesitate to express his sorrow at his mother's death? Why does he find it so problematic? If one consults the secondary literature, one's perplexity is not immediately dispelled, for Augustine's critics have interpreted this passage in a number of ways: the epitome of Augustine as a divided, conflicted, alienated self;(3) Augustine turning his account of Monica's death into a rather Narcissistically self-referential story about himself;(4) a story of Augustine struggling to see the event in its proper perspective, first ineffectively denying his worldly attachments, then coming to see them in their proper relation to the eternal;(5) or a wrestling of Augustine's emotional, humane side with a rather inhuman, coldly ascetic attitude towards grief, a "ruthless... indifference" of Augustine and his contemporaries.(6)
Although not specifically addressing Augustine's grief and his confusion over it, there are also allegorical interpretations of his account of Monica's death, either as the climax of book nine and parallel to the allegorical interpretation of the Sabbath in book thirteen of the Confessions (Conf. 13.35.50-13.36.51);(7) or as an allegory of Augustine's love for his mother, the church.(8) Although this passage, like any other in Augustine, may have multiple meanings and functions, certainly the impression is that at this point there is a general confusion over Augustine's confusion. I think that an answer to this can be found by examining more closely the structure of book nine: in particular, by examining Augustine's use of interruptions in the chronological order of the narrated events.(9) By using these flashbacks and flash-forwards Augustine highlights for his readers his evolving attitudes towards death, grief, and love, thereby illuminating the climactic instance of all three, the death of Monica.
Augustine begins book nine quite typically with a praise of God,(10) in particular emphasizing Monica and himself as the servants of God: "O Lord, I am your servant; I am your servant and the son of your handmaid" (Conf. 9.1.1).(11) He then narrates the events that occurred next in the chronological sequence of his life, his final weeks as a professor of rhetoric and his intention to resign from that post (Conf. 9.2.2-9.2.4). The next event that should be narrated, if Augustine were still simply following the chronological sequence, should be the beginning of the vintage vacation and the end of his teaching; but this in fact is not mentioned until chapter four (Conf. 9.4.7). Instead, the next chapter narrates events that occur long after, events that in fact occur outside of the time frame of the autobiographical narrative of the Confessions. These are the conversions and deaths of Verecundus and Nebridius (Conf. 9.3.5-9.3.6). Augustine then resumes the proper chronological sequence of his story, narrating the beginning of the vintage vacation (Conf. 9.4.7); his retreat with his friends to Cassiciacum (Conf. 9.4.7-9.4.12); his formal resignation from his post (Conf. 9.5.13); and the baptisms of Alypius, Adeodatus, and himself (Conf. 9.6.14). But during the account of his baptism, Augustine again departs on another flash-forward to recount briefly the subsequent life and death of Adeodatus, more events outside of the time frame of the Confessions (Conf. 9.6.14).(12)
Several obvious similarities are to be noted between the chronological breaks so far in book nine. They are both accounts of deaths. They are both flash-forwards. In particular, they are flash-forwards to events that occur outside of the time frame of the Confessions. It could be said then that if the Confessions were strictly a story told in chronological sequence within a particular time frame, then these stories would not have been included. Their inclusion here by Augustine therefore seems especially deliberate. Augustine has violated both the order and the time frame of his story because it is important to his purpose to include accounts of these deaths.(13) A comparison between these accounts and the mention of Patricius' death (Conf. 3.4.7) and the more lengthy account of the death of Augustine's unnamed friend (Conf. 4.4.7-4.6.11) will help to uncover his purpose and meaning here.
Similar to these accounts, Patricius' death is also mentioned out of its proper place in the chronological sequence of the Confessions.(14) But dissimilar to these accounts, it is a flashback. More importantly, it is a flashback to an event that did in fact occur within the time frame of the Confessions: if Augustine had wanted to, he could have included it in its appropriate place. Therefore, the fact that Patricius' death is narrated so briefly and out of its proper chronological sequence is quite rightly taken as an indication of Augustine's ambiguous or indifferent feelings towards his father.(15) But as noted, with the deaths of Verecundus, Nebridius, and Adeodatus, the situation here is just the opposite: if Augustine had been following the chronology of his story and its time frame, there would have been no place to put these accounts. Rather, he deliberately makes a place for them despite this fact. Therefore, being told out of chronological sequence serves to highlight the importance of these three deaths for Augustine, not to minimize them.
Further, the events surrounding all three deaths in book nine should also be noted. Each of the three deaths is recounted in the context of the person's conversion, another comment missing from Augustine's first mention of his father's death.(16) Augustine makes a place for these accounts in book nine in order to assure the reader that Verecundus, Nebridius, and Adeodatus subsequently died in a state of grace. Such a happy conclusion could not otherwise have been known, since by the end of the time frame of the autobiographical part of the Confessions the first two are not yet Christians. As for Adeodatus, although he is a Christian, it would seem that because he is baptized in his youth, Augustine would surely fear he might fall into the same traps that he himself did: this would then be the background for his insistence that "you took his life away from the earth, and now I remember him with a more peaceful mind, for I have no fear for anything in his childhood or youth, and none at all for him as a man" (Conf. 9.6.14). By narrating their deaths, Augustine has shown us the conclusions to these three characters' own journeys to faith. In this and similar ways, it seems that the Confessions are not always so exclusively focused on Augustine himself as some have maintained:(17) these two accounts do not seem to advance Augustine's own story at all, but rather give us the completion of the stories of his friends and son, stories with importance and interest for us in their own right. They show us Augustine's genuine concern and love for them. The climaxes to their stories having been told, the three characters are dismissed from the narrative to make room for the similar climax to Monica's story.(18)
Augustine's insistence in these accounts that the three men died in a state of grace and are now safe with God, as well as his deep affection for the three, make the accounts very similar to that of the death of the unnamed friend in book four. Augustine describes the friend's deathbed conversion as bringing him to God quite similarly to how he describes Nebridius' state: of his friend he writes, "But he was snatched away from my madness, so that he might be kept with you for my consolation" (Conf. 4.4.8); and of Nebridius, "Now he lives in Abraham's bosom" (Conf. 9.3.6; cf. Luke 16:22).
The difference between books four and nine is striking, however, in Augustine's reaction to the deaths. In book four, he is paralyzed by despair: "...most heavily there weighed upon me both weariness of life and fear of dying.... my life was a horror to me" (Conf. 4.6.11). But in book nine, he can feel joy for his lost loved ones while remembering fondly the times he shared with them. Of Nebridius, Augustine says, "There he lives, in that place of which he asked so many questions of me, a poor, ignorant man. No longer does he put his ear to my mouth, but he puts his spiritual mouth to your fountain, and in accordance with his desire he drinks in wisdom, as much as he can, endlessly happy" (Conf. 9.3.6); and of Adeodatus, "I had experience of many still more wonderful things in him. To me his power of mind was a source of awe. Who except you is the worker of such marvels?" (Conf. 9.6.14). By narrating their deaths when he could have omitted them, Augustine shows his readers that he has now come to an appropriate understanding of love and grief. No longer absolutizing his loved ones in the almost idolatrous way he had the friend of book four, Augustine can accept them in life as gifts from God, while still loving them for their own sakes; and he can accept their deaths as not ending the loving and eternal relationship that still exists between them: "But blessed is the man who loves you [God], and his friend in you.... For he alone loses no dear one to whom all are dear in him who is not lost" (Conf. 4.9.14).(19)
After a very brief return to the proper chronological sequence in narrating his actual baptism (Conf. 9.6.14), Augustine next inserts a lengthy series of flashbacks (Conf. 9.7.15-9.9.22). The first of these is a description of the persecution under Justina and the rediscovery and translation of the relics of Sts. Gervasius and Protasius (Conf. 9.7.15-9.7.16). The episode is not particularly well integrated into the narrative and seems like more of an afterthought than the other chronological interruptions of book nine.(20) It is, moreover, a flashback to an event within the time frame of the Confessions, and therefore, like the death of Patricius, could have been narrated in its proper place. Being inserted here as an afterthought does make it seem that, like the death of Patricius, the events around the persecution under Justina did not particularly move Augustine at the time. He says as much when he notes that at the time he was "still cold to the warmth of your Spirit" (Conf. 9.7.15), though he did note the commotion in the city. But unlike the death of Patricius, the events of 386 did affect Augustine the following year at his baptism. By narrating these stories out of sequence, Augustine shows that they were not relevant to him until 387.
Augustine connects the events of 386 to his baptism because at his baptism he was overcome with tears at the singing in the church: "How greatly did I weep during hymns and canticles, keenly affected by the voices of your sweet-singing Church! Those voices flowed into my ears, and your truth was distilled into my heart, and from that truth holy emotions overflowed, and the tears ran down, and amid those tears all was well with me" (Conf. 9.6.14). The following flashbacks then narrate how it was that singing had become traditional in the Church in Milan. But more importantly, they show the significance of Augustine's tears at his baptism. He cries at the singing because he can remember a time, painfully recent, when the singing did not move him, even though it affected everyone else, especially his mother: "Therein, living in prayer, my mother, your handmaid, held a first place amid these cares and watchings," while Augustine himself was "still cold to the warmth of your spirit" (Conf. 9.7.15). His tears at his baptism contain an element of shame at his having not abandoned his former life sooner, even when the goal was within his grasp: "Yet even then, when the odor of your ointments was so fragrant, we did not run after you. Therefore, I wept the more at the singing of your hymns" (Conf. 9.7.16). But at the same time, his tears show Augustine's joy now that he has found God, however belatedly: "For long had I sighed after you, and at length I breathed in you, as far as breath may enter into this house of grass" (Conf. 9.7.16).(21) Only from these flashbacks can we see that Augustine's tears at his baptism are simultaneously tears with which he grieves over his previous alienation from God and rejoices at his present (and now permanent) communion with him.
In the next section, Augustine gives a lengthy flashback to Monica's earlier life (Conf. 9.8.17-9.9.22). As with Augustine's confusion over his feelings at her death, the exact reason for the inclusion of this little biography here is variously interpreted: "fond but highly selective memories of her" that eventually turn the story back to the real subject, Augustine himself;(22) a fitting final tribute to her;(23) or Monica as illustrative of the proper Christian life, either in contrast with Augustine's earlier sinfulness,(24) or as an example for him now to follow.(25) Without necessarily denying these interpretations,(26) I think that they do not fully explain this flashback. In particular, all these interpretations tend to emphasize the positive, praising aspects of Augustine's story of Monica, and therefore have somewhat minimized the significance of his including here the story of her drinking as a child. Since it is this part of the story that I think is most important for our understanding of Augustine's tears, I will save its treatment until last and begin with the latter parts of Augustine's story of Monica.
This little biography is divided into two parts: the first, on Monica's childhood (Conf. 9.8.17-9.8.18); and the second, on her life with Patricius (Conf. 9.9.19-9.9.22). In the second part Augustine praises Monica for her patience in the face of Patricius' adultery and violent temper: "She endured offenses against her marriage bed in such wise that she never had a quarrel with her husband over this matter.... But in addition to this, just as he was remarkable for kindness, so also was he given to violent anger. However, she had learned to avoid resisting her husband when he was angry, not only by deeds but even by words" (Conf. 9.9.19). Her patience similarly protected her from the ill will of her mother-in-law and the servants: "By her good services and by perseverance in patience and meekness, she also won over her mother-in-law who at first was stirred up against her by the whispered stories of malicious servants" (Conf. 9.9.20). Augustine goes on to praise her for her irenic influence over others, as she brings peace between any who are in disagreement: "...wherever she could she showed herself to be a great peacemaker between persons who were at odds and in disagreement" (Conf. 9.9.21). Finally, he says that in her piety and devotion to others "she took care as though she had been mother to us all, and she served us as though she had been a daughter to all of us" (Conf. 9.9.22).
Several points should be noted about this part of the flashback. As with the immediately preceding flashback to the events around the persecution under Justina, the events narrated here have occurred (at least in part) during the time frame of the Confessions and could have been narrated somewhere else. But it should also be noted that unlike any of the other chronological interruptions we have examined, this passage, despite being one of the longer, is the most general:(27) with the possible exception of the incident with Monica's mother-in-law, no specific event is related, and no relation to any point in Augustine's life is given. In a way, the passage's generality means that it could have been included anywhere, but at the same time nowhere, because it has no connection to any specific event in the narrative on which to "hang" it. It could only be used as it is at this point, as an epitome and generalization of everything we have learned about Monica earlier in the Confessions, and an epitome of her life is certainly most appropriate here at the end of it. Her long suffering patience at her wayward son is shown here as analogous to her patience with her wayward husband. Her concern for Augustine's salvation that we have seen throughout the Confessions is shown here as also applying to her husband, and is even generalized to everyone: she was like a mother to all.(28) Indeed, the imagery of pain in childbirth mentioned earlier in relation to Augustine himself is here extended to all her children: "I cannot tell clearly enough what love she had for me, and how with greater anguish she brought me forth in spirit than she had given me birth in the flesh" (Conf. 5.9.16); "...she had brought up children, being as often in labor in birth of them as she saw them straying from you" (Conf. 9.9.22). This part of the flashback, in which Monica is once again presented as the ideal mother, is most of a piece with the descriptions of her throughout the rest of the Confessions.(29) As a passage that really adds little new to our understanding of Monica, but only elaborates or epitomizes what we have already seen numerous times throughout the book, I do not find this part of the flashback surprising or problematic: it seems to function, as some of the interpretations cited above indicate, as a fairly straightforward tribute to her by Augustine.
It is the immediately preceding flashback to Monica as a child (Conf. 9.8.17-9.8.18) that seems surprising and significant. With Augustine's description of Monica's childhood drinking problem (Conf. 9.8.18) we have probably the only place in the Confessions in which we see Monica as flawed and sinful. (Although she is ultimately, indeed quite readily turned back to the right path, she is here presented as sinful nonetheless.) No longer the perfect mother and the perfect believer that she is uniformly presented as in the rest of the Confessions,(30) she is seen here for the only time as someone in need of the exact same correction that Augustine himself has struggled to get and to receive throughout the book. Although not precisely parallel (it is, after all, not theft), Monica's youthful offense is here described in a way similar to the pear tree incident (Conf. 2.4.9-2.10.18), in that neither is motivated by desire for the object obtained, but rather by love of the sinful act of obtaining it: "Nor did I wish to enjoy that thing which I desired to gain by theft, but rather to enjoy the actual theft and the sin of theft" (Conf. 2.4.9); "She did this not out of a desire for drink, but from a sort of excess of those youthful spirits" (Conf. 9.8.18). Monica, whom Augustine so often contrasts to his own sinful self, is here shown as having once been exactly like him.
Like the earlier flash-forwards to the conversions and deaths of Verecundus, Nebridius, and Adeodatus, this episode obviously takes place outside of the time frame of the Confessions. It again seems that Augustine has included it here when he could have omitted it. Further, to give such a negative story about Monica in a flashback that is otherwise a typical and predictable praise of her patience and piety also makes this passage stand out as incongruous, deliberate, and potentially significant.
We are finally in a position to analyze Augustine's confusion over his weeping at Monica's death with which we began this paper. Following the flashback to Monica's life, Augustine resumes the proper chronological sequence of his story, telling of their vision together at Ostia (Conf. 9.10.23-9.10.26) and then Monica's death (Conf. 9.11.27-9.11.28). There follows a long section (Conf. 9.12.29-9.13.34) that constantly mentions Augustine's confusion over his grief and his unwillingness to cry for his mother. Again, why does he feel such confusion? A consideration of the types of weeping Augustine has described so far in the Confessions will help illuminate this.
First, the scene is described quite similarly to the death of the friend in book four. Augustine uses the same image of the two as one soul in two bodies: "For I thought that my soul and his soul were but one soul in two bodies" (Conf. 4.6.11); "For out of her life and mine one life had been made" (Conf. 9.12.30).(31) As noted, Augustine weeps freely at that earlier death, but they are clearly tears of despair, made without any hope for the friend's survival: "I marveled that other men should live, because he, whom I had loved as if he would never die, was dead.... Perhaps because of this I feared to die, lest he whom I had loved so much should wholly die" (Conf. 4.6.11). As Augustine indicates, such tears would certainly not be appropriate at Monica's death, but would only confuse and torment him more: "We did not think it fitting to solemnize that funeral with tearful cries and groans, for it is often the custom to bewail by such means the wretched lot of those who die, or even their complete extinction. But she did not die in misery, nor did she meet with total death" (Conf. 9.12.29).(32) If tears mean hopelessness, then Augustine's refusal to shed such tears at Monica's death would surely make sense.
But tears of despair over the physical death of someone are not the most frequent tears in the Confessions. These would seem to be Monica's tears over her son, living and dying in sin:(33) "Graciously you heard her, and you did not despise her tears when they flowed down from her eyes and watered the earth beneath, in whatsoever place she prayed" (Conf. 3.11.19); "For when I would be washed clean by that water, then also would be dried up those rivers flowing down from my mother's eyes, by which, before you and in my behalf, she daily watered the ground beneath her face" (Conf. 5.8.15). Augustine is in fact called "the son of such tears" (Conf. 3.12.21), and he reminds us of them again in book nine, calling Monica "that mother now dead to my eyes who for so many years had wept for me so that I might live in your eyes" (Conf. 9.12.33). Monica's tears for Augustine the unreformed sinner are portrayed throughout the book as positive and highly efficacious. As shown above, such tears can also be turned, when the sinner repents, into the kind of tears combining grief and joy that Augustine sheds at his own baptism: "...the tears ran down, and amid those tears all was well with me" (Conf. 9.6.14). These tears of grief and joy, which Augustine has shown he can shed for himself, are liberating and not problematic. But when Monica died, would Augustine have been immediately ready to shed such tears for her? Given the consistently idealized portrayal of her in the Confessions, the answer would clearly seem to be no. How could he weep for Monica as she had wept for him, when he sees himself as the foulest of sinners and her as the perfect mother and believer?
It is at this point that the difference between the times when the events of the Confessions occurred and when they were written down becomes clear and sheds light on Augustine's confusion. At the time of Monica's death, Augustine was deeply confused because he could not readily weep for her as for another repentant sinner who had come to God. As shown above, Augustine seems to have felt no such confusion when Nebridius and Adeodatus died several years later,(34) partly because he had by that time come to a better understanding of death and grief, but also because they had never been for him idealized figures like Monica. It is only by the time of the writing of the Confessions that Augustine clearly sees Monica as another flawed human being in need of God's grace, and he shows this particularly by the inclusion of the story of her childhood drinking problem, an episode that surely did not occur to him at the actual time of Monica's death. In this story Augustine emphasizes God's part in Monica's correction: "My God, what did you do at that time? How did you cure her? Whence did you heal her? Was it not that you brought out of another soul, a hard and sharp reproach, like a surgeon's knife out of your secret stores, and by one stroke you cut away all that foul matter?" (Conf. 9.8.18). The larger-than-life Monica of the rest of the Confessions is here reduced years later to a more realistic and, for Augustine and his readers, a more manageable size: a little girl who sinned and needed God's help to stop sinning. Only with this story in which Monica is portrayed as exactly like Augustine himself can he now see his tears as comforting and not painful: "I took comfort in weeping in your sight over her and for her, over myself and for myself. I gave way to the tears that I had held back, so that they poured forth as much as they wished. I spread them beneath my heart, and it rested upon them, for at my heart were placed your ears, not the ears of a mere man" (Conf. 9.12.33). Only with this realization that Monica too required a repentance instigated and sustained by God's action can Augustine experience his tears rightly, not as signs of despair or weakness, but as signs of both grief and joy, proper expressions of a proper love.(35)
NOTES
1. A very slightly different version of this paper was originally presented at the conference "Augustine: Language, Memory, and Time," at DePaul University, April 20, 1996. I would like to thank all the participants there for their comments, and in particular the organizers of the conference, Drs. Katherine Rudolph and Jason Drucker. Also, I would like to thank Ms. Diana Buran for her paper on weeping in the Confessions, submitted to me in Freshman Seminar, Spring 1995. Her very perceptive analysis began my thinking on the subject which contributed to the present work, a gratifying example of the teacher learning from the student.
2. References to the Confessions will include book, chapter, and section number in parentheses. All quotations from the Confessions will be from John K. Ryan, The Confessions of St. Augustine (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1960) unless otherwise noted.
3. Donald Capps, "Augustine's Confessions: The Scourge of Shame and the Silencing of Adeodatus," in The Hunger of the Heart: Reflections on the Confessions of Augustine (eds. Donald Capps and James E. Dittes; Society for the Scientific Study of Religion Monograph Series 8; West Lafayette, IN: Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1990) 69-92, esp. 83-92.
4. Margaret R. Miles, Desire and Delight. A New Reading of Augustine's Confessions (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1991) 81-86; on Augustine's Narcissism, see also Donald Capps, "Augustine as Narcissist: Of Grandiosity and Shame," in The Hunger of the Heart: Reflections on the Confessions of Augustine (eds. Donald Capps and James E. Dittes; Society for the Scientific Study of Religion Monograph Series 8; West Lafayette, IN: Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1990) 169-84.
5. Colin Starnes, Augustine's Conversion: A Guide to the Argument of Confessions I-IX (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1990) 264-65.
6. John J. O'Meara, The Young Augustine: The Growth of St. Augustine's Mind up to His Conversion (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1954) 204.
7. Robert McMahon, Augustine's Prayerful Ascent: An Essay on the Literary Form of the Confessions (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1989) 108-12.
8. William Mallard, Language and Love. Introducing Augustine's Religious Thought Through the Confessions Story (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994) 173-74.
9. What to consider as an interruption is of course subjective to some extent. I have not considered every instance of Augustine mentioning something that happened before or after the events in the immediate context (such as his mention in Conf. 9.2.4 that he had been having chest pains since the previous summer), but only those interruptions that are extensive enough to be considered narratives or episodes on their own. Also, this method means that we will not consider to any extent the two most overworked sections of book nine: the retreat at Cassiciacum and the vision at Ostia. These two incidents are particularly prominent in Courcelle's classic work: see P. Courcelle, Recherches sur les Confessions de saint Augustin (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1950) 7-11, 202-10, 222-26. See also P. Henry, La vision d'Ostie, sa place dans la vie et l'oeuvre de saint Augustin (Paris: J. Vrin, 1938).
10. Cf. the similar beginnings to books one, five, six, and eight. The beginning to book six, with its description of Monica, is especially similar.
11. Ps 116:16; cf. Starnes, Augustine's Conversion, 247-48. "Handmaid" here could also possibly refer to the church, or both: see Mallard, Language and Love, 172.
12. Cf. the very different analysis of Capps, "Silencing of Adeodatus," 87-92, who argues that Augustine's brief mention of his son's death is not a proper account at all, but rather shows his continuing shame at Adeodatus' illegitimacy. It does not seem that the mention here is so brief, but is of an appropriate length for an event outside of the time frame of the main story. Also, Augustine's relation to Adeodatus in their dialogue On the Teacher seems much fuller and closer than Capps indicates in his analysis: I do not believe that based on it one could legitimately characterize Augustine's relation to his son as primarily consisting of shame. Cf. the analysis by Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967) 135, especially his quotation of Augustine from the Opus imperfectum contra Julianum (6, 22), his last work: "Surely what Cicero says [to his son] comes straight from the heart of all fathers, when he wrote: 'You are the only man of all men whom I would wish to surpass me in all things.'" (For the Latin, see J. P. Migne, ed., Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina [Paris: 1841] vol. 45, col. 1551.)
13. Cf. McMahon, Augustine's Prayerful Ascent, 109, who notes the preponderance of accounts of death in book nine and their "violation of the 'natural order' of the narrative."
14. Augustine's mention of his father's death as an afterthought in just one clause does not seem an example of an interruption in the chronological sequence, such as the ones we have been examining, but it is similar in its being narrated out of sequence.
15. Cf. Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 30.
16. Though Augustine will finally mention it as part of his tribute to Monica (Conf. 9.9.22), giving credit to her for his father's conversion.
17. E.g. Miles and Capps, cited in note 4 above.
18. Verecundus and Nebridius disappear completely. Adeodatus is mentioned in Conf. 9.12.29 and 9.12.31, though his action is minimized. Again, cf. the very different analysis in Capps, "Silencing of Adeodatus," 87-92. I would take Adeodatus' silencing as rather more likely a device to keep the focus on Monica at this point. Without necessarily agreeing completely with his allegorical interpretation, cf. the similar conclusion of McMahon, Augustine's Prayerful Ascent, 110: "Though Adeodatus, in fact, died some time after Monica, his death is recorded before it. The prolepsis enables the author to create correspondences with the allegory of on God's 'eternal sabbath' in book 13, while placing Monica's death at the climax of book 9."
19. Cf. the conclusions in my "God in the Friend, or the Friend in God? The Meaning of Friendship for Augustine," Augustinian Heritage 38 (1992) 123-36.
20. Cf. Starnes, Augustine's Conversion, 254: "The last chapter before the eulogy to Monica occurred to Augustine as an afterthought at the time he was writing the Confessions." In light of what follows, however, Justina may be seen as a contrast with the faithful Monica; she may also be another example of the repentant sinner, though her conversion is only hinted at here.
21. Cf. Starnes, Augustine's Conversion, 256: "This is Augustine's expressed reason for including these episodes. They explain his joy in the psalms and hymns of the church by showing exactly where he had come from - where such things were of no concern or consolation."
22. Miles, Desire and Delight, 85-86.
23. Mallard, Language and Love, 173-74.
24. Starnes, Augustine's Conversion, 257-59.
25. Colin Starnes, "Augustine's Conversion and the Ninth Book of the Confessions," in Augustine: From Rhetor to Theologian (ed. Joanne McWilliam; Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1992) 51-65.
26. Again, a passage may certainly have more than one meaning or function in Augustine's work. I find both of Starnes' treatments of this passage the most satisfying of those listed here: see previous two notes.
27. Cf. the much shorter description of Adeodatus' life, which nonetheless contains the detail that he plays a part in Augustine's dialogue On the Teacher (Conf. 9.6.14). Monica herself is also a character in Augustine's The Happy Life, though he does not mention so here. Clearly, that aspect of their relationship is not relevant now.
28. Cf. Starnes, Augustine's Conversion, 258: "Her care for Augustine's salvation has been before us throughout the Confessions but the same was true for the rest of her family.... To her family and to all in the church she was ever 'the servant of your servants' (IX, ix,22): a mother to all."
29. Cf. Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 30: "In Augustine's description of his early life, Monica appears, above all, as a relentless figure.... This all-absorbing mother, deeply injured by her son's rebellions, is the Monica we usually see through Augustine's eyes." Augustine's constant portrayal of Monica as idealized mother continues to lead to psychological analyses of him and his work: e.g. recently, Charles Kligerman, "A Psychoanalytic Study of the Confessions of St. Augustine"; David Bakan, "Augustine's Confessions: The Unentailed Self"; and James E. Dittes, "Continuities Between the Life and Thought of Augustine"; as well as the interesting critique by David Burrell, "Reading the Confessions of Augustine: The Case of Oedipal Analyses"; all four to be found in The Hunger of the Heart: Reflections on the Confessions of Augustine (eds. Donald Capps and James E. Dittes; Society for the Scientific Study of Religion Monograph Series 8; West Lafayette, IN: Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1990) pp. 95-108, 109-15, 117-31, 133-42.
30. Cf. Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 29: "Yet, the balanced picture of Monica which Augustine provides in Book Nine of his Confessions, dissolves during most of the early books."
31. Cf. Miles, Desire and Delight, 84.
32. Cf. Miles, Desire and Delight, 84: "At the time of Monica's death, however, he thinks that tears are theologically incorrect since Monica has died as a faithful Christian, in the hope of resurrection, so that, in fact, 'she was not altogether dead.'"
33. On Monica's weeping, see the discussion in Miles, Desire and Delight, 81-82. On the connection between prayer and weeping in Augustine, see J. Balogh, "Unbeachtetes in Augustins Konfessionen," Didaskaleion (n.s.) 4 (1926) 5-21.
34. Probably in 390: see Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 74, 135.
35. Cf. Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 164: "Monica, the idealized figure that had haunted Augustine's youth like an oracle of God, is subtly transformed, by Augustine's analysis of his present feelings on remembering her death, into an ordinary human being, an object of concern, a sinner like himself, equally in need of mercy."