by Mike Oettle
TWO notable
Christian mothers appear on the calendar for May: Monica (4 May), mother of St
Augustine, and Helena (21 May), mother of the Emperor Constantine I. These
two very different mothers are remembered chiefly because of the high profiles
of their sons, and it is interesting to compare the two.
Monica, or
Monnica (died AD 387), a Romanised Berber woman of Tagaste in Numidia (now the
village of Souk-Ahras in Algeria), was married at an early age to a pagan named
Patricius. Her life with him was not easy, as he was a hot-tempered man and his
mother (who lived with them) a difficult woman, but Monica was a dutiful,
patient and loving Christian and, although she only succeeded in converting
her husband late in life, she lived in complete peace with them until their
deaths. Of her two sons, she especially loved Augustine (born in AD 354) and
made it her heart’s desire to see him baptised.
Augustine
went to study at the University of Carthage (now in Tunis) where, at the age of
19, he became a devoted follower of philosophy or “divine wisdom”. Repelled
by the “barbarity” of the Old Testament, he turned to Manichæism, a religion
which, although it encouraged ascetism and intense devotion to Christ, also
taught that the physical world was evil and did not discourage his wild way of
life, nor the fact that he was “living in sin” with a girl he stayed with for
over 10 years – longer than his nine-year fling with Manichæism. (He had a
son by her, too.) At 28 Augustine, a teacher of rhetoric, headed for Rome to
find better pupils, but then obtained a professorship (with the title of
Imperial Rhetorician) in Mediolanum.[1]
During all
this time Monica kept praying for her son and eventually joined him in
Mediolanum (he had tricked her and left her behind in Carthage). There she met
Bishop Ambrose, who had already begun to have an influence on her son. Guided
by Ambrose and Monica, Augustine was bound to find his way to complete
commitment to Jesus, and this finally happened while he was reading the Letter
to the Romans in a garden and came across the words: “Let us live decently as
people do in the daytime: no drunken orgies, no promiscuity or licentiousness,
and no wrangling or jealousy. Let your armour be the Lord Jesus Christ; forget
about satisfying your bodies with all their cravings.”[2]
After a time of preparation he was baptised by Ambrose in 387.
Monica’s
life work was done. Within just five days she took ill and died, aged 56,
satisfied that her son was at last a Christian.
He returned
to Africa[3] to live a monastic life at Tagaste, but in
391 was press-ganged into becoming a priest in the nearby city of Hippo[4]
(now Annaba) and became its bishop in 396. His writings make him the great
philosopher of the early Catholic Church, and his influence is still felt
today, not least because he had a profound influence on the great reformer
Calvin.
(Augustine
of Hippo is not to be confused with Augustine of Canterbury, also known as
Austin, who carried the gospel to south-eastern England. He died on 26 May
605.)
By contrast
Helena (AD 248-328) was no such exemplary mother until later in life. It is not
even certain that she was married to Constantine’s father, the Emperor
Constantius, but it was hardly her fault that he put her aside in order to
marry the daughter of an imperial partner, and thus advance his political
career. After Constantine had become emperor in 306 he had her proclaimed
empress dowager, and persuaded her to become a Christian. (He himself, although
he established Christianity as the official religion, resisted being baptised
until shortly before his death.) Helena did little of note until after a family
tragedy involving her favourite grandson Crispus and his stepmother, Fausta,
who were executed for an incestuous affair. Grief-stricken, she went on a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where she had churches built on the reputed sites
of the Nativity and the Ascension.
At this
point, unfortunately, Helena disappears into legend, for she is credited with
the discovery (called the “invention”) of the cross on which Jesus died (the
so-called true cross), and after this a host of miracles began to be attributed
to her, chiefly (it would seem) because of confusion with other women named
Helena. She was an especially popular saint to pray to during the Middle Ages,
but it seems that she owes her popularity to legend and her imperial status
more than to any profoundly Christian quality.
In in her
own time, however, and in the mediæval era, Helena was very highly regarded.
(She was especially popular in religious art, appearing with the “true cross”.)
It called to mind the words of the Magnificat (which one could apply
respectively to Monica and Helena): “For he hath regarded the lowliness of his
handmaiden” and “He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted
the humble and meek.”
She also
was important to England in the time of King John (*1167 †1216, king from
1199), because Rome tried to depose him on the grounds that England was a
papal fief. John counter-argued that England was not under Rome’s authority
because it was “an empire of itself”, a rather contorted argument based on the
fact that Constantius was proclaimed emperor at Eboracum (York) and Constantine
lived in Britain during his childhood.
Both Helena
and Monica have found their way into geography, thanks to St Helena Island (discovered
on St Helena’s Day, 1502, by the Portuguese navigator João da Nova Castella),
St Helena Bay on the Cape West Coast (discovered by Vasco da Gama on 7 November
1497), and the City of Santa Monica, in Los Angeles County, California.
ASIDE from Monica, the only saint from Africa on the calendar for May is Simon of Cirene (12 May), a Jew from the eastern part of modern-day Libya.
[1] Milan.
[2] Romans 13:13,14.
[3] The Romans used the word “Africa” solely for
the countries we know today as Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia; at its widest the
term also covered the western part of modern-day Libya.
The name is derived from the tribal name
Aferi; this tribe’s home was in the vicinity of the cities of Carthage and
Tynes (now Tunis), a district occupied between 310 and 307 BC for three years
by Greek forces from Syracuse.
Following this war the Phoenicians of Carthage
and western Sicily and the Greeks of eastern Sicily left each other in peace,
but the Greeks now had a name for the land around Carthage: AFRIKA, or Afrika.
In later years the Romans fought three wars
against the Phoenicians. The third war, the so-called Third Punic War (149-146
BC) resulted in the sacking of Carthage and Tynes het uitgeloop op die
vernietiging van Carthago en Tynes, the rebuilding of Tynes, and the permanent
Roman occupation of a territory largely the same as modern Tunisia, which the
Romans called Africa.
Following their later seizure of land further
west, the Romans called that territory Africa Nova. The futher extension of the
territory covered by the name Africa came in the time of Prince Henry the
Navigator (15th century).
[4] Hippo means “horse” – it’s not short for hippopotamus,
which means “river horse”.
Vir Afrikaans, kliek hier
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Write to me: Mike Oettle