In Book IV of The City of God, St Augustine tells of a Roman god who had fallen into obscurity. This deity was the nighttime equivalent of Jupiter or Jove, the king of the gods, and at one time, according to Augustine, Summanus (for that was this nighttime God's name) was more popular among the Romans than the now more familiar Jove. Jove was the god of daytime thunder, whereas Summanus rolled the night.
Eventually, somewhere down the years, through a process that even Augustine finds too obscure to comment on in any detail, Summanus became overshadowed by Jove, who pleased people with his daylight tricks and sunny manifestations of power and pyrotechnics by, among other things, building a "famous and conspicuous temple." Summanus was less willing to pander to the crowd, preferring the aural displays best possible at night when the other senses become all focused into this yearning ear.
The early books of The City of God are an overt attempt to prune the garden of the Roman gods, to try to whittle it down to just one, or, failing that, to condemn those he deems unworthy. For Augustine the paganism of the Romans was too prolific. It was too much, there were too many, it was too bureaucratic, there were too many names and attributes to remember, and you never quite knew (Augustine complains at one point) which god you were supposed to pray to as you walked through a door: the god of doors, the god of hinges, or the god of fair egress.
I'm actually not sure if Augustine is saying in this book that the god's name was Summanus. He says: "For, as we read in their own authors, the ancient Romans paid greater honours to I know not what Summanus, to whom they attributed nocturnal thunderbolts, than to Jupiter." "I know not what Summanus" is a locutaion I just don't follow. Augustine here seem to be piecing together the story of a God that exists by then only orally, who exists in the stories that people tell themselves and each other of the impact and severity of storms, storms that still exist in the public consciousness. There needed to be a God to manage all the storm-wrought damage and to tend to people's individual needs, and Summanus did just that; until, of course, Rome fell and the ominous signs of a decaying empire that gripped a people with a paranoia became nothing more than a passing thought...
But it's a shame that Augustine's pruning was so fervid and so complete, so monomaniacally monotheistic, though I think we can discern a hint of regret lingering through this passage. It's a shame that the god of nighttime thunder, whatever his name was or is, lost to us. Because there is nothing more fearful-divine than thunder at night, not in the distance, but right on top of you. There is something otherworldly about it.
It is, for example, a dark rolling thunder that awakes Dante from his swoon in "Canto IV" of the Inferno.
From the Longfellow translation...
Broke the deep lethargy within my head
A heavy thunder, so that I upstarted,
Like to a person who by force is wakened;
And round about I moved my rested eyes,
Uprisen erect, and steadfastly I gazed,
To recognise the place wherein I was.
True is it, that upon the verge I found me
Of the abysmal valley dolorous,
That gathers thunder of infinite ululations.
Obscure, profound it was, and nebulous,
So that by fixing on its depths my sight
Nothing whatever I discerned therein.
Eventually, somewhere down the years, through a process that even Augustine finds too obscure to comment on in any detail, Summanus became overshadowed by Jove, who pleased people with his daylight tricks and sunny manifestations of power and pyrotechnics by, among other things, building a "famous and conspicuous temple." Summanus was less willing to pander to the crowd, preferring the aural displays best possible at night when the other senses become all focused into this yearning ear.
The early books of The City of God are an overt attempt to prune the garden of the Roman gods, to try to whittle it down to just one, or, failing that, to condemn those he deems unworthy. For Augustine the paganism of the Romans was too prolific. It was too much, there were too many, it was too bureaucratic, there were too many names and attributes to remember, and you never quite knew (Augustine complains at one point) which god you were supposed to pray to as you walked through a door: the god of doors, the god of hinges, or the god of fair egress.
I'm actually not sure if Augustine is saying in this book that the god's name was Summanus. He says: "For, as we read in their own authors, the ancient Romans paid greater honours to I know not what Summanus, to whom they attributed nocturnal thunderbolts, than to Jupiter." "I know not what Summanus" is a locutaion I just don't follow. Augustine here seem to be piecing together the story of a God that exists by then only orally, who exists in the stories that people tell themselves and each other of the impact and severity of storms, storms that still exist in the public consciousness. There needed to be a God to manage all the storm-wrought damage and to tend to people's individual needs, and Summanus did just that; until, of course, Rome fell and the ominous signs of a decaying empire that gripped a people with a paranoia became nothing more than a passing thought...
But it's a shame that Augustine's pruning was so fervid and so complete, so monomaniacally monotheistic, though I think we can discern a hint of regret lingering through this passage. It's a shame that the god of nighttime thunder, whatever his name was or is, lost to us. Because there is nothing more fearful-divine than thunder at night, not in the distance, but right on top of you. There is something otherworldly about it.
It is, for example, a dark rolling thunder that awakes Dante from his swoon in "Canto IV" of the Inferno.
From the Longfellow translation...
Broke the deep lethargy within my head
A heavy thunder, so that I upstarted,
Like to a person who by force is wakened;
And round about I moved my rested eyes,
Uprisen erect, and steadfastly I gazed,
To recognise the place wherein I was.
True is it, that upon the verge I found me
Of the abysmal valley dolorous,
That gathers thunder of infinite ululations.
Obscure, profound it was, and nebulous,
So that by fixing on its depths my sight
Nothing whatever I discerned therein.
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