Saint Monica

St Monica (331-387)   St. Monica like most saints never told her own story. She was fortunate however to have as her biographer her son, the great St. Augustine. Monica was born in the rural town of Thagaste, now Souk Ahras in Algeria. It was a small place of only a few thousand inhabitants surrounded by farms. Monica and her family were Berbers, the native people of the country. This part of North Africa was religiously diverse. Roman paganism, the old Carthaginian paganism (Monica’s name was derived from that of the goddess Mon), a host of cults, and various strains of Christianity all existed side by side. As the daughter of Catholics Monica was brought up in the old religious traditions of the Church in Africa, such as fasting all day Saturday in preparation for Sunday Mass, and attending banquets (which sometimes degenerated into drinking parties) at the tombs of martyrs on their feast days. She remained loyal to these acts of devotion for most of her life, even after they had gone out of fashion among African Catholics. As a young adolescent girl Monica developed a taste for wine. It was her responsibility to go to the cellar and bring wine to the table for her parents and she got into the habit of taking one or two surreptitious sips before returning to the dining room. Soon she was downing a cup a day. A servant who caught her teased Monica calling her a little drunkard. Monica felt the humiliation keenly and ever after was careful to restrict her consumption of wine.

Although this story may sound like the Roman version of the child caught with her hand in the cookie jar, in Monica’s world it was a more serious infraction. Fourth-century Roman society believed wine was an erotic stimulant. A young girl who drank wine in secret was not keeping her passions under control and might even be in danger of compromising her virtue. Sometime before 354 Monica’s parents arranged a marriage for her with Patricius, a pagan, a Roman citizen, and a town councilor of Thagaste. St. Augustine always described his father as poor. Certainly Patricius was not an aristocrat (he was probably descended from freedmen, slaves who had been liberated by their master). Nonetheless Patricius owned land, a good house in town, and was comfortable enough financially that he never had to work to support himself and his family. Patricius’ mother lived with him and his new wife. Initially Monica and her mother-in-law bickered. We know that some of the women slaves of the household took sides in the women’s quarrel: on one occasion Patricius’ mother asked him to have some of these slaves beaten because their gossip was only increasing the antagonism between herself and Monica. In time Monica and her mother-in-law made peace, and Monica even persuaded her mother-in-law to become a Christian. A tiresome mother-in-law was not all Monica had to endure. Patricius had a violent temper. He never beat his wife, but his rages tested Monica’s patience. Even more distressing were Patricius’ infidelities. In the Confessions St. Augustine tells us that his mother never reproached her husband for cheating on her. Among her friends however Monica, who had a gift for sarcasm, described Roman wives as “slaves” who dared not “withstand their masters.”

        Monica gave birth to Augustine on November 13, 354. She had other children, a son Navigius and a daughter Perpetua, but we can not be certain about their birth order. Augustine was not baptized at birth. Because baptism washes away all sin many Christian parents put off the sacrament. It was not uncommon for nominal Christians to wait until they were on their deathbed to be baptized. When Augustine was born Monica had him marked with holy oil in the sign of the cross and had blessed salt, a sign of exorcism, sprinkled on his tongue. This ceremony would have made him a catechumen, one who was taking instruction in the faith, and Monica was Augustine’s teacher. Augustine was Monica’s favorite. She breast fed him herself at a time when other mothers of her class would have given their child to a wetnurse. She liked to have her boy with her, “as is the way with mothers,” Augustine recalled, “but far more than most mothers.” Patricius also loved Augustine dearly. He was ambitious for his son. By the time Augustine was 15, his father had scraped together enough money to send him to school at Madaura, a university town about 40 miles from Thagaste. The effort and expense Patricius incurred won him universal respect in town. After one year the money ran out and Augustine was compelled to return home while his father tried to raise another sum so his boy could continue his education. One day during Augustine’s year of idleness father and son when to the baths together. When Patricius saw Augustine naked and sprouting the first strands of body hair he knew his son had reached puberty. That night, overjoyed at the thought that soon he would have grandchildren and in celebration of Augustine’s budding virility, Patricius got drunk. Monica however was not ready to see Augustine marry. She worried that if he married and started a family he would never finish his education nor have any chance of going on to a lucrative career. Instead of looking for a bride for her 16-year-old son she warned him against committing sexual sins, especially the sin of Adultery. Augustine treated her “womanish advice” with contempt. He was, as he says in his Confessions, “in the mood to be seduced.” Later Augustine would blame Monica for not marrying him off. If his mother had found him a wife, Augustine argues unfairly, he would not have lived in sin with his mistress for so many years. Meanwhile Patricius came around to Monica’s way of thinking. He put away his plans of becoming a grandfather and concentrated on getting Augustine back to school. Patricius called on Romanianus, the most prominent and wealthiest man in the district. A patron-client relationship existed between Romanianus and Patricius that was further strengthened by a distant blood tie. Romanianus made a generous offer: he would subsidize Augustine’s entire education—not at Madaura, but at cosmopolitan Carthage, the city known as “Rome in Africa.” In 371 at age 17 Augustine went to Carthage to continue his studies. He had barely settled in when word came from home that Patricius was dead. Monica’s grief at the death of her husband was compounded when word reached her from Carthage that Augustine had taken a concubine. A year later the woman (in none of his writings does Augustine ever mention her name) gave birth to a baby boy they named Adeodatus, meaning “gift from God.” Augustine came home to Thagaste in 375 to take a post teaching literature. In Carthage he had joined the Manichean sect, a group that taught the universe was ruled by two opposite powers constantly in conflict. One, the Father of Greatness, embraced all positive immaterial qualities such as light and intelligence. The other, generally called Satan, ruled over base matter and was the cause of all that was evil in the world. Every human being was a battleground between these immortal forces of good and evil. Over the course of history, several “Jesuses” had come to earth to assist humankind in its struggle against Satan, but none of these Jesus figures were saviors who would triumph over Satan. To a Catholic, especially one as devout as Monica, Manicheism was the grossest of all heresies. When Monica learned what her son had become she barred the door and refused to let him in her house. So Augustine went to live with his patron Romanianus who was also a Manichee. Monica turned to God, weeping for her son as if he were dead. She went to see a bishop who had been raised a Manichee but had converted to Catholicism. Monica asked him to go speak with Augustine to show him his errors, but the bishop answered that Augustine was still in the first flush of his conversion, he was not ready to listen to sound arguments against Manicheism. Monica would not take no as an answer. She pleaded and wept and made such a nuisance of herself that the bishop lost his temper. “Go away from me,” he said. Then getting some of his composure back he added, “Don’t worry. It is not possible that the son of so many tears should be lost forever.”

      One night God sent Monica a dream to console her. She saw herself standing on a narrow wooden beam with a handsome, radiant young man. The youth told her to dry her tears because some day her son would be with her. When she told Augustine her dream he said that could indeed be together if she became a Manichee. Monica’s sarcasm served her again. She answered, “He didn’t say I was to be with you. He said you were to be with me!” In 383 Augustine announced that he was going to Rome to pursue his teaching career. His mistress and Adeodatus would accompany him. Monica wanted to go as well, but rather than refuse her outright Augustine did something very cruel. At the harbor he took her to see a small chapel dedicated to the martyr St. Cyprian. While Monica prayed Augustine hurried to the ship and sailed without her. By the time Monica came out of the chapel Augustine’s ship was already out of sight. She stood alone on the dock, beside herself with grief. Mother and son did not see each for two years. In spring 385 she decided to go to Rome, but Augustine was no longer there. He had come to Rome in hopes of making more money and winning recognition as a teacher and philosopher. Instead some of Augustine’s students cheated him out of his fees. Furthermore, the city was becoming a backwater. The emperor had made Milan his capital where he welcomed to his court intellectuals and poets from across the empire. Augustine had even heard good things about the bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose, whose learned sermons were rooted in a sound classical education. So Augustine traveled north to Milan—and Monica followed him. In Milan all of Monica’s prayers and tears bore fruit. Years earlier she had delayed arranging a marriage for him so he could finish his education. Now that education was working in Monica’s favor. Augustine had become disenchanted with Manicheism. In a gloomy mood he began rereading the Academica by his favorite classical author, Cicero. In this book the old Roman orator derided impulsive schoolboys who claim to seek the truth but become beguiled by a peculiar sect. Augustine took Cicero’s reproach to heart. He lost his faith in Manichean doctrine, and even confidence in his ability to discern what was good and true. Monica had become a member of St. Ambrose’s congregation. During Holy Week 386, when the Emperor Theodosius had surrounded Ambrose’s basilica with troops because the bishop would not surrender any Catholic church to the Arian heretics, Monica had been among the throng of Catholics who barricaded themselves with Ambrose inside the church. On Holy Thursday Theodosius backed down; the troops were sent back to their barracks and the churches of Milan were left undisturbed. Ambrose had won his showdown with the emperor.

        Ambrose’s moral authority impressed Augustine almost as much as his erudition. Yearning for the truth, longing to be taught, Augustine accompanied his mother to any Mass where Ambrose was scheduled to preach. Once Augustine began taking instruction in the faith from Ambrose, Monica felt confident enough to move against an aspect of her son’s life which she had tolerated for years: his mistress. Augustine knew that as a Catholic he could not continue to live with this woman as his common-law wife. Since she was of low birth he could not marry her either, and besides Monica was already negotiating his marriage to a Catholic heiress. Augustine would have to send away the woman he had lived with for 17 years. In the Confessions, Augustine wrote that sending away the mother of his son “cut and wounded” his heart. She returned to Africa, but left their son Adeodatus with Augustine. On the night of April 24-25, 387, at the Mass of the Easter Vigil, St. Ambrose baptized Augustine and Adeodatus. The prediction the irritable African bishop had made to Monica so many years before had been fulfilled at last.

        After his baptism Augustine resolved to return home to Thagaste. There he, Monica, Adeodatus, and a handful of like-minded friends would live as a kind of monastic community. They made their way to Ostia, the port of Rome, and waited for a ship that would take them back to Africa. One day while they were waiting Monica and Augustine stood at a window discussing the what joys the saints must experience in Heaven. Suddenly mother and son were caught up in an ecstasy and were granted a glimpse of the beatific vision. When the vision faded away Monica said, “Son, for my part I have no further joy in any thing in this life.... There was only one reason I wanted to linger in this life—to see you become a Catholic Christian before I died. Now that my God has done this for me, what more is there for me to do here?” Five days later, Monica fell ill with a fever. As she drifted in and out of consciousness, Augustine, Adeodatus, and Augustine’s brother Navigius remained at her side. At one point she told her sons to bury her in Ostia. Navigius, trying to cheer her up, said he hoped she would recover so they could return to Africa, then some day far in the future they would bury her in her own country. Monica answered, “Lay this body any where; do not worry about this: I have only one request, that wherever you are you remember me at the altar of the Lord.” One the ninth day of her illness, Monica died. She was 56 years old. As Augustine closed his mother’s eyes, Adeodatus collapsed in grief. When the boy had recovered himself everyone in the house gathered around Monica’s deathbed to chant Psalm 100, “Mercy and judgment, I will sing to thee, O Lord.”

        In 1430 Monica’s tomb was discovered in Ostia. Pope Martin V transferred the relics to Rome, enshrining them under the altar in a side chapel of the Church of St. Augustine. A fragment of the original inscription on St. Monica’s tomb was found in 1945 by two young boys who were digging beside Ostia’s Church of St. Aurea. In the 15th century Pope Eugenius IV established a confraternity of St. Monica whose members prayed for lapsed Catholics. This pious organization was revived in 1850 in Paris by a group of French women who gathered together under the patronage of St. Monica to pray for sons and husbands who had left the Church.