Augustine & Architecture of Preaching

People often ask me about the physical setting of Augustine's preaching. What would it actually have looked like to hear him preach?

Well, in all likelihood the preacher would be wearing the long robes of a monk. Beside his fellow ministers, he would have looked undistinctive as he would not have worn symbols of high ecclesiastical office. Shaved head, simple robes, dark African skin.

Before the service he would pray with his fellow ministers, while
the congregation stood around gossiping. Once he entered the church building, a certain anticipation would occur, though by all accounts that did not mean the people would be silent! They could be shouting out demands for their favourite readings, requests that the sermon deal with an issue they were concerned about, expressing frustrations about a legal ruling Augustine may have given against them.

After the readings and sung Psalm, Augustine would preach. The most striking thing, to my mind, about the visual experience would be his posture. Modern preachers stand to speak, while listeners sit. Jewish rabbis (such as Jesus) sat to teach, with listeners crowded round.

The model Augustine adopted was taken from his secular environment of the Roman empire. In Augustine's church, the listeners (about 300 of them) stood, packed into the small church building. Others milled around outside. While the crowd listened, and the stenographers scribbled down every word, Augustine sat to preach on his cathedra.

The cathedra was a large, imposing seat. It was made of either polished stone or possibly marble. Sitting on a raised platform, it may have been draped with a colourful cloth. The cathedra would have been an incredibly emotive and symbolic position from which to proclaim the Gospel. For from a similar cathedra, Pilate had sat to pass judgment on Jesus Christ (Matthew 27:19). The example I have pictured above is a marbel cathedra, used for the coronation of Roman Emperors from about 930 to 1530.

Thus Augustine's preaching, visually, represented the stunning advance the Gospel made in only a few generations since Jesus. Before Constantine, preaching could not be practiced in N Africa - at least not has it came to be done by Augustine. For prior to Constantine, persecution forced Christians to meet secretly in small groups. The church leaders wrote treatises and scholarly works, but they could not offer preached sermons as public discourse.

Augustine's cathedra represented the subversive victory of Christ over the Empire that executed him, and was emblematic of Augustine's remarkable ability to make use of secular tools in service of Christian preaching.

It can be interesting to analyse the visual setting of the place we hear sermons preached from...