This is the chapel in the church of St. Augustine in Rome where the mortal remains of St. Monica (+387), the mother of Augustine of Hippo now rest.
To the right is a shot of the chapel on the day some years ago when the bones of her son, St. Augustine, were brought from their resting place in Pavia (near Milan) to Rome.
For the first time since 387, son and mother were reunited.
How did St. Monica’s tomb wind up here?
Here is an excerpt from an article I wrote for Inside the Vatican (December 2004) on the above mentioned event. I used the alternate (and more accurate Punic) spelling of the saint’s name – "Monnica" (emphasis not in the original):
Most visitors to the Eternal City find it puzzling and wondrous that Monnica’s remains would be in Rome and even more so that Augustine’s should be in northern Italy, or that we have them at all. How did this come to pass? Monnica died at age 56 of a malarial fever at Ostia, Rome’s port city, not far from where modern Rome’s port, DaVinci airport, is situated. After Augustine’s baptism in 386 by Milan’s bishop St. Ambrose (+ AD 397), Monnica and Augustine together with his brother Navigius, Adeodatus the future bishop’s son by his concubine of many years whom Monnica had forced Augustine to put aside, and friends Nebridius, Alypius and the former Imperial secret service agent (agens in rebus) Evodius were all waiting at Ostia to return home to Africa by ship. They were stuck there for some time because the port was blockaded during a period of civil strife. As she lay dying near Rome, Monnica told Augustine (conf. 9): “Lay this body anywhere, let not the care for it trouble you at all. This only I ask, that you will remember me at the Lord’s altar, wherever you be.” She was buried there in Ostia. In the 6th century she was moved to a little church named for St. Aurea, an early martyr of the city, and there she remained until 1430 when her remains were translated by Pope Martin V to the Roman Basilica of St. Augustine built in 1420 by the famous Guillaume Card. D’Estouteville of Rouen, then Camerlengo under Pope Sixtus IV. As fate or God’s directing have would have it, in December 1945, some children were digging a hole in the courtyard of the little church of St. Aurea next to the ruins of ancient Ostia. They wanted to put up a basketball hoop, probably having been taught the exciting new game – so different from soccer – by American GIs. While digging they discovered the broken marble epitaph which had marked Monnica’s ancient grave. Scholars were able to authenticate the inscription, the text of which had been preserved in a medieval manuscript. The epitaph had been composed during Augustine’s lifetime by no less then a former Consul of AD 408 and resident at Ostia, Anicius Auchenius Bassus, perhaps Augustine’s host during their sojourn. It is possible that Anicius Bassus placed the epitaph there after 410 which saw the ravages of Alaric the Visigoth and the sacking of Rome a
nd its environs. One can almost feel behind these traces of ancient evidence Augustine’s plea to his old friend sent by letter from the port of Hippo Regius over the waves to Ostia. Hearing of the devastation to the area, far more shocking to the ancients than the events of 11 September were for us, did Augustine, now a renowned bishop, ask his old friend to tend the grave of the mother whom he had so loved and who in her time had wept for her son’s sins and rejoiced in his conversion?
Looking for a great book on Augustine? Try this!
Meanwhile, in the chapel here there is a relic of St. Monica. May she pray for us, for widows and for parents of children who have drifted from the Church.
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I like the sound of St Monica, particularly since your earlier post. I never thought I would identify with her, other than as a worrying mother, but I read also that she became desire-less of anything, other than her son’s salvation. I also identify with the story about wine.(It’s not only perfect Mom’s that love their son’s and worry about their salvation) My prayer for my son’s, I offered to Our Lady. She took my fear, and gave me her requests, to pray for her sons. Priests. Last year, it worked well, for nine months. Life was uncertain, and circumstances were fraught, yet joy was mine, I tell the truth. The part I did not acknowledge, was the fact that we are in a battle. When you decide to live for Our Lady’s purposes, truly, expect attack. Get protected. I didn’t. The devil gets in through the easiest cracks, your weak spots. Why? Because he is lazy, and remember, ultimately, nothing, works out positively for him, any more. So he is subject to the defects he tempts us with. Yet still, he has certain intelligence.
Please pray for me. I know there are a lot of strong good Catholics who visit this blog. Pray for my sons too. Although unlike her, I desire exactly what she desired, and also pray for that, for others. Thank you.
What a beautiful Church. Monica is a saint for our time, as there are so many mothers with fallen away Catholics for children, including my own mother, who prays daily for my three brothers who are agnostics. Only my sister, who died as a baby and is in heaven, and myself, are Catholics.
Thank you for honoring Monica today.
Supertradmom, you are so sweet. I wish I was, I am genuinely asking for prayers, in the same way Saint Monica began to understand the gift of motherhood, that it is to pray for our, and therefore any sons salvation. I am asking for prayers, for my own soul. I am the wine bibbler. Imagine that, Father’s got a wine bibbler as a commenter. But, by the grace of God, I do get release, but I get tempted again, and it seems like a good idea, and I make promises to the family, and I keep breaking them. And I know this blog is all about perfection, and exact prayers, but my dad always said to me, that I was the rebel in the family, so maybe I do the same thing in the blog. By the way, my father asked for my forgiveness last year, for the stringent demands he put upon the family. We alkies aren’t all bad, just perfectionist tryers that didn’t quite meet the mark ( we got darn close)and I truly want that, but I am struggling. Is there anybody here, will pray for me? Father Z, you have to expel me if I get too er er wotever it is I get ‘too’ much of.
It is a serene, childlike, beautiful faith that would think to reunite the relics of these two. Naturally, SS. Monica and Augustine have
been together in heaven for quite some time, but I would imagine they’re both moved that they were thought of after 1600 years.
It was a loving, deeply human gesture to bring the two together–I thank whoever made it possible, and I thank you, Fr. Z. for posting
about it. Lovely.
Et ubi est sepulcrum Augustini concubinae? Ipsa memoriam aeternam plus quam Monica meretur. Augustinus dissolutus fuit. Matrem filii sui in matrimonium ducere debuit. Qualis mulierarius perditus!
(And where is the tomb of Augustine’s concubine? She merits eternal memory more than Monica. Augustine was a rake. He ought to have married the mother of his son. What a dissolute womanizer!)
Augustine is the prime example of the selective memory of the Church. His fatuous theory that Original Sin is transmitted by sexual intercourse is a monstrous perversion of the divine command to be fruitful and multiply. He was a man of a deeply disturbed psyche, suffering undoubtedly from a Jocasta complex. If he is forgiven the abandonment of his mistress by the infinite mercy of God, then the rest of us can count as venial our amatory peccadilloes.
[Kooky.]
Roland de Chanson
That’s a very posh angle you’ve used there, yet when did you last pray, and what was the prayer? You remind me of the tormentor. You obviously are no lover of the rosary. If you were, your mind would have been rested, and renewed, yet still compassionate. You seek forgiveness. It is available Roland de Chanson, through repentance, the same sought by Augustine, and found. “Too late, have I loved thee”
Roland de Chanson,
You might want to investigate the entire concept of the concubine and her status under Roman Law at the time of Augustine, starting here:
http://www.augnet.org/?ipageid=71
shadowlands,
First, I deeply regret my classical and Freudian faux pas. I meant to write Oedipus complex. I thank you for your superabundant charity in not having embarrassed me by pointing it out.
Not that I am seeking a spiritual director via a blog combox, but I will confess to you that I pray the Rosary in Latin daily. And the Jesus Prayer in Greek and Slavonic when I am doing mindless physical work. It is truly prayer of the heart. You should investigate Hesychasm. With your already heightened spiritual acuity, you will undoubtedly experience the Divine and Uncreated Light long before a paltry sinner such as I.
Gospodi Iisuse Christe, syne Bozhij, pomiluj jego iz zemli teni greshnago.
Roland de Chanson
Nope, sorry mate, still the tormentor’s tactics springin to mind, especially with the diabolical sentence at the end, I mean, I may be a phillistine, but there’s no way you were quotin’ Latin there? Don’t get hung up on Oedipus, he’ll tear/tare your eyes out!!
Try prayin’ it in English for a bit, then go back to the Latin,once you’re sorted with the resentment stuff, Regarding your last couple of paragraphs, which I couldn’t make head nor tail of, but you sounded like you were showin’ off a bit, remember, it’s not by might, and not by power, but my my spirit, says the Lord!
Our God is an awesome God!!!
Charles E. Flynn,
Maybe I have missed the point, not being a Roman lawyer, but would not Augustine have been more pleasing in the sight of God had he made an honest woman of this poor nameless lady who loved him and bore him a son, even at the expense of not having become a famous theologian?
Roman law is irrelevant. He could have been married in the Church. But I do not condemn him. I am French and my sins of the flesh were never sins of the heart. But beyond that, it’s good to see that even those who sin more greviously than we, may merit eventual canonization. Metagnoia to pan.
shadowlands,
Blimey, matey. I’ll have a jar or wha’ever ’tis you’re drinking. ;-)
No – that’s not Latin. You get two more guesses. Some of the readers here will understand it. BTW, I never pray in English. I pray in the languages of the Western and Eastern Catholic Churches. If I wanted to pray in the vernacular, I would pray in French. English is the language of protestant heretics.
Damn! I see that I have made a commoner’s typo in the previous post – read “grievously” – encore mieux “grièvement.” Noblesse oblige. Surtout à propos de l’orthographe!
Ok, have just reflected on the ‘dell boyish’ attitude of my last comment.
Why, Roland de Chanson, would you ‘confess’ to praying the rosary in Latin? I would proclaim it, if I were learned enough to do that.
Ok, fair enough, I’m only just looking at the more traditional blogs, having recently started going to Prinknash, and even though I don’t understand the latin, they have assured me, it’s Ok, and that the fact I think or believe Our Lady is leading me there, is Ok.It will kind of sort itself out, they say.
God will decide what to do with me, and like St Monica, as long as my sons souls are safe, although my sons souls grow by the day (Our Lady keeps showing me more Priests)God will take care of this failing flesh that I reside in. Become a spiritual mother Roland! Sorry, but you are so obviously a girl. No man would give himself such a name on Father Z’s blog, unless he had inherited it. Offer yourself, forget about being bloomin ordained girls, who needs to become what we’re not? Become Our Lady’s daughter’s. Spiritual Mother’s!!! Let’s promote that on the bus adverts!! You will sense joy in your spirit!! Truly.
Roland de Chanson,
The article to which I linked suggests that under Roman law, Augustine could not legally marry his concubine. I do not know whether the Church in Northern Africa at the time would have been willing to marry him, possibly in defiance of Roman law. I think I need to read two books about Augustine, which arrived at my house today:
Augustine: A Very Short Introduction, by Henry Chadwick
Augustine of Hippo: A Life, by Henry Chadwick
You might find this interesting:
http://catholicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/08/having-just-finished-posthumously.html
I was struck by the line, “I have not followed myself in everything.”
Charles E. Flynn,
Thanks for the references and the link. I long ago read Chadwick’s The Early Church so I will enjoy his volumes on Augustine I am sure. It’s either the library or amazon tomorrow!
shadowlands,
Now I am the one who can make neither head nor tail of what you wrote. But for the record, my name really is Roland though the “de Chanson” is clearly fanciful. Something to do with a warrior who fought the Saracens, I think.
And BTW, if I am a girl, my wife will be astonished to find herself a lesbian and then we’ll not have a clue where our kids came from. And here I thought all along it was good old Augustinian concupiscence.
From past experience of my wastrel Augustinian youth, I recommend you keep a bottle of Cognac in the house and take a dram with your morning coffee when you oversleep the Angelus. It drives away the tormentor, even the self-tormentor. ;-)
A woman who has been affected by a man in this way, Our Lady can still direct, to herself. I speak, from experience. OK Roland de Chanson, you may grieve for these women, but also listen to the recovered hearts. Remember, it is eternity we are ultimately preparing for. Don’t give short term answers to life’s ultimate questions, because the Catholic Church will call you out on that!
Ok Roland, you are a fella. I still maintain you are a devil. I am someone’s daughter. If you heard your own child being advised, through a weakness the way, you just have advised me, you would thump the fellow. I tell you this, my son would punch you, if he read your comment! Actually, so would I, but I begin to realise, blogger is for cowardy custards!!!
Stop talking like as if flesh and blood is your eternal enemy, and let Father’s blog become the battleground the Lord wants it to be, not flesh against flesh, but a spiritual war. Weapons? Stage one, the rosary!
Roland, make fun of me all you want. To be frank, getting back to St Monica, I don’t care, it’s sons souls that keep me motivated, be they priests or my sons.Get close to Our Lady and you will be the same. Abuse the fact that I’ve admitted alcoholism. You won’t get rewarded by God for doing that, according to Father Grouschel, who I’ve actually heard talking on the subject, by the way!!
ALL: Do not feed the troll.
Fr Z “Do not feed the troll”
Father’s blog must be getting mythical press if trolls in Middle Earth are registering to comment:)
As regard St Monica she’s a model for mothers everywhere(after Our Lady of course) and if I was a women/mother I’d be praying to her like mad, however I personally St. Mary Magdalene is more my cup of tea but I appreciate what Shadowlands is trying to say all the same.
My final point the end of the quote “but remember me at the altar of the Lord” – get Mass’s said for the souls of your deceased relatives, do it!! but take care not to block the parish schedule.
ALL: Do not feed the troll.
LOL. Thanks, Fr. Z! I needed that.
Jack in KC
Just to satisfy my own curiosity, I googled and found this:
Edmund Hill, OP, wrote
(See http://tinyurl.com/2fltobg)
“To return to the woman who was his mistress in his youth; he is sometimes blamed for what is presented as his heartless treatment of her in sending her back to Africa from Milan (where he was Professor of Rhetoric at what could be called the Imperial University), when an advantageous marriage was being planned for him, shortly before his conversion…. Augustine himself talks about the woman ‘being torn from my side, and my heart being crushed and wounded, so that it drew blood’ (Confessions VI 15).”
According to Wiki, Adeodatus was baptised at the same time as St. Augustine the Blessed, but Adeodatus died soon after St. Monica. Sad.
In the Orthodox Calendar, the feast of St. Augustine the Blessed is celebrated on 15 June. He’s one of my favourites because among other things, he’s a patron saint of printers. I hope he’ll help with my spelling and punctuation!
I’m surprised no one has posted the wonderful poem by Matthew Arnold, “Monica’s last prayer.” Well, it is wonderful except for the last three lines, which I have omitted.
‘Oh could thy grave at home, at Carthage, be!’ —
Care not for that, and lay me where I fall.
Everywhere heard will be the judgment-call.
But at God’s altar, oh! remember me.
Thus Monica, and died in Italy.
Yet fervent had her longing been, through all
Her course, for home at last, and burial
With her own husband, by the Libyan sea.
Had been; but at the end, to her pure soul
All tie with all beside seem’d vain and cheap,
And union before God the only care.
David: Thanks for that!
David,
You scandalize the art of poesy by such unbridled bowdlerizing. Let me make the Petrarchan sonnet whole again:
Creeds pass, rites change, no altar standeth whole.
Yet we her memory, as she pray’d, will keep,
Keep by this: Life in God, and union there!
Is there a better description of the wasteland of the novus ordo than that first stich of the sestet? or of the true mission of the Church in the last: theosis?
devilish gobbetygook as usual, Roland.
For those who resent St. Augustine’s life before his Christian conversion:
Luke 15:25-32
As the older brother of the prodigal son returns from his work in the field, he hears the sounds of the celebration inside the house and, upon inquiring, is told their significance: “Your brother has come, and because he has received him safe and sound, your father has killed the fatted calf” (15:27). The older son is far from pleased with this information about his father’s party for his younger brother. In fact, “he was angry and would not go in” (15:28). The older brother thus represents a type of Christian whose attitude toward a wayward Christian brother is far less charitable than is that of God, his heavenly Father. The successors of the older brother in this parable have been numerous in the history of the church. There is no reason for believers to resent a straying Christian who returns to the fold. Such Christians have sustained real and tangible losses that obedient Christians do not experience. They have thrown away “treasures in heaven” which they could have been accumulating during their wayward years. Moreover they have lost the personal experience of the presence of God, for although He has always been with them, they have not been with Him in the sense of enjoying His fellowship and instruction. The longer a Christian lives his life apart from God, the more telling all these losses become. The solemn fact remains that, even after repentance, we cannot turn back the clock and relive those wasted years. What the older brother sadly lacked was the perfectly natural feeling of joy that should come—not simply from recovering a son—but from recovering a brother as well. In the parable itself, this was in fact his only brother. How happy he should have been to see this brother walk back into his life, just as his father was so happy to see his son walk back into his. Joy was, after all, the truly natural reaction for both of them to such an event as this.
“They have a cave troll!”
shadowlands,
In re-reading your posts I realize that I may have said some things which, while intended in jest, in retrospect were insensitive. I apologise for that. I skimmed the posts quickly and dashed off comments thinking you were having me on. I totally missed the fact that you are a woman and my comments about drinking were in the event out of line. They were intended as light banter and not with any intent to insult you.
I’ll say a Rosary for you. I hope you’ll do the same for me. Benedicat te Deus. (real Latin this time – may God bless you.)
Tell me, Father, Why you prefer Lancel’s biography to the work Peter Robert Lamont Brown? (I’m just curious.) I saw on Amazon that Brown has a new edition of his biography with a epilogue discussing recent research on Augustine. I was about to order it when when I saw your recommendation of Lancel.
Aside from the merits of his biography of Augustine, I confess otherwise a prejudice in favor of Prof. Brown. There has been three developments in the humanities in the past 40 years that are praiseworthy: (1) the Early Music revival, (2) the Baroque revival, and (3) the developing of the historical concept of Late Antiquity. As David Munrow deserves the credit for midwifeing the first, and Rudolf Wittkower for the second, so Brown for the third, beginning in his The World of Late Antiquity (1971). Gibbon now is honored as a great prose stylist, and not for much else.
When I was a schoolboy, European/Western History was taught as divided into three periods: Ancient (ending in A.D. 473), Medieval, and Modern (beginning in A.D. 1400 in Italy). Now we have a 4th, Late Antiquity (AD 200-800, and maybe even until Otto the Great) which really ought to be called “The Byzantine Age”.
Anyone who has been to Rome and seen Santa Agnes fuori le Mura, Santa Constanza next to it, Santa Pudenziana, the 5th C mosaics at Santa Maria Maggiore, Santi Cosmos e Damiano, San Teodoro, the older part of S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura, S. Agnese fuori le Mura, S. Stefano Rotondo, Santa Maria in Cosmedin, and the resplendent mosaics of the 9th C done during Pope Paschal II – anyone who has seen these churches knows already that the idea that culture between the 3rd and 9th C was supposedly a “dark age” is, to quote a sage, B and in B and S as in S.
And reading Augustine thus now has more historical background.
Thanks for suggesting Lancel.
Roland.
All forgiven, I will definately offer a rosary for you too. God bless. Oh, and thankyou!!
shadowlands, re your 27 Aug @ 7:30pm. I’ll be praying for you. Miracles really do happen, I witnessed my sister’s miracle. To God be the glory.
wanda
thankyou.
St. Augustine was a glorious light of the Church. Nevertheless, She (the Church) does not defend the intensely evil life he led for many years. She venerates him now because he converted sincerely and applied his gifts to the service of good. “There will be more joy in Heaven over one sinner that returns than over 99 just who have no need for repentance.”