Emmanuel Bermon - Grammar and metaphysics: About the forms essendi, essendo, essendum, and essens in Augustine’s Ars grammatica breuiata (IV, 31 Weber)

The Ars breuiata attributed to Augustine brings a valuable piece of information about the verb esse ("to be"): "Some scholars in fairly recent times have also said, since they had to translate and explain deep and divine expressions: essendi, essendo, essendum ["to be", gen. / dat. / abl. / acc.], and essens ["being"] on the pattern of scribendi, scribendo, scribendum, scribens.") (… Docti quidam temporis recentioris cum haberent necessitatem magna et diuina quaedam interpretandi explicandique et essendi et essendo et essendum et essens dixerunt, quemadmodum scribendi, scribendo, scribendum, scribens).

The forms listed here are extremely rare or absent in the Latin of antiquity. Apart from this text, essendi is attested for the first time in two places of Augustine’s works, essendo and essendum do not appear before the ninth century, and there is only one other instance of the present participle essens, in the whole history of the Latin language: in Augustine himself, who presents it as an equivalent of the Greek ôn.

This excerpt from the Ars breuiata doubly confirms the attribution of this Treatise to Augustine. It further points out a bold grammatical innovation of which Augustine was a witness. What is it? I shall advance two hypotheses: essens was introduced to explain and perhaps to translate the name of God revealed in Exodus 3, 14 (LXX): egô eimi ho ôn; and essendi appeared in such expressions as "essendi causa" or "auctor essendi" which are precisely found in Augustine, and which formulated in Latin the Neoplatonic idea that God (or the first principle) is aitios or arche tou einai. While dealing with these two points, I will suggest that the invention of these atypical forms goes back to Marius Victorinus.