Augustine

Aurelius Augustinus, known as Augustine of Hippo, was born in 354 at Thagaste in the Roman province of Numidia in North Africa. His father Patricius was a curial official of modest means and remained a pagan until late in life; his mother Monica was a committed Christian whose prayers for her son later became a central theme of Augustine's spiritual autobiography. He received a classical Latin education at Thagaste, Madauros, and Carthage and excelled in rhetoric. In adolescence and early adulthood he adhered for some years to Manichaeism, lived in a long-term concubinage with an unnamed companion by whom he had a son, Adeodatus, and taught rhetoric in Carthage, then briefly in Rome, and from the mid-380s in Milan, then the imperial residence of the Western empire.

In Milan, Augustine came under the influence of Bishop Ambrose, whose preaching and non-literal reading of Scripture, together with Augustine's reading of Neoplatonic works, undermined his Manichaean materialism and prepared his conversion to Catholic Christianity. After an inner crisis described in the Confessions, he was baptized by Ambrose at Easter in 387, together with Adeodatus and his friend Alypius. Monica died at Ostia as the party prepared to return to Africa. Back in Thagaste, Augustine established a lay community devoted to prayer and study. In 391, while visiting Hippo Regius, he was ordained priest against his inclination by Bishop Valerius, who needed a capable Latin preacher. He founded a monastery at Hippo and, about 395 or 396, was consecrated coadjutor bishop, succeeding Valerius as bishop of Hippo.

As bishop he combined pastoral care, preaching, and a common life with clergy with a large body of writing directed against Manichaeans, Donatists, Pelagians, and pagan critics of the Church. The Confessions, composed around the turn of the fifth century, offered an introspective account of his early life and conversion. De Trinitate treated the doctrine of the Trinity; De civitate Dei, begun after the sack of Rome in 410 and finished over more than a decade, answered pagan charges that Christianity had weakened the empire and set out a theology of the two cities. In the Pelagian controversy he wrote at length on grace, original sin, and predestination; against the Donatists he argued for the catholicity of the Church and the validity of sacraments independent of the minister's personal holiness. He also left numerous sermons, letters, and exegetical works, including homilies on the Psalms and the Gospel of John.

Augustine died on 28 August 430 while Hippo was under siege by the Vandals. According to later tradition his relics were taken from Africa to Sardinia and, in the eighth century, to Pavia, where they are venerated in the church of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro. He was recognized as a saint by the ancient Church without a later formal process of canonization, and is counted among the principal Latin Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Western calendars keep his feast on 28 August.