O pensamento gramatical de Santo Agostinho

Abstract

This work offers a reflection on the grammatical thought by St. Augustine (c. IV-V A.D.). We examine, in this sense, the grammatical treatise attributed to the bishop of Hippo, entitled Ars pro fratrum mediocritate breuiata, in relation to formal and conceptual aspects of the grammatical gender of the artes, which has been produced in Late Antiquity, with reference to the Artes grammaticae by Donatus (c. IV AD). In order to examine the grammatical substance from the Augustinian text, we have also considered some other aspects codified in Augustine’s philosophical texts, such as De magistro, De ordine and De doctrina Christiana, highlighting the way how properly grammatical concepts is in these works also reflected. Thus, we intend to show that the grammatical metalanguage that characterized the genre of Latin Artes grammaticae, with Augustine, has been disseminated gradually in his texts of philosophical content, as a strategy to prepare and provide his "students / Christians" with an important tool for reading and making biblical exegesis. In conclusion, we realize that the boundaries which surrounded the teachings in regard to the Liberal Arts (the so-called Trivium – grammar, dialectic and rhetoric) has not been thereby completely dissociated, in the work of Augustine, but were part of a project to disseminate Christian doctrine. The theoretical and methodological assumptions used for the compilation of our work are from the Historiography of Linguistics.