Charles Kim: “Unus est magister vester Christus: St. Augustine and the Transformation of the Magister from the Schola to the Ec​clesia.”

Jesus admonishes those gathered around in Matthew 23:10, “Ne velitis dici magistri, unus est magister vester Christus.” That is, rather, how St. Augustine heard it. In English translation of the original, “Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah,” (NRSV). As St. Augustine begins a homily in Carthage in 413 (s.23), he takes this passage as a warning for anyone who might call themselves a magister.He says, magisterium periculosum est. Quintilian and his Instituto Oratoriademonstrate well the prevailing views of the classical magister in the liberal education of the Greco-Roman world. He notes that the magisterjudges the students, not the other way round because he is the absolute authority. Yet, St. Augustine, after assuming the role in the magisterium, subverts the mos antiquorum when he ascends the cathedra episcopito preach. He follows Christ’s admonition above and says the magisterium periculosum est. Why would the role of the magister now be dangerous when it was once the absolute authority, not only in the classroom, but in the wider social world? In this paper, I would like to explore precisely this question. I will show from St. Augustine’s Confessionesand Sermo23, as well as from Quintilian’s Instituto Oratoria that the liberal arts as understood in the ecclesial context must submit to the one true Magister. This, then, provides a demonstration of Augustine’s view of humility as the ground of the virtues rather than a vice.