This story is a collaboration with Biography.com

His Confessions represent the first spiritual autobiography, and it’s influenced the memoirs of famous authors ranging from Henry Adams to C.S. Lewis. Students of theology today still regularly wrestle with his titanic tome, City of God. From his baptism in 386 C.E. until his death in 430 C.E. at the age of 75, Augustine of Hippo (canonized as St. Augustine in 1298) applied a Socratic line of thinking to the then-relatively nascent Christian faith and produced some of the most impactful theological texts of the early church. On the subject of Augustine, the noted Christianity scholar Jaroslav Pelikan once noted: “There is probably no Christian theologian—Eastern or Western, ancient or medieval or modern, heretical or orthodox—whose historical influence can match his…”

The philosophical and theological writings of Augustine have an indelible place, not just in the pantheon of religious writing, but in the whole of the Western canon. Surprisingly, after 16 centuries, Augustine’s body of work just expanded for modern scholars.

The University of Würzburg announced that a Latin manuscript held in a Christian monastery in Pelplin, Poland, contains two previously unknown sermons by St. Augustine of Hippo. One of the university’s professors, Latin scholar Christian Tornau, was called upon to translate the 12th-century manuscript, which contained six sermons by St. Augustine, not a particularly unusual number for a monastery manuscript.

Early theological writings, like those of Augustine and, some centuries later, those of Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas, were not merely professions of faith or instructions for worship. They were logical arguments and philosophical treatises that confronted the apparent contradictions within the Biblical texts head on, attempting to reconcile the seemingly unreconcilable.

Of St. Augustine’s six sermons in Pelplin, two of them served as quite a surprise—they were previously unknown to the modern world.

The two sermons are companion pieces in which Augustine grapples with the idea of witches in a story in the Old Testament. The sermons address the problem of the Witch of Endor, a medium who appears in the Old Testament First Book of Samuel. The story is set after the death of the titular prophet Samuel, when King Saul had “had put away those that had familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land” (1 Samuel 28:3, KJV). As the army of the Philistines gathered against him, King Saul sought guidance from God for how to proceed into the upcoming battle, only to receive no word “neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets.”

Saul then called for a woman “that hath a familiar spirit,” the aforementioned Witch of Endor, that he might have her conjure a spirit to guide him. The woman, who was said to possess an “ōḇ” (with no direct translation, this could mean anything from a summoning pit for necromancy to a ritual talisman), summoned forth the spirit of Samuel the prophet at Saul’s request, only for Samuel to rebuke Saul for having “disquieted” him. He informs Saul that God has “departed” from Saul, and that God has “rent the kingdom out of thine hand, and given it to thy neighbour.”

As Tornau noted, the story raises an obvious question: “Why can a necromancer summon the spirit of a prophet?”

“This in turn,” Tornau continued, “opens up the theodicy problem: how can an omnipotent God allow this or is he not really omnipotent?”

The first of St. Augustine’s sermons, according to the university’s summary, contends with this question and raises two possible answers: either the spirit of Samuel was an illusion crafted by the witch to deceive Saul, or if it was authentic, it was permitted by God in this singular instance in order to confront the king with his transgressions. “It was not until the second sermon,” Tornau said, “that the options were weighed up.”

Pointedly, Augustine does not provide a single answer, leaving it instead for his audience to reflect on the possibilities, and therefore grapple themselves with the inherent mystery necessary for faith. This was common for St. Augustine, whose rhetoric favored presenting possibilities and encouraging careful consideration from the listener. This structure suggests to Tornau that the sermons are likely authentic. “The style, humour and content also clearly indicate that the sermons in the manuscripts were actually written by Augustine,” the professor noted.

Efforts to trace the source from which this 12th-century manuscript had been copied, unfortunately, were stymied by a reality that’s all too human. “Firstly, the creation of such a manuscript in the 12th century is unusual,” Tornau said. “A copy at the beginning of the 8th or 9th century would be more typical.” While Tornau believes that the earlier manuscript may have been held in the Amelungsborn Abbey in Lower Saxony in Germany, that library’s collection was destroyed in the 17th century, during the Thirty Years’ War. Now, all that remains is to make these newfound sermons available to the public, so that they might never again be lost.