The Bishops’ Bishop
Part two: Shepherd, Administrator and Crisis Manager

By Maureen McKew

When Augustine became bishop of Hippo, he was a reluctant prelate. Instead of the life of prayer, reading and writing he had envisioned when he returned to North Africa after his conversion, he faced the prospect of leading a sizeable diocese, possibly the largest in North Africa, located in the Roman province of Numidia, now Tunisia.The city of Hippo was destroyed by Vandals shortly after Augustine’s death, but it is estimated that the diocese covered approximately 2,400 square miles.

Augustine led this diocese with its teeming, frequently litigious population and warring religious factions, while becoming the foremost religious leader in North Africa and possibly the entire Christian church. During these years, he also produced a staggering body of written work, only some of which has been discovered. More the 1,600 years after his death, he remains the model for every diocesan bishop who has followed him, right down to 2002.

The role of a diocesan bishop is not just one role, but many combined. In addition to his miter and zucchetto (skull cap), today’s diocesan bishop has to wear a variety of hats: those of shepherd, catechist, administrator, fund-raiser, cheer leader and even crisis manager. Augustine, too, wore many hats as bishop of Hippo. How he managed makes him a shining if somewhat daunting role model.

The Shepherd of Souls

The word pastor comes from Latin and means shepherd or herdsman. A modern bishop carries a version of a shepherd’s crook, called a crosier, as a symbol of this role. Augustine took his shepherd’s duty very seriously. He was a ministering, writing, traveling, preaching bishop. His theological thought was inexorably linked to his pastoral experiences, according to the Rev. Thomas Martin, O.S.A., associate professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova.

Father Martin projects Augustine into modern times, envisioning him as much loved pastor/preacher who also happens to have books on The New York Times list of best-sellers. "Augustine could never allow himself to be an ivory tower theologian, just as he could never allow himself to be an unthinking pastor," Father Martin says. "The two roles, pastor and theologian, were always rubbing against each other. There is no theological issue that he does not bring to the pulpit, whether it is grace, the Trinity or any other topic. He is always aware of its pastoral implications. It is very rare in our Church history that we find such as pastor/thinker."

In his sermons to the people of Hippo, which were faithfully recorded by a long line of secretaries, he did not talk down to the people figuratively because he respected the fact that they had their own occupations, such as farming and trading. Nor did he literally talk down to them. He spoke either sitting or standing near his cathedra (chair) to worshippers who were standing as close as 20 feet from him. He dialogued with them; sometimes he had to chide them, to calm them down because they reacted with moans and groans, even laughter. He enjoyed having them as an audience and they enjoyed being with him.

Whenever he traveled, he made a point of stopping at various towns and hamlets in the far reaches of the diocese of Hippo. The journeys were long, hot and uncomfortable. Carts with springs were long in the future. He also detested sailing; perhaps suffering from mal de mer. All of Augustine’s major biographers agree on this point: he hated to travel. However, he did it for God and for God’s people

The Civil Magistrate

Augustine presided over his diocese in a spiritual sense. However, he also took on the civil responsibility of magistrate. His "court" was called the audientia episcopalism or the bishop’s audience. Augustine’s colleague, secretary and first biographer, Possidius, wrote that the bishop held morning sessions, often working right through lunchtime, listening to disputes and attempting to arbitrate.

In his biography, St. Augustine (Librairie Artheme Fayer, 1999; English translation:

SCM-Canterbury Press, London 2002), Dr. Serge Lancel, emeritus professor of Latin literature and Roman civilization at the University of Grenoble, France, detects what might be called today a preferential option for the poor on Augustine’s part. He cites the words of the bishop in his commentary on Psalm 72, 12: For He delivers the needy when they call, the poor and those who have no helper. Augustine wrote: "It is one thing to sin in need, another to sin in plenty.

If a poor man commits a theft, his crime is the result of his hunger. Why should a rich man who is overflowing with so much steal another’s property?" However, Augustine made no secret of his personal distaste for the job of magistrate.

"When it comes to my own creature comforts, I would much prefer to do some manual work at set times, as it is laid down in well regulated monasteries, and take advantage of the other moments to read, pray or study the holy Scriptures, than to be exposed to the stormy complexities of other people’s squabbles in secular affairs that have be settled by a judgment or concluded by an intervention."

--De opera monachorum

The Humble Bishop

For all his priestly life, Augustine lived simply with his brother monks in a monastic society in his residence. According to Father Martin, he was fond of quoting Isaiah: "Don’t put your hopes in a human being." This is not false. Augustine never lost sight of the fact that neither he nor any other human being has ever been worthy of God’s grace. He studiously avoided the prestige and the honors which many of his brother bishops accepted as their due. In fact, he was more weighed down by his sense of accountability than by any gifts and possessions.

He said; "I make mistakes every day." What did he mean by that? That he was fallible, just like everyone else. However, there was another meaning. Father Martin explains: "This was not just a pastoral statement; it is also a theological one. Augustine believed that without owning up to his own moral frailty, he could not say ‘Our Father.’ He calls the ‘Our Father’ the daily cleansing. All are in need of the daily forgiveness of sins -- not just the big ones, but the little ones, too."

Augustine also preached: "We are all fellow learners before Christ’s desk." In that sentence, the bishop acknowledged that even though he had the roles of teacher, catechist, dispenser of the sacraments and preacher of the Word, he was still a fellow pupil in the school of Christ.

Augustine practiced the humility in dealing with his brother bishops. He worked hard at maintaining cordial relations with them, even though they were constantly peppering him with requests for theological tracts and explanations. Not that he ever placed good relations ahead of clear theology. However, he always broached the delicate issue of a bishop in theological error with good manners. "Hopefully, I am misunderstanding . . . ." Even in dealing with the cantankerous St. Jerome, he was persistent yet charitable. For example, he once found it necessary to correct Jerome’s misinterpretation of a letter of Paul to the Galatians, in which Paul has to reprimand Peter for a mistake. Jerome had come to the conclusion that this was role playing, that Peter could not have made an error. Augustine responded with quiet logic that if such were the case, the Scripture would be lying.

His relations with his priests were equally cordial, perhaps because he never asked them to do anything he would not do himself, nor did he live in splendor while they lived in poverty. His own rules for monastic life were for him, just as much as for the other priests and monks. However, the monks didn’t always live up to his expectations for them. In fact, several betrayed his trust, leading his biographers to make two interesting discoveries: first, that even the great Augustine was not above making some terrible errors in judgment and, second, that the way he dealt with the consequences was an early lesson in crisis management.

The Bishop Makes a Mistake.

Even by today’s standards, the matter of Antoninus of Fussala would be a bishop’s nightmare. Lancel’s description of the debacle is vivid.

As the years passed, Augustine realized that his diocese was too big geographically for him to cover. So he suggested to the pope that Hippo be divided into smaller, more manageable dioceses. Fussala was the chief town in one of the new dioceses. The language there was primarily Punic. Augustine, whose monastery was a veritable training college for bishops, had set his heart on a certain candidate who spoke the language. A date was made for the primate of Numidia to install the new bishop. To Augustine’s horror, the candidate failed to appear for the ceremony.

Now the primate was quite elderly and Augustine did not want to force him to make the journey twice. He might also have been embarrassed that one of his own had failed him. At any rate, there was present another man from Augustine’s monastery: Antoninus. He had traveled with the bishop from Hippo and even though he was only a lector and barely twenty years of age, he had two things going for him. Augustine had known him since the young man’s childhood and Antoninus spoke Punic. It is difficult to imagine Augustine being so reckless as to appoint someone who had had utterly no experience in leadership, but it happened and the result was a disaster.

No sooner had Augustine returned to Hippo than Antoninus showed his true colors.

He appointed as his advisors a priest who had been expelled from Augustine’s monastery, along with a trouble-making deacon. He also selected a deserter from the army and gave him the title of defender of the church. This "defender" proceeded to create a sort of extortion racket, by which he and Bishop Antoninus relieved the locals of their lands and property. Antoninus actually confiscated the stones from peoples’ houses to build himself a grand residence and decorated it with the objects stolen from them. He also descended into debauchery.

Antoninus’ reign of terror in Fussala went on for years because the locals were too frightened to talk. When the truth came out, Augustine took responsibility for the appointment and presided over a church court to relieve him of many of his gains and privileges. Antoninus proved to be a wily adversary, however, and made a personal appeal to Pope Boniface, offering a deceitfully obtained letter of recommendation from his primate.

The matter dragged out for a long time until an episcopal tribunal issued a damning report. The tenacious Antoninus then announced he was heading to Rome to appeal to the new pope. Augustine had to write to this pope and again, he took responsibility. What became of Antoninus is not clear. However, Lancel writes that letters of Augustine written some years later indicate that the bishop of Hippo was again administering Fussala Augustine could easily have made excuses for his hasty appointment of Antoninus and he could have given up trying to correct this error. Yet, he never stopped trying to set things right for the poor people of Fussala and he never stopped taking the blame.

The Crisis Manager

As any communications or public relations expert worth his or her salt will attest, the first and most important role of crisis management is this: tell the truth in a timely fashion. That means don’t ignore the crisis, don’t cover it up, don’t make excuses and, above all, don’t stonewall. Own up fast to any responsibility for the crisis and take steps to correct it. The matter of Antoninus was one example, but there were others.

According to the rules of Augustine’s monastery, members were required to give up individual possessions. In the year 425, when Augustine was about 71 years old and the monastery well established, one of his priests, Januarius, gave him a rude shock. He had kept control of his personal assets and willed them to a daughter, who was living at a convent. However, as he approached death, Januarius remade his will and left his property to the Diocese of Hippo. In other words, he broke the rule of the poverty and, what’s more, he disinherited his own child for the benefit of the Church.

Augustine immediately went into action. First, he addressed the Christian community of Hippo and made all the facts known. Then he publicly declined Januarius’ inheritance. Next, he explained that while he did accept some legacies, he always rejected those which came at another person’s expense. He emphasized that the monastery kept no reserves but gave everything to help poor persons. All this he outlined on December 18, just before Christmas.

Then he turned to the priests, monks, deacons and others who lived under his rule. He gave them until the feast of the Epiphany to decide between their vows and possessions, and then rid themselves of their assets. He concluded by promising his people: "If there should be one of my clerics keeping a personal possession in order to bequeath it, I will strike his name from the list of members of my clergy. He can appeal against me before a thousand councils, go wherever he pleases to lay complaints against me; with the Lord’s help he will never again be a cleric where I am bishop." Augustine’s full account can be found in Sermons 355 and 356.

In an earlier crisis, Augustine dealt not only with accusations of sexual impropriety among the men in his monastery but also with the rights of the accused. When he learned of the allegations, he explained the situation to the public without prejudging the facts or the accused and outlined his plan to deal with it. Indeed he said that he himself could not judge who was telling the truth: the accusers or the accused. So, as was the custom of the time, he announced that he had dispatched the two gentlemen on "a pilgrimage of truth" to the monastery of Paulinus of Nola in southern Italy. Unfortunately, the outcome of the pilgrimage has not been discovered. Much of Augustine’s work has been lost to history.

What does matter is that Augustine, without benefit of public affairs advisors, spin doctors or lawyers, followed the principles of crisis management. For him, scandal was not simply an embarrassment. It was a sin. He knew he was morally obligated to God and to the people of God to tell the truth and find a remedy for the scandal. He knew that he was bound to put the needs of the people ahead of his own interests or that of the diocese. He knew that his diocese, indeed the institutional Church, existed for the people and not the other way around.

The Priest of the People

As he grew in age and love and understanding of the people of his diocese, Augustine wanted to leave their interests in good hands. After years of arbitrating their disputes, he was well aware that they might engage in disputes of the naming of a successor. So he called a meeting to talk about and endorse his designated successor, Heraclius. The reaction of the people when he raised the topic is a measure of how much he was loved, according to Father Martin. "The secretary who recorded the event indicated that the people interrupted him to shout "Long live Augustine" 34 times and "Deo Gratias, Augustine our father" 15 times. Over and over, they cried out "Dignus and Justus est" (he is right and just).

A year after Augustine’s death, Hippo was sacked and burned. Fortunately, his library survived and Possidius compiled a full list of his works. In his biography, St. Augustine of Hippo (Faber and Faber, London, 1967, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California & London, 2000) Dr. Peter Brown, Rollins Professor of History at Princeton University quoted that loyal secretary’s epitaph.

"I think that those who gained most from him were those who had been able actually to see and hear him as he spoke in church, and, most of all, those who had some contact with the quality of his life among men."

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