However, scarcely five days after, or not much more, she was prostrated by fever; and while she was sick, she one day sank into a swoon, and was for a short time unconscious of visible things. We hurried up to her; but she soon regained her senses, and gazing on me and my brother as we stood by her, she said to us inquiringly,Where was I?Then looking intently at us stupefied with grief,Here,says she,shall you bury your mother.I was silent, and refrained from weeping; but my brother said something, wishing her, as the happier lot, to die in her own country and not abroad. She, when she heard this, with anxious countenance arrested him with her eye, as savouring of such things, and then gazing at me,Behold,says she,what he says;and soon after to us both she says,Lay this body anywhere, let not the care for it trouble you at all. This only I ask, that you will remember me at the Lord's altar, wherever you be.And when she had given forth this opinion in such words as she could, she was silent, being in pain with her increasing sickness.
Book IX, Chapter 11.
Does anyone know if Augustine ever formulates a whole theology of this topic?
