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Theology & a Recipe came into existence because I wanted to make an Augustinian Pear Tart. That’s it. The rest had to follow along slowly in the wake of my irreverent ode to gluttony. Happily, that wicked pear has proven fruitful in other areas, from the Gospel of Mark’s deviled pork with withered figs to Revelation’s seven bowls of snacks. But I have held off making good on my original idea until now. As usual, it’s all Augustine’s fault. I’ve delayed till now because I wanted to do him justice. After all, he is the most important Latin father, the most prolific, the most influential. He made Western Christendom despite losing North Africa. I needed to go through his Confessions again but also branch out a bit—to the point of putting myself through all 46½ hours of The City of God on audiobook. (It got good starting at chapter 19… about twenty-four hours in.) I also reread Peter Brown’s magnificent biography, Augustine of Hippo, and in so doing discovered the two reasons why my original inspiration kept running into a brick wall. First reason: Augustine feels so immediate in his tone, his intimacy, his frankness—until, suddenly, he doesn’t. The closer I got to Augustine, the farther he slipped away from me. I kept mistaking him for a contemporary, but he repeatedly proved himself to be a man of Late Antiquity. The more I read, the more I realized how poor a judge I was of his time and place, and all the more so of his decisions about what to do in his time and place. But, at the same time, I can’t erase the fact that I have the knowledge of the next sixteen centuries that he, in part, helped to shape. Second reason, and related to the first: I can’t get over his concubine. “Our curiosity about her is a very modern preoccupation,” Brown observes, “which Augustine and his cultivated friends would have found strange.” Concubinage is naturally repugnant to us now (and partly because Augustine made it so). It sounds like sheer abuse, but it was a culturally recognized institution, not without protections. When respectable legal marriage presented itself, yes, Augustine sent his concubine away, testifying openly in his memoir to the deep gash it left on his heart. History has pulled a veil over her fate. We don’t even know her name. But I couldn’t let it alone. In the end I decided that, to pay my respects to Augustine, I would give the two of them the fifth act that, as far as we know, they never got. There was a great temptation to turn this into, on the one hand, a romantic happily-ever-after for the famous pair, and, on the other, a tirade against injustices past and present. But both would deny Augustine his right to be a man of his time—and deny his concubine the right to be a woman of hers. I wanted to tell a story that followed their logic, not mine, even if the whole reason for telling it was to solve my own problem. So the account that follows is not necessarily likely—but it is possible. All the characters named within are real people, and the facts about them are real, except, of course, the central encounter of the story. I’ve tried to animate both the imagined emotions and the authentic faith with Augustinian insights through and through. Even if it didn’t happen this way, it could have. And perhaps it did. Late Have I Loved TheeI. Possidius hesitated at the door. Even at the best of times his abbot, bishop, and friend did not like to be interrupted. What with that impudent Julian’s blithe assertions of human perfectibility reviving the Pelagian delusion, which ought to have been extinguished upon its papal condemnation, Augustine was spending every waking moment dictating diatribes against prestigious heretics. Could this caller possibly be worth the loss of ten minutes of Augustine’s time? Ten words from Augustine’s tongue? And what would he say to a woman? Even if she was a veiled and ancient sister. “I have walked ten days,” she had told Possidius, after introducing herself, outside the door of the cloister attached to the great church. “In the company of these, my sisters.” The two other women nodded without ceasing their whispered prayers. Possidius opened his mouth to object, not without shame at refusing elderly women after such a long journey, but she continued, “And I think you know as well as I do that the gates of Hippo will not remain open much longer.” “That is likely so,” he conceded. “If you turn me away now, I will never regain the chance to complete the errand that brought me here. I assure you, I would not have come, had it not been urgent.” Possidius wavered. She reminded him powerfully of his mother. Of his grandmother, too. “I will be brief,” she added. “I know the value of your master’s time.” He kept his eyes cast to one side, although he presumed that the great age of the woman meant she was less susceptible to either causing or experiencing temptation than a younger one. Still, he had not been taught by the master for nothing. “The bishop does not normally receive visitors who are…” He could not find the proper way to phrase his objection to a grandmother. She supplied it for him: “One of Eve’s kind.” Possidius rushed on, “And certainly never alone.” Was it possible to hear a smile? “If I had given my life to honorable marriage, dear brother in Christ, by now my grandchildren would have grandchildren. You will not deny such an old woman and consecrated sister her desire, especially one that is just and holy, and will do no injury to your master.” Possidius certainly could not imagine any harm in her. “If you will be so kind as to offer my sisters a moment’s relief from the sun overhead, they will remain together while I am in conference with the bishop.” At that Possidius could not but relent. He led the women into the large antechamber and indicated a bench for the two companions to sit upon. He called for a servant to bring them some refreshment and then led the eldest sister through a long hallway and up a flight of stairs to Augustine’s study. Only as he grasped the handle did qualms overtake Possidius again, but there was a stillness and steadfastness in the woman that he could not gainsay. He motioned that she should wait. Once on the other side of the door he stood in silence until the bishop finished his train of thought. Possidius was shocked every time he looked at his mentor anymore: to see his age, his exhaustion, his weakness, his weariness. At times, even spiritlessness. Privately, and not a little guiltily, Possidius thanked God for Julian of Eclanum, though only because he gave the master reason to exercise his immense powers once more. Silence fell and Augustine looked up from his desk. “Forgive me, my lord,” said the younger man, his heart pounding. “You have a visitor.” Augustine merely nodded. “Who?” Possidius breathed deeply and said, “She is called Sister Iucunda.” Before the inevitable objections could be voiced, the monk rushed on, “She is very aged, walked ten days to reach this place, and pleaded with me most eloquently. She took her vows at your sister the prioress’s convent.” This, he hoped, would commend the woman and excuse Possidius’s presumption. Augustine frowned. “But that convent dissolved years ago already, after my sister’s death. Did you not know? It must have been before you came here. They were not a happy community. Rife with disobedience and envy. Did this Sister Iucunda happen to mention where she has dwelt since then?” Possidius knew the next detail might prove problematic. “She assured me that, immediately upon its dissolution, she took refuge in a house for virgins and widows.” “Where?” “In Thagaste.” “Melania’s, then?” “Yes.” Augustine turned his face away. Possidius kept absolutely still, well-trained by the master’s aversion to fidgets. All the clergy in Hippo had mixed feelings about Melania. A wealthy Roman wife, she persuaded her husband Pinianus to mutual continence and, moreover, to the extravagant sale of their vast properties to feed the poor and endow the consecrated up and down the African coastline. Such generosity did not always elicit the desired response. Augustine was deeply displeased at the gratitude of the lazy and the false conversions of the hungry. Notorious for valuing the wrong virtue, the masses had even tried to force Pinianus into the priesthood as an expression of their thanks. He refused. Melania, for her part, was restless. Seven years after seeking refuge in Numidia she moved on, taking her wealth and entourage with her, first to Egypt and then to Jerusalem, showering money and piety as she went. Still, she had not left the brothers and sisters in Thagaste unprotected. There were funds enough to support well over a hundred sisters in respectable religious poverty. Many were trained to copy sacred manuscripts, as Melania herself had done. Together with the men’s monastery, Melania’s holy households occupied more space than Thagaste itself. None of which Augustine could object to, exactly. It was only that he had grown up in Thagaste, as everyone knew; everyone who could read had read his “Confessions,” and those who couldn’t read knew what it said anyway and tittered over the mighty bishop’s scandalous past. The city remained a sore spot for the aged bishop even now. Brutal hill men, unrepentant Donatists, and Augustine’s own glory-grubbing father all followed in the wake of the name of Thagaste. “Why does she wish to see me?” Augustine said at last. “Is there an uproar in this convent, too?” “No, not at all, at least she says not,” Possidius hastened to explain. “She will give me no answer but to say that her errand is both urgent and holy.” “Everything is urgent now; nothing is holy,” remarked the bishop with characteristic wryness. He looked over at the two scribes patiently awaiting his pleasure. “You may go,” he said to them. “You stay,” he said to Possidius. “Bring her in.” II. Sister Iucunda was startled by the sight of Augustine’s age, too, despite having prepared herself with the calculation that he must be at least three-quarters of a century old. But she was more startled at how instantly she knew him. White hair, liver-spotted skin, caved-in cheeks did not impede the immediate, absolute, irrefutable knowledge. She advanced a few paces into the room and halted, stranded in the space between door and desk. The young man, Possidius, swiveled between him and her, plainly anxious over the risk he had taken in admitting her. Augustine, as yet, did not know her. He kept his eyes on a sheaf of papers scattered before him. He, like her, had long since trained his eyes in the art of avoidance. “Yes, Sister,” he spoke in a flat tone. She replied: “My lord.” Augustine’s head snapped up. She saw him scan her veil, trying to pierce the lacework for a confirming sign, then drop his disobedient eyes to her hands, so gnarled, so browned, so curled inward from the copying of manuscripts: he had never known her hands so, yet he knew them all the same, as she had known him. He rose to his feet. He opened his mouth. He started to say— “Iucunda,” she asserted, firmly. “That is my name now, my name in the Lord.” He stood immobile. In the infinitesimal movements of his face she saw him react and then react to his reactions: an immediate instinct that betrayed all the decades of his training; a second instinct to throw her out and Possidius to boot; then, the unfurling insight that only extremity could have brought this meeting to pass; finally, the impossibility of the young monk observing the proceedings, weighed against the impropriety of sending him out and leaving them together. Alone. It was a long minute before she heard him say, “Possidius, leave us.” The younger man looked his astonishment but retreated. Augustine remained on his feet. He stared at the floor before hers. Her eyes flickered over him and away. “Sit,” he said at last. She shuffled over to a stool and perched on it. He sank, like a foundering ship, into his own chair. “I did not know you had become a sister,” he said. His voice trembled at the edges. “My sister—your prioress, I mean—never told me.” “I asked her not to. I thought it might be awkward for you. She knew me, of course. She was very kind to have mercy on me.” “Did you—when—” He trailed off. She understood him. “Not at once. I went first to my own brother. But when I learned that Adeodatus—” Her voice broke. Augustine looked away. The name hung between them: the name of the beloved child who was also the evidence against them. She gathered herself and continued. “—had been baptized before he was gathered to the Lord, and that you were baptized at last as well, all impediments removed, I too desired baptism. I had been a catechumen. Before.” At this last word, a blush stole over Augustine’s aged face. He nodded shortly, unwillingly. “After several years’ waiting I was granted the grace of baptism. Immediately thereafter I took my vows.” He said nothing. “My penitence,” she said, “has been long.” No words, no movement. She, too, lapsed into silence. They sat in the room together. She felt the questions he would not ask. He had written so well of the powers swamping the soul, forces that Pelagius and his pusillanimous hangers-on refused to acknowledge. She saw, as only she could see, how swamped he was now. She would not drag him further into the mire. Now, at the end of everything, she desired only to give and receive mercy. “I will trouble you but a moment more,” she said. He came back to himself at the sound of her voice and looked at her, this time forgetting to look away. “I will die soon,” she said. She saw the shock in his old, hardened face as she said it. But surely a man like him should no longer be surprised by death. Surely he had long since thought her dead, if he thought of her at all. “According to the good will of the Lord, I shall soon be taken from this life by the illness that eats at me from the inside out.” He continued to look at her, openly, as if the veil was not in front of her face. “It is not so bad, just yet,” she said. “I was able to walk here from Thagaste, only not quickly. I have seen other sisters before me perish in this way. I suppose I may have as much as a year remaining to me in this vale of tears.” He glanced down as he said, “So you made the trip while you still had the strength.” “No one knows when her hour will come,” she remarked. “It may be that the barbarians take my life before the illness does.” “Do not jest about that,” said Augustine sharply. “I make no jest, but even in Thagaste we have news of Bonifacius and his treachery, and the advance of Genseric and his hordes. Of late our prioress has read to us from the first book of your ‘City of God,’ to prepare ourselves for the worst, if the barbarians despoil us of honor. Not that I have much honor to speak of,” she added. Augustine covered his face with his long hands. She felt the weight of his disgust and steeled herself to her task. “I have come here, my lord, to beg your forgiveness.” “What?” His hands fell away, he was on his feet again, there was a blazing from his body, a furious rage that reminded her of moments long forgotten, or long denied. “I cannot go to my creator without first begging your forgiveness for leading you into sin. A sin of which the whole world now knows. A sin that I have spent the rest of my life repenting of, for the shame it brought down upon you, for all the ways that I, like others of my sex, corrupt and enslave the senses of men—” “Stop!” he cried. She shook but held herself in place. She would not leave until he ordered her away, and even then, not until she had gained his forgiveness. She attempted to renew her plea but he cut across her. “That you should accuse yourself,” he said, his voice tremorous, not like a small and frightened thing but like an earthquake, “for my wantonness, my greediness, my pleasure; you, whose father and brothers sacrificed your catechumenate and prospects of marriage to the lust of an ambitious rhetor; you, who endured my demands and tempers, and bore the son that I later enticed away from you—” He choked. She saw the sob heave through his rigid body. She said, “In these matters, one does not sin alone.” He shook his head and turned it toward the ceiling. “And now, in this last hour, that you should risk the dangers of the journey and your own ill health to ask my forgiveness, while I—I have never even thought to ask yours! Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy.” The turn in the conversation baffled her and she fell silent again. She could not look on him; whatever tumult of emotion wracked him, her attention could only inflame it. She turned her eyes around the room instead. There were vases and vessels and suchlike gifts of thanksgiving, she surmised, from grateful laymen and village priests. A finely wrought box of olive wood somehow put her in mind of the Holy Land. She imagined it came from Jerome. But more than anything there were books, small and large, heavy and light, bound and loose, on the desk, on the shelves, on the scribes’ stands, on the floor. She peered down at one near her foot: De dono perseverantiae. She picked it up. “This is in the library of our convent,” she said. “I read it as soon as it arrived. It gave me great comfort and, indeed, hope for God’s forgiveness. And for yours.” Augustine came out of his trance. He looked down at her. “You read it?” he said. “Yes.” “You can read?” “Your sister taught me,” she explained. “I can write, too. Melania taught me that. I have copied the entire Scriptures once through, and St. Paul’s letters several times over. Some years ago I also copied the writings of St. Cyprian and the earlier treatises of Tertullian, but if the prioress permits I much prefer only to read such things and reserve my copying for the sacred writings.” “You read—and you write?” His expression had shifted and she could not discern it. “For these past forty years, little else. That, and prayer.” The unfathomable expression continued. She rose. “The Lord has shown me great mercy,” she said. “He has been kind to me and heard my prayer. I am ready to shed this cloak of sin and rise up a spiritual body in His presence forevermore. Whether I live or whether I die, I am the Lord’s. However I die, I am the Lord’s. You, my lord,” she faltered for a moment but found her voice again quickly, “you have blessed me in your writings and strengthened me for whatever final trials await me now in these dark times. Please do not think me greedy for asking for one last gift: your forgiveness. Allow an old woman to die in peace.” As if controlled by some force outside him, Augustine strode around his great desk and approached her, stopping short several paces. She saw a knee start to bend and straighten again. His lips parted. She both saw and heard him start to say her old name. Then he corrected himself and in a faint tone spoke: “Sister Iucunda, I cannot forgive you, unless you first forgive me.” “For what have I to forgive you?” she protested, but he interrupted her. “Forgive me!” he cried in a voice that was equal parts command and anguish. “Should Eve forgive Adam for handing him the apple?” “Will Eve forgive Adam for blaming her and her alone? The very one he acclaimed as his own flesh and blood?” His hands tightened into fists, but still they shook. “Have I not written that no one stands alone on his own sin but belongs to the mass of sinful humanity? And will I then suppose myself exempt and cast blame on another? No, else all I have written prove a hypocrisy and a lie. I will not let thee go except thou bless me—that is, except you forgive me.” She stood in silence, feeling the words form in her mouth, doubting them as blasphemy, but unable now, as ever, to do anything but grant his desire: “I forgive you.” He exhaled as though he would collapse. “But now you must—” He straightened again and said, “If there is any matter concerning me of which you are guilty, I forgive you.” She did not like the conditionality of his statement, but she had no more strength to wrestle with him. She ducked her head and, a little unsteadily, turned and walked to the door. She looked back. He was rooted to the same spot. An impulse overcame her faster than she could notice, much less resist: she reached up a hand and pushed her veil away. Their eyes met. “Thank you,” she said. With a sudden gust of wind she swept out of the room. In the antechamber she collected her sisters and with them marched to the outer gates of Hippo Regius, then through them to begin the long journey back home to Thagaste. Several hours later, the city gates were locked in preparation for a siege. III. At that same hour, Augustine locked himself into the small and narrow cell where he slept. Three paces took him from one end of the cell to the next, yet he turned, and turned, and turned, making the circuit with restless compulsion. No one, but no one, was a better observer of his own thoughts than the bishop; nor a more relentless, critical, and unmerciful observer of them. It was not the first time he faced the worst his soul had to offer. Yet little introspection was required to identify what predominated now in his conscience: shame. Shame, first, to recall the ways that the one who now called herself Iucunda had been appearing to him these many decades now, not in the bright light of day when work and comradery held it off, but at night. Some would excuse such visions as the work of demons or a concupiscence that could not be fought with daylight reason, but Augustine had never accepted such excuses. He did not seek such visions and shunned them in waking hours, but when they came to him in the night his sleeping soul consented. Sometimes he found himself and fought back, waking in an agonized sweat. But other times he did not fight, and the vision overpowered him. Yet this was old shame. A newer shame accompanied it now: that, after sending her away with an apologetic chest of coins, he had never taken the trouble to discover what had become of her. She may have been rejected by her family, reduced to selling herself. She may never have asked for baptism and died outside the salvation of the church. Determined to pursue the virtue of his new life, he had failed in charity toward the one whom he had wronged more than any other. It was entirely by the grace of God, and not in the least by the sanctification of Augustine, that she had found her way to a consecrated life. And that paved the road toward a third shame, one less salutary and more compromised: shame that he had been outstripped in virtue by a woman. For she had done without the status and acclaim that he had enjoyed. She had sought his forgiveness with a courage that proved all his years of caution to be sheer cowardice. And she had done so knowing what he’d written about her. Such knowledge could not be avoided in Thagaste, of all places. Not to mention the fact that Melania saw to it that her holy households were equipped with library and scriptorium. Sister Iucunda—as she now was known—even alluded to it in their brief exchange. He recited the words to himself; he still knew them by heart: Meanwhile my sins were being multiplied, and my concubine being torn from my side as a hindrance to my marriage, my heart which clave unto her was torn and wounded and bleeding. And she returned to Africa, vowing unto Thee never to know any other man, leaving with me my son by her. But unhappy I could not imitate a very woman... She knew both how he had bled for her, and how quickly he had replaced her. In the remembrance of youth, Augustine felt his age more than ever. Even the pacing exhausted him. He lay down on his narrow bed, praying aloud, impassioned, helpless. Sooner than he hoped, the grace of sleep overtook him. A sound startled him awake: horns blowing the alarm. He was on his feet at once, teetering as the blood drained from his head and his stiff limbs sorted themselves out. He let himself out of the cell and ascended the staircase to the roof. He was not the first to arrive. Possidius, ever vigilant, preceded him, as did several other brother priests. They were all looking in the same direction, for on the horizon was to be seen the ruby smoldering of fire. No one needed to say what it meant: Genseric was on the march. “He approaches from the west,” breathed Augustine with evident relief. Possidius studied his master before replying. “Of course,” he said. “The scouts say he crossed from the Balearics and has been taking the coastline town by town.” “What became of the—the visitor?” Augustine asked. His voice was low. “She left with the others immediately upon concluding her interview with you,” said Possidius. His voice was studiously flat. Augustine had not offered any explanation of the meeting or report of its outcome. “Others?” “Two other sisters came with her. They departed at once and said they would make as far as they could before nightfall on their return journey to Thagaste.” “Which is due south,” said Augustine. “They departed before the gates were shut?” “Yes.” “So they are already several hours removed from Hippo, if they traveled directly as they told you.” “So it would seem.” Augustine looked out again over the distant fires. The moon caressed the surface of the sea with milky trails that rocked slowly, gently, in a trance. “They are safely out of it,” he said, “but we—” The old man came abruptly to himself. “We are locked in. And for how long a time? God alone knows.” “Better to be locked in than for these gates to be breached,” said Possidius. With a gesture Augustine gathered the brothers together and dismissed them. “Go back to sleep,” he said. “It is out of our hands. Better to be rested for the morning. We must be mighty in prayer.” “Will you stay here, my lord?” inquired Possidius, not disguising his worry over Augustine’s frailty. “Yes. I will join you at lauds.” The brothers withdrew. Augustine walked to the parapet opposite the approaching army, facing the darkened patchwork of wheatfields and, beyond, the mountains. “It must be so late as nearly to be early,” he said aloud. The barest shimmer in the east awoke the first lark, which chirped, and after a pause another responded in kind. Soon the morning would be a raucous conversation of praise for the creator, praise unmarred by sin of any kind. And with the dawning warmth and dew, the calendula and geranium would also awaken, the asphodel and the yolk-yellow marguerites: all the ravishing scents and colors of a coastal spring. Augustine offered thanks that the winter, which he detested, was over; that the earth itself testified to the coming renewal of all creation. He loved to watch the colors of the sea by day, green and blue and purple, but he no longer sailed. By foot only he had traveled in recent years to Carthage. He remembered also journeys to Thagaste, the acrid and alluring scent of rocket crushed underfoot—great carpets of it along the pathways through the olive groves. This time of year the almond trees would be in blossom, too, pink tassels casting dappled shade on the traveler. He thought of her walking home, robed in springtime. Then all at once it invaded him, possessed him, conquered him. An emotion he had studied in the theaters of Carthage but never experienced himself, desirable young rhetor that he was; an emotion he later claimed to feel for the true church against pretenders and posers. Jealousy. She said that an illness ate her from the inside out, but that was a literal truth. Augustine felt the metaphorical fangs slide into his heart and take it between the jaws: a ravening, slavering jealousy such as he had never known. The cuckold’s accusation slipped out of his mouth and over the dawn-dusted city. “Lord Christ,” he whispered, “you have betrothed her: you have taken her for your bride: and you have been to her the husband I never was.” With the strictness of habit that still intimidated the priests under his care, Augustine remonstrated with his soul, admonished it to rejoice in her good fortune. It refused all such blandishments and sank into the magma of bitter, ungenerous jealousy. Christ had given her life; Augustine had only taken it from her. Christ had called her to blessedness; Augustine had only inveigled her in corruption. Christ had taught her to read the Scriptures; Augustine had only held her back from baptism. Christ had placed in her path all the wisdom of the church until she could comprehend it without the aid of any other mentor. Augustine had not once sought to illumine her mind in all the years he made use of her body. Christ was her true husband; Augustine, a mere adulterer. In his mind’s eye, in frantic conjecture, Augustine rewrote their history. He was a man of honor and she a respectable matron. They had welcomed not one child who died as punishment on their fornication but many who devoted their lives to Christ and his poor. After childbearing they parted like Melania and Pinianus, freely and willingly, to consecrate their later years to prayer and study and works of charity. He taught her to copy the sacred writings. He led her into the mysteries of grace and the incarnation, providence and predestination. He endowed her with all he had and kept nothing for himself. The unremitting voice that scoured his soul peeled back the righteous veneer of his imagination and accused: Usurper! Worse than Bonifacius! You have no true desire for her good. You wish only for yourself to be the source of her good. Your desire for benevolence itself is sin. You would dethrone Christ to satisfy your greed both to have her and to release her, to buy her and to redeem her. But she is not yours. She is Christ’s. You once let her go. He never will. The first brilliant arc of the sun slid over the rim of the mountains and flooded the locked city with gold. Immovable gates stood between him and her. Only death would rejoin them. Only death would purify Augustine of his wretched, unfit jealousy. Jealousy of the only One who had the right to be jealous. To be Jealousy itself. Until then, Augustine knew, he would have no choice but to endure the jealousy that, alone, and in the eleventh hour of his life, begot what he should have given her from the beginning. He gazed out over the southern gate of the city, along the footpaths leading to the vine-crossed hills. A wren sang out in delirious joy at the morning. “Late have I loved thee,” Augustine confessed, “O beauty, so ancient and so new.”
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