The Augustinian Recollects feel indebted in some way to pope Ratzinger, and when he retired to private life and reached his 86th year (last 16 April), they express their gratitude with a little gesture: by publishing material that is close to his heart and, like him, has disseminated in the past the figure of Saint Augustine. If in the last years the Bavarian pope has been the propagator of Augustinian thinking, in the 18th century it was also a work from Baviera that greatly made the Saint of Hippo known and portrayed graphically.
As a tribute to Benedict XVI we present a digital exhibit entitled: “the other Augustine who came from Baviera”. It is a collection of prints on the life of Saint Augustine, an album Baroque in style and dense in concept printed in the land of Benedict XVI. Its authors were Johann Anwander, painter, and the brothers Joseph Sebastian and Johann Baptist Klauber, engravers. It was published in 1758 in Augusta (Aubsburg), a few kilometers from the natal town of Ratzinger.
Two centuries and a half before the Bavarian Pope, the album of Anwander and Klauber did a work similar to his, spreading knowledge about Augustine. It was disseminated throughout the world, serving as inspiration to all types of artists. Even in the 20th century, for the celebration of the 15th centenary of the saint’s death (1930) or the 16th of his birth, both Augustinians and Augustinian Recollects made use of the old prints published in Baviera, which were later reproduced in Barcelona. In the Spanish convents of Marcilla, Monteagudo and San Millan de la Cogolla one can see the print collection enlarged and appropriately framed.
They are a total of 19 prints conceived in comic form, with extensive captions basically drawn from the Bible and the Confessions. The texts are all in Latin, hence the need to translate them into Spanish and to give appropriate explanations. Finally, for a more fitting musical background, a German composition that spoke of Augustine was found, concretely the aria “Or mi pento” (Now, I repent) of the oratorio “La conversione di Sant’Agostino”, written en 1750 by Johann Adolf Hasse, interpreted by the Akademie Für Alte Musik de Berlín.