Primary source · Latin
The Letters of Augustine
Augustine of Hippo · AD 386–430
What this text is
Nearly three hundred letters — to Jerome across a testy decade, to the Donatists across a broken church, to Roman officials on mercy, and the late-found Divjak letters on the slave trade.
Profile of Augustine of Hippo →
Public-domain translations
J. G. Cunningham (NPNF, 1886)
The Catholic Church is spread abroad through the whole world… she is the one true mother of Christians, and by her the schisms of all parties are judged. (Letter 43, to the Donatists of Glorius's circle.)
Manuscript witnesses
Medieval letter-collections + the Divjak corpus
9th c. onward (Divjak: 15th-c. copies of ancient collection)The corpus still growing: twenty-nine unknown letters surfaced in 1975.
Patrologia Latina, vol. 33 (Migne)
1845Standard pre-critical text of the corpus.
Provenance
Hippo and all Africa, AD 386–430 — some 300 letters, with the Divjak finds of 1975
Editions & scholarship
Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.
- S. Aureli Augustini Epistulae (CSEL 34, 44, 57–58, 88)A. Goldbacher; J. Divjak, 1895–1981The critical editions, old corpus and new finds.
- Letters (WSA II/1–4)Roland Teske, 2001–2005The complete modern English translation.