• “We have ever had in communion with us Augustine of holy memory for the sake of his life and merits; never has the slightest breath of evil suspicion tarnished his name. We have always kept him in memory as a man of such great learning that my predecessors ranked him with the foremost masters. Unanimously they held him in high esteem, for all loved him and paid him honor.” —Pope St. Celestine I.
• “Would you feast on delicious food, read the works of your countryman, the blessed Augustine, nor ask us to give you what, as compared with his white flour, is but our bran.” —Pope St. Gregory I: Letter to Innocent, Prefect of Africa.
• “The greatest of teachers of the churches after the apostles.” (Maximus post apostolos ecclesiarum instructor) —Peter the Venerable: Letter 229, 13 (To St. Bernard).
• “Doctor of grace.” (Doctor gratiae.) —Official title of the bishop of Hippo. (In 1298 Boniface VIII named Sts. Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine and Gregory the Great, Doctores Ecclesiae.)
• “What does the Christian world have more golden or august than this writer? (Quid habet orbis Christianus hoc scriptore magis aurem vel augustius?) —Erasmus: Praef. Opera S. Augustini.
• “There’s no pot without bacon in it, and no sermon without St. Augustine.” —Spanish Proverb.
• “A man than whom, by the verdict of history, past ages produced no greater or grander in all the world.” —Pope Pius XI: Ad Salutem.
The Triumph of St. Augustine, by Claudio Coello.
Oil on canvas, 1664; Museo del Prado, Madrid.
Oil on canvas, 1664; Museo del Prado, Madrid.