"Serpent Wisdom" in Augustine's Sermons 64 and 64A

The sixteenth verse of the tenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew is discussed specifically in two sermons of Augustine of Hippo: 64 and 64 A (=Mai 20). Both sermons do not have an exact dating, both were delivered, as is clear from their content, on the day of remembrance of the martyrs, but at the same time they are listed among Augustine’s exegetical sermons, since they begin with the interpretation of Matthew 10:16: “I send you out like sheep among wolves. Be simple as doves and wise as serpents." These words of Christ in the Gospel are addressed to his disciples; Augustine sees in them a call to all Christians, and he points to the martyrs, whose memory was celebrated on the day of the sermon, as an example of those who fulfilled this command to imitate doves and snakes. It is easy to explain the comparison with doves to Augustine, as he himself says. The opinion about the simplicity and gentleness of doves is indeed a common place in the Christian tradition. Augustine, in the sermons under consideration, as well as in many other cases, says that pigeon birds are peaceful, sociable among themselves, live amicably, argue without malice and even fight without rage, because they have no bile (Sermo 64.7) 1. For Augustine, proof of the peacefulness of pigeons can be, in particular, the fact that they do not kill other animals, unlike many other birds, including even smaller sparrows that do not disdain insects 2. A snake is a different matter. This animal, already by virtue of its poisonousness, and therefore danger, cannot but arouse strong hostility in people, which Augustine himself points out to his listeners as one of the problems in the interpretation of this verse: “I fear the poisonousness in the snake” (Sermo 64.5). Moreover, the role of the serpent in the story of Adam and Eve (Gen. 3) firmly connected this image in Christian literature with a dark and evil force (Augustine, however, does not talk about this in the sermons under consideration 3. The interpretation is also complicated by the fact that in the sermons under consideration Augustine is dealing with a text in which the adjective φpόνιμoι relating to snakes from the Greek original is rendered by the Latin astuti, and not prudentes (the latter is often found in many other interpreters of Matthew 10:16 and in Augustine himself in some other cases). The word astutus, as we know, can and often is used with a negative connotation. There are at least two places in Augustine's writings where he argues (not entirely successfully) for the possibility of understanding astutus without a negative connotation in some passages of Scripture, or more precisely, where he argues that negative connotation is not an essential component of the semantics of this word. Let us cite these passages, which are interesting to us, especially since in both cases Matthew 10:16 is cited as an example of the use of astutus in a positive sense. The first place is in letter 167 (to Jerome). Augustine says here that some vices are similar in appearance to virtues, and do not oppose them in everything. An example is astutia, which has something in common with prudentia, while the direct and complete opposite of prudentia is imprudentia. To make it clear that by astutia is meant here an ordinary negative property, Augustine says: Nunc enim eam dico astutiam, quae usitatius in malitiosis intellegi et vocari solet; non sicut nostra loqui Scriptura consuevit, quae saepe astutiam in bono ponit: unde: Estote astuti ut serpentes; et illud: Ut et Invinibus det astutiam (Prov. 1:4). Quamquam et apud illos Romanae linguae disertissimus dixerit: Neque illi tamen ad cavendum dolus, aut astutia deerant (Sallust. Cat. 26.2) 4, astutiam ponens in bono: sed apud illos rarissimum, apud nostros frequentissimum est (Ep. 167. 2. 6). The second place is from the exegetical work “On the Book of Genesis Literally.” Here Augustine (in connection with the naming of the serpent - the tempter prudentissimus omnium bestiarum in Gen. 3:1) says that the word sapientia can be used in a negative sense, and astutia - in a positive sense only with a deviation from ordinary usage: Abusione quippe nominis ita sapientia dicitur in malo, quemadmodum in bono astutia; cum proprie magisque usitate in latina duntaxat lingua sapientes laudabiliter appellentur, astuti autem male cordati intellegantur. Unde nonnulli, sicut in plerisque codicibus invenimus, ad usum latinae locutionis, non verbum, sed potius sententiam transferentes, astutiorem omnibus bestiis istum serpentem, quam sapientiorem dicere maluerunt (De Genesi ad litteram. 11.2.4). Be that as it may, the preacher was faced with the task of showing such examples of snake behavior that could be characterized as a manifestation of astutia in a good sense, i.e. as agility and dexterity, and perhaps prudence, insight and caution. In other words, this astutia must be very close to prudentia. The knowledge about snakes accumulated by ancient scholarship is enormous: just read Schlange’s article in RE. 2 Reihe. 3. 1921 (Sp. 494–557), to see how much ancient authors wrote about the varieties of snakes, their properties and behavior. One of the widely recognized qualities of snakes in general was caution, the ability to avoid adverse circumstances. Some interpreters rightly pointed out that it was precisely this property that Christ could have had in mind when he told his disciples to be wise (i.e., in this case, prudent, cautious, prudent) like snakes. Thus, Ambrose of Milan, in his interpretation of the Gospel of Luke, speaks (regarding the vipers mentioned by John the Baptist) about the prudentia naturalis of snakes, by virtue of which they discern what is useful and achieve it (qui profutura videant et sponte deposcant-Ambr. In Luc. 2.27). Ambrose speaks directly about prudent caution in connection with Matthew 10:16 in his explanation of Psalm 36 (Ambr. Expl. ps. XII. 36. 10. 1). By the way, the interpreters of the New Age, who avoid allegorization and strive to find the most direct meaning of the Gospel words, also believe that the quality of the snakes that Christ presents as an object of imitation for his disciples is precisely prudent caution. As an example, we can cite part of the commentary on Matthew 10:16 by M. Thebeansky in the “Explanatory Bible”: “The Savior does not say: be cunning like foxes, whose cunning lies in the fact that they deceive others; but like snakes, whose policy is to protect themselves, and not to be cunning for their own safety... We must be so wise as not to unnecessarily bring disasters upon our own heads” 5 . But it was not enough for Augustine to simply talk about the caution of snakes, about the ability to avoid danger - and this would have been absurd in sermons dedicated to martyrs who did not escape death. Instead, he resorts to the example of the behavior of snakes, which can be interpreted not as an indication of caution in general, but as evidence of caution aimed at preserving the main, essential important at the expense of the secondary. Let us quote from sermon 64 A, where only this feature of the behavior of snakes is used: “<Christ> teaches us to be cunning like snakes, that is, to beware of those who can harm us. But you cannot beware of someone who is trying to harm if you do not understand how they can harm you... Let them see how the snake acts, how it exposes the curves of its body to attack instead of its head and thereby tries to preserve the head, in which, as it feels, its life is located; how she neglects everything else that makes up her length, so that her head does not fall under the blows of her attacker. So, if you want to imitate the cunning of the serpent, guard your head. Moreover, it is written: The head of a husband is Christ (1 Cor. 11:13)... Imitating this serpentine wisdom (since the head of the man is Christ), the martyrs, instead of Christ, as if their head, exposed to the persecutors everything that they owned mortally (mortaliter), so as not to destroy that part of themselves in which their life was. They fulfilled this commandment of the Lord, who taught to imitate the serpentine wisdom, so that others would believe that they had lost their heads when the order came to cut off their heads, but so that they themselves, after cutting off their bodily head, would keep their head intact - Christ” (Sermo 64 A. 2-3. - Translation hereinafter mine). Although in a parallel passage in Sermon 64 Augustine presents the same observation of the behavior of snakes as something accessible to the experience of everyone (see below), there is no doubt that it was adopted from the Latin exegetical tradition. The roots of this interpretation are probably Greek, but it is found in all major Latin exegetes, whose interpretations Augustine used, for example, in Hilary of Pictavia (In Matth. 11) and Jerome (In Matth. ad vers. 10:17–18). We find a similar argument in Augustine’s contemporary, Gaudentius (Gaudentii sermo 18. PL 20. 980–981). In Sermon 64, however, the interpretation does not stop there. Another property of the snake is brought into play here: shedding its old skin. Due to the fact that old skin is easily associated with the idea of ​​aging, old age, it is easy for Augustine to associate the change of skin of a snake with “putting off the old man,” which the Apostle Paul speaks of in his letter to the Colossians (3:10) 6 . But that's not all. It is well known (and was known in ancient times) that in order to shed old skin, snakes crawl through narrow openings, for example, between stones, where they often find lint. Augustine compares this opening, leading the serpent to renewal, with the “narrow gate” from the Sermon on the Mount, “leading into life.” The snake turns out to be a unique symbol that allows us to combine the idea of ​​the narrow path of the righteous (in this case, martyrs) with the idea of ​​renewal of life, which the follower of Christ achieves, according to the Apostle Paul, leaving behind the old and temporary. Here is part of Sermon 64, which uses all of the above motifs: “Not everything about the snake is scary. There is something repulsive in it, and there is something worthy of imitation. When the snake feels weighed down by old age and begins to feel the burden of decay, it squeezes through the crevice, takes off its old clothes and emerges renewed. Imitate her, Christian, if you hear the words of Christ: Enter through the narrow gate (Matthew 7:13). And the Apostle Paul says to you: Put off the old man and put on the new man, created according to God (Col. 3:10). This means that there is something to imitate the snake: you cannot die because of old age. Whoever dies because of any temporary gain dies because of decay. But when you strip off all this old age, you will thereby find yourself an imitator of the serpentine wisdom. Imitate the snake even more - guard your head. What does "guard your head" mean? Don't give up Christ. Perhaps one of you will notice, when you start killing a snake, how it exposes its body to the blows instead of its head. She does not allow herself to be hit in the part of her body where she knows her life lies. And our life is Christ (John 14:6). Listen to the apostle: The head of a man is Christ (1 Cor. 11:13). Therefore, whoever guards Christ within himself preserves his head in his place.” Augustine, of course, also had predecessors in this exegetical use of the motif of the snake shedding its skin or walking through narrow places; there were contemporary interpreters who mentioned the same thing in a similar context. Among the predecessors, let us name, for example, Ambrose of Milan (Ambr. Exp. ps. XII. 37. 8), a similar interpretation is found in Rufinus of Aquileia (Ruf. De benedict. patr. Dan. 3). But, as it seems to us, it is precisely about Augustine’s 64th sermon that it can be said that it not only accumulates the options for understanding the image of the snake proposed at different times by different authors, but also weaves them into such a unity in which each version supports the other, thanks to which the symbol turns out to be motivated multiple times and in many ways. Let us add to this that all the features of snakes mentioned in sermon 64 are briefly described in Augustine’s essay “On the Seventeen Questions to the Gospel of Matthew” (with the same New Testament parallels) 7 . However, the combination of the motives mentioned here achieves particular expressiveness and persuasiveness precisely in Sermon 64, because in the minds of the listeners, those who have already demonstrated the ideal imitation of the serpentine wisdom are martyrs. It was they who saved their head, sacrificing their body and earthly life for this. It was they who stripped off the oldness and renewed their lives, for they did not die for the sake of the old life. It was they who walked the narrow path for the sake of renewal, for what a path is narrower than the path of death. Thus, thanks to the skillful use of the experience of Latin exegesis, the idea of ​​serpentine wisdom, consisting in the readiness to sacrifice the bodily for the sake of the eternal and to free oneself from the old nature, entering through the narrow gate, rises in sermon 64 high above the concept of everyday caution and everyday prudence. It would be useful to think further about why Augustine did not use two more possibilities already realized by Latin biblical exegesis: he did not bind the serpents of Matt. 10:16 with the serpent of Moses (for Christians - a symbol of Christ), as Ambrose does, following Greek models (Exp. ps. 118. 6. 15), and did not draw a parallel between the eruption of poison by the snake and the rejection of evil by the righteous, like the same Ambrose (Exp. ps. XII. 37. 8). But here we would move into the realm of more fragile hypotheses. The last detail (the opinion about the absence of bile as the beginning of anger) is reproduced by Augustine more than once. It goes back in the Christian tradition to Origen (borrowed from him by Jerome, from whom Augustine could have known about it); there is no mention of it among more ancient writers. See Steier A. Taube || RE. 2. Reihe. 4. 1932. Sp. 2482. Especially on the symbolic meaning of the dove in Augustine, see the article: Lau D. Columba || Augustinus - Lexikon. 1. Sp. 1069 – 1077. Simplices autem sicut columbas esse voluit ad nulli nocendum. Nam hoc genius avis nullum omnino animalium necat, non solum grandium contra quae vires non habet, sed etiam minutissimorum quibus etiam perparvi passeres aluntur. Est autem omnibus irrationalibus animantibus una quaedam inter se societas, sicut etiam rationalibus sua id est hominibus, non solum secum sed etiam cum Angelis. Discant ergo ex similitudine columbarum nulli prorsus nocere ad societatem suam pertinenti participatione rationis (Quaestiones septendecim in Euangelium secundum Matthaeum. 8). See about this role of the snake in Augustine: Solignac A. Le serpent du paradis // Bibliothèque augustinienne. Oeuvres de Saint Augustin. Vol. 49. P. 553–555; Kelly J.F. The Devil in St. Augustine Genesis Commentaries // Studia Patristica. Vol. 33/16. Leuven, 1997, pp. 119–124. It is noteworthy that some educational publications of Sallust, even in modern times, pointed out to students the need to understand astutia in this place of the “Conspiracy of Catiline” (where this word is used in relation to Cicero) in a positive sense. Explanatory Bible. T. 3. St. Petersburg, 1911, pp. 201–203. Note that since ancient times the molting of a snake has been perceived precisely as rejuvenation. In the Greek language, the linen was called γῆpας (“old age”, see, for example: Arist. Hist. anim. 594 b 26). Therefore, for Greek exegesis such a comparison was even easier. However, the Latin preachers, it seems, were ready to use the word vetustas in almost the same meaning (Aug. En. ps. 66. 10: Vetustatem nostram ad petram Christum conteramus). Estote ergo prudentes sicut serpentes ad cavendum Malum in capite custodiendo, quod est Christus (cf. 1 Cor. 11:3), Nam Serpens pro capite totum Corpus obicit persequenti; vel quod per Angustias se coartans vetere Tunica exutus innovatur, quod imitantur quibus dictum est: Intrate per angustam portam (Matt. 7:13), cum vetere homine exuntur (cf. Col. 3:9). Nam si cavendum Malum ita moneret, ut vilierer Resistance esset malis, non supra dixisset: Mitto vos sicut oves in medio luporum (Quaestiones septendecim in Matthew 8).