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Abstract: Due to the conventions of late-antique epistolary politeness, it is not always easy to identify polemical passages in Augustine’s correspondence. The present contribution attempts to discern and classify some recurrent techniques and strategies that are characteristic of letters the addressee of which is him- or herself the target of Augustine’s polemics, i. e. in which polemical rhetoric is blended with diplomacy. After describing some more formal techniques, such as polemical hermeneutics and Refraintechnik , I turn to the rhetorical, i. e. persuasive, functions of polemics in Augustine’s anti-pagan, anti-Donatist and anti-Pelagian letters, using the basic distinction between direct polemics (polemics against the addressee in person) and indirect polemics (polemics against the addressee’s group or friends) as a starting point. Another relevant distinction, taken into account throughout, is whether a polemical letter is primarily designed to impress the immediate addressee or to have an effect on the wider readership that Augustine had to reckon with as soon as a letter was dispatched.

Abstract: This paper concerns itself with unfriendliness, an attitude rather than an emotion, and whether it can be detected in ancient correspondence. After discussing various other philologically detectable tells for authorial attitude or identity in modern contexts, it turns to a few examples from Late Antique correspondence (Augustine, Ruricius, Avitus). It ends with an extended linear reading of Augustine, Epistula 151 to Caecilianus on the execution of Marcellinus and Apringius, highlighting two techniques that are christened outsourcing and basso ostinato . The letter emerges, polite fancy-dress notwithstanding, as a paranoid-making, reproachful, and quite unfriendly letter.

Abstract: The analysis of salutations is often disregarded because they are said to be later additions of copyists or at least conventional phrases without any content. But the correspondence of Augustine suggests that the bishop himself composed the recorded salutations and that he even added a subtext in many cases. The survey sheds light on elements, development, and different functions of salutations in order to show that, at least in Augustine’s correspondence, an analysis of the salutations is a valuable resource to describe not only the social differences between sender and recipient, but also the atmosphere, the reason for writing, and the correspondents’ relationship to each other.

Abstract: Augustine is rarely studied as a polemist and even less often as a satirist, especially if we are to compare him with Jerome. The pages of his anti-Donatist writings are primarily read by historians and theologians, for whom, rightly, the question of his use of ridicule is of secondary importance. In this case study of Augustine’s anti-Donatist correspondence I will try to ask exactly that question. The close reading of his polemical letters proves that Augustine at times aimed at raising laughter by portraying his adversaries in a peculiar way. The analysis starts with the Donatists’ leaders who are presented as hypocrites and men of unimpressive intelligence. Next, I discuss how Augustine mocked the Donatists’ martyrs and their idea of martyrdom. The last part presents the ways of ridiculing the Donatist converts.

Abstract: Nearly half of the letters written by Augustine were directed to other clerics. The paper analyses how polemical intentions could be hidden behind friendly formulas. Particular consideration is given to the correspondence between Augustine and Donatist clerics, whom he treated as his peers and brothers.<fnote> The research was funded by the Polish National Science Centre grants: “The Presbyters in the Late Antique West” (2013/10/E/HS3/00202) and “The History of the Donatist Schism” (2015/19/D/HS3/00626).</fnote>

Abstract: Unfriendly modes of communication are integral parts of theological controversy in the Early Church. As some of the most notorious examples in this regard, the works written by Jerome of Stridon offer plentiful features of polemic ranging from relatively subtle forms of unfriendliness to open invective. Particularly well suited for a comparative reading is a group of three letters from Jerome’s pen dating to a time when the Jovinian controversy had reached yet another climactic point. Closely related to one another, since both their recipients count among Jerome’s supporters in Rome, these letters (48, 49, and 50 Hilberg) serve as case studies of epistolary polemic in Late Antiquity inviting comparison with other patristic authors, as well.