15. Similar to this is also that condition when persons, with their senses more profoundedly in abeyance than is the case in sleep, are occupied with the like visions. For to them also appear images of quick and dead; but then, when they return to their senses, whatever dead they say they have seen are thought to have been verily with them: and they who hear these things pay no heed to the circumstance that there were seen in like manner the images of certain living persons, absent and unconscious. A certain man by name Curma, of the municipal town of Tullium, which is hard by Hippo, a poor member of the Curia,37    Curialis scarcely competent to serve the office of a duumvir38    Duumviralitius of that place, and a mere rustic, being ill, and all his senses entranced, lay all but dead for several days: a very slight breathing in his nostrils, which on applying the hand was just felt, and barely betokened that he lived, was all that kept him from being buried for dead. Not a limb did he stir, nothing did he take in the way of sustenance, neither in the eyes nor in any other bodily sense was he sensible of any annoyance that impinged upon them. Yet he was seeing many things like as in a dream, which, when at last after a great many days he woke up, he told that he had seen. And first, presently after he opened his eyes, Let some one go, said he, to the house of Curma the smith, and see what is doing there. And when some one had gone thither, the smith was found to have died in that moment that the other had come back to his senses, and, it might almost be said, revived from death. Then, as those who stood by eagerly listened, he told them how the other had been ordered to be had up, when he himself was dismissed; and that he had heard it said in that place from which he had returned, that it was not Curma of the Curia, but Curma the smith who had been ordered to be fetched to that place of the dead. Well, in these dream-like visions of his, among those deceased persons whom he saw handled according to the diversity of their merits, he recognized also some whom he had known when alive. That they were the very persons themselves I might perchance have believed, had he not in the course of this seeming dream of his seen also some who are alive even to this present time, namely, some clerks of his district, by whose presbyter there he was told to be baptized at Hippo by me, which thing he said had also taken place. So then he had seen a presbyter, clerks, myself, persons, to wit, not yet dead, in this vision in which he afterwards also saw dead persons. Why may he not be thought to have seen these last in the same way as he saw us? that is, both the one sort, and the other, absent and unconscious, and consequently not the persons themselves, but similitudes of them just as of the places? He saw, namely, both a plot of ground where was that presbyter with the clerks, and Hippo where he was by me seemingly baptized: in which spots assuredly he was not, when he seemed to himself to be there. For what was at that time going on there, he knew not: which, without doubt, he would have known if he had verily been there. The sights beheld, therefore, were those which are not presented in the things themselves as they are, but shadowed forth in a sort of images of the things. In fine, after much that he saw, he narrated how he had, moreover, been led into Paradise, and how it was there said to him, when he was thence dismissed to return to his own family, “Go, be baptized, if thou wilt be in this place of the blessed.” Thereupon, being admonished to be baptized by me, he said it was done already. He who was talking with him replied, “Go, be truly baptized; for that thou didst but see in the vision.” After this he recovered, went his way to Hippo. Easter was now approaching, he gave his name among the other Competents, alike with very many unknown to us; nor did he care to make known the vision to me or to any of our people. He was baptized, at the close of the holy days he returned to his own place. After the space of two years or more, I learned the whole matter; first, through a certain friend of mine and his at my own table, while we were talking about some such matters: then I took it up, and made the man in his own person tell me the story, in the presence of some honest townsmen of his attesting the same, both concerning his marvellous illness, how he lay all but dead for many days, and about that other Curma the smith, what I have mentioned above, and about all these matters; which, while he was telling me, they recalled to mind, and assured me, that they had also at that time heard them from his lips. Wherefore, just as he saw his own baptism, and myself, and Hippo, and the basilica, and the baptistery, not in the very realities, but in a sort of similitudes of the things; and so likewise certain other living persons, without consciousness on the part of the same living persons: then why not just so those dead persons also, without consciousness on the part of the same dead persons?

15. Huic rei simile est etiam illud, cum homines altius quam si dormirent, subtrahuntur corporis sensibus, et occupantur talibus visis. Et his enim apparent imagines vivorum atque mortuorum; sed cum fuerint sensibus redditi, quoscumque mortuos vidisse se dixerint, vere cum eis fuisse creduntur: nec attendunt, qui haec audiunt, similiter ab eis absentium atque nescientium quorumdam etiam imagines visas esse vivorum. Homo quidam Curma nomine , municipii Tulliensis, quod Hipponi proximum est, curialis pauper, vix illius loci duumviralitius et simpliciter rusticanus, cum aegrotaret, ablatus a sensibus , 0603 pene mortuus jacuit aliquot diebus: tenuissimus flatus in naribus, qui manu admota utcumque sentiebatur et erat exiguum viventis indicium , sepeliri ut exanimem non sinebat. Nullos artus movebat, nulla sumebat alimenta; nihil oculis, nihil ullo alio sensu corporis qualibet impacta molestia sentiebat. Videbat tamen multa velut in somnis, quae tandem aliquando post dies plurimos quasi evigilans, visa narravit. Ac primum, mox ut aperuit oculos: Eat aliquis, inquit, ad domum Curmae fabri ferrarii, et videat quid ibi agatur. Quo cum itum esset, inventus est mortuus eo momento, quo iste fuerat sensibus redditus, et pene a morte revixerat. Tunc intentis qui aderant, illum exhiberi jussum esse quando ipse dimissus est, indicavit; seque illic unde redierat dixit audisse, quod non Curma curialis, sed Curma faber ferrarius ad loca illa mortuorum praeceptus fuisset adduci. In illis ergo visis, tanquam somniis suis, inter eos defunctos, quos videbat pro meritorumdi versitate tractari, agnovit etiam nonnullos quos noverat vivos. Ipsos autem vere forsitan credidissem, si non inter illa quasi somnia sua vidisset etiam quosdam qui nunc usque adhuc vivunt, clericos videlicet aliquos regionis suae, a quorum ibi presbytero audivit, ut apud Hipponem baptizaretur a me, quod et factum esse dicebat. Viderat itaque in illa visione presbyterum, clericos, me ipsum, nondum scilicet mortuos, in qua postea vidit et mortuos. Cur non etiam illos sicut nos vidisse credatur, utrosque scilicet absentes atque nescientes; ac per hoc non ipsos, sed similitudines eorum, sicut etiam locorum? Nam et fundum vidit ubi erat ille cum clericis presbyter, et Hipponem ubi a me quasi baptizatus est: in quibus locis profecto non erat, quando illic sibi esse videbatur. Nam quid ibi ageretur eo tempore, nesciebat: quod procul dubio sciret, si vere ibi esset. Visa sunt igitur ista, quae non praesentantur in ipsis rebus ut sunt, sed in quibusdam rerum imaginibus adumbrantur. Denique post multa quae vidit, etiam in paradisum se introductum esse narravit, dictumque sibi esse, cum inde dimitteretur rediturus ad suos: Vade, baptizare, si vis esse in isto loco beatorum. Deinde ut a me baptizaretur admonitus, jam factum esse respondit. Cui rursus ille qui cum eo loquebatur: Vade, inquit, vere baptizare; nam illud in visione vidisti. Post ista convaluit, perrexit Hipponem. Pascha jam propinquabat, dedit nomen inter alios Competentes, pariter cum plurimis incognitus nobis; nec illam mihi visionem, nec cuiquam nostrorum indicare curavit. Baptizatus est, peractis diebus sanctis remeavit ad propria. Biennio vel amplius transacto, ego cuncta haec cognovi: primo per quemdam meum ejusque amicum in convivio meo, dum quaedam talia loqueremur: deinde institi ac feci ut haec mihi praesens 0604 ipse narraret, attestantibus honestis civibus suis, et de mirabili ejus aegritudine, ut jacuerit pene mortuus per dies plurimus, et de illo alio Curma fabro ferrario, quod commemoravi superius, et de his omnibus quae cum mihi diceret, etiam tunc ab illo se audisse recolebant atque firmabant. Quamobrem sicut vidit baptismum suum, et me ipsum, et Hipponem, et basilicam, et baptisterium, non in rebus ipsis, sed in quibusdam similitudinibus rerum; ita et alios quosdam vivos, eisdem nescientibus vivis:

CAPUT XIII.

Mortuorum animae non intersunt rebus viventium. Cur non ergo ita et illos mortuos, eisdem nescientibus mortuis?