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AURELIUS
AUGUSTINUS
PSALMUS
CONTRA PARTEM DONATI
introduction, text,
translation and commentary
by Paul van Geest and Vincent Hunink
(in preparation; pub.
ca. 2008)
Augustinus, drawing by Siegfried Woldhek
published with permission of the artist
For many years
St.Augustine fought the teachings of the Donatists, a group of christians in
Africa with some quite radical ideas about the purity of the church and its
members. The Pslam against the Donatists is Augustine's earliest writing
against them. He chose a highly surprising medium to show the right, catholic
approach to the conflict: a poem of some 300 lines, of which he himself says
that it is not a poem in classical style at all. In fact, it closely resembles a
form of song that was made popular by the Donatists themselves, and that bears
close resemblance to christian psalms.
Augustine's use of metre
and language is particularly remarkable. Omitting all common forms of erudition,
intertextual references and
flowery style, he employs a form of Latin close to the colloquial Latin of his
days. In doing so, he hopes to reach even the most simple folk among his
audience and convince them of the catholic position. The verses do not adopt
classical standards either, but rather freely flow in lines of roughly fourteen
to eighteen syllables, although modern editions tend to normalize this to
sixteen syllables.
The Psalm is
commonly discarded as a mediocre work of bad latinity and of little theological
relevance. On closer scrutiny, this judgment appears to be mistaken. Both the
Latin and its contents are highly interesting and deserve special attention. The
text may count as one of the first specimina in European literature of a poem
with marked influence of the normal word accent (rhythmical rather than
quantitative poetry).
A new edition with ample
introduction and commentary is currently in preparation. It is a joint
venture of a theologian (Paul
van Geest, professor of Augustinian studies at the Free University of
Amsterdam and the Catholic Theological University of Utrecht) and a latinist (Vincent
Hunink, associate professor at Radboud University Nijmegen).
In the new edition, a
fully revised Latin text and English prose translation will be preceded by an
extensive discussion of the theological and historical contexts of the poem.
Details of the text will be analysed in a full commentary. The result will be
the first serious edition of the Psalm since decades. The book will be of
interest to students of theology, patristics, latin language and literature,
western poetry and history of literature.
More information will be
provided on this web page in the months and years to come. Anyone interested is
kindly invited to contact the authors.
latest changes here:
03-10-2012 16:14
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