Edition Hide
Confessiones (PL)

CAPUT XI. De ecstasi et morte matris.

27. Ad haec ei quid responderim, non satis recolo. Cum interea vix intra quinque dies, aut non multo amplius decubuit febribus. Et cum aegrotaret, quodam die defectum animae passa est, et paululum subtracta a praesentibus. Nos concurrimus, sed cito reddita est sensui, et aspexit astantes me et fratrem meum, et ait nobis quasi quaerenti similis: Ubi eram? Deinde nos intuens moerore attonitos: Ponetis hic, inquit, matrem vestram? Ego silebam, et fletum frenabam. Frater autem meus quiddam locutus est, quo eam non peregre, sed in patria defungi tanquam felicius optaret. Quo audito, illa vultu anxio reverberans eum oculis quod talia saperet, atque inde me intuens: Vide, ait, quid dicit. Et mox ambobus: Ponite, inquit, hoc corpus ubicumque; nihil vos ejus cura conturbet; tantum illud vos rogo, ut ad Domini altare memineritis mei ubi fueritis. Cumque hanc sententiam verbis quibus poterat explicasset, conticuit; et ingravescente morbo exercebatur.

28. Ego vero cogitans dona tua, Deus invisibilis, quae immittis in corda fidelium tuorum, et proveniunt inde fruges admirabiles; gaudebam et gratias agebam tibi, recolens quod noveram, quanta cura semper aestuasset de sepulcro quod sibi providerat et praeparaverat juxta corpus viri sui. Quia enim valde concorditer vixerant, id etiam volebat, ut est animus humanus minus capax divinorum, adjungi ad illam felicitatem, et commemorari ab hominibus, concessum sibi esse post transmarinam peregrinationem, ut conjuncta terra amborum conjugum terra tegeretur. Quando autem ista inanitas plenitudine bonitatis tuae coeperat in ejus corde non esse, nesciebam, et laetabar admirans quod sic mihi aperuisset; quanquam et in illo sermone nostro ad fenestram cum dixit, Jam quid hic facio? non apparuit desiderare in patria mori. Audivi etiam postea, quod jam cum Ostiis essemus, cum quibusdam amicis meis materna fiducia colloquebatur [Col. 0776] quodam die de contemptu vitae hujus et bono mortis, ubi ipse non aderam; illisque stupentibus virtutem feminae, quam tu dederas ei, quaerentibusque utrum non formidaret tam longe a sua civitate corpus relinquere: Nihil, inquit, longe est Deo; neque timendum est ne ille non agnoscat in fine saeculi, unde me resuscitet. Ergo die nono aegritudinis suae, quinquagesimo et sexto anno aetatis suae, trigesimo et tertio aetatis meae, anima illa religiosa et pia corpore soluta est.

Translation Hide
The Confessions of St. Augustin In Thirteen Books

Chapter XI.--His Mother, Attacked by Fever, Dies at Ostia.

27. What reply I made unto her to these things I do not well remember. However, scarcely five days after, or not much more, she was prostrated by fever; and while she was sick, she one day sank into a swoon, and was for a short time unconscious of visible things. We hurried up to her; but she soon regained her senses, and gazing on me and my brother as we stood by her, she said to us inquiringly, "Where was I?" Then looking intently at us stupefied with grief, "Here," saith she, "shall you bury your mother." I was silent, and refrained from weeping; but my brother said something, wishing her, as the happier lot, to die in her own country and not abroad. She, when she heard this, with anxious countenance arrested him with her eye, as savouring of such things, and then gazing at me, "Behold," saith she, "what he saith;" and soon after to us both she saith, "Lay this body anywhere, let not the care for it trouble you at all. This only I ask, that you will remember me at the Lord's altar, wherever you be." And when she had given forth this opinion in such words as she could, she was silent, being in pain with her increasing sickness.

28. But, as I reflected on Thy gifts, O thou invisible God, which Thou instillest into the hearts of Thy faithful ones, whence such marvellous fruits do spring, I did rejoice and give thanks unto Thee, calling to mind what I knew before, how she had ever burned with anxiety respecting her burial-place, which she had provided and prepared for herself by the body of her husband. For as they had lived very peacefully together, her desire had also been (so little is the human mind capable of grasping things divine) that this should be added to that happiness, and be talked of among men, that after her wandering beyond the sea, it had been granted her that they both, so united on earth, should lie in the same grave. But when this uselessness had, through the bounty of Thy goodness, begun to be no longer in her heart, I knew not, and I was full of joy admiring what she had thus disclosed to me; though indeed in that our conversation in the window also, when she said, "What do I here any longer?" she appeared not to desire to die in her own country. I heard afterwards, too, that at the time we were at Ostia, with a maternal confidence she one day, when I was absent, was speaking with certain of my friends on the contemning of this life, and the blessing of death; and when they--amazed at the courage which Thou hadst given to her, a woman--asked her whether she did not dread leaving her body at such a distance from her own city, she replied, "Nothing is far to God; nor need I fear lest He should be ignorant at the end of the world of the place whence He is to raise me up." On the ninth day, then, of her sickness, the fifty-sixth year of her age, and the thirty-third of mine, was that religious and devout soul set free from the body.