"Non solum sibi sed aliis etiam": Neoplatonism and Rhetoric in Saint Augustine's De doctrina

Christiana
Author(s): Martin Camargo
Source: Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Autumn 1998), pp. 393-
408
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the International Society for the
History of Rhetoric
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/rh.1998.16.4.393
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MARTIN CAMARGO

"Non solum sibi sed aliis etiam": Neoplatonism

and Rhetoric in Saint Augustine's De doctrina
Christiana

Abstract: In the Confessions (397-401) and On Christian Doctrine (396;

426), St. Augustine brackets Neoplatonic philosophy with
Ciceronian rhetoric, finding the acknowledged value of each to be
limited by an emphasis on individual achievement that is conducive
to pride. His personal struggle to overcome such pride shaped his
conception of Christian eloquence, which stresses humility through
subordination to the scriptural text and service to others. The
Christian orator, as defined by Augustine, is above all a teacher who
embodies the biblical text, whether by using the "rule of charity" to
paraphrase the truths found in Scripture, by simply repeating the
actual words of the Bible, or by leading a life of charity that
constitutes a kind of speech without words.
ore than fifteen-hundred years after it was completed.
Saint Augustine's De doctrina Christiana ("On Christian
Doctrine") is experiencing a renaissance of scholarly
interest that recently earned it the epithet "a classic of
western culture".' Historians of rhetoric have been among the
most dedicated students of this provocative and often perplexing

' The papers from a 1991 conference entitled "De doctrina Christiana: A Classic
of Westem Culture", held at the University of Notre Dame, have now been
published in two volumes: Duane W. H. Amold and Pamela Bright, eds., De doctrina
christiarm: A Classic of Western Culture (Notre Dame; University of Notre Dame Press,
1995), and Edward D. English, ed., Reading and Wisdom: The De doctrina Christiana of
Augustine in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995).
© The International Society for the History of Rhetoric, Rhetorica, Volume XVI,
Number 4 (Autumn 1998)

393

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394 RHETORICA

work, which has been regarded as "the first manual of Christian

rhetoric" and the key bridge between the classical and medieval
traditions of. rhetoric' Whereas scholars of rhetoric tend to
concentrate their attention on the last book of De doctrirm
christiarm, those whose concern is Augustine's debt to Neoplatonic
philosophy are likely to ignore Book IV in favor of the preceding
three books. In tiiis essay I will endeavor to reunite the two parts
of Augustine's text by showing that rhetoric and Neoplatonism
have a special relationship not only in De doctrina christiarm but
also in Augustine's autobiography. Just as Augustine's adherence
to Ciceronian rhetoric and Neoplatonic philosophy were among
the last obstacles to be overcome in the process of his conversion
to Christianity, so too did they collectively represent the most
insidious constraints to the formulation and practice of what
might be caUed Christian eloquence.
The nature, the extent, and even the chronology of
Augustine's specific debts to Neoplatonic writers such as Plotinus
and Porphyry have been objects of scholarly debate for more than
a century. It has been extremely difficult to reach a consensus
regarding the origins and development of Augustine's
Neoplatonism, not only because there is no way to determine with
any certainty which books of the Neoplatonists Augustine read
and when, but also because, as Peter Brown observes, Augustine
so thoroughly "absorbed, 'digested' and transformed" the ideas of

This paper was written for a session on Neoplatonism and rhetoric at the Tenth
Biennial Conference of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric,
University of Edinburgh, July 1995. 1 wish to thank Carol Poster, the organizer of
this session, as well as the conference's organizing committee for inviting me to
participate.
' See especially James J. Murphy, "St. Augustine and the Debate about a
Christian Rhetoric", Quarterly Joumal of Speech 46 (1960) pp. 400-410, revised in
Rhetoric in the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of Califomia Press, 1974) pp. 47-64.
Christine Mohrmarm credits Augustine with defining a theory of style for Christian
oratory but emphasizes that the Bible, the Church Fathers, and popular speech were
more essential sources for this Christian eloquence than the formal art of rhetoric:
"St. Augustine and the Eloquentia", in Etudes sur le latin des Chretiens, vol. 1 (Rome:
Storia e Letteratura, 1958) pp. 351-70, esp. pp. 357-70. For addiHonal bibliography on
St. Augustine and rhetoric, see below and James J. Murphy, Medieval Rhetoric: A
Select Bibliography, 2nd edn. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989) pp. 37-43.

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Neoplatonism and Rhetoric in St Augustine 395

the Neoplatonists that they became indistinguishable from his

own.'
As important as such issues are in themselves, they are
tangential to the present study, which seeks to determine not
what Augustine's Neoplatonic beliefs actually were in the year of
his conversion (386) but rather what Neoplatonism came to
represent for Augustine as he recalled his own conversion to
Christianity and as he attempted to describe the kind of eloquence
that could effect a like conversion in others. For this reason, I wiU
use Augustine's own account in the Confessiones (397-401) of his
encounter with the "books of the Platonists" to identify what he
considered the essential doctrines of Neoplatonism, and then to
show how his subsequent critique of those doctrines parallels his
critique of rhetoric, in the Confessiones themselves and especiaUy
in De doctrina christiarm (396; 426). Neoplatonism and rhetoric, the
two chief constituents of Augustine's intellectual identity at the
time of his conversion, continued to be linked in Augustine's later
thought. Specifically, I wiU argue that the critique of
Neoplatonism in De doctrina Christiana, I-III (and, more explicitly,
in Confessiones, VII) is strongly influenced by Augustine's
awareness of similar defects in the conduct of professional
rhetoricians, just as his formulation of a Christian eloquence in De
doctrina christiarm, IV, thirty years later, is in important ways
shaped by his earlier critique of Neoplatonism.
By his own accovmt, Augustine's reading of the Neoplatonists,
in the Latin translations of the African rhetorician Marius
Victorinus, was a major turning point in his intellectual and
spiritual Ufe. Augustine represents this introduction to the "Ubri
Platonicorum", which took place in 386, as God's way of
preparing him for his conversion to Christianity a few months

' Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley: University of Califomia Press,

1967) p. 95. For an excellent survey of the scholarly controversy surrounding
Augustine's use of Plotinus and/or Porphyry, see John J. O'Meara, "Augustine and
Neo-platonism", Recherches Augustiniennes 1 (1958) pp. 91-111. The fundamental
influence of Platonism on Augustine's Chrishanity has been studied most recently
by John M. Rist, Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994). Among earlier studies, see especially A. Hilary Armstrong,
"St. Augustine and Christian Platonism", The St. Augustine Lecture 1966 (Villanova,
PA: Villanova University Press, 1967); reprinted in Plotinian and Christian Studies
(London: Variorum Reprints, 1979), XI: 1-66.

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396 RHETORICA

later. The "books of the Platonists", he says in tiie Confessiones

(VII.20.26), "taught me to seek for a truth which was incorporeal"
(lectis Platonicorum iUis libris posteaquam inde admonitus
quaerere incorpoream ueritatem)." Through those books,
Augustine maintains, God Ufted him from his Manichean
materialism and so made him receptive to the Christian faith that
he had so long resisted. Even after his conversion, Augustine
continued to study the Neoplatonists intensely and, under their
influence, undertook an ambitious program of self-purification
through study of the liberal arts as a means of attaining a lasting
vision of truth. The De musica is one product of this program of
study; anotiier is the account of the artes that occupies most of De
doctrirm, II.
However, by the time Augustine wrote the first three books of
De doctrina in 396, his attitude toward what he had leamed from
the books of the Platonists had changed significantly. In fact,
whenever he mentions the followers of Plato in De doctrirm it is to
distinguish himself from them. Twice in Book II he asserts the
subordination of Plato's truths to the Christian tiuth that they so
often resemble, the second time by way of infroducing the famous
"Egyptian gold" analogy in section 40.60: "Any statements by
those who are called philosophers, especially the Platonists, which
happen to be true and consistent with our faith should not cause
alarm, but be claimed for our own use, as it were from owmers
who have no right to them." (Philosophi autem qui vocantur si
qua forte vera et fidei nostrae accommodata dixervmt, maxime
Platonici, non solum formidanda non sunt sed ab eis etiam
tamquam ab iniustis possessoribus in usum nosfrum vindicanda.)
Furthermore, both statements are made in association with the
treatment of the artes that takes up most of Book II (16.24-39.59)
and that, as Frederick Van Fleteren and Christoph SchaubUn have
shown in recent essays, represents a relic of Augustine's earlier

The works of Augustine are quoted from the following editions and
translations: Lucas Verheijen, ed., Confessionum Libri XIII, Sancti Augustini Opera, pt.
I, 1, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 27 (Tumhout: Brepols, 1981); Rex Wamer,
trans.. The Confessions of St. Augustine (New York: Mentor, 1963); Augustine, De
Doctrina Christiana, ed. and trans. R. P. H. Green (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).

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Neoplatonism and Rhetoric in St Augustine 397

Neoplatonic approach to vision through intellectual purification.'

Augustine makes the Neoplatonic cormection clear when, near the
end of his account of the artes (11.39.58), he admonishes "young
people who are keen and intelUgent, who fear God and seek a life
of true happiness...not [to] venture without due care into any
branches of leaming which are pursued outside the church of
Christ, as if they were a means to attaining the happy life"
(videtur mihi studiosis et ingeniosis adulescentibus et timentibus
deum beatamque vitam quaerentibus salubriter praecipi ut nuUas
docfrinas quae praeter ecclesiam Christi exercentur tamquam ad
beatam vitam capessendam secure sequi audeant).
In the interim between his conversion and his writing the De
doctrirm, the libri Platonicorum have been superseded by the
Scriptures, in particular by the writings of Saint Paul. Augustine
describes this change with great precision in the Confessiones,
which he wrote during the years immediately following his
completion of De doctrina, I-III, from 397 to 401. hi Book VII,
chapter 9.14, of the Confessiones Augustine spells out what he
fovmd in the books of the Platonists that was compatible with
Christian truth; but he also indicates what he did not find there:
"But I did not find then that the Word was made flesh and dwelt
among us" (sed quia uerbum caro factum est et habitauit in nobis,
non ibi legi). Here again, he compares the truths of the
philosophers to the gold of the Egyptians; since aU truth is God's,
according to Augustine, the limited tiuth of the Neoplatonists
belongs more tiuly to the Christian who believes in the full truth
of Christ's incarnation. The pagan Neoplatonists, who do not
share this faith, make "idols" (idola) oi this partial truth, by
"worshiping and serving the creature more than the creator"
(coluerunt et seruiervmt creaturae potius quam creatori, Conf,
VII.9.15).
Of course, the pagan Neoplatonists rejected the Incarnation as
violating the hierarchy of being. They could not accept the descent
of pure spirit into materiality, of the One into the many, of the
timeless into the temporal, and stiU remain followers of Plato.

^ Frederick Van Fleteren, "St. Augustine, Neoplatonism, and the Liberal Arts:
The Background to De doctrina Christiana", in Amold and Bright, eds., De doctrina
christiarm (1995), pp. 14-24, and Christoph Schaublin, "De doctrina Christiana: A
Classic of Westem Culture?", ibid., pp. 47-67.

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398 RHETORICA

Rather than the divine lowering itself to unite with man, the
human soul, itself partaking of divinity, was to ascend through
self-purification and contemplation to unity with the divine. It is
the Neoplatonists' self-sufficiency, their beUef in the efficacy of
their own efforts to bridge the gap separating human creature
from divine Creator, tiiat is at tiie heart of Augustine's critique.
Moreover, in what Augustine came to regard as their
self-centered pride they are Uke the rhetoricians whom Augustine
later criticized for valuing the applause of an audience more than
the tears and groans that are tiie outward signs that their auditors
have been persuaded to change their Uves {De doctrirm, IV.24.53).
The impUcit link between tiie Platonists and tiie rhetoricians helps
explain the simile that Augustine applies to the phUosophers who
proudly refuse to accept God's self-abasement:
But those who, like actors on the stage, are raised up above the general
level in their supposedly superior learning do not hear him saying:
Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, for ye shall find rest
to your souls. Although they knew God, yet they glorify Him not as
God, nor are thankful, but wax vain in their thoughts, and their
foolish heart is darkened; professing that they were wise, they
became fools. (Conf, VII.9.14; emphasis mine)

Qui autem cothurno tamquam doctrinae sublimioris elati non

audiunt dicentem: discite a me, quoniam mitis sum et humilis corde,
et inuenietis requiem animabus uestris, etsi cognoscunt deum, non
sicut deum glorificant aut gratias agunt, sed euanescunt in
cogitationibus suis et obscuratur insipiens cor eorum; dicentes se
esse sapientes stulti facH sunt'
Although in De doctrina, I, Augustine appropriates the
Neoplatonic metaphor of the "journey" from visible things to
invisible reaUty, he clearly distinguishes his understanding of the

See also Rist, Augustine, p. 149: "Augustine's first, and chief, complaint
against the Platonists was that, although they knew where they must go, they were
ignorant of the way to get there..., their pride prevented them from recognizing that
an act of God himself, in the Incarnation, was and must be the only means of
return". Rist goes on to discuss Augustine's shift from emphasizing the individual's
salvation to emphasizing the necessity of moral action and responsibility toward
others.

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Neoplatonism and Rhetoric in St Augustine 399

journey from that of the philosophers. In Augustine's view, one

does not accomplish that journey by escaping the world through
study and contemplation, as the Neoplatonists maintain, but
through "goodness of purpose and character" (bono studio
bonisque moribus, I.IO.IO) in this world; not by virtue of one's
own divine nature but because "wisdom itself...deigned to adapt
itself to our great weakness and offered us a pattern for living;
and it has done so actually in human form because we too are
hvmian" (Quod non possemus, nisi ipsa sapientia tantae etiam
nostrae infirmitati congruere dignaretur et vivendi nobis
praeberet exemplum, non aliter quam in homine, quoniam et nos
homines svimus, I.ll.ll). For Augustine, the role of the incamate
Christ as the perfect mediator transforms the Neoplatonic
metaphor of the journey into something else: "So although it
[wisdom, i.e., Christ] is actually our homeland, it has also made
itself the road to our homeland" (Cum ergo ipsa sit patria, viam se
quoque nobis fecit ad patriam, I.ll.ll). We cannot exalt ourselves
through our own efforts, as the Neoplatonists taught; God can be
reached only through the abasement of humility modeled by God
in the incamate Christ, as a remedy for the pride that alienated
mankind from God at the Fall. But Augustine's version of this
theme in De doctrina christiarm, while denying the individual's
power to achieve union with God on his own, holds out the
possibihty of his helping others to do so by a kind of
"incamational rhetoric". And in this paradoxical raising of self
and others through humility, Augustine's critique of
Neoplatonism shades into his critique of rhetoric'

' On Augustine's transformation of the Neoplatonic conception of the joumey

to God, see especially John C. Cacadini, "The Sweetness of the Word: Salvation and
Rhetoric in Augustine's De doctrina Christiana", in Arnold and Bright, eds., De
doctrina christiarm (1995), pp. 164-81; David Dawson, "Sign Theory, Allegorical
Reading, and the Motions of the Soul in De doctrina christiarm", in Arnold and Bright,
eds., De doctrina Christiana (1995), pp. 123-41; Mark D. Jordan, "Words and Word:
Incarnation and Signification in Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana", Augustinian
Studies II (1980) pp. 177-96 and Rowan Williams, "Language, Reality and Desire in
Augustine's De doctrina". Journal of Literature & Theology 3 (1989) pp. 138-50. A useful
survey of the larger tradition to which such ideas belong is Andrew Louth, The
Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys (Oxford; Clarendon
Press, 1981).

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400 RHETORICA

Augustine describes this "incamational rhetoric" most clearly

at tiie end of Book IV; but he develops tiie theoretical groundwork
for it in a passage that is among the most difficult in De doctrina
Christiana,' namely, his discussion of the things that are to be both
enjoyed and used (1.22.20-34.38). When Augustine originally
mentioned this category of tilings (1.3.3), he specified no examples,
but distinguished humans as tiiose who do the enjoying and the
using:
There are some things which are to be enjoyed, some which are to be
used, and some whose function is both to enjoy and use. Those
which are to be enjoyed make us happy; those which are to be used
assist us and give us a boost, so to speak, as we press on towards our
happiness, so that we may reach and hold fast to the things which
make us happy. And we, placed as we are among things of both
kinds, both enjoy and use them; but if we choose to enjoy things that
are to be used, our advance is impeded and sometimes even
diverted, and we are held back, or even put off, from attaining
things which are to be enjoyed, because we are hamstrung by our
love of lower things.

Res ergo aliae sunt quibus fruendum est, aliae quibus utendum, aliae
quae fruuntur et utuntur. lUae quibus fruendum est nos beatos
faciunt; istis quibus utendum est tendentes ad beatitudinem
adiuvamur et quasi adminiculamur, ut ad illas quae nos beatos
faciunt pervenire atque his inhaerere possimus. Nos vero, qui
fruimur et utimur inter utrasque constituti, si eis quibus utendum est
frui voluerimus, impeditur cursus noster et aUquando etiam
deflectitur, ut ab his rebus quibus fruendum est obtinendis vel
retardemur vel etiam revocemur inferiorum amore praepediti.
Later in Book I, Augustine seems to indicate that humans are
themselves things to be used as well as enjoyed, although he
emphasizes that the enjoyment of our neighbors is not enjoyment
properly speaking, which is reserved for God, but a contingent
and temporary enjoyment (1.33.37). Admittedly, Augustine

Gerald Press calls the argument "opaque": "The Content and Argument of
Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana", Augustiniana 31 (1981) pp. 165-82, at p. 172 n.l6.
Rist, on the other hand, regards the passage as "unnecessarily notorious" (Augustine,
p. 164) and provides useful context for its interpretation (pp. 159-68).

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Neoplatonism and Rhetoric in St Augustine 401

wavers in the course of this more detailed discussion of human

beings as "things". In fact, when he first addresses the question
"whether humans should enjoy one another or use one another, or
both" (utrum frui se homines debeant an uti an utrumque), he
comes down clearly on the side of "use", since we should love
both ourselves and others for the sake of something else, namely
God (1.22.20). One explanation for the more ambiguous
formulation that occurs later in the same discussion is that it
aUows Augustine to draw Christ into the category of things to be
used and enjoyed. Thus, he concludes his treatment of human
beings as things by returning to the joumey metaphor in order to
make the point that our enjoyment of the incamate Christ is also
temporary: "From this it is to be inferred that nothing must detain
us on our way, since not even the Lord, at least in his graciously
chosen role of being our way, wanted to detain us, but wanted us
to pass on, not sticking feebly to temporal things, even though
they were accepted and endured by him for our salvation" (Ex
quo intellegitur quam nulla res in via tenere nos debeat, quando
nee ipse dominus, in quantum via nostra esse dignatus est, tenere
nos voluerit sed tiansire, ne rebus temporaUbus, quamvis ab illo
pro salute nostra susceptis et gestis, haereamus infirmiter, 1.34.38).
The idea that Christ, as both the Way and the Destination, is
both a thing to be used (as man) and a thing to be enjoyed (as
God) gains support from Augustine's earlier assertion that "even
the Lord God himself wanted to be called our neighbour" (et ipse
deus et dominus noster proximum se nostium dici voluit, 1.30.33).
As God, Augustine seems to be arguing, Christ is the object of
love defined by the first great commandment, "Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul,
and with thy whole mind"; as man, he is the agent of love defined
by the second great commandment, "Thou shaft love thy neighbor
as thyself". For a neighbor, says Augustine, is anyone to whom we
owe an "act of compassion" (officium misericordiae, 1.30.31); and
though the way in which Christ shows compassion to us as his
neighbors differs from the way in which we show compassion to
our neighbors, the two acts have the same object and are linked
together hierarchically: "God shows compassion to us because of
his own kindness, and we in tum show it to one another because
of his kindness: in other words, he pities us so that we may enjoy

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402 RHETORICA

him, and we in our tum pity one another so tiiat we may enjoy
him" (lUe enim nobis praebet misericordiam propter suam
bonitatem, nos autem nobis invicem propter illius, id est iUe nostri
miseretur ut se perfruamur, nos vero invicem nostri miseremur ut
Ulo perfruamur, 1.30.33).
Like Christ, Augustine maintains, neighbors are to be used
and enjoyed-used as a means toward God rather than as an end
in tiiemselves (the Way) and enjoyed for tiie sake of God in them
(tiie Destination). But whereas we may be said to enjoy our
neighbors in a quaUfied or "improper" sense, tiiere is no sense in
which Christ can be said to enjoy us. His love for us must be
defined as use, says Augustine; but he uses us "not to his own
advantage but to ours" (non ad eius sed ad nostram utiUtatem,
1.32.35).' It foUows that we become most Uke Christ when we too
love our neighbors in such a way that we use them to their
advantage rather than our own, although such use is also to our
advantage, since God rewards us for it. "This reward is the
supreme reward—that we may thoroughly enjoy him [i.e. God]
and that aU of us who enjoy him may enjoy one another in him"
(Haec autem merces summa est, ut ipso perfmamur et omnes qui
eo fruimur nobis etiam invicem in ipso perfruamur, 1.32.35). Thus,
Augustine concludes, by humbling ourselves in using other men
for their benefit rather than our ovwi, we become imagines Christi,
to be enjoyed as well as used: "When you enjoy a human being in
God, you are enjoying God rather than that human being" (Cum
autem homine in deo frueris, deo potius quam homine frueris,
1.33.37). However, Augustine does not develop this concept of
imitatio Christi very expUcitly in Book I; and when he returns to it
at the very end of De doctrina christiarm, he invests it with a
rhetorical significance that is only implied in the remarks written
thirty years earlier.
In the course of completing the De doctrirm, in 426, Augustine
establishes a hierarchy of teachers that is intimately related to the

Green's translation omits the second part of this phrase (sed ad nostram),
rendering the sentence in which it appears thus: "So the kind of use attributed to
God, that by which he uses us, is related not to his own advantage, but solely to his
goodness" (Ille igitur usus qui dicitur dei quo nobis utitur, non ad eius sed ad
nostram utiUtatem refertur, ad eius autem tantummodo bonitatem). I have supplied
the missing words.

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Neoplatonism and Rhetoric in St Augustine 403

hierarchy of signifiers, of mediators betWeen the visible and the

invisible, that he had constructed thirty years earlier. Most of
Book IV is devoted to justifying and providing a Christian
alternative to the Ciceronian eloquence tiiat Augustine had so
admired prior to his conversion. As Adolf Primmer has
demonstrated, much of this disquisition on style is a skillful
inversion of Cicero's Orator, with the pleasing style that wins the
speaker glory now subordinated to the ojficia oi teaching and
moving.'" The merely eloquent speaker is reduced to the status of
a thing that does not signify anything else: such a speaker neither
teaches nor moves but persuades only "that he is speaking
atfractively or elaborately" (persuadet...pulchre omateque se
dicere, IV.25.55). Because wisdom is more important than
eloquence for the Christian speaker, Augustine emphasizes prayer
for the grace to speak wisely as more essential preparation for
speaking than lessons in rhetoric. Yet it is not the wise speaker to
whom Augustine assigns the highest place in his hierarchy of
teachers. Rather, he concludes De doctrina christiarm by
distinguishing those teachers who merely speak the truth, as
Scripture does, from those who also embody it, as Christ does.
Thus, a "wise and eloquent speaker who Uves a wicked life
certainly educates many who are eager to leam" (qui sapienter et
eloquenter dicit, vivit autem nequiter, erudit quidem multos
discendi studiosos) but not so many as he would educate if he
armounced the truth "in truth", that is, if he spoke a truth that was
his own. His own good life is the Christian orator's most powerful
means of persuasion, according to Augustine: "More important
than any amount of grandeur of style to those of us who seek to
be Ustened to with obedience is the Ufe of the speaker" (Habet
autem ut oboedienter audiamur quantacumque granditate
dictionis maius pondus vita dicentis, IV.27.59).
This statement is clearly not Augustine's belated attempt to
add ethos to logos and pathos as means of persuasion. Jan
Swearingen is surely right that Augustine avoids the issues of

'° Adolf Primmer, "The Function of the genera dicendi in De doctrina Christiana 4",
in Amold and Bright, eds., De doctrina Christiana (1995) pp. 68-86.

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404 RHETORICA

"imitation and character" tiiat define ethos in classical rhetoric."

Rather than a plausible self constmcted in words, Augustine is
calling here for the construal of self as words—by analogy with the
Incamate Word-through imitatio Christi. The rhetorically
constructed self, associated above all with the pleasing middle
style that wins the rhetor praise, is in fact antithetical to the life of
Christian humiUty that Augustine advocates. The type of
persuasion that Augustine has in mind does not depend on
spoken words for its effects. He says explicitly that even the
Christian who is vmable to speak at aU may live in such a way that
"his way of Ufe becomes, in a sense, an abundant source of
eloquence" (IV.29.61), vmderscoring the importance of this point
through his use of rhymed isocola in the original Latin: "sit eius
quasi copia dicendi forma vivendi". Augustine does not minimize
the importance of speaking wisely and eloquently about the truths
signified in Scripture: Christ, too, was a preacher of the word. But
he considers the most perfect Christian the one who Uves the fruth
that he speaks. Hence, Augustine goes on to argue, a person of
virtuous life who memorizes and repeats what was wisely and
eloquently written by a person who Uves wickedly, speaks a truth
that is more his own possession than that of the person who
actually wrote the words. All truth is God's, reasons Augustine,
and "it is not the case that the word of God is not theirs, if they
obey him" (verbum autem dei non est ab eis alienum qui
obtemperant ei, IV.29.62).
Retuming to the language of Book I, we might paraphrase
Augustine as saying tiiat tiie teacher who speaks wisely and
eloquently, even if he does not Uve virtuously, is more useful to
his fellow man than one who speaks eloquently but not wisely.
However, Augustine regards the Christian who lives virtuously as
an even better, more persuasive teacher than a wise and eloquent
speaker whose life does not match his speech and who therefore
speaks words that are not properly his own. Finally, for
Augustuie, even a virtuous Christian who speaks only words
written by another or who "speaks" only metaphorically, through
virtuous actions in imitation of Christ, is not unUke the ideal

C. Jan Swearingen, "Ethos: Imitation, Impersonation, and Voice", in James S.

Baumlin and Tita French Baumlin, eds. Ethos: New Essays in Rhetorical and Critical
Theory (Dallas: Southem Methodist University Press, 1994) pp. 115-48, at pp. 126-27.

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Neoplatonism and Rhetoric in St Augustine 405

teachers, who speak the truth wisely and eloquently while living
the truth that they speak in ChristUke humUity, giving thanks to
God for having placed "a good sermon on their lips" (ut deus
sermonem bonum det in os eius, IV.30.63).'^
In Augustine's accovmt of his conversion it is Ambrose who
best embodies what Augustine considers the ideal combination of
wisdom, eloquence, and Christlike humility. On the other hand,
the lower ranks in the hierarchy of teachers are most sharply
delineated in the priest SimpUcianus' account of Marius
Victorinus, recorded by Augustine in Book VIII of the Confessiones.
Victorinus was both a model of and a means toward Augustine's
conversion. As a highly successful professor of rhetoric, he
mirrored Augustine's own secular identity. However, he
influenced Augustine more significantly through his wisdom than
through his eloquence: it was he who translated the very books of
the Platonists that Augustine later read, and he too had studied
"aU the Uberal sciences" (omnium liberaUum doctrinarum
peritissimus, VIII.2.3). Most important of all, as an old man
Victorinus converted to Christianity; and though at first he kept
the fact secret, out of pride, eventuaUy "he turned his pride
against what was vain, and kept his humility for the fruth" (quae
imitator superbus acceperat, depuduit uanitati et erubuit ueritati,
VIII.2.4). His humble, pubhc profession of faith, which Augustine
expUcitly contrasts with his former pubhc appearances as a
rhetorician, exerts an even greater persuasive force on Augustine
than his eloquence could have done or than his wisdom actually
did. "When this man of yours, SimpUcianus, told me aU this about
Victorinus", says Augustine, "I was on fire to be like him" (ubi
mihi homo tuus SimpUcianus de Victorino ista narrauit, exarsi ad
imitandum, VIII.5.10). Shortly after recounting the story of
Victorinus, Augustine describes his own conversion to
Christianity in the garden (VIII.8.19-12.30).
WhUe the hierarchy of teachers that I have described clearly
reflects Augustine's backgrovmd in Neoplatonism, in Augustine's
accovmt the emphasis is always on commvinity rather than on the
individual and hence on rhetoric rather than on phUosophy. In

" On the "mute eloquence" of the Christian orator's own example, see also
Henri-Ir^n^e Marrou, Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique, 4th edn. (Paris: de
Boccard, 1958) pp. 522-23.

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406 RHETORICA

striving to be an imago Christi, Augustine's virtuous Christian

humbles rather than raises hunself, becoming in the process a
thing to be enjoyed as well as to be used, but enjoyed for the sake
of God witiiin him rather tiian for tiie sake of his own exceUence.
Such a teacher is most ChristUke in his helping or persuading
others to rise by means of the "incamate rhetoric" that he
embodies in his life of virtuous hvunUity. That Augustine came to
rate this paradoxical land of eloquence highest of aU must be due
in part to his own lived experience. Accustomed as he was by
temperament and training to regard phUosophy, in particular
Platonism, as the highest wisdom and classical rhetoric as the
supreme eloquence, he immediately recognized Victorinus'
struggle as his own. Though Augustine never heard Victorinus
speak, he was moved to action by the eloquence of his example.
Late in his life, Augustine must have recalled the powerful effect
of that example in formulating what is ultimately the most
revolutionary aspect of his Christian eloquence.

De doctrina Christiana caimot be called a "manual of rhetoric"

at all, if that term is understood in its usual sense, as designating a
set of instructions for producing texts of a certain sort. Even Book
IV, the most "rhetorical" part of the work, devotes more space to
the analysis of texts than to their production. Augustine's
conceptual framework derives unmistakably from rhetoric: at the
beginning of Book I and again at the beginning of Book IV he
divides De doctrina into a treatment of discovery (I-III) and
expression (IV). However, while the De doctrirm was extremely
influential in the Middle Ages, its influence was not on the
medieval "preceptive arts"—the ars dictaminis, ars praedicandi, and
ars poetriae—as much as on medieval exegesis and theology."
Augustine's rejection of the rules that define traditional rhetoric is
consistent with his movement away from the skUled individual—
whether the classicaUy trained rhetor or the Neoplatonist adept—
toward the community of Christians, which he sees as a
movement away from prideful self-orientation and toward
charitable other-orientation. EntaUed in that movement is an

" See Richard McKeon, "Rhetoric in the Middle Ages", Speculum 17 (1942) pp.
5-7,19-21, and 24-25.

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Neoplatonism and Rhetoric in St Augustine 407

emphasis on the officium oi teaching at the expense of moving,

which is clearly subordinated to it, and pleasing, which is aU but
eliminated from Augustine's conception of Christian eloquence.
Augustine's Christian "orator" is modeled not on Cicero but on
Christ, who teaches through words and deeds. Augustine caUs on
aU Christians to be orators/teachers in the unage of the "Word
made flesh", in effect to transform themselves into "texts",
whether by paraphrasing the truths fovmd in the Bible (guided by
the "rule of charity"), by repeating the actual words of the Bible,
or by actually Uving the meaning of the bibUcal text. This last,
non-verbal form of Christian eloquence represents what is
probably Augustine's most original confribution to the history of
rhetoric: his assertion that the "saint's life" is an effective "speech"
as it unfolds, even before and regardless of whether it is ever
recounted oraUy or in writing.
Even to sketch the history of this idea through the Middle
Ages would require an essay much longer than the present one;
but one example among the many that could be cited will suffice
to indicate its lasting vitality. Nearly one-thousand years after
Augustine wrote De doctrina christiarm, his conviction that a "forma
vivendi" of humiUty and charity toward one's neighbor fvmctions
Uke a "copia dicendi" informed Geoffrey Chaucer's portrait of an
exemplary Christian in the "General Prologue" to the Canterbury
Tales. The humble Parson is portrayed as an indefatigable teacher,
in a dual sense that recalls Augustine's description of the
Christian orator:
This noble ensample to his sheep he yaf.
That first he wroghte, and afterward he taughte.

He waited after no pompe and reverence,

Ne maked him a spiced conscience.
But Cristes loore and his apostles twelve
He taughte; but first he folwed it hymselve."

" "General Prologue", lines 496-97 and 525-28, from The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd
edn., ed. Larry D. Benson et al (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987) pp. 31-32.

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408 RHETORICA

Although the poor Parson has neither the corrupt Pardoner's

power to move nor even the obsequious Nvm's Priest's power to
please, Chaucer, Uke Augustine, assigned the place of honor to his
humble yet "fructuous" eloquence, choosing him "To knytte up al
this feeste and make an ende".'*

"The Parson's Prologue", line 47: Riverside Chaucer, p. 287.

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