Functions of style in St. Augustine’s Christian rhetoric
Functions of style in St. Augustine’s Christian rhetoric

Summary/Abstract: The spread of Christianity determined major cultural changes all over Europe as well as in the entire world. Without further dwelling on the relationships between the new religion and the classical culture, we will show that, in the art of eloquence, the perspective of the fathers of the Christian Church favoured, on the one hand, the survival of some of the Ancient rhetorical works and led to the introduction of a religious rhetoric that gradually departed from the influence of the old models, on the other. This paper aims at synthetically and systematically describing St. Augustine's view on the importance and functions of elocution, in order to reveal the innovations brought by this scholar to the classical rhetorical canon.

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