The Retractationes of Saint Augustine

In the year 427, when Saint Augustine was seventy-two years of age, he began to work on a treatise which he called the Retractationes. This was a task he had been wanting to accomplish since 412, when the idea first occurred to him, as he confessed to Marcellinus,1 “to gather together and point out,...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Eller, Meredith F. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Cambridge Univ. Press 1949
In: Church history
Year: 1949, Volume: 18, Issue: 3, Pages: 172-183
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Summary:In the year 427, when Saint Augustine was seventy-two years of age, he began to work on a treatise which he called the Retractationes. This was a task he had been wanting to accomplish since 412, when the idea first occurred to him, as he confessed to Marcellinus,1 “to gather together and point out, in a work devoted to this express purpose, all the things which most justly displease me in my books.” He states in the Prologue to the Retractationes that he finally felt forced to begin the work. “For a long time I have been thinking over and planning a task which, with the help of the Lord, I am now beginning, because I think it should be postponed no longer: namely, to review my writings, whether books, letters, or tractates, with a kind of judicial severity, and to indicate, as if with a censor's pen, what displeases me.”2
ISSN:1755-2613
Contains:Enthalten in: Church history
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.2307/3162239