It’s the season of the witch — at least if you’re a theologian.

This week, a Latin professor named Christian Tornau revealed two previously undiscovered sermons attributed to St. Augustine, the 4th-century bishop known as a founding father of modern Christianity. The sermons contain new details and insight on the Witch of Endor, a Biblical prophet who foretold King Saul’s doom in the First Book of Samuel.

The sermons assert that the legendary witch wasn’t sent to curse the Israelite king, but instead to give the Biblical monarch a path to redemption and peace.

According to St. Augustine, a Northern African bishop who hailed from what is now Algeria, the spellbinding story begins on the eve of a battle between the Israelites and the Philistines, an ancient seafaring tribe from the Aegean region of Greece that colonized an area of Canaan now known as Gaza.

Feeling forsaken by God, King Saul disguised himself and secretly visited the Witch of Endor, a spirit medium on the outskirts of his city who must practice her occult rituals in secret or else risk the death penalty — a punishment decreed by King Saul himself.

Going against his own ruling, Saul visits the witch and asks her to summon the dead prophet Samuel, who rises from a ritual pit with some grim news: The Israelites will lose this battle against the Philistines, and Saul and his sons will be slaughtered within a day.

The encounter has baffled biblical scholars for centuries.

Was Saul a hypocrite whose fear drove him to defy his own belief in God, instead trafficking in the occult? Did the Witch of Endor really summon Samuel or was it an early example of demonic deception? And if the witch’s magic was legit, why would God allow such a forbidden act to work flawlessly?

St. Augustine’s newly discovered work, which was unearthed at Bad Doberan Abbey in Germany, offers some surprising insights.

Rather than presenting Saul as beyond redemption, the early text suggests the fallen king’s encounter with Samuel may have sparked genuine repentance before his death, opening up a wider path to salvation for the king. The scripture also explores the possibility of an uneasy truce between the power of the occult and the inevitability of divine judgement.

“This is unparalleled in Augustine and in ancient Christianity in general, where we find a very negative image of Saul,” said Tornau, who teaches at the University of Würzburg in Germany. “Augustine suggests it … and clearly takes it seriously.”

The discovery came after Tornau spent nearly two years studying a 12th-century manuscript copied at Bad Doberan Abbey in Germany. Of the six sermons it contained, two turned out to be previously unknown works by Augustine, one of Christianity’s most influential theologians.

The find almost fell apart.

At first, Tornau and his colleagues suspected the texts were medieval forgeries because parts of the writing didn’t align with the Berber bishop’s usual style.

But deeper analysis uncovered telltale clues, including Augustine’s characteristic humor, North African liturgical traditions, and a rare style of prayer used only in Late Antiquity.

“Our final verdict is that they are indeed authentic,” Tornau told university officials.

The sermons are now being prepared for publication, offering scholars a rare glimpse into how one of Christianity’s greatest thinkers wrestled with one of the Bible’s most complicated anecdotes, which has inspired thousands of scholarly works, as well as some pop culture moments.

The shoutouts date all the way back to 1390, when the Witch of Endor gets name-checked in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. A ship named The Witch of Endor is commandeered by Gregory Peck in the old-school adventure film Captain Horatio Hornblower. The ship also makes an appearance on the long-running SyFy series The Expanse.

And the Biblical sorceress is thought to be the inspiration for Endora, the glam and kooky matriarch in the classic sitcom Bewitched.