In the Confessions, after telling his audience about the internal struggle with his physical desires, Augustine relates famous tolle lege incident in a garden in Milan where, with his friend Alypius, Augustine happened to read a codex of Paul’s epistle and took the ‘first heading I cast my eyes upon’ (Conf. 8.12.29) on himself. It might be admitted that, with regard to the act of consulting a sacred book, Augustine followed a venerable tradition in late antiquity, in which the words tolle lege chanted by children as they played indicate a procedure of the oracle. The use of the word oraculum in the very passage supports the view that Augustine himself was familiar with this tradition.
It is noteworthy that Augustine recorded the conversation he had with a knowledgable physician, Vindicianus, earlier in the Confessions (Conf. 4.3.5-6), in which they discussed how astrological predictions often turned out to be correct. Vindicianus also pointed out the prediction drawn from the consultation of a book of poetry. Yet, remarkably, although he concluded that the true predictions by astrologers was produced not by art but by chance (‘non arte … sed sorte’), Augustine’s attitude towards the occurrence was not negative. Indeed, not only in the Confessions, but in some works (e.g. De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus 45.2; De doctrina christiana 1.28.29; Epistula 55.37), he was concerned about a source of inspiration for the oratorical process that had played such a crucial role in his conversion. Why did Augustine think about this kind of oracle? How did he follow the custom in late antiquity? In this paper I shall argue the significance and impact of this phenomenon in the thought of Augustine.
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