From Pride to Humility, from Impasse to Resolution, from Day to Day: Structure and Argument in Augustine’s Nativity Sermons 195 and 196 with a Division into Five Parts

Abstract

Augustine divided his Nativity sermons into parts according to a number of structuring principles. Apart from the standard division into four parts, which he proposed in De doctrina christiana 4 (ss. 186 and 187), he also used a division into three parts (ss. 184 and 185; s. 192) and - as this article demonstrates - a division into five parts (ss. 195 and 196). This latter division is centred around a didactic moment (part 3), for which Augustine makes preparation in part 2 and upon which he looks back in part 4. Parts 2 and 4 are closely linked, the distinction being that the message of part 2 is not yet infl uenced by the didactic moment, while the message of part 4 is. In part 4, it transpires that the impasse presented in part 2 has been resolved. The corpus, consisting of parts 2, 3 and 4, is preceded by an introduction (part 1) and followed by a conclusion (part 5). The diff erent parts can be distinguished from each other on the basis of linguistic characteristics (especially sentence type, use of ...