St. Augustine as a catechist

Since the 4th century, the craving for Christianity has been increasing. People of different classes and different cultural levels come to the Church: nobles and slaves, people who stood “equal in enlightenment with the century,” and semi-literate simpletons. With few exceptions, these people know very little, if not nothing, about Christianity. The Church, through its priests and later deacons, takes upon itself the responsibility of introducing these people to the Holy Scriptures, Christian dogmas and Christian morality. Teaching was conducted orally; the students were “announced”; from the Greek word χατηχέω (“to teach from the voice”, “to announce”), they were called “catechumens” (ours is “catechumens”). There was no specific method in teaching: everything depended on the pedagogical tact and skill of the teacher. The varied composition of the audience and its frequent large numbers made teaching even more difficult, especially if the teacher himself did not have much experience. Experiencing such difficulties, the modest Carthaginian deacon Deogratius turned in 400 to St. Augustine, already a famous theologian and teacher of the Church, with a request to instruct him in teaching people who come to be baptized, but still know nothing about the Christian faith. Augustine responded with a small treatise, De rudibus catechizandis (On the Education of Catechumens). This little book has one of the most respected places in world pedagogical literature: for its time it was unheard of news, a real pedagogical revelation. And to this day, the advice of the African bishop has not lost its power and significance; their undying value lies in the intelligent and high demands placed on both the teacher and the entire style of teaching, which must necessarily be combined with moral education. This was already news. The Roman school did not deal with education: this was a matter for the family. It was she, relying on family traditions and the authority of elders - father, mother, relatives, who developed character in the young man and instilled those feelings and thoughts that were to become the guide and support of his whole life. The family was taught to sacrifice one’s interests for the sake of the state, to give one’s life for the freedom and honor of one’s native country, to honor its laws, to protect the dignity and honor of one’s family and one’s clan. Cicero talks about this upbringing, and according to Pliny the Younger, in the 1st century in the empire it was the same, at least in the Italian provincial (in our sense) families of the circle that Pliny had in mind. The school - neither the secondary “grammatical” nor the higher “rhetoric” - did not interfere in this family education and did not worry about the moral education of its pupil; its goal was to ensure his success in life, to make him a master of speech, who would always be able to convince of what is now profitable to convince. Quintilian could repeat after the Stoics that only a good person can be a good speaker, but he himself did not think about how to educate this “good person”, and the school did not set itself this task at all either in the 1st century, when Quintilian wrote, or in the 4th century, when Augustine wrote. It was occupied with something else: to show the student “how to seek success in this world and to improve in rhetoric, which is earned by human honor and deceptive wealth” 1 . She didn’t even think about moral rules. Against this background, the teaching activity of the Church - St. Augustine acted as its representative and on its behalf - emerges especially clearly. The catechist must not only introduce the newcomer to a faith unknown to him; he must plant in his soul the elements of Christian ethics, begin the formation of a Christian soul - teaching the faith and education in the spirit of this faith are inseparable from one another. All teaching must be conducted with one goal - to instill in the student that there are two cornerstone commandments: love for God and love for neighbor; “We must turn to these commandments and fix the gaze of the one whom we instruct with our words” (3, 4). “Whatever you tell, tell it in such a way that your listener, when he hears it, believes; having believed, he began to hope; hoping, I fell in love” (5, 11). When introducing the student to the events of Old Testament and New Testament history, “we must indicate the reason and meaning of everything we talk about: this will help reduce the entire story to the main goal - to love, you cannot take your eyes off it, no matter what you do, no matter what you say” (7, 1). It is not enough to indicate to the listener the content of his new life and the path to it; it is necessary to save him from those stumbling blocks that are most often encountered on this path: to warn him against heresies (2, 1), from a society that should be avoided (8, 3), to tell him about the inhumanity of worldly entertainment (21), to dispel disappointment in the Christian community, in which there are so many bad people: “one should not think that the devil will remain victorious, because he has attracted many to himself: few will defeat him” (24, 11). How to teach so that all this motley material - not only new, but also completely alien to a person who grew up in the concepts and sentiments of a pagan religion - does not immediately scare him away and does not seem “temptation and madness”? Augustine gives the catechist a series of advice and instructions that are very diverse, but imbued with the same spirit. The teacher must be attentive and caring towards the student; he establishes simple friendly relations with him, constantly monitors how he assimilates new material for him, takes into account the peculiarities of his mental and spiritual make-up, and is most afraid of offending and offending him. In everything, you need to take care of him and start with something very simple: sit the student down so that he can listen calmly and comfortably to the teacher. This demand, so natural and self-evident for us, involved Augustine in a kind of “ideological struggle” with the African Church, in which a custom had taken root that demanded that the laity stand before the clergy. Augustine sharply protested: “Can we tolerate our arrogance: we do not allow grown people, our brothers, and those whom our main concern should be to make brothers, to sit in front of us, but a woman listened to Our Lord Himself, Whom the angels serve, while sitting” (16:4). Let the catechist, having spoken, monitor the impression of his words: if they do not bother the listener in any way, then you need to try everything “that can wake him up and, as if pull him out of the hole... drive away the fear that prevents you from discovering your judgment with gentle persuasion; moderate shyness by talking about brotherly communication; when asking questions, look for what is not clear, and instill confidence that the listener can freely object if it seems necessary to him... one must act in accordance with his answer: speak more simply and clearly... do not dwell on what is known... if the listener is very stupid, one must mercifully tolerate him... and explain the most necessary: ​​about the unity of faith, about temptations, about the Christian way of life. Such a person needs to talk not so much about God, but to God about him” (15, 2-4). A skilful selection must be made from the events of the Old and New Testaments; it is necessary to arouse the listener's interest; one must not overload and tire the memory. And the purpose of each lesson, its true meaning is to instill in the student, to cultivate in him “love from a pure heart, a good conscience and unfeigned faith” (3, 2-3); it is “like that golden thread on which precious stones are strung in one row” (7, 13). Don't overwork the student; noticing that he “opens his mouth not for approving words, but for a yawn... let’s give his soul a rest, season our words with a cheerful joke, decent and suitable for our topic, talk about something surprising and stunning, and most importantly, talk about himself, so that he perks up, stung by this concern for him personally...” (16, 2). The ancient school did not really take into account the characteristics and individual inclinations of the student. The teacher, however, had the duty to monitor what the student was more inclined to - history, poetry or the study of law, and what kind of speech - concise and strict or refined and embellished in every possible way - he was more successful in, but all training went the same way according to the same plan: everyone wrote papers on the same topics, read and analyzed the same authors. The teacher of the rhetoric school addressed young men of approximately the same age and the same educational level: all his students came to him from the grammar school. The position of the catechist is much more difficult: he dealt with adults (in the 4th century it was not yet customary to baptize in childhood) of different cultures and different social strata; peasants, who often had difficulty coping with Latin speech, and philosophically educated people came to him. St. Augustine structured his teaching differently, depending on whether the listener was a learned person or an ignoramus, a citizen or a foreigner, a rich man or a poor man (20:4). He left for the edification of Deogratius an exemplary lesson for a simple Carthaginian townsman (very interesting for characterizing the people of this stratum and the state of the African Church of that time) (21, 37), and especially highlighted two more cases: when not simpletons come to be baptized, but people of high culture, “with a mind sophisticated in thinking about high things” (10, 1), or who have graduated from rhetorical school. Regarding the former, he says that “such people usually, even before becoming Christians, carefully inquire about everything.” It is not necessary that “he listens from you as from a teacher what he knows” (9, 1–2). You need to have a “quiet, modest conversation” with him: ask him why he wanted to become a Christian, find out what books he read, explain the harm of heretical works (the catechist, apparently, should be well informed in both Orthodox and heretical literature) and generally warn against the temptations of thought and too much trust in reason: powerless to penetrate into the hidden, he can deviate from the truth to its likeness (9, 6-7). Despite this reservation, the man who, as a result of his thoughts about lofty things, came “to the circle of Christ’s people,” inspired Augustine with respect. His advice regarding those who have graduated from rhetoric school is imbued with a completely different feeling. Augustine himself came from this school, taught there for a long time, owed his high oratory skills to a large extent to it, and understood perfectly well what its main drawback was: the word not only overshadowed the deed, it replaced it; It led away from research and reflection to irresponsible and thoughtless admiration with a fireworks display of beautiful phrases. “Verbal abundance is likened to a reliable and irrefutable chain of evidence,” complained Minucius Felix, one of the first Christian apologists. Admiration for the word had to be overcome: “I learned from You,” Augustine turns to God, “that eloquent statements should not seem true, because they are eloquent, and awkward ones ... false, because they are awkward” (5, 6, 10). But Augustine’s contemporaries highly valued the school of rhetoric, and the people who graduated from it were imbued with a proud consciousness of their superiority over the ignorant crowd who did not know how to speak correctly. Here the catechist had a lot of work to do. “These people, who think that they have surpassed all other people thanks to the art of speech... need to be instilled and instilled so that they get out of the habit of looking down on those who have learned to avoid moral vices more than verbal errors...” (10, 2). “The most useful thing for them is to understand... that words must be preferred to thoughts... Let them know that the only voice that reaches God's ears is the voice of the heartfelt feeling; and then they will not laugh at the barbarisms and solecisms that they sometimes hear from the lips of the priest: good pronunciation, which has such meaning in the forum, may mean nothing in the church” (10, 4-6). “De rudibus catechizandis” by St. Augustine served as a guide, probably, for many catechists, but in this book he addressed directly Deogratius, whose figure shines through quite clearly through the verbal fabric of Augustine’s letter. A nervous, impressionable young man, prone to mystical contemplations, very proud, painfully worried about his teaching failures, often imaginary and always exaggerated, a lover of books and solitude, an educated man and in the recesses of his soul proud of his knowledge, he was a real martyr of his catechetical position, which forced him to communicate with people who had to explain the ABC of the Christian faith, which was often difficult to comprehend. (it’s not for nothing that Augustine repeatedly repeats, when he talks about the work of a catechist, the verb inculcare - “to drive in”). He wanted to “explain in long and complex twists what the listener’s mind would instantly absorb and absorb,” but he was forced, “having descended from the heights, to stomp around below and repeat the basics” (12, 1). He did not suffer from an excess of love for these wards of his, who somehow understood the basics, and Augustine showed him the ideal of a teacher. We know little about the teachers of the ancient school. Brief biographical notes of Suetonius do not provide material for characterizing his “glorious grammarians”, namely as teachers. Quintilian demanded that the teacher treat his students like a father, but did not fill this requirement with specific content. Blessed Augustine was the first to dwell in detail on the teacher’s relationship with his students - this has already been discussed - and he was the first to make two main demands on the teacher: he must love his job - “they listen to us more willingly when we ourselves are carried away by the matter of teaching: our joy colors all speech; it’s easier for us to speak, we are better understood” (2, 12); but in order to teach joyfully, and not “in the fog of boredom,” it is necessary that the teacher’s words come from his mouth “from an abundance of love” (19, 5). The teacher must love his students, “only then things will go well if the worker strives for him, driven by love” (13, 8). Augustine found hot words to characterize this love. Let the ignorant sit in front of the teacher - “let us adapt to these children, let us love them with brotherly, fatherly, maternal love, unite our hearts with theirs - and the familiar words will seem new to us. Such is the power of an empathetic soul: when they are touched by our words, we, teaching them, dwell in them, and they, learning, in us: as if they speak in us, and we ourselves somehow learn from them what we teach” (14, 1). And he reinforces the image of the teacher with a touching comparison: “Let the thought of the hen not leave your heart: she is exhausted, but covers the tiny chickens with her feathers; her voice is hoarse, and yet she summons her squeakers; if they do not hide under her gentle wings, they will become prey to birds of prey” (12, 5); The teacher not only communicates a number of information: he is the protector and guardian of his students. St. Augustine wrote for Deogratius while he was an African bishop. Some of his advice has meaning and value only for his time (IV century) and his country, but there are also those in his book that time was powerless to crush: St. Augustine gave the ideal of a teacher for centuries, for all countries and all times. Blazh. Augustine. Confession, I, 9, 14. Further in the text the chapter and verse of this work are indicated in brackets. – Ed.