Curma's vision and the likenesses of the living and dead
Augustine is giving a concrete example of how people withdrawn from their senses see likenesses of both the living and the dead, not the persons themselves.
Something similar happens when people are withdrawn from their bodily senses more deeply than if they were asleep, and are taken over by visions of this kind. Images of the living and the dead appear to them too. But when they come back to their senses, whatever dead people they say they saw are believed to have truly been with them. Those who hear this do not notice that such people have likewise seen images of certain living people who were absent and knew nothing about it.
There was a man named Curma, from the town of Tullium near Hippo, a poor town councillor, scarcely a duumvir of that place, and a simple country fellow. When he fell ill, he was withdrawn from his senses and lay almost dead for several days. A very faint breath in his nostrils, which could just be felt when a hand was placed there, was the only slight sign of life, and it kept them from burying him as lifeless. He moved no limbs, took no food, and felt nothing with his eyes or any other bodily sense, no matter what irritation was inflicted on him. Yet he saw many things as if in dreams, which he eventually related after many days when he woke up, so to speak.
First, as soon as he opened his eyes, he said, "Someone go to the house of Curma the blacksmith and see what is happening there." When they went, they found that the man had died at the very moment when this Curma had been restored to his senses and had almost come back to life from death. Then, as those present listened intently, he said that he himself had been ordered to be presented at the time when he himself was released. He explained that he had heard, in the place from which he returned, that it was not Curma the town councillor but Curma the blacksmith who had been commanded to be led to those places of the dead.
In those visions, then, as in his dreams, among the dead whom he saw being dealt with according to the diversity of their merits, he also recognized some whom he had known while they were alive. I might perhaps have truly believed that those people themselves were there, if he had not also seen, among those dreamlike visions of his, certain people who are still alive to this day—namely, some clergy of his own region. From their presbyter there he heard that he should be baptized by me at Hippo, and he said this had indeed happened. So in that vision he had seen a presbyter, clergy, and me myself—none of us dead yet—and afterwards in the same vision he also saw dead people. Why should we not believe that he saw the dead just as he saw us—both groups absent and unaware, and therefore not the people themselves but their likenesses, just as with places? For he also saw the farm where that presbyter was with the clergy, and Hippo, where he was, so to speak, baptized by me. He was certainly not in those places when he seemed to himself to be there. For he did not know what was happening there at that time, which he would undoubtedly have known if he had truly been there. So these things were seen not as they are presented in the realities themselves, but as they are shadowed forth in certain images of realities.
Finally, after many things he saw, he also reported that he had been led into paradise and told, when he was being sent away from there to return to his own people, "Go, be baptized, if you wish to be in this place of the blessed." Then, when he was admonished to be baptized by me, he replied that it had already been done. The one speaking with him said again, "Go, be truly baptized; for you saw that in a vision." After these things he recovered and went to Hippo. Easter was already approaching. He enrolled among the other catechumens, unknown to us along with many others. He did not bother to tell that vision to me or to any of our people. He was baptized, and after the holy days were completed he returned to his own home. Two years or more passed before I learned all this: first through a friend of mine and his, at my table, when we were discussing such things; then I insisted and arranged that he himself tell me in person, with his respectable fellow citizens bearing witness both to his remarkable illness—how he lay almost dead for many days—and to that other Curma the blacksmith, which I mentioned above, and to all these things which, as he told them to me, they recalled and confirmed they had already heard from him at that time.
Therefore, just as he saw his own baptism, and me myself, and Hippo, —not in the realities themselves but in certain likenesses of realities—so too he saw certain other living people, without those living people knowing it. Why then not also the dead in the same way, without those dead people knowing it?
Latin
Huic rei simile est etiam illud, cum homines altius, quam si dormirent, subtrahuntur corporis sensibus et occupantur talibus uisis. et his enim adparent imagines uiuorum atque mortuorum; sed cum fuerint sensibus redditi, quoscumque mortuos uidisse se dixerint, uere cum eis fuisse creduntur nec adtendunt qui haec audiunt similiter ab eis absentium atque nescientium quorundam etiam imagines uisas esse uiuorum. homo quidam Curma nomine municipii Tulliensis, quod Hipponi proximum est, curialis pauper, uix illius loci duumuiralicius et simpliciter rusticanus, cum aegrotaret, ablatus a sensibus paene mortuus iacuit aliquot diebus: tenuissimus flatus in naribus, qui manu admota utcumque sentiebatur et erat exiguum uiuentis indicium, sepeliri ut exanimem non sinebat. nullos artus mouebat, nulla sumebat alimenta; nihil oculis, nihil ullo alio sensu corporis qualibet inpacta molestia sentiebat. uidebat tamen multa uelut in somnis, quae tandem aliquando post dies plurimos quasi euigilans uisa narrauit. ac primum mox ut aperuit oculos, eat aliquis, inquit, ad domum Curmae fabri ferrarii et uideat, quid ibi agatur. quo cum itum esset, inuentus est mortuus eo momento, quo iste fuerat sensibus redditus et paene a morte reuixerat. tunc intentis, qui aderant, illum exhiberi iussum esse, quando ipse dimissus est. indicauit seque illic unde redierat dixit audisse, quod non Curma curialis, sed Curma faber ferrarius ad loca illa mortuorum praeceptus fuisset adduci. in illis ergo uisis, tamquam somniis suis, inter eos defunctos, quos uidebat pro meritorum diuersitate tractari, agnouit etiam nonnullos, quos nouerat uiuos. ipsos autem uere forsitan credidissem, si non inter illa quasi somnia sua uidisset etiam quosdam, qui nunc usque adhuc uiuunt, clericos uidelicet aliquos regionis suae, a quorum ibi presbytero audiuit, ut apud Hipponem baptizaretur a me, quod et factum esse dicebat. uiderat itaque in illa uisione presbyterum, clericos, me ipsum, nondum scilicet mortuos, in qua postea uidit et mortuos. cur non etiam illos sicut nos uidisse credatur, utrosque scilicet absentes atque nescientes, ac per hoc non ipsos, sed similitudines eorum, sicut etiam locorum? nam et fundum uidit, ubi erat ille cum clericis presbyter, et Hipponem, ubi a me quasi baptizatus est: in quibus locis profecto non erat, quando illic sibi esse uidebatur. nam quid ibi ageretur eo tempore, nesciebat: quod procul dubio sciret, si uere ibi esset. uisa sunt igitur ista, quae non praesentantur in ipsis rebus, ut sunt, sed in quibusdam rerum imaginibus adumbrantur. denique post multa, quae uidit, etiam in paradisum se introductum esse narrauit dictumque sibi esse, cum inde dimitteretur rediturus ad suos: uade, baptizare, si uis esse in isto loco beatorum. deinde, ut a me baptizaretur, admonitus iam factum esse respondit. cui rursus ille, qui cum eo loquebatur, uade, inquit, uere baptizare; nam illud in uisione uidisti. post ista conualuit, perrexit Hipponem. pascha iam propinquabat. dedit nomen inter alios conpetentes, pariter cum plurimis incognitus nobis; nec illam mihi uisionem nec cuiquam nostrorum indicare curauit. baptizatus est, peractis diebus sanctis remeauit ad propria. biennio uel amplius transacto ego haec cuncta cognoui: primo per quendam meum eiusque amicum in conuiuio meo, cum quaedam talia loqueremur; deinde institi ac feci, ut haec mihi praesens ipse narraret adtestantibus honestis ciuibus suis et de mirabili eius aegritudine, ut iacuerit paene mortuus per dies plurimos, et de illo alio Curma fabro ferrario, quod commemoraui. superius, et de his omnibus, quae cum mihi diceret, iam et se tunc ab illo audisse recolebant atque firmabant. quamobrem sicut uidit baptismum suum et me ipsum et Hipponem et basilicam et baptisterium non in rebus ipsis, sed in quibusdam similitudinibus rerum, ita et alios quosdam uiuos eisdem nescientibus uiuis.
Cur non ergo ita et illos mortuos eisdem nescientibus mortuis?