The Arca of Saint Augustine in Pavia

Saint Augustine, Doctor and Father of the Church, and author of Confessions and City of God, died during the Vandal siege of Hippo, August 28, 430. There he was buried. Decades later the Arian Vandal Trasamund began a persecution of the Catholic Clergy, and the Bishops of Carthage and Ruspe determined to flee to Sardinia with the relics of Augustine. Augustine was retombed at the Basilica of Saint Saturninus in Cagliari in a beautiful white marble urn.In the eighth century the Muslim Saracens invaded Sardinia. The Lombard King Liutprand, a Catholic, redeemed the body of Augustine for the sum of sixty thousand gold crowns in 720.

The saint was brought to Pavia, the capital of the Lombards, where the King gave Augustine reburial in the church of Saint Peter of the Golden Roof (San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro, so called since its origin for the gold leaf in the ceiling), then the Cathedral church of the Bishop, in a new leaden coffin enclosed within another coffin of silver, and then yet another coffin of marble, all encased under a brick wall. In the fourteenth century the tomb of Augustine was graced with an Arca, or tomb, made by Giacomo da Candia of Pavia, said to have been a follower of the sculptor Giovanni di Balduccio. The reliefs give episodes from Augustine’s life, including his Baptism by Ambrose.

The relics of the saint are now kept in a golden urn, enclosed within a locked silver case. The reliquary is exhibited twice a year. Buried in the crypt of Saint Peter’s are the Philosopher Boethius (480-524) (cruelly executed by the Gothic King Theodoric in retaliation against Justinian)and King Liutprand.