08 — Sources and Legacy
The documentary basis of our knowledge of Augustine, and the shape of his influence: the vast corpus he left — more works than any other ancient Christian author, catalogued by his own Retractationes and by Possidius’s Indiculus — together with the Life by his disciple Possidius; and the asymmetry of his legacy, the single most formative theologian of the Latin West who remained, for a millennium, almost unknown in the Greek East.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism West; “Blessed Augustine”)
This section turns from Augustine’s thought to the record of it and the reach of it. The first file surveys the immense corpus and the sources that preserve and catalogue it — Augustine’s own self-critical Retractationes, his letters and sermons, and Possidius’s biography. The second weighs the strange asymmetry of his influence: how Augustine became the master of Western theology while leaving scarcely a trace in the Byzantine East until late, and what that asymmetry means for understanding both his stature and his contested Eastern reception.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Vast Corpus | The scale of Augustine’s output; the Retractationes (426/427), his review of his own works; the letters and sermons, including the modern Divjak and Dolbeau discoveries; Possidius’s Vita Augustini and its Indiculus catalogue. |
| Augustine East and West | Augustine as the formative mind of the Latin West (the medieval schools, the Reformation, Catholic theology); against his near-absence from the Greek East before the late Byzantine translations; the assessment of the asymmetry. |
See Also
- Pastor and Preacher — the sermons and letters in their pastoral setting
- The Spectrum of Orthodox Opinion — the contested reception this asymmetry helps explain
- Feast and Relics — the fate of the man and his remains
- The Church Fathers — Augustine among the Fathers
References
- Possidius. The Life of Saint Augustine. Trans. F. R. Hoare, The Western Fathers. London: Sheed & Ward, 1954.
- Augustine of Hippo. Retractationes. Trans. in The Fathers of the Church, Vol. 60.
- Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. New ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.