The Enarrations, or Expositions, on the Psalms

^6. That city “which partakes in the same,” partakes in its stability: justly therefore, since he is made a sharer in its stability, says he who runs there. For all things there stand where nought passes by. Do you too wish to stand there and not to pass by? Run there. Nobody has “the same” from himself...

7. “For there the tribes went up”. We were asking whither he ascends who has fallen; for we said, it is the voice of a man who is ascending, of the Church rising. Can we tell whither it ascends? Whither it goes? Whither it is raised? “Thither,” he says, “the tribes went up.” Whither? To “partaking in the Same.” But what are the tribes? Many know, many know not. For if we use the word “curies” in its proper sense, we understand nothing, save the “curies” which exist in each particular city, whence the terms “curiales” and “decuriones,” that is, the citizens of a curia or a decuria; and you know that each city has such curies. But there are, or were at one time, curies of the people in those cities, and one city has many curies, as Rome has thirty-five curies of the people. These are called tribes. The people of Israel had twelve of these, according to the sons of Jacob.