Two newly-discovered sermons by one of the early church’s leading theologians, both on a notoriously difficult Biblical passage, are set to be published later this year.
The talks are by Augustine of Hippo, one of the most significant Christian leaders in post-New Testament history, and focus on the Witch of Endor in 1 Samuel 28.
They have been authenticated following an investigation by Christian Tornau, a Latin scholar and professor at the University of Wurzburg. Tornau was contacted in 2024 by a monastery association which asked him to look at a 12th-century manuscript which had originally belonged to Bad Doberan Abbey in Germany but was latterly housed at a monastery in Pelplin, Poland. The document was found to contain six sermons by Augustine (354–430), who wrote such monumental works as Confessions and The City of God.
Two of the talks were previously unknown to the modern world. In 2025, a summer school of more than 20 Latin scholars was convened in Austria to discuss the find and concluded unanimously that the sermons are genuine.
“The style, humour, and content … clearly indicate that the sermons in the manuscripts were actually written by Augustine,” Tornau says. Now the homilies, the full texts of which have not yet been released, are being prepared for publication later this year.
