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Open LibraryAbout this book
AUGUSTINUS (A.D. 354-430), son of a pagan Patricius of Tagaste in North Africa and his Christian wife Monica, while studying in Africa to become a rhetorician, plunged into a turmoil of philosophical and psychological doubts in search of truth, joining for a time the Manichaean society. He became a teacher of grammar at Tagaste, and lived much under the influence of his mother and his friend Alypius. About 383 he went to Rome and soon after to Milan as a teacher of rhetoric, being now attracted by the philosophy of the Sceptics and of the Neo-Platonists. His studies of Pauls letters with Alypius and the preaching of Bishop Ambrose led in 386 to his rejection of all sensual habits and to his famous conversion from mixed beliefs to Christianity. After a year in Rome again and his mothers death he returned to Tagaste and there founded a religious community. In 395 or 396 he became Bishop of Hippo, and was henceforth engrossed in duties, writing and controversy. He died at Hippo during the successful siege by the Vandals. From his large output the Loeb Classical Library offers that great autobiography the Confessions which reveal Gods action in man; On the City of God which unfolds Gods action in the progress of the worlds history, and propounds the superiority of Christian beliefs over Pagan in adversity; and some of the Letters which are important for the study of ecclesiastical history and Augustines relations with other theologians.
Themes & subjects
Philosophy of mindEarly works to 1800NonfictionPoliticsTrinityApologetics, history, early church, ca. 30-600
First published 1957About the author
Augustine of Hippo
13 November 354 – 28 August 430
Augustine was born in Thagaste (present-day Souk Ahras, Algeria), a provincial Roman city in North Africa, the son of a Catholic mother and pagan father. He was raised a Catholic, and at age of 11, he went to school at Madaurus, about 19 miles south of Thagaste. There he learned both Latin literature and pagan beliefs and practices. He returned home in 369 and stayed for about two yeras, reading Cicero's dialogue Hortensius. At age 17 he went to Carthage to continue his education in rhetoric. He decided to follow the Manichaean religion, lived a hedonistic lifestyle for a time, and took a lover who stayed with him for over thirteen years and gave birth to his son. In 373-374, Augustine taugh…
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