The Myth of Monnica

Saint Augustine's Conversion
by Garry Wills

(Page 2 of 8)

His mother joined him at Milan, and he was under the influence of her life and faith ...

— Nock, Conversion

It is often assumed or asserted that Augustine's conversion was the result of his mother's efforts and prayers. It is true that by the time Augustine wrote The Testimony, he attributed his conversion to God's grace, and attributed much of that grace to Monnica's prayers. But the idea that she had a controlling influence at the time, or even a very strong one, cannot be substantiated in the natural order, or by any literal reading of the evidence. The hagiographical approach to her life has greatly inflated her role - yet all that we know of her comes from The Testimony, which does not present her as a perfect mother or Christian. The exaggeration of her influence reaches a dark apogee in Rebecca West's biography of Augustine:

She did not want her son to grow up.... It was fortunate that in her religion she had a perfect and, indeed, noble instrument for obtaining her desire that her son should not become a man. Very evidently Christianity need not mean emasculation, but the long struggles of Augustine and Monnica imply that in his case it did.... With her smooth competence she must have been able to make the Church a most alluring prospect.²

The most significant thing Augustine says of his mother during his own youth was that she had fled from the epicenter of Babylon (worldly corruption) but was loitering (tardior ibat) in other parts of it (T 2.8), which is not the definition of a saint, by his own exacting standards. He rebukes Monnica for worldliness on several occasions - when she did not baptize him after his childhood sickness (T 1.18), when she did not urge marriage on him earlier (T 2.8), when she arranged a worldly marriage to an underage heiress (T 6.23). She was far from controlling his life. He ignored her advice on sexual continence, saying he would have blushed to obey words he considered "womanish" (T 2.7). He remained a Manichean for a decade despite her objections. He lied in order to give her the slip before leaving Africa (T 5.15). He mentions her name only once (T 9.37) in all his five million words of writings.

He did not initially share her admiration for Ambrose, the bishop of Milan who would baptize him. He did not join her in the church when Ambrose held his long vigil of defiance against the empress Justina (T 9.15). He did not, at that point, believe in church miracles (as opposed to gospel miracles), and he no doubt differed with her on Ambrose's theatrical introduction of miracle-working martyrs' bodies into his fight with the empress (T 9.15).³ This attitude toward miracles would not have made him well-disposed to his mother's claim that she could tell divine visions by their odor (T 6.23). Nor would he have sympathized with her semi-Manichean rites at martyrs' tombs, from which she would not have desisted but for her reverence toward Ambrose (T 6.2).

These misgivings, no doubt stronger at the time than when he records them a decade later, are countered, of course, by the marvelous tribute he pays to Monnica in Book Nine of The Testimony. But that tribute follows on his rediscovery of Monnica at Cassiciacum, just before his baptism, when for the first time she was included in the discussions of his philosophical friends. Before this, he had the prejudice of his time and class against the intellects of women. His first plan of a philosophical community, formed in Milan, fell through over the issue of including women (T 6.24). O'Donnell suggests that Monnica may have been illiterate (O 3.115). Monnica at first resisted her inclusion in the Cassiciacum discussions, but Augustine encouraged her.⁴ He laughed with surprise at her earthy wisdom, on this first occasion of her displaying it to him.⁵ He tells her, "I am daily struck anew by your natural ability."⁶ The sexist compliment he pays her is itself revealing: "Forgetting her sex, we almost thought that some important man had joined us."⁷

On the basis of his new respect for Monnica, the mystical experience he shared with this unlettered woman (as first reported a decade later from his bishop's residence) is meant to destroy the presumption that soul-culture demands exercise in the liberal arts - though he continued to hold that view for some time after the reported experience. Monnica did not lead him to baptism. Rather, baptism led him to Monnica. The long excursus on her in Book Nine is very likely derived from a eulogy composed first for the benefit of her children and grandchildren. We know how much his own son loved his grandmother (T 9.29). Presumably, Augustine's sister and brother had the same feeling for her, as did his brother's children. If, as Courcelle plausibly maintained, Augustine could write the tribute to Alypius (T 6.11-16) for Paulinus of Nola, surely he could have done the same for his own relatives.⁸ Augustine only realized her worth in Monnica's last months, after his conversion - for which she was not responsible, except by prayer.

© 2004 Viking, a division of Penguin Putnam, used by permission.

About the Author

Garry Wills is one of the most respected writers on religion today. He is the author of Saint Augustine's Childhood, Saint Augustine's Memory, and Saint Augustine's Sin, the first three volumes in this series, as well as the Penguin Lives biography Saint Augustine. His other books include "Negro President": Jefferson and the Slave Power, Why I Am a Catholic, Papal Sin, and Lincoln at Gettysburg, which won the Pulitzer Prize.