Augustine of Hippo ( , ; ; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also well-known as Saint Augustine, was a Christian theologian and philosopher from Thagaste, Numidia Cirtensis and the Bishop of Hippo Regius. He is generally regarded as one of the most influential philosophers in the history of the Western world,", and his writings deeply influenced the development of Western philosophy and Western Christianity and is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers of the Latin Church in the Patristic Period.
In his youth he was drawn to the Manichaean faith, and later to the Hellenistic philosophy of Neoplatonism. After his conversion to Christianity and baptism in 386 by Saint Ambrose, Augustine developed his own approach to philosophy and theology, making significant contributions in a wide variety of areas. He is known as Doctor Gratiae ("Doctor of Grace") for the vast influence of his views on the necessity of unmerited, prevenient grace, for salvation and the nature of original sin.
Additionally, he made important contributions in ecclesiology, noting the validity of sacraments regardless of the merit of the celebrant against the views of the Donatists. In his book The City of God, Augustine imagined the Church as a spiritual City, distinct from the material Earthly City, against the backdrop of the fall of the Western Roman Empire. He is also widely recognized for his contributions to just war theory. His other notable works include On the Trinity, On Christian Doctrine, and Confessions, the latter of which was the first Western autobiography.
Augustine is recognized as a saint in the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Lutheran churches, and the Anglican Communion. Generally regarded as one of the greatest theologians and philosophers in the history of the Catholic Church, he is one of the four Great Latin Church Fathers, along with Ambrose, Jerome, and Pope Gregory I. His thoughts profoundly influenced the Medieval worldview, and he was the most cited author in the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas. Many Protestants, especially Calvinists and Lutherans, consider him one of the theological fathers of the Protestant Reformation due to his teachings on salvation and divine grace, although this interpretation is disputed by the Catholic Church. In Eastern Orthodoxy, he remains highly venerated, but some of his teachings, including the filioque, are more disputed.Papademetriou, George C. "Saint Augustine in the Greek Orthodox Tradition". goarch.org
Biography Name Augustine of Hippo, also known as Saint Augustine or Saint Austin, is known by various cognomens throughout the many denominations of the Christian world, including Blessed Augustine and the Doctor of Grace ().
Childhood and education
Augustine was born in 354 in the municipium of Thagaste (now Souk Ahras, Algeria) in the Roman province of Numidia. His mother, Monica or Monnica, was a devout Christian; his father Patricius was a pagan who converted to Christianity on his deathbed.Vesey, Mark, trans. (2007) "Confessions Saint Augustine", introduction, . He had a brother named Navigius and a sister whose name is lost but is conventionally remembered as Perpetua.
Scholars generally agree that Augustine and his family were Berbers, an ethnic group indigenous to North Africa, but were heavily Romanized, speaking only Latin at home as a matter of pride and dignity. In his writings, Augustine mentions in passing his identity as a Roman African. For example, he refers to Ponticianus as "a country man of ours, insofar as being African,"Confess., VIII, 6, 14. English version, Latin version and to Faustus of Mileve as "an African Gentleman".Contra Faustum, I, 1. English version, Latin version He writes that Apuleius "as an African is better known to us Africans".Ep., CXXXIII, 19. English version, Latin version
Augustine's family name, Aurelius, suggests his father's ancestors were freedmen of the gens Aurelia given full Roman citizenship by the Edict of Caracalla in 212. Augustine's family had been Roman, from a legal standpoint, for at least a century when he was born. It is assumed that his mother, Monica, was of Berber origin, on the basis of her name, but as his family were honestiores, an upper class of citizens known as honorable men, Augustine's first language was likely Latin.
At the age of 11, Augustine was sent to school at Madaurus (now M'Daourouch), a small Numidian city about south of Thagaste. There he became familiar with Latin literature, as well as pagan beliefs and practices. His first insight into the nature of sin occurred when he and a number of friends stole pears from a neighbourhood garden. He tells this story in his autobiography, Confessions. He realises that the pears were "tempting neither for its colour nor its flavour" – he was neither hungry nor poor, and he had enough of fruit which were "much better". Over the next few chapters, Augustine agonises over this past sin of his, recognising that one does not desire evil for evil's sake. Rather, "through an inordinate preference for these goods of a lower kind, the better and higher are neglected".Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, 2:5 In other words, man is drawn to sin when grossly choosing the lesser good over a greater good. Eventually, Augustine concludes that it was the good of the "companionship" between him and his accomplices that allowed him to delight in this theft.Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, 2:8
At the age of 17, through the generosity of his fellow citizen Romanianus,Encyclopedia Americana, v. 2, p. 685. Danbury, Connecticut: Grolier, 1997. . Augustine went to Carthage to continue his education in rhetoric, though it was above the financial means of his family.Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, 2:3.5 Despite the good warnings of his mother, as a youth Augustine lived a hedonistic lifestyle for a time, associating with young men who boasted of their sexual exploits. The need to gain their acceptance encouraged inexperienced boys like Augustine to seek or make up stories about sexual experiences.Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, 2:3.7
It was while he was a student in Carthage that he read Cicero's dialogue Hortensius (now lost), which he described as leaving a lasting impression, enkindling in his heart the love of wisdom and a great thirst for truth. It started his interest in philosophy.Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, 3:4 Although raised Christian, Augustine became a Manichaean, much to his mother's chagrin.
At about the age of 17, Augustine began a relationship with a young woman in Carthage. Though his mother wanted him to marry a person of his class, the woman remained his lover. He was warned by his mother to avoid fornication (sex outside marriage), but Augustine persisted in the relationship for over fifteen years,Boyce, James (May 2015) "Don't Blame the Devil: St Augustine and Original Sin". Utne Reader. and the woman gave birth to his son Adeodatus (372–388), which means "Gift from God",Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, 4:2 who was viewed as extremely intelligent by his contemporaries. In 385, Augustine ended his relationship with his lover in order to prepare to marry a teenage heiress. By the time he was able to marry her, however, he had already converted to Christianity and decided to become a Christian priest and the marriage did not happen.
Augustine was, from the beginning, a brilliant student, with an eager intellectual curiosity, but he never mastered Greek – his first Greek teacher was a brutal man who constantly beat his students, and Augustine rebelled and refused to study. By the time he realized he needed to know Greek, it was too late; and although he acquired a smattering of the language, he was never eloquent with it. He did, however, become a master of Latin.
Move to Carthage, Rome, and Milan Augustine taught grammar at Thagaste between 373 and 374. The following year he moved to Carthage to conduct a school of rhetoric and remained there for the next nine years. Disturbed by unruly students in Carthage, he moved to establish a school in Rome, where he believed the best and brightest rhetoricians practised, in 383. However, Augustine was disappointed with the apathetic reception. It was the custom for students to pay their fees to the professor on the last day of the term, and many students attended faithfully all term, and then did not pay.
Manichaean friends introduced him to the prefect of the City of Rome, Symmachus, who had been asked by the imperial court at Milan to provide a rhetoric professor. Augustine won the job and headed north to take his position in Milan in late 384. At thirty years old, he had won the most visible academic position in the Latin world at a time when such posts gave ready access to political careers.
Although Augustine spent ten years as a Manichaean, he was never an initiate or "elect", but an "auditor", the lowest level in this religion's hierarchy. While still at Carthage a disappointing meeting with the Manichaean bishop, Faustus of Mileve, a key exponent of Manichaean theology, started Augustine's scepticism of Manichaeanism. In Rome, he reportedly turned away from Manichaeanism, embracing the scepticism of the New Academy movement. Because of his education, Augustine had great rhetorical prowess and was very knowledgeable of the philosophies behind many faiths. At Milan, his mother's religiosity, Augustine's own studies in Neoplatonism, and his friend Simplicianus all urged him towards Christianity. This was shortly after the Roman emperor Theodosius I declared Christianity to be the only legitimate religion for the Roman Empire on 27 February 380 by the Edict of Thessalonica and then issued a decree of death for all Manichaean monks in 382. Initially, Augustine was not strongly influenced by Christianity and its ideologies, but after coming in contact with Ambrose of Milan, Augustine reevaluated himself and was forever changed.
Augustine arrived in Milan and visited Ambrose, having heard of his reputation as an orator. Like Augustine, Ambrose was a master of rhetoric, but older and more experienced. Soon, their relationship grew, as Augustine wrote, "And I began to love him, of course, not at the first as a teacher of the truth, for I had entirely despaired of finding that in thy Churchbut as a friendly man." Augustine was very much influenced by Ambrose, even more than by his own mother and others he admired. In his Confessions, Augustine states, "That man of God received me as a father would, and welcomed my coming as a good bishop should." Ambrose adopted Augustine as a spiritual son after the death of Augustine's father.
Augustine's mother had followed him to Milan and arranged a respectable marriage for him. Although Augustine acquiesced, he had to dismiss his concubine and grieved for having forsaken his lover. He wrote, "My mistress being torn from my side as an impediment to my marriage, my heart, which clave to her, was racked, and wounded, and bleeding." Augustine confessed he had not been a lover of wedlock so much as a slave of lust, so he procured another concubine since he had to wait two years until his fiancée came of age. However, his emotional wound was not healed.Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, 6:15 It was during this period that he uttered his famously insincere prayer, "Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet."Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, 8:7.17