[1.] Confessiones (Confessions): best Latin text by Skutella (Leipzig 1935, repr. Stuttgart 1969), repr. in BA 13-14 with French translation and excellent notes; see also PL, CSEL, CCSL, Loeb Classical Library with translation; Latin text with useful English notes by J. Gibb and W. Montgomery (Cambridge 1908, second ed. 1927, repr. New York 1979). The classic English translation is that of E.B. Pusey, which is the basis for the quotations here.
Since this essay first appeared, my own Latin text with extensive commentary was published by Oxford University Press (1992).
[2.] Soliloquies 2.1.1.
[3.] These works were not without occasional suggestive personal notes. Cf. The Trinity 15.28.51, the last paragraph of that work, with its reflection on the alarming implications, for a writer as prolific as Augustine, of Prov. 10.19, "You shall not avoid sin by pouring out a multitude of words."
[4.] See M. Verheijen, Eloquentia Pedisequa (Nijmegen, 1949).
[5.] Rom. 10.14 (abbreviated), Ps. 21(22).27, and Mt. 7.7.
[6.] The landmarks in this century are the stimulating but finally confounded thesis of P. Alfaric, L'evolution intellectuelle de saint Augustine: I. Du manichéisme au neoplatonisme (Paris, 1918), and the two masterworks of P. Courcelle, Recherches sur les Confessions de saint Augustine (Paris, 1950; second edition 1968) and Les "Confessions" dans la tradition littéraire (Paris, 1963). The best summary of the issues in English is J.J. O'Meara, The Young Augustine (London, 1954; reprinted 1980). My own views would be regarded by all those writers as conservative; I hope to explore them at length in another work.
[7.] See Courcelle, Recherches, 157-167, the classic essay in a long debate.
[8.] A. Pincherle, La formazione teologica de Sant'Agostino (Rome, 1947) is the best survey of this period, though investigations have continued, e.g., O. du Roy, L'intelligence de la foi en la Trinité selon saint Augustin: Genèse de sa théologie trinitaire jusqu-en 391 (Paris: &Eaucte;tudes augustiniennes, 1966). For a concise survey see E. TeSelle, Augustine the Theologian (New York: Herder, 1970) 90-182.
[9.] The best concise view of the Christian Platonists of Milan is in the note by A. Solignac in second volume of the BA edition of the Confessions, pages 529-536.
[10.] On Victorinus, see P. Hadot, Marius Victorinus: Recherches sur sa vie et ses oeuvres (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1971).
[11.] M. Atkinson, Plotinus, Ennead V.1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983) offers translation and commentary of a Plotinian text Augustine had read on the three hypostases.
[12.] The stylistic independence of Augustine is well illustrated by the opening words of 8.2.4, which may stand for many similar passages in the Confessions. "O Lord, Lord, Which hast bowed the heavens and come down, touched the mountains and they did smoke, by what means didst Thou convey Thyself into that breast?" The question is simplicity itself, but the interposed quotation from Ps. 143(144).5 puzzles and repays attention. From Augustine's great collection of sermons on the Psalms, we find that those lines had a particular allegorical meaning for him (En. Ps. 143.12): The "mountains" of the text are the proud men of earth, whom God has to purify of their pride, while the "heavens" stand for the Apostles, the living instruments by which heavenly truth is brought down to earth. Given those equivalences, Augustine says in his sermon that this text summarizes the essential stages of the divine redemption of the individual. Revelation comes through scripture of apostolical origin, and the proud are purged of their sins by the hand of God. On that interpretation the question Augustine asks contains within itself, cryptically, its own answer. The next sentences say that Victorinus studied scripture assiduously and that Simplicianus rebuked his pride and eventually brought him around to accepting church membership along with the most humble. This implicit self-sufficiency of the question is a remarkable sign of the way this text is not meant to be completely self-explanatory to a merely human audience.
[13.] J. Burnaby, Amor Dei 210.
[14.] On this subject, see, P. Henry, La vision d'Ostie: sa place dans la vie et l'oeuvre de S. Augustin (Paris: Vrin, 1938).
[15.] Augustine on prayer: "We might ask ... what need there is for prayer at all, if God already knows what we need (Mt. 6.8). But the very act of prayer brings serenity to our heart, purges it, and makes it readier to receive the divine gifts that are poured into us of the spirit. Not for the self-seeking of our prayers does God hear them, he who is always ready to give us his light, a light not visible but spiritual and intelligible. It is we who are not always ready to receive it, when we stoop to lowly things and are shadowed over by our lust for material things. In prayer therefore there takes place a conversion of the heart to him who is always ready to give if we but take what he gives, and in that conversion there is cleansing of the inner eye when the material things we crave are shut out. Then the vision of the pure heart can bear the pure light from above that shines without fading or setting. Our heart then can not only bear the light, it can abide in it, not only painlessly but with unspeakable joy, the joy that brings true and unsullied fulfillment to the blessed life." The Sermon on the Mount 2.3.14.
[16.] See my "Augustine, Confessiones 10.1.1-10.4.6," Augustiniana 29(1979) 280-303.
[17.] K. Grotz, Die Einheit des "Confessiones" (Tübingen, 1970).
[18.] See E.P. Meijering, Augustin über Schöpfung, Ewigkeit und Zeit (Leiden: Brill, 1979).
[19.] The only discussion I know of
trinitarian patterns in the Confessions is H. Kusch,
"Trinitarisches in den Bchern 2-4 und 10-13 der Confessiones,"
Festschrift Franz Dornseiff (Leipzig 1953) 124-183; but my
interpretation differs from his at numerous points.