The Augustinian Recollect Enrique Eguiarte explains how, although St. Augustine never participated in a Jubilee, he did visit Rome and St. Peter’s Basilica. In the videos we will be able to better understand what a Jubilee is, and with the help of Augustine of Hippo, better understand terms such as pilgrimage, forgiveness and indulgence.
By Enrique Eguiarte, Augustinian Recollect
Someone might wonder if St. Augustine ever lived and participated in a Jubilee. The answer would be clear: ‘No’. In fact, the first Jubilee in history was called by Pope Boniface VIII in the year 1300, 870 years after the death of St. Augustine.
Now, if we were asked if St. Augustine ever visited Rome and St. Peter’s Basilica, the answer would also be clear: ‘Yes’. His first trip to the capital of the Empire was in 383, when he decided to leave the North African capital of Carthage in search of new horizons.
However, the reception that Rome gave Augustine was not exactly very welcoming, as he soon fell ill and was close to death. In the Confessions he wrote that what prevented his death was the devout and continuous prayers of his mother Saint Monica (Conf. 5,16).
He had a second disappointment in Rome. As a teacher of grammar and rhetoric, he soon began to give classes, and at first things seemed better to him than in Carthage, as the Roman students were very respectful and disciplined, in contrast to the unruliness and indiscipline of the Carthaginian students.
But at the end of the course an unpleasant surprise awaited him from his respectful students: after the lessons were over, they disappeared without paying him their fees (Conf. 5,22). Very disciplined, but not very honest…
Augustine returned to Rome after his baptism. He was on his way to his homeland but could not reach Carthage because in 387 the civil war between the Emperor Valentinian II and the usurper Magnus Maximus had begun.
After the death of his mother Saint Monica in Ostia, and unable to embark for Carthage, Augustine went to Rome and visited various monasteries in the Aventine area, as he recalls in his book De moribus (1,33,70).
He also visited St. Peter’s Basilica. It was not the monumental basilica that we can see today as one of the seven wonders of the contemporary world, the fruit of the art and ingenuity of some of the best artists of the Italian Renaissance.
English:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMzLkGgeyt8
The one he visited was the one that the Emperor Constantine had ordered to be built. St. Augustine refers to it as the “memorial of the apostle Peter,” according to his Letter 29,11. Technically speaking, a “memorial” was the tomb of a martyr, in this case that of St. Peter.
Two curious facts to conclude: Augustine was scandalized that within St. Peter’s Basilica the faithful were allowed to “eat and drink with the martyr St. Peter,” a custom that was prohibited in Milan and that shortly after, when St. Augustine became a priest in Hippo, he himself would eliminate in his own local Church.
The saint does understand that this custom was maintained in St. Peter’s Basilica, which was already visited by people from distant Churches where the practice was customary. It appeals to the universality and catholicity of the Church, as well as to respect for the healthy customs in force in each place.
A second curious fact is that the Basilica of St. Peter that Augustine visited had been built on the cemetery where the apostle Peter was buried after his martyrdom around the years 64-67.
This cemetery, which mixes pagan and Christian tombs, can be visited today. The Vatican Necropolis is located between 5 and 12 meters below St. Peter’s Basilica and its existence was revealed in the excavations carried out in the 1940s.
During the construction of the Basilica of Constantine, many of these Christian and pagan tombs were not destroyed, but rather covered with earth, while part of the structure was used for the foundations of the new basilica.