Two lost sermons by St Augustine examining King Saul's encounter with the Witch of Endor have been discovered in an ancient manuscript in a Polish library.
The 12th-century Latin texts reveal how the influential early Christian theologian tackled one of the most mysterious episodes in the Bible, in which a medium appears to summon the dead prophet Samuel.
The discovery was made in 2024 when Professor Christian Tornau, a Latin scholar at the University of Würzburg in Germany, was asked to decipher six sermons attributed to the saint. Tornau identified that two of the texts were previously undiscovered works.
To confirm the find, Professor Tornau worked alongside Dr Clemens Weidmann of the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (CSEL), an academic research organization dedicated to Latin ecclesiastical texts. The pair invited 20 other Latin scholars to verify the authenticity of the manuscripts.
The biblical mystery of Endor
The newly identified sermons focus on King Saul's visit to the Witch of Endor, a story recorded in the Old Testament book of 1 Samuel 28. In the biblical passage, Saul finds himself in a desperate situation shortly before a crucial battle against the Philistines.
"Saul believes himself to be in a hopeless situation shortly before a battle against the Philistines. God does not listen to his prayers. He turns to a witch," Tornau said in a statement. At the king's request, the medium conjures the spirit of the deceased prophet Samuel, who predicts Saul's death in battle.
According to the Bible, Samuel was a central figure in early Israelite history who anointed the first two kings of Israel, Saul and David, at the order of God. The story of his apparent resurrection by a medium has baffled Jewish and Christian theologians for centuries.
The narrative created a deep theological problem because it appeared to show a necromancer holding power over a righteous prophet of God. Latin scholars and theologians have long questioned how an omnipotent God could allow a witch to summon Samuel, asking whether it exposed a limit to divine power or represented a demonic illusion.
Augustine's theological argument
St Augustine wrestled with these possibilities across the two sermons, evaluating whether the figure Saul encountered was truly Samuel or a form of supernatural illusion. St Augustine ultimately argued that the Witch of Endor held no power over the dead.
The saint argued that if Samuel genuinely appeared to Saul, it occurred solely because God permitted it to happen to deliver a final warning, rather than because the medium had summoned him through magic.
The two sermons were delivered over several days to a church audience. Professor Tornau explained that the first sermon was preached during a Sunday service and concluded with the question of theodicy, the branch of theology addressing divine justice and omnipotence, alongside potential interpretations.
"It was not until the second sermon on the following Wednesday that the options were weighed up," Tornau said. He noted that after St Augustine presented the two sermons, the church audience was left to form their own opinion on the biblical passage.
Rhetorical style and authenticity
Tornau suggested that this didactic and rhetorical approach is typical of St Augustine, as the saint was known for presenting options for interpretation, omitting a final judgment and allowing the audience to think for themselves.
"The style, humor and content also clearly indicate that the sermons in the manuscripts were actually written by Augustine," Tornau said. Establishing authenticity was essential for the research team, as history records several cases where writings attributed to the saint were later found to be forgeries.
St Augustine lived from 354 AD to 430 AD and is widely regarded as the most important Christian thinker after the Apostle Paul, with his theological ideas helping shape Western Christianity. Born in North Africa to a pagan father and a devout Christian mother, he pursued a worldly and intellectually restless early life.
He initially rejected Christianity, exploring hedonism and the dualistic Persian religion of Manichaeism before embracing Neoplatonism, a philosophy rooted in the teachings of Plato. Following a profound spiritual crisis, he converted to Christianity and was baptized in Milan in 387.
Survival of the manuscript
Reconstructing the transmission history of the sermons presented significant challenges for the researchers. Tornau noted that creating such a manuscript in the 12th century was unusual, as a copy produced at the beginning of the 8th or 9th century would be more typical.
Researchers believe the newly discovered sermons survived because a 12th-century medieval scribe copied them from an older manuscript that has since been lost to history. An old catalogue from the monastery mentions a text with the same headings and sequence of contents, which Tornau explained could have served as a model.
However, the researcher noted that he cannot confirm this assumption 100 percent because the entire monastery library collection was burnt during the Thirty Years' War, a European conflict fought from 1618 to 1648. Despite the loss of the original model, the surviving manuscript in Poland now offers scholars valuable insight into Augustine's lost writings.
