Two previously unknown sermons by St. Augustine, the influential theologian whose ideas have recently featured in a public debate between Pope Leo XIV and Vice President JD Vance, have been discovered in a medieval manuscript in Poland more than 1,600 years after they were originally preached.
The newly identified texts were found by Professor Christian Tornau, a Latin scholar at Germany’s University of Würzburg, while examining a 12th-century manuscript that once belonged to Bad Doberan Abbey and is now housed in the monastery of Pelplin, Poland, according to a release from the German university.
What appeared to be a routine scholarly assignment turned into a significant finding when Tornau determined that two of the manuscript’s six sermons had never previously been identified as works by Augustine, the university said.
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Newsweek contacted Tornau via email on Thursday for translations of the manuscript.
Who Is St. Augustine?
Augustine of Hippo, who lived from A.D. 354 to 430 and served as bishop in what is now Algeria, is considered one of the most influential figures in Christian history. He is one of Christianity’s most important Church Fathers whose writings helped shape Western philosophy, theology and Christian understandings of faith and grace.
Authentic discoveries of Augustine’s writings are rare. Although Augustine left behind an enormous body of work, most surviving manuscripts have already been extensively studied, making the identification of previously unknown texts a notable event for historians and theologians alike.
For scholars, the find offers a fresh glimpse into the thinking of a theologian whose ideas continue to shape debates within Christianity more than 16 centuries after his death, including contemporary discussions involving the head of the Catholic Church and one of America’s most prominent Catholic politicians.
Pope Leo and JD Vance Clash on ‘Just War’
The discovery comes amid renewed public attention on Augustine’s legacy following a dispute between Pope Leo and Vance over Catholic teaching on war.
In April, Vance questioned the pope’s comments on war, invoking the Christian tradition of “just war” theory, a body of thought that traces its roots in large part to Augustine. The vice president, who has cited Augustine as an important influence and chose him as his patron saint after converting to Catholicism, argued that the tradition stretches back more than a millennium.
Pope Leo, meanwhile, has a particularly close connection to Augustine. The pontiff is a member of the Augustinian religious order and has publicly paid homage to the North African saint, whom he regards as a spiritual father. Augustine’s writings have long influenced the order’s intellectual and theological traditions.
Pope Leo’s X account wrote in April that God is “never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”
The pontiff’s remarks came weeks after the United States and Israel launched war with Iran and its regional allies.
“When the pope says that God is never on the side of people who wield the sword, there is more than a 1,000-year tradition of just war theory,” Vance said at a Turning Point USA event hosted at the University of Georgia on April 14. “We can, of course, have disagreements about whether this or that conflict is just.”
“How do you say that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword?” he asked, citing the example of U.S. troops that had liberated France from the Nazis and freed prisoners from the Holocaust camps.
“I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology,” Vance said. “If you’re going to opine on matters of theology, you’ve got to be careful. You’ve got to make sure it’s anchored in the truth and that’s one of the things that I try to do and it’s certainly something I would expect from the clergy.”
What Newly Discovered Sermons Say
While not directly addressing the concept of “just war,” the newly discovered sermons appear to tap into the dispute about whether God can permit an evil act for a greater purpose.
The sermons focus on a passage from the Bible about the Witch of Endor in the First Book of Samuel.
According to the biblical account, King Saul seeks guidance before a battle against the Philistines after God no longer answers his prayers. He turns to a medium who summons the spirit of the prophet Samuel, who then foretells Saul’s death.
The key verse is 1 Samuel 28:6: “Saul asked the Eternal for guidance, but He did not give him an answer, neither in dreams nor by consulting the Urim nor through prophecy.”
The story raised difficult theological questions for early Christian thinkers. As Tornau explained, the episode prompts questions about why a necromancer would be able to summon a prophet’s spirit and whether such an event could occur under an all-powerful God. Christian theologians traditionally offered two interpretations: either the witch deceived Saul, or God permitted the event to warn Saul of his coming death.
The story raises a theological question: “Why can a necromancer summon the spirit of a prophet? This in turn opens up the theodicy problem: how can an omnipotent God allow this or is he not really omnipotent?” says the Latin scholar Tornau.
Augustine’s sermons engage with those competing interpretations.
The first sermon, delivered on a Sunday, presented the theological problem without resolving it. The second, preached several days later, weighed the alternatives, giving worshippers time to reflect on the issue before Augustine offered further analysis.
What Will Happen to the Sermons Next?
Tornau is now working with scholars from the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (CSEL), a leading publisher of Latin texts, to prepare the first scholarly edition of the sermons.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Ben Kelly and Gray R. Thomas