That Same Flower: Floria Aemilia's Letter to Saint Augustine [Hardcover]

Gaarder says he discovered the letter in 1995 while shopping in an antique bookstore in Buenos Aires, Argentina and agreed to purchase it from the owner for a little more than $12,000 even though it was uncertain at the time as to its authenticity. Following an examination of the letter's style, terminology and grammar, however, Gaarder says he became convinced it could have only originated in medieval days.

The letter, titled the Codex Floriae, if indeed genuine, represents a major historical find. Over the centuries, very little has come to light regarding the lover of St. Augustine and their son Adeodatus. We do know that they lived together for several years in North Africa and Italy before Augustine's conversion into the Christian faith. Previously, all that has been known about Floria Aemilia has been derived from Augustine's own writings, chiefly his famous autobiographical Confessions.

In That Same Flower, however, Floria Aemilia writes candidly of her relationship with Augustine and of her feelings about his conversion. At times she corroborates what Augustine, himself has written and portrays him as a man prone to attacks of anguish and confusion. The major part of the letter, however, is dedicated to a bitter denouncement of Augustine's decision to separate forever from both Aemilia and their son. Aemilia, it is clear does not share Augustine's faith in a God that "desires above all that man should live in abstinence...I have no faith in such a God."

Augustine, himself, suffered deep sorrow over his decision to part from Aemilia. In his Confessions, he laments, "The woman I lived with was not permitted to stay at my side...My heart, which was deeply attached to her, was pierced, and wounded so that it bled...My wound, inflicted when my relationship with the woman I lived with was brought to an end, would not heal either."

Augustine's pain, however, pales in comparison to the anguish that surges forth from Aemilia's writings. Her distress is convincing and compelling and we feel the enormity of her pain. The victim of Augustine's conversion, Aemilia expresses her heartbreak most eloquently in her letter. "My heart," she says, suffered the same hurt...for we were two souls torn from each other...because you loved the salvation of your own soul more than you loved me."

Augustine's mother, Monica was one of the factors that led to the end of Aemilia's relationship with Augustine. Monica, described as a willful and ambitious woman, by Aemilia, and one who opposed her, banished Aemilia from the household and arranged for what she assumed would be a more suitable engagement for Augustine. Rightfully expecting Augustine to come to her defense, Aemilia was crushed and defeated when he refused to do so, even though he later withdrew from the engagement.

Augustine, however, also refused to return to the one woman he truly loved. Convinced that eternal damnation could only be avoided by a total renouncement of the pleasures of the body, he withdrew from all physical pleasure, including the company of Aemilia.

Aemilia, herself, has no sympathy for Augustine's views. Instead, she views them with the utmost contempt, having no faith in a God who places the existential and spiritual worth of a man over that of a woman. "I don't believe in a God," she writes, "who lays waste to a woman's life in order to save a man's soul."

Aemilia also writes much of the medieval "theologians and Platonists" who were the influential players in Augustine's intellectual and spiritual development. Their ideas, she says, transformed Augustine from a man living a carefree existence into a God-fearing mortifier of his own flesh. Aemilia denounces these men as ruling within a "dark labyrinth" and swears that Augustine was misguided by them.

Scored with the basic theme of Augustine's anti-materialism and aversion to bodily appetites, Aemilia accuses him of carrying his denial of physical gratification to extremes, regarding everything from eating nutritious food to listening to an enjoyable piece of music as a sin against God.

And, in his Confessions, Augustine writes that the sense of hearing "offers its perilous enticements" and that "I still find satisfaction in the melodies to which your words give life and should when they are sung artistically by a fine voice...So I sin in this without noticing; but after I feel it is sin."

After reading Aemilia's letter, it is difficult to put complete faith in Augustine's self-righteous insensitivity to natural human desires, especially when one considers his weaknesses and imperfections and the severe background of his religious convictions.

Aemilia shared this disbelief and Augustine's conversion failed to convince her about the necessity of "despising this life, and about how good it is to die." It did, however, remind her of the priceless value she, herself, placed of the here-and-now. She comes to the conclusion that "it must be human arrogance to reject this life--with all its earthly joys--in favor of an existence which is, perhaps, merely an abstraction...We must first live...then we can philosophize."

We must learn to embrace both the fruits and the beauty of our own humanity and to cherish and nurture our existence during our short and precious time here on earth. This is Floria Aemilia's message to the world; the message that she went to great lengths to nurture and preserve in the letter that became That Same Flower.