On the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount
Augustine’s exposition of Matthew 5–7 in two books (De sermone Domini in monte), written about AD 393–394. It shows how the Sermon on the Mount was read in the Latin church at the end of the fourth century.
Augustine wrote this exposition in North Africa in the years before he became bishop of Hippo. Book 1 covers Matthew 5 and book 2 covers Matthew 6 and 7. He treats the Beatitudes as ascending stages and relates them to the seven gifts of the Spirit named in Isaiah (1.4.11), and he counts seven petitions in the Lord’s Prayer (2.10.36).
The opening paragraph states his view of the whole: anyone who weighs the discourse “which our Lord Jesus Christ spoke on the mount” will find in it “a perfect standard of the Christian life” (1.1.1). The work is evidence for how the sermon was read in the Latin church at the end of the fourth century. It has no information about the occasion of the sermon beyond what Matthew gives.
Cited in
- c. AD 28–29, estimated date