Primary source · Latin
Possidius, Life of Augustine (with the Indiculum)
Possidius of Calama · c. AD 432–437
What this text is
The sober memoir of the man rather than the mind: Augustine's daily table, his handling of the Donatist conferences, the deathbed psalms on the wall — closed by the Indiculum, Possidius's catalogue of every work he could find in the library at Hippo. The one full portrait of Augustine by someone who knew him.
Public-domain translations
Weiskotten translation (1919, public domain)
And that his death might lack nothing, he ordered the four psalms of David that deal with penance to be copied out and, lying in bed during the days of his sickness, he looked at those sheets as they hung on the wall and read them, weeping constantly and deeply. (ch. 31)
Manuscript witnesses
Early medieval Latin tradition
8th–9th c.The Vita travels with Augustine's own corpus through the Carolingian scriptoria; no ancient copy survives.
Editio princeps (with the Opera Augustini, Basel)
1506Printed among the works it catalogues.
Weiskotten's critical text with translation
1919The edition behind the chapter numbers used here.
Provenance
Written at Hippo after Augustine's death during the Vandal siege, by a fellow-bishop of forty years' friendship
Editions & scholarship
Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.
- Sancti Augustini vita scripta a Possidio episcopoH. T. Weiskotten (ed. & tr.), 1919Critical text, translation, and notes — public domain.
- Augustine of Hippo: A BiographyPeter Brown, 1967 / 2000The modern control on Possidius's admiring portrait.