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Augustine through the Ages. An Encyclopedia. Edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald, O.S.A. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 1999. Pp. il, 902, $75.00.)
The great African Doctor of the Church is doing well by the encyclopediasts. Alongside the stately progress of the Augustinus-Lexikon (over 1900 columns to reach `Donatists; in German, French, or English),Augustine through the Ages presents in some 500 articles by 150 scholars Augustine's life, work, thought, and influence for a readership ranging from the academic researcher to the merely curious. Users with nothing but English will find a few bibliographies beyond them, and have to negotiate around some untranslated Latin, but for the most part this volume will prove accessible to serious monoglott students. It is not Augustine for the masses.
An editor of such a work cannot avoid decisions on what to include or exclude. Many of the entries suggested themselves: each of Augustine's writings (with valuable accounts and tabulated information on his letters and sermones), family, friends, colleagues, and opponents, his controversial engagements, leading events of his life, the resources of the North African Christian tradition he fell heir to, influences on his intellectual and religious formation, the world in which he lived and the church history of his day-and much more besides, including an inevitably selective coverage of major figures and phases illustrating Augustine's...