Augustine of Hippo

From Manichaean to bishop; wrote the Confessions and The City of God.

Life

Gifted son of North Africa

Augustine was born in Thagaste in Numidia, in Roman North Africa. His mother Monica was a devout Christian, while his father followed traditional polytheism. As a young man he went to Carthage to study and later became a teacher of rhetoric; for a time he was captivated by the dualist teachings of Manichaeism and led what he himself called a dissolute life.

Conversion and writings

In 384 CE he went to Milan to teach, and inspired by the preaching of Bishop Ambrose, he converted to Christianity in 386 after a religious experience in a garden. He then returned to North Africa and became Bishop of Hippo, writing the Confessions, which frankly recounts the transgressions of his early years and the inner journey of his conversion. In his later years, after the city of Rome was sacked by the Visigoths, he wrote The City of God in response to accusations that "Rome fell because it abandoned the old gods," constructing a theological framework of history that opposes the "earthly city" to the "City of God."

Church Father and legacy

His controversies with the Donatists and Pelagians established the Western church's orthodox doctrines of original sin, grace and church unity, profoundly influencing Christian theology for more than a thousand years afterward. In 430 CE, while the Vandals were besieging Hippo, he died of illness in the city, not living to see it fall. Later generations often cast him as a flawless saint, but the youthful debauchery and intellectual wavering he admits in the Confessions are precisely the most genuine and moving parts of the book.

Legacy

Augustine of Hippo is the most influential Church Father of Western Christianity. His doctrines of original sin, grace and predestination laid the foundations of Western theology and became an important intellectual resource for Reformation leaders such as Martin Luther and Calvin. His Confessions began the Western tradition of introspective autobiography, while The City of God set out a systematic theology of history. His views on sexuality and original sin, and his defense of using coercion against heretics, have also drawn criticism from modern scholars.

Major works & achievements

• Confessions
• The City of God in 22 books
• On the Trinity
• Refuted the Donatists and Pelagians

Did you know? His mother, Monica, was also canonized as a saint, and the city of Santa Monica in California is named after her.

Key dates

• 354Born in Thagaste, North Africa
• 373For a time a follower of Manichaeism
• 384Went to Milan as a teacher of rhetoric
• 386Converted to Christianity under Ambrose's influence
• 391Ordained a priest in the Diocese of Hippo
• 397Wrote the Confessions
• 413Began writing The City of God
• 430Died during the Vandal siege of the city