most devout and diligent worshipper; liberal in alms; daily attending the Eucharist ("nullum diem praetermittebat oblationem ad altare [Domini]"), and was twice daily in the church, not to gossip there ("non ad vanas fabulas et aniles loquacitates") but to hear the word and pray (ib. v. 9). During the struggle of Ambrose with the Arian empress-mother Justina (385) Monnica was the most devout among the host of worshippers who gathered for vigils and prayers in the church (ib. ix. 7). The hymns of Ambrose she greatly loved, and treasured in her memory; the dialogue de Beatâ Vitâ closes with some noble words from Monnica, introduced by a quotation from the hymn "Fove precantes, Trinitas."
The final crisis of her son's conversion was instantly reported to her by Augustine and Alypius, to her extreme delight (ib. viii. 12), though it involved not only his baptism but his acceptance of a life of celibacy. Between his conversion and baptism she retired with him to Cassiciacum, the campagna of his friend Verecundus. The dialogues de Ordine and de Beatâ Vitâ give a charming picture of this retirement, spent in holy intercourse and in lofty thought lighted up with eternal truth. Monnica appears as an interlocutor in both dialogues, conspicuous for strength of native sense, and occasionally speaking with a vigour and spirit evidently reported from the life; a woman who might have shone at any period for intellectual gifts. "We fairly forgot her sex, and thought that some great man was in our circle" (de B. V. § 10). At the close of the dialogue she speaks of the bliss of the Eternal Vision: "This beyond dispute is the blessed life, the perfect; at which we must look to be enabled to arrive, hastening on in solid faith, joyful hope, and burning love " (ib. ad fin.). In the dialogue de Ordine Augustine speaks of his mother's "ingenium, atque in res divinas inflammatus animus" (ii. § 1).
She was now near the end. Her son, an orthodox believer, was about to return with her to Africa. They were lodging at Ostia, and making the last preparations for the voyage (Conf. ix. 10). Augustine records a conversation with his mother as they sat at a window looking on the viridarium of the house—a delightful colloquy ("colloquebamur soli valde dulciter"), rising from theme to theme of subtle but holy thought to the height of the beatific vision. The "colloquy" was surely no mere monologue on Augustine's part, if he has drawn his mother truly in his two dialogues. It closed with a solemn utterance from her: "she had done with the wish to live; her son was a believer, and fully consecrated; what did she there?" (ib.). Five days later she was taken ill ("decubuit febribus"), and at once recognized the end. Her long-cherished wish to lie in the grave of Patricius was gone. "Nothing," she said, "is far from God. There is no fear lest He, at the last day, should not know whence to raise me up." "So on the ninth day of her illness, in the 56th year of her age, and in the 33rd of my own, that devout and saintly soul was released from the body." She died in the presence of Augustine, of another son, of her grandson Adeodatus, so soon to follow her, and of many others ("omnes nos") (ib. 11, 12).
Augustine's grief was great. The burial was tearless ("cum ecce corpus elatum est, imus redimus sine lacrymis"), but another time of anguish followed, and a vain effort for relief at the bath. Then sleep came and a calmer waking, and now Augustine, like his blessed mother, found help in an Ambrosian hymn, "Deus creator omnium," and at last could weep calmly. He records his prayers for the departed soul, and begs those of the reader.
Monnica's character was equally strong, lively, and tender by nature and refined by grace to extraordinary elevation. Augustine lavishes his unique eloquence upon her heavenly tone of life and influence and the intensity of her longings for the salvation of the souls she loved. He calls her his mother both in the flesh and in the Lord. His whole being was due, under God, to Monnica. Christians who knew her " dearly loved her Lord in her, for they felt His presence in her heart" (ib. 10). She was an eager student of the Scriptures (de Ord. i. § 32). In Brieger's Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, vol. i. p. 228, is printed (from Riese's Anthologia Latina, fasc. ii. p. 127) an epitaph on Monnica, bearing the name of Bassus, ex-consul; probably Anicius Bassus, consul a.d. 408, and therefore a contemporary of Augustine's. The lines are:
In tumulo Monicae. (sic.)
Hic posuit cineres genetrix castissima prolis
Augustine tui altera lux meriti,
Qui servans pacis caelestia jura sacerdos
Commissos populos moribus instituis.
Gloria vos major gestorum laude coronat
Virtutum mater felicior subolis.
In the last couplet Monnica and her son are, apparently, addressed together. The pentameter apostrophizes Monnica as "Mother of Virtues," and Augustine as her yet "happier offspring"; happier, it may be, as a celibate saint. This epitaph is an interesting proof of the religious reverence accorded from the first to Monnica. Brieger's Zeitschrift also mentions the translation of the bones of Monnica from Ostia to Rome, in 1430, in the reign of Martin V., and at the expense of Mapheus Veghius. The relics were deposited in a chapel dedicated on the occasion to Augustine, and on the sarcophagus were inscribed the following lines, a curious and instructive advance upon the older epitaph in their ascription of mediatorial powers to Monnica:
Hic Augustini sanctam venerare parentem,
Votaque fer tumulo, quo jacet illa, sacro.
Quae quondam gnato, toti nunc Monica mundo
Succurrit precibus, praestat opemque suis.[1]
This translation is dated, in the Roman Martyrology, April 9. Monnica appears as a saint in the Roman calendar, Sancta Monica vidua, Apr. 4, and not infrequently as a figure in medieval art. Scheffer's picture, painted 1845, "St. Augustin et sa mère," gives a noble modern realization of Monnica.
Together 'neath the Italian heaven
They sit, the mother and her son,
He late from her by errors riven,
Now both in Jesus one:
The dear consenting hands are knit,
And either face, as there they sit,
Is lifted as to something seen
Beyond the blue serene.
- ↑ v. 1. sibi, as the epitaph appears in Papebrochi, Acta Sanctorum Maii, t. i. p. 491.
