Rafal Toczko: Augustine’s use of status legales in polemic with the Donatists

In the ancient handbooks dedicated to the art of rhetoric we can find chapters discussing the so called ‘legal questions’ (nomikai staseis, status legales). They consisted of practical precepts for forensic orators. For instance, when the two parties in court disagreed as to the interpretation of a given law, rhetorical theory advised them to use hermeneutical principles gathered under the label ‘the letter and the intent’. When, on the other hand, the legal texts crucial for the case were obscure, each party was supposed to argue based on the status called ‘ambiguity’. The analysis of the Christian polemical literature of the early centuries suggests that we are dealing with a larger phenomenon that might be called the‘Christianisation of the status legales.Augustine is just one of the many Christian writers who found the rules of legal questions appealing.In the Donatist controversy both sides reached for various biblical passages presented and discussed as legal rules or norms of conduct. Augustine used these scriptural arguments both to confirm his ideas and to refute the teachings of his opponents. In doing so he employed the patterns of argumentation and various loci communes that stem directly from De inventione and Rhetorica ad Herennium.In order to demonstrate how the two status legales: scriptum et voluntas and ambiguitas shape Augustine’s exegesis, my analytical study will focus on his letters, sermons and treatises where he discusses passages from the Gospel of Matthew 13:30-39 and Song of Songs 1:6-7.