The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation

Episode 94 - Holy Bath Houses and Invisible Wine: The Real Patrick Behind Augustine's Father

• Paul

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The story of Augustine's family has been distorted through centuries of scholarly misinterpretation. What happens when we strip away these layers of projection and examine what Augustine actually wrote about his father Patrick, his mother Monica, and his brother Navigius?

Traditional portrayals depict Patrick as a villain - habitually unfaithful, violently abusive, and perpetually drunk. Monica appears as a long-suffering Christian wife enduring her pagan husband's cruelty. But these characterizations serve a specific narrative purpose: they make Augustine's spiritual journey seem more remarkable by contrast. When we examine the primary sources carefully, however, a very different picture emerges.

The "wronging of the marriage bed" that Monica endured wasn't adultery, but Patrick's unwillingness to observe periods of sexual abstinence during religious festivals - a common practice among Berber Christians that continues in some Eastern churches today. The infamous "bathhouse incident" wasn't Patrick taking his son to an orgy, but simply expressing joy that Augustine showed interest in women, meaning he might marry and produce grandchildren. And the "invisible wine" that intoxicated Patrick wasn't alcohol but spiritual excitement.

Most tellingly, Monica herself appears throughout Augustine's writings not as a timid, abused woman, but as forthright and courageous - someone who started riots over religious principles and wasn't afraid to discipline her son when necessary. These details paint a complex but far more positive portrait of the family that shaped Western Christianity's most influential theologian.

By understanding Augustine's family more accurately, we gain insight into his theological development and can better discern where his thinking reflects genuine Christian tradition versus his own philosophical innovations. This exploration invites us to question how our modern assumptions color our reading of ancient texts and challenges us to develop a more Christ-centered perspective on church history.

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

Speaker 1:

Well, welcome to the next episode of the Christ-Centered Cosmic Civilization. And we're continuing to look at Augustine immense influence that he has on creating the Western worldview that really dominates for about a thousand years and, in some ways, still does, and so we were picking away at him because we want to see the strengths and weaknesses of that and, ultimately, we want to improve on it, get more biblical, more Jesus-centered, because not everything Augustine says is Jesus-centered. He has been described as someone who is God-centered but not Jesus-centered, and maybe that's something for us to think about. But he is certainly this enormous influence and a great thinker, but we're wanting to examine him closely to help us with this desire, zeal we have to get a Christ-centered cosmic civilization view. Now, then, we're going to think about not Augustine himself directly now, but those around him. We want to think about his dad, patrick, his mum, who's Monica, and then his brother. What's his brother's name? Pj, navigius, navigius.

Speaker 1:

Now, each of those is really interesting and we might even do an episode on each of them. Um, but, and? And there's other family, family members beyond that in a wider circle. So, but, uh, the reason we want to do this is there's a strange thing that has happened in, let's call it, the Augustine industry. And what he's done is that these members of his family, his relatives, are, uh, denigrated uh, and really run down in a very bad way, making them seem like really bad people or stupid people. And the goal of that, whether consciously or unconsciously, seems to be to say to to. It's an attempt to big up augustine and say, oh, oh, look how foolish, look how pagan, look how, what bad Christians. Everybody is around him. And then the idea is, and then look at him, how incredibly Christian he is. And it's a bit. It seems to be that. That's the only way I can make sense of it and we. The reason we want to pick at that and see the truth of that, of what really was, is because we can see that there are ways in which Augustine isn't as Christian as he should be. Like we've thought about him being principally philosopher and he wants to be thoroughly Christ-centred in his philosophy. But is he, or is he still, particularly in his early years when he's first become a Christian? He's still carrying a lot of pagan philosophical baggage and it takes him a long time to get rid of it and, like us all, he never gets rid of it all. And so we want to then look at his family to sort of see what is the truth about his family, how pagan and messed up were they? Or were they actually much better than they are sometimes depicted?

Speaker 1:

So I want to begin by let's begin with Patrick. His father and he gets a very rough time in write-ups about him, like he's sometimes called in PJ's written a lengthy article about him for Global Church History Project and you can, if you're, if you subscribe to that, you can access these super long, detailed posts that he has on these people. But the Patrick one's quite extensive and he's described as things like habitually unfaithful or a drunkard, or a man of spontaneous violence and things like this, and he comes across as an absolute horror. And then even the Catholic Encyclopedia describes him as a man having dissolute habits with drunkenness and then like as if he was consistently sexually immoral and things like that, physical abuse, all kinds of things. And maybe you give this quotation from Elaine Pagel's claim of Patrick's habitual unfaithfulness, and she said this that the violence connected with his natural role as a disciplinarian spilt over internally and the wife was the first object in its path. So here patrick is and he's now being depicted as a domestic abuser, violent at home, beating up monica and then elaine.

Speaker 1:

Pagel says the most graphic testimony is that of augustine's own mother, monica. Her relationships with augustine and her other children, on the one hand, and with her husband, patrick, on the other. The anger of the husband was as commonplace as his sexual liberties taken inside and outside the household. His anger was sudden. His anger was sudden, unprovoked and unpredictable. Well, this guy sounds like a villain out of a horror movie, you know, sexual liberties taken inside and outside, and constantly beating up people, especially Monica, and she's trying to absorb all this violence to protect her children.

Speaker 1:

I mean, if that's true, I mean, patrick is a horror, isn't he? Okay, now then, where is all that from? I mean, there's a lot of this doing down of Patrick, and maybe that gives us enough of a flavour of it. But first of all, like cause, doesn't? I'm going to ask Peter now? Isn't it the case, though, that in the confessions, like, here's a quotation from Augustine's confessions, and this perhaps gives rise to this, and maybe we'll start with this one, and maybe you can explain how, why this is to be understood and why Augustine might say something like this and what Augustine might mean by it, rather than what a modern person, like. A modern person reads a comment We'll see the comment in a second but a modern person might read that and think it means one thing. But Augustine, with his perspective, is something. It might be something entirely different, but anyway, listen to this.

Speaker 1:

This is from Confessions, book 9, Chapter 9, like verse 19. And it says this Monica so bore the wronging of her bed as never to have any dissension with her husband on account of it, for she waited for God's mercy on Patrick that by believing in God Patrick might become chaste. So there is the idea that she put up with Patrick wronging the marriage bed in order not to have quarrels with him, and instead what she did was waited for god to kind of save him, and that would sort him out. So what is that? Let's begin with that what, how, what. How do people take this kind of language and what do they think of it? And then you help us perhaps think about what Augustine might have really meant.

Speaker 2:

So on that sort of basis, as we're thinking, people don't always take seriously how kind of pagan in a sense Augustine can be or like non-biblical often. People then assume when he has this wronging of the bed it means more or less what it does in the Bible, where that, you know, to defile the marriage bed is adultery, so that. But there are lots of reasons not to think that and really from the context of what he's saying there and what he says elsewhere about monica and about marriage, so we know monica was forthright and would tell people off if they did things wrong, even Patrick. So she did stand up to Patrick when he was in the wrong and if he committed adultery he would obviously be in the wrong and that would be worth telling him about. And so like on one occasion she started a riot in Rome over a kind of religious and moral issue and also when St Augustine wanted to come home but he was kind of being all edgy and he was like trying to troll Christianity because he was a maniche at that time, she didn't have any of it and threw him out and wouldn't talk to him and all of that.

Speaker 2:

So she was very forthright. That was the kind of person she was, wouldn't talk to him and all of that. So she was very forthright. That was the kind of person she was. So she's not an incredibly meek person in the bad sense of that of just not being brave as Christians are called to be and all of this and just putting up with evil and not convicting people about evil. That's not it. That is not Monica, like during her marriage with patrick or after. So it's like that's not consistent and it's not consistent with either of their teachings, monica or augustine, on marriage. So it just can't be that. Um. But when we look at berber culture because she she's very much a berber, um, and you you know Augustine's much more Roman. We thought about that heritage before as like an Afar or an Afros who's you know part of that Roman world more.

Speaker 1:

But Monica is very Berber and amongst Berber Christians chastity within marriage had these very specific confines about, like during Lent, no marital interaction is allowed and on many other occasions certainly no Sundays, I think, probably not Saturdays either Christianity, because I know that, like they take in the Bible, for example in Exodus, when they get to Sinai and Moses tell that they're given instructions about how to prepare because the angel of the Lord is there and says now get ready, because the Lord, meaning the father, is going to come down to the top of the mountain. You must get yourselves ready. And then he says in this time you must prepare yourselves and cleanse yourselves and don't have any marital relations during this time of spiritual preparation. And you get that sort of thing in the Bible, where even married couples are to refrain from sexual relations in times of holy festivals or times of fasting or preparation. So that's in the Bible. The reason I'm just pointing that out is sometimes when I've explained how Berber Christians are like that and they're not the only ones, I mean, there were plenty of other Christians at that time who were like that but you do get this sort of zeal for the Lord in that Berber Christianity Sometimes people have said they obviously are not really Christian and it's like no, that is really Christian, that is all biblical.

Speaker 1:

And the fact that whenever I've tried to explain that concept of fasting from sexual relations for periods and the Apostle Paul even mentions this, doesn't he in 1 Corinthians 7, this idea of having periods of time like that. But when I mention it, modern Christians are like, whoa, hang on, that's weird, that's like nothing to do with Christianity. It is a really Christian thing. So that, yeah, I was just wanting to intervene there to just give some biblical context to that idea of sort of withholding, or not even withholding really, because it's a mutual thing. We're both a Christian couple are like, yeah, let us devote ourselves to the lord and give all our passion to the lord and therefore not with each other for this period of time. So, yeah, it's a moniker.

Speaker 2:

As a berber christian knows that that that is part of christian life and so in ethiopia, if you've had that marital interaction in the week, you're not allowed communion for that same reason. And you're not allowed to approach the mount. So they're like Jesus has really come down from heaven in this bread, so you can't approach it, right?

Speaker 1:

So they literally go to the Exodus passage and say if God is coming down to be among us which is what Holy Communion is about you must fulfill the regulations of Exodus 19 in order to take Holy Communion. Wow, I didn't even know that PJ. That's an amazing. I mean, whether all churches will adopt that practice, I doubt, and maybe it's not the right thing to do, but it is a fascinating insight into how global Christianity thinks about these things and how seriously take Christian marriage and this kind of communion with the Lord.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so yeah, that's the key of it, and it's that one Corinthians 7, where it's like, when you've got christians who have been given more chastity, as they've uh carried along in the christian faith, then you can have periods that both agree upon uh to abstain for long periods of time. So what's going on in that passage is that Augustine believes Patrick should have been totally chaste, which for him means abstaining for these times, especially Lent and so on. And so Monica seems to also believe this personally. But knowing that St Patrick was only a catechumen at that time, couldn't be expected to have the full spiritual graces from, because I suppose if he's not baptized he can't have communion yet and everything. And so they do believe again. That is when you really encounter the living God, and then the living God changes you in these moments of sacrament. So then she's just like before. All that's happened.

Speaker 2:

I can't hold him to that standard that I I hold myself to and I hold the, the kids to. Um, I can't expect that of him. So they go, for they don't have long periods of time where they abstain, and so it doesn't mean so some people have it that, um, you know, whenever patrick wanted it, then she would have to, which isn't what he's saying either. It's just that they didn't go for very long periods, like Lent, which is, you know, 40 plus days, and they didn't go for that long period of time without agreeing with each other about it before you know his full conversion. For his full conversion.

Speaker 1:

So that makes sense and that fits a lot more with the language of actually what Augustine's saying. And of course, modern people are always a little bit Well. It says quite a lot about the modern people what they think those phrases refer to rather than what Augustine means by it. But on the other hand, before Patrick really is a catechumen, there are things referred to that, for example, it's often assumed that his father like immorality. That is it true? That, like when augustine was a teenager and he goes to the public baths with his dad and with patrick, and then there's a kind of bawdy locker room initiation event, isn't there, where um augustine is kind of taken to kind of a drunken orgy by Patrick. Now, surely that is a bad thing for Patrick. Now we're laughing actually because I'm stating it. The way I'm stating it is how people describe it and it's those details.

Speaker 2:

Well, like you say so, he was actually a catacumban at that time, but people often say this is when he was a pagan.

Speaker 1:

So they say exactly that I thought that because of the language people use, they literally describe him patrick taking uh taking augustine to a drunken orgy which, yeah, again.

Speaker 2:

So, like when we read augustine, we get a totally different idea when we read the full passage and not just snippets taken. And augustine believe he believes he's very much like the apostle paul, like the least and taken out of time, um, and also his words being taken out of context and that happened in his own lifetime and we can see with that passage and everything it does a lot. So with the chastity passage we thought before that gets taken out of context and so people don't understand it and it's definitely the case here. So what happens? Yeah, he does go to this bathhouse and then he doesn't go into the exact details, but something happens that shows he's attracted to women.

Speaker 2:

And Patrick is very happy about this because he didn't know that was how Augustine was. He thought he might have been either asexual and everything, because he was obviously. You know, monica has a very ascetic way of life and she would quite like the kids to just be desert monks or maybe thought he was gay, because there was plenty of that in the Roman Empire happening. And you know he wasn't judging or anything, he just didn't go into it. But then finding out in this moment in the bathhouse that he did.

Speaker 1:

So Augustine in some way indicates, or in some, he has a strong attraction to the opposite sex and, of course, if we know all the story of the confessions, we could have reassured. Patrick, you don't need to worry, like um on that count, um, but uh, so patrick is a, becomes aware of this, and then he's quite he's happy about that, isn't he? Now, is that?

Speaker 2:

and he rushes home drunk on the invisible wine.

Speaker 1:

Yeah let me read the actual Confessions, book two, chapter three, part six. It says Augustine claims that Patrick was, quote rejoicing in that intoxication wherein the world so often forgets you, its creator, and falls in love with your creature instead of you, from that invisible wine. So Augustine is saying Patrick was intoxicated on the invisible wine of the creator, not intoxicated on visible wine that's earthly. Isn't that fair?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and so he's just happy because he was worried he might not have become a grandad Because Navigis was also very ascetic and holy and everything. But actually Navigis did get married and have kids but he was just worried he's got these very ascetic children who aren't showing a lot of attraction or anything, just worried. He's got these very ascetic children who aren't showing a lot of attraction or anything and he would. Actually he's getting old and he wants to make sure he's looked after. He also wants to make sure he's got grandkids because he'd love grandkids and he was apparently a great grandad. Again, if we look at all of Augustine's work we would see that he was a great grandad. But from this earlier stuff we read you wouldn't have that impression at all.

Speaker 1:

But he was and he was excited and he just thought, yeah, and it's a very contemporary thing because just this last week I was speaking to a father who was concerned because his children had no interest in getting married or producing any children. But there's all sorts of words now to describe people who were sort of radically individual and just live alone. And outside of the Western world, in Asia, it's like a crisis-level thing in certain countries because it's so few children actually do produce offspring and literally governments kind of are trying to pay people and things and policies are put forward. So it's kind of like you know that people often draw parallels between the ancient world and our modern world and the crises of them and what caused that ancient world to decline, and they'll say, oh, the same thing's happening now.

Speaker 1:

But one of them is that this like where many children, for one reason or another, don't wish to have offspring and Patrick's worried about that. Now parents are like no, no, they're not even allowed to be worried about it anymore. That's considered prejudicial. But now at least in his time he was free to be upset about it or worried about it, and then, when he's comforted, so then so he's happy about that. There's no indication that they went and got drunk and certainly no indication that they went to an orgy or something, yeah.

Speaker 2:

and again, if you're in a Western country that doesn't have public baths or anything, the idea of there being an incident like this in a public bath means, oh, this is incredibly bawdy and evil. But we've got friends who are finnish who, yeah, there's sauna stuff that happens without any of that sort of connotation yeah, nothing to do with sexual immorality or debauchery yeah it's just like for most, I think for most of the world.

Speaker 1:

Um like, uh, to have baths where there were, there are people publicly nude is relatively common, and I think modern Western people get freaked out by that, and that in itself, though, is indicative of a deep problem in the worldview that the human body is. So People are so uncomfortable with their their own body and sexuality, really. Now, um, I also, uh, so we've got that, but augustine is, isn't it the case that he is somewhat unhappy, though, because his dad has a kind of somewhat positive view of human sexuality, and augustine wished kind of wished that his dad had given him a negative one. Is that fair?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, because he does feel in retrospect, partly because he doesn't want to blame Monica, but actually there's some things Monica said where she showed she was just as happy. In fact she at one point seemed to think, oh, augustine's going to be doing adultery and all of this sort of stuff, and so just tells him make sure you don't commit adultery or fornication with a married woman, like, just make sure it's all, which is like terrible advice from a parent. But he never wants to put Monica under the firing line, partly because obviously she was alive for some of the works he was writing. So he kind of does seem to blame Patrick a bit. So he wants someone to blame. He decides to blame Patrick Even though what Patrick says is not quite so damaging. He's just like oh, grandkids on the way, that would be great and really that should entail marriage. So he seems to basically be excited about marriage.

Speaker 2:

But Augustine feels because he was on the verge of committing all the sins that he would and getting a child out of wedlock and everything that all happens and you get to concubine and all of this, he feels that's totally Patrick should have been much more sensitive to the struggles he was going through and should have been much more as you say, like have a much more negative view of sexuality, entirely Not like like we were reading St Oregon before and he had a strangely incredibly positive view. We were saying a married couple that just love each other in the Lord are like eunuchs. You know, when Jesus says you've got to be like a eunuch, totally cutting off the flesh, he's saying they do that because marriage is a totally good thing. They are this kind of virginal eunuch thing if they do it for the Lord.

Speaker 2:

But if someone is totally ascetic for the wrong reasons that Augustine might have been if he was a maniche and to attain gnosis he totally cut off sexuality and everything that would be according to Oregon. That would have been like whoredom sort of thing. So a very different view from a fellow North African. But perhaps that is because Augustine ends up in this gnostic route later in life. That affects how he thinks about his childhood. But then Patrick and Monica wouldn't have necessarily shared those misgivings and everything.

Speaker 1:

They might have had a more Oregonist yeah, a more positive, natural kind of view, whereas Augustine because he's messed around with the Manichaeans, it has twisted him slightly and that's something we might want to explore in a later piece about. Because he's messed around with the manichees, it has twisted him slightly and that's something we might want to explore in a later piece about does he ever really sort out desire and what that's all about? Okay, let's just ask at the end of this can you tell us? Because what about the idea that he was a very violent man and everyone lived in fear of this wife beating husband? Is there any truth in?

Speaker 2:

that Well, augustine denies it constantly, like in more than one place. But people just feel like they can read through him and say like no, I see what's actually going on, there is actual beating going on. And say like no, I see what's actually going on, there is actual beating going on. So often they like to think that basically Patrick did beat Monica when the kids weren't looking and then therefore they didn't know and therefore, and they say like Monica acted timorously and everything and that shows she must have been beaten. But, as we thought before, she doesn't act particularly timorously or anything. She seems entirely forthright and brave and you know all of that. She doesn't act like a, an abused woman, really yeah, well, she doesn't at all, I mean.

Speaker 1:

So it's almost like people want to read onto the situation something, but it doesn't fit her at all. If you, if you know her and all, and the way she lived and spoke and acted, she doesn't appear to be like behaving as if she is domestically abused yeah, and I think one of the things that happens is like she becomes like a pagan saint of abused women because people project this onto her.

Speaker 2:

So it becomes something where a lot of people get very passionate and they found the kind of like oh, this is the saint for me sort of thing and they project all this on her because she becomes very caught up in kind of poetry and some like plays and stuff that speak to people, but really it's the plays and poems and stuff they've read about her and not her and the direct sources that are connecting with them, and so and it seems odd that to me, because there are plenty of examples of, say, of female saints who would very easily fit a model of suffering domestic abuse.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and it's part of the overt story, like the prophetess abigail, yeah, prophetess abigail, but for monica it just there isn't really any evidence to go on. It's all. It's really projection, isn't it? And that the it's again like because um augustine and his family are so fascinating to western christian that there is this kind of almost industry around them in artwork, poems, plays, everything really, and not all of what's become generated. It's got sort of a life of its own ideas about them. And then when you say, but what is the actual evidence for any of this?

Speaker 2:

It turns out and sometimes none, but sometimes the actual evidence is against it, like in that case really yeah, and and they like with the case with him getting drunk supposedly, and he literally says you know invisible wine so he cannot be talking about.

Speaker 1:

Uh, unless he's talking about white wine, I guess, but like, but he literally says he's intoxicated about the creator, like, uh, rejoicing in cre in creation, really, and that fits with everything. Okay, look, we've come to the end of our time and I feel like there is so much more we could say, um, but that's probably enough about patrick and maybe we'll be able to think about Monica and what's the Navigis. Are there any other members of his family that are of interest?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, he's got a sister traditionally said to be called Perpetua, but he doesn't name her directly, but they usually say and Perpetua is a very common Berber name after that Marta. So it's kind of when in doubt sort of situation, so that she's also there's interesting stuff we can say about her. And then possibly he's got another sister who was widowed, and then lots of nephews, lots of cousins, so it's a big family, okay, well, we may have more to say.

Speaker 1:

So we don't know for certain. Her name's Peretua, but it's just because it's a common name at the time. It's like in Britain today If you're not sure what a name someone's called you, just well, it used to be John, but now Muhammad. That's the most common first name, so it's like that. Anyway, that's enough for this episode. There's so much to about. I hope you may, if you're listening, actually read Augustine's Confessions. There's some great modern translations that are very readable, and even abridged ones that make them just smaller and manageable. I think Penguin do a little kind of mini edition of it. That's very readable, but see how you get on.