The most famous statements St. Augustine ever made–and one of the most famous in all of antiquity–comes in the first paragraph of the Confessions:

…fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te.

You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.^[1]

But where did St. Augustine get this phrase from? Given that the phrase cor inquietum appears nowhere else in extant Latin literature before St. Augustine, it seems safe to say that it is his invention.

Though it is used nowhere before St. Augustine, he himself uses it a few times elsewhere–but not many. Here they are.

First, it is found in the anti-Donatist Against Cresconius, a Donatist Grammarian (Contra Cresconium, 405) 1.8.11, in a quotation of Ezekiel 3:7:

Domus autem Israel non audient te, quia nolunt audire me. Omnis enim domus Israel inquieto et duro corde est.

But the house of Israel will not listen to you, because they do not want to listen to me. For all the house of Israel has a restless and hard heart.

Interestingly, though, that is not what the Vulgate has, which instead reads “shameless face and hard heart” (adtrita fronte est et duro corde). Now, St. Augustine would not have been using the Vulgate. However, inquieto corde does not appear to have been the reading of the Vetus Latina, either.

A couple of possibilities suggest themselves. (1) St. Augustine was quoting from a different version of the Old Latin (there was not just one version of Latin Bible before the Vulgate). (2) St. Augustine was quoting from memory, and “restless heart” is his own gloss. Though I cannot prove it, I think the latter is more likely, as the other witnesses to the text are not close to Augustine’s phrasing.^[2]

Next, we find the phrase twice in his work on the Psalms. In Explanations of the Psalms (Enarrationes in Psalmos) 38.5 (dated by Maria Boulding possibly to 416) , commenting on what is Psalm 39:3 in the Hebrew or Masoretic numbering of the text, we read:

Et in meditatione mea exardescet ignis. Coepit esse inquietum cor meum.

“And in my meditation my fire will burn.” My heart began to be restless.

The context here is quite different from the Confessions: In this instance, the speaker’s heart is restless because he saw sin and did not reprove it.

Closer the other instance in this work, a remark in Explanations of the Psalms 55.17, which dates possibly to 412-13:

Qui diligit me, mandata mea custodit; et qui diligit me, diligetur a Patre meo, et ego diligam eum. Quid illi ergo dabis? Et ostendam meipsum illi. Si non amas, parum est; si amas, si suspiras, si gratis colis eum a quo gratis emtus es, non enim eum promerueras ut te redimeret, si consideratis in te beneficiis eius suspiras, et inquietum habes cor desiderio eius; noli extra eum aliquid ab eo quaerere, ipse tibi sufficit.

“He who loves me will keep my commandments; and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I myself will love him.” What, then, will you give to him? “And I will show myself to him.” If you do not love, the gift is too little; if you love, if you pant, if you worship him without a price by whom you were bought without a price (for you had not deserved for him to redeem you), if, having reflected on his kindnesses, you pant for them, and you have a heart that is restless with desire for him, do ask him for anything outside of himself. He himself is enough for you.

The thought in this passage (that is, that the possibility of true rest is to be found only in God) is nearly identical to that in Confessions 1, and it is thus the closest parallel for the combination of thought and expression that we have in the rest of St. Augustine’s works.

Some Concluding Thoughts

A handful of concluding thoughts:

1. There are no instances that I can find of a “restless heart” (cor inquietum) before St. Augustine.
2. St. Augustine uses the phrase four times.
3. Though one of these is in a biblical quotation, there is good reason to think that the phrase is his gloss or paraphrase of the text rather than a witness to a different version of the text, since–again–no one lese uses this phrase.
4. In terms of context, the passage from Explanations of the Psalms 38.5 is not relevant to his usual use of the phrase.
5. Confessions was written between 397 and 401. That makes its “restless heart” the earliest one we have in the works of St. Augustine. Those that follow, then, continue a trend of expression that we find on its opening page, entering into St. Augustine’s understanding and exegesis of the biblical text.
6. Even if the expression is his, it does not mean that the thought is, so that it is possible to conceive of biblical and philosophical sources for the thought.
7. Nevertheless, St. Augustine’s expression of the thought, whatever its source(s), subsequently becomes a touchstone. Ask yourself: Have you ever referred to a “restless heart,” or heard someone else do so? If so, you’re likely a part of the Augustinian legacy.