Interpretations of

Saint Augustine’s
Confessions
Status quaestionis
 Since the composition of the Confessions,
readers have posed various questions
concerning the work’s
 Unity
 Purpose
 Genre
 Cause
Christine Mohrmann
 Mohrmann offers us a very thorough
analysis of the major questions
surrounding the Confessions, while at the
same time offering us her opinion, having
evaluated the various scholarly positions
The Confessions and the Psalms
 Mohrmann maintains that the Psalter
provided the main impetus and model for
Augustine’s work
 The Psalms often feature a confessio
laudis with a confessio peccati, both of
which give praise to God
 Moreover, the Psalms often make
reference to the glory of creation, after
having made reference to the work of God
in the soul of the Psalmist
Concurrence of Bourke
 Vernon Bourke seconds Mohrmann’s
opinion about the link between the Psalter
and the Confessions:
 “After praising the grace of God as manifested
in his own tumultuous life, Augustine turns, at
the end of the Confessions, to the evidence of
God’s power and greatness in the whole
created universe…we recognize the eminent
suitability of these last books within the
complete work”
Unity of the Confessions
 Mohrmann notes that in his Retractions,
Augustine does not question the unity of
the Confessions, nor does he remark that
they are oddly put together
 The primary reason for the seeming lack
of unity is the difference in literary
expectations
The theory of Pierre Courcelle
 Courcelle’s contribution to the study of the
Confessions is significant, dated in
 He proposed that the first nine to ten
books were an introduction to a much
longer planned work which was eventually
abandoned by Augustine
 Such a work would have served primarily
as a commentary on Genesis
Mohrmann on Courcelle
 Mohrmann rejects Courcelle’s theory for
various reasons:
 Augustine had conceived and completed
other major works even though they were
interrupted by more pressing issues
 The quotations in the Confessions reveal a
unity and an entire work composed according
to established rules of composition
The genre of the Confessions
 Mohrmann demonstrates that the genre of
the Confessions is quite new in
Augustine’s day, as well as being a
decidedly Christian genre
 Autobiographies were very rare in
antiquity even though individualism was
not lacking
Three worldviews
 Greeks’ interest in the individual was as
an idealized form, abstracted from reality
 Romans’ interest in the individual was
more like our own, but autobiographies
nevertheless were extremely rare
 Christians’ interest in the individual was
tied to their belief in the dignity of human
life in the image and likeness of God
Christian predecessors
 Tertullian is noted by many as being the
man to introduce the individual element
into literature
 Saint Cyprian also paved the way for the
Confessions in his Ad Donatum, in which
he relates to the reader the state of his
soul and his journey to the true faith
The cause of the Confessions
 Henry Chadwick proposes two reasons for
the composition of the Confessions
sometime between 397 and 400:
 When Augustine was recommended for
episcopal ordination in 395-6, various aspects
of his past were subjects of concern and
ridicule (Manicheism, immorality, baptism)
 Paulinus of Nola had requested biographical
information from Alypius (then bishop of
Thagaste) which Augustine provided in Book
VI