Living Letters of the Law. Jeremy Cohen

in the same biblical passage (e.g., De Genesi ad litteram 8.4, 8.7).

      82. Ibid. 1.1, p. I.

      83. Ibid. 8.4, p, 236. It is instructive to compare these comments of Augustine with those of Nicholas of Lyra centuries later, who identified the Christological significance of the paschal lamb as primary within the intention of the biblical author. See Nicholas's Postilla litteralis ad Exodus 12:1, 13:10, in Biblia sacra cum glossis, interlineari, et ordinaria, Nicolai Lyrani postilla, ac moralitatibus, Burgensis additionibus, et Thoringi replicis (Venice, 1588), 1:145F-146B, ISOGH. See also Jeremy Cohen, “Scholarship and Intolerance in the Medieval Academy: The Study and Evaluation of Judaism in European Christendom,” AHR 91 (1986), 610 and n. 49; and Herman Hailperin, Rashi and the Christian Scholars (Pittsburgh, Pa., 1963), esp. pp. 184–91.

      84. Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 8.1–8.2, pp. 231–33; Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, trans. John Hammond Taylor, Ancient Christian Writers 41–42 (New York, 1982), 2:253–54 n. 9.

      85. 1 would argue that Augustine's treatment of Tyconius's rules and the subject of curriculum late in the third (30.42–37.56) and fourth books of the De doctrina christiana-those portions of the work composed ca. 426–427-bespeaks increased recognition of a need for systematic regimen in Christian hermeneutic and accords well with the exegetical shift I am delineating. Cf. Augustine's Retractiones 2.4.1, CSEL 36:136; and, for a survey of the major issues and scholarly viewpoints, Eugene Kevane, “Augustine's De doctrina christiana: A Treatise on Christian Education,” Recherches augustiniennes 4 (1966), esp. 103–12.

      86. Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 8.1, pp. 231–32; cf. 1.21, and, again, the parallel argument of Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed 2.25, 2.30.

      87. Augustine, De Genesi ad lttteram 8.2, p. 233; see also above, n. 84.

      88. Robert Nisbet, Hitstory of the Idea of Progress (New York, 1980), p. 64.

      89. F. Edward Cranz, “The Development of Augustine's Ideas on Society before the Donatist Controversy,” HTR 47 (1954), 255–316.

      90. Cf. Johannes van Oort, Jerusalem and Babylon: A Study into Augustine's City of God and the Sources of His Doctrine of the Two Cities, Supplements to Vigiliae christianae 14 (Leiden, Netherlands, 1991), esp. pp. 108ff., 159–60, who argues—contra both Cranz and Markus, discussed below—that the opposition between the two cities pervaded Augustine's historical thought from early in his career and underwent little essential change. See also the helpful study of A. Lauras and Henri Rondet, “Le Theme des deux cités dans l'oeuvre de Saint Augustin,” in Etudes augustiniennes, Theologie 28 (Paris, 1953), pp. 99–160.

      91. See Cranz's “De civitate Dei, XV, 2.” Cranz's theory presents additional difficulties as well. First, Augustine did not completely discard his sevenfold periodization of history in the wake of the Ad Simplicianum, but he invoked it even in later works which Cranz adduced as exemplifying his new outlook on grace—from the Contra Faustum 12.8 and De catechizandis rudibus (On Catechizing the Uninstructed, 399–400) 22.39, to the De civitate Dei 22.30. Cf. additional citations in Luneau, L'Histoire du salut, pp. 289–90, Archambault, “Ages of Man,” pp. 205–6, and van Oort, Jerusalem and Babylon, pp. 94ff. Regarding the passages cited here, I find it difficult to agree completely with Cranz, “Development of Augustine's Ideas,” p. 279 (cf. also Luneau, L'Histoire du salut, p. 380), that “the context of gradual progress is dropped, and while Augustine continues to make use of the six ages, the Old Testament periods serve merely as convenient chronological divisions.” On the idea of historical progress, see also Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress, pp. 54ff. Second, the historical-philosophical ramifications of this new outlook on grace do not appear to have pointed directly toward the ideas of the De civitate Dei, which refuses to associate the conversion of Rome's emperors with the fulfillment of Christian history. On the contrary, the Contra Faustum, which Cranz deemed particularly indicative of Augustine's changed perceptions, finds vindication for the doctrine of the church in “these very kings of the earth, now gainfully subjected to the rule of Christ” (13.7, CSEL 25:385; and cf. 22.60). Indeed, according to the Contra Faustum, actualizing the psalmist's messianic prophecy that “‘all kings of the earth shall bow to him, all nations shall serve him’ (Psalm 72:11), Christian emperors, placing the complete trust of their piety in Christ, have triumphed most gloriously over his sacrilegious enemies, who placed their hope in the worship of idols and demons” (22.76, p. 676).

      92. Markus, Saeculum, pp. 101–2. Cf, also the insightfully nuanced discussion in John M. Rist, Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized (Cambridge, England, 1yy4), chap. 6.

      93. See the more recent-and compelling-discussion in Robert A. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge, England, 1990), chaps. 4–5.

      94. Augustine, De civitate Dei 15.7, CCSL 48:462.

      95. Brown, Augustine of Hippo, p. 3 21.

      96. See also above, n. 43; and Peter Brown, “St. Augustine's Attitude to Religious Coercion.” Journal of Roman Studies 54 (ry64), 107–16, on connections in Augustinian doctrine between exegesis, historiosophy, and those outside the Catholic Church.

      97. Jeremy Cohen, “Be Fertile and Increase, Fill the Earth and Master It”: The Ancient and Medieval Career of a Biblical Text (Ithaca, N.Y., 1989), pp. 245–59 with nn.;cf. also Elizabeth A. Clark, “Heresy, Asceticism, Adam, and Eve: Interpretations of Genesis 1–3 in the Later Latin Fathers,” in Ascetic Piety and Women's Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity, by Elizabeth A. Clark, Studies in Women and Religion 20 (Lewiston, N.Y., 1986), pp. 363–73, David G. Hunter, “Resistance to the Virginal Ideal in Late-Fourth-Century Rome: The Case of Jovinian,” Theological Studies 48 (1987), 45–64, Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988), chap. 19, and Markus, End of Ancient Christianity, pp. 57–62.

      98. Augustine, De Genesi contra Manichaeos I. 19.30, PL 34:187.

      99. See above, n. 72.

      100. Verna F. Harrison, “Allegory and Asceticism in Gregory of Nyssa,” Semeia 57 (1992), 113–30.

      101. Augustine, Retractiones 1.9.3, CSEL 36:48–49.

      102. Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 11.41.57, CSEL, 281:376. P. Agaésse and A. Solignac, in their edition of Augustine, La Genese au sens littéral, Oeuvres de Saint Augustin 48–49 (Paris, 1972), 1:28–31, contend that Augustine probably wrote books 1–9 of De Genesi ad litteram by 410, and almost certainly by 412; that he composed books 10–12 between 412 and 415; and that he hastily wrote the final chapters of book ii just prior to the publication of the entire work. On the dating of the De Genesi, see also Clark, “Heresy, Asceticism, Adam, and Eve,” pp. 368ff.

      103. See above, n. 98.

      104. Augustine, De civitate Dei 14.22, CCSL 48:444.

      105. The intriguing view that Augustine identified rhetoric with fornication, advanced by Marjorie O'Rourke Boyle, “Augustine in the Garden of Zeus: Lust, Love, and Language,” HTR 83 (1990), 117–39, depends primarily on citations from his earlier works (i.e., Confessiones and prior); this comports with my earlier suggestion (above, n. 85) that the guidelines for Christian rhetoric and eloquence outlined in the fourth book of De doctrina christiana befit a later stage in the development of Augustinian doctrine, when human speech, history, and sexuality are valued more highly than previously. On similar issues, cf. also Eugene Vance, “Saint Augustine: Language as Temporality,” in Mimesis: From Mirror to Method, Augustine to Descartes, ed. John D. Lyons and Stephen G. Nichols Jr. (Hanover, N.H., 1982), pp, 20–35, 251–52, and “Augustine's Confessions and the Poetics of the Law,” Modern Language Notes 93 (1978), 618–34.

      106. Brown, Body and Society, pp. 398–99. See also the interesting study of Hunter, “Resistance to the Virginal Ideal,” esp, p. 64.

      107. Margaret Ruth Miles, Augustine on the Body, American