ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO (354 – 430 AD) son of St. Monica, was a Roman African, and who at first led a sinful life. He was drawn into the heresy of Manichaeism and later to neo-Platonism, but after his baptism and conversion to Christianity in 386 Augustine "established anew the ancient Faith" according to his contemporary, St. Jerome. St. Augustine became an early Christian theologian and philosopher whose writings influenced the development of Western Christianity and Western philosophy. He was the bishop of Hippo Regius in north Africa and is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers in Western Christianity for his writings in the Patristic Period. Among his most important works are The City of God, De doctrina Christiana and Confessions. He helped to theologically define the doctrine of original sin, and he is recognised as a Doctor of the Church.
STATUS of his Great Monarch Prophecy: MISATTRIBUTION
In several books and on
the internet the following few lines can be found regarding a Great
Monarch prophecy that was supposed to have been written by St.
Augustine of Hippo:
* “A Frankish King will
one day rule over the entire Roman Empire … .” (The Kingdom of
the Franks is now France.)
* “He
shall give up the ghost at Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives…”
I had hoped this was a
real prophecy made by St. Augustine, but after additional research
and website digging, I have discovered it was actually a re-wording
or Monk Adso's famous prophecy and was attributed to St. Augustine,
and, I also discovered it is also a pseudo-St. Anselm of Canterbury
prophecy. So two prophetic sources have to be relocated to the
'suspect' list.
How I discovered this:
- Robert Wilkinson (see footnotes below for his book) observes that a biblical scholar named Guy Lefévre de la Boderie (1541-1598) makes mention of the prophecy attributed St. Augustine, that a Frankish King would establish his empire and lay his crown and sceptre down on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Wilkinson says Guy quoted this from Augustine's 'De Antichristo'. (1) However, there is no such work by Augustine, and, there is no such prophecies on his writings about the Antichrist in his famous 'City of God'.
(2) Digging further, I discovered that there are three medieval manuscripts listed on the Oxford University medieval manuscript catalogue entitled 'De Antichristo', and it was one of the versions of the work on the Antichrist by the Monk Adso of Montier-en-Der, (also known as Adso Deruensis) that circulated widely in England: one manuscript from the 14th century was misattributed to St. Anselm of Canterbury, while two from the 15th century were misattributed to him and St. Augustine. One of the manuscripts were also written at St. Augustine's at Canterbury, which probably lent a false support to the claim it was a manuscript by St. Augustine.
Therefore, St. Augustine
and St. Anselm did not make this prophecy.
Below is a screen shot of
the Oxford University catalogue link with the manuscripts listed:
(Source:
http://mlgb3.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/authortitle/browse/A/#entry241_anchor
)
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(1) Robert Wilkinson, “The
Kabbalistic Scholars of the Antwerp Polyglot Bible” Brill,
Netherlands, 2007, p 116.
Back to the Great Catholic Monarch and Angelic Pontiff Prophecy Timeline, click here.
Article UPDATED: August 5, 2020
