|
some other city demanding him for their Bishop, procured privately the consent of Saint Aurelius, Archbishop of Carthage, and the approbation of his own people, and the neighboring prelates of his province of Numidia, to make St. Austin his Coadjutor in the bishopric. Saint Austin strenuously opposed the project, but was compelled to acquiesce in the will of Heaven, and was consecrated in December, 395, having in November entered into the forty-second year of his age. Valerius died the year following.
"St. Austin in his new dignity was obliged to live in the episcopal house, both on account of hospitality and for the exercise of his functions. But he engaged all the priests, deacons and subdeacons that lived with him, to renounce all property, and to engage themselves to embrace the rule he established there; nor did he admit any to Holy Orders who did not bind themselves to the same manner of life. Herein he was imitated by several other bishops, and his was the original of "Regular Canons," in imitation of the apostles. Possidius tells us that the saint's clothes and furniture were modest but decent - not slovenly. No silver was used in his house except spoons. His dishes were of earth, wood or marble. He exercised hospitality, but his table was frugal; besides herbs and pulse, some flesh was served up for strangers and the sick; nor was wine wanting; but a quantity was regulated which no guest was ever allowed to exceed. At table he loved rather reading or literary conferences than secular conversation, and, to warn his guests to shun detraction, he had the following distitch written upon his table:
"This board allows no vile detractor place,
Whose tongue shall charge the absent with disgrace."
St. Augustine would never talk to women except in the presence of a third person; nor were women - not even his sister who was an abbess and his two nieces who were nuns in her community - allowed to converse in his house. He said that though no sinister suspicion could arise from the conversation of a sister or a niece, yet they would be sometimes attended or visited by others of their sex. He disengaged himself as much as possible from purely temporal affairs that he might the better attend to things spiritual and to matters of doctrine by which course the Church has profited much; for of all the Doctors of the Church, there was none greater than he. He was doubtless one of
|
