Augustine, Confessions §aug_conf_09_027: What answer I made her unto these things, I remember not.
Source: Augustine, Confessions (c. AD 400) (aug_conf_09_027) · father
What answer I made her unto these things, I remember not. For scarce five days after, or not much more, she fell sick of a fever; and in that sickness one day she fell into a swoon, and was for a while withdrawn from these visible things. We hastened round her; but she was soon brought back to her senses; and looking on me and my brother standing by her, said to us enquiringly, "Where was I?" And then looking fixedly on us, with grief amazed: "Here," saith she, "shall you bury your mother." I held my peace and refrained weeping; but my brother spake something, wishing for her, as the happier lot, that she might die, not in a strange place, but in her own land. Whereat, she with anxious look, checking him with her eyes, for that he still savoured such things, and then looking upon me: "Behold," saith she, "what he saith": and soon after to us both, "Lay," she saith, "this body any where; let not the care for that any way disquiet you: this only I request, that you would remember me at the Lord's altar, wherever you be." And having delivered this sentiment in what words she could, she held her peace, being exercised by her growing sickness.
Witnesses (Deuteronomy 19:15)
- manuscript_tradition: Patrologia Latina (Migne) vol. 32 — Confessions Latin text
- critical_edition: Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (CCSL) 27 — Verheijen
- translation: Pusey translation (1838) — Library of Fathers
- translation: Pine-Coffin translation (Penguin Classics, 1961)
- republication: Internet Archive — Confessions (multiple editions)
- republication: Project Gutenberg — Confessions
- citation_tradition: Aquinas, Summa Theologica — cites Confessions extensively