St. Augustine of Hippo

Augustine of Hippo, also known as Saint Augustine or Saint Austin, was born Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis on 13 November 354 in Thagaste, in the Roman province of Numidia, now Souk Ahras, Algeria. He died on 28 August 430. A Christian theologian and philosopher from Roman North Africa, he became Bishop of Hippo Regius and one of the central Church Fathers of the Latin Church in the Patristic Period. Across Christian traditions he is remembered by many names, including Blessed Augustine and Doctor Gratiae, the “Doctor of Grace.”

Augustine’s early life was shaped by a mixed household and a Roman African world. His mother, Monica or Monnica, was a devout Christian; his father, Patricius, was a pagan who converted to Christianity on his deathbed. Scholars generally agree that Augustine and his family were Berbers, heavily Romanized, and that Latin was likely his first language. At 11 he was sent to school at Madaurus, where he learned Latin literature and encountered pagan beliefs and practices. In his Confessions, he later reflected on a childhood theft of pears with friends, using the episode to think about sin, desire, companionship, and the choice of a lower good over a higher one.

At 17, helped by the generosity of Romanianus, Augustine went to Carthage to study rhetoric. There he lived for a time in a hedonistic manner, sought the approval of other young men, and began a long relationship with a woman who bore his son, Adeodatus, whose name means “Gift from God.” While a student he read Cicero’s lost dialogue Hortensius, which he said awakened in him a love of wisdom and a thirst for truth. Though raised Christian, he became a Manichaean, to his mother’s distress, and later was drawn to the Hellenistic philosophy of Neoplatonism.

After his conversion to Christianity, Augustine was baptized in 386 by Saint Ambrose. From that point he developed his own approach to philosophy and theology, writing across a wide range of subjects. He is especially known for his teaching on unmerited, prevenient grace, salvation, and original sin, the basis for his title “Doctor of Grace.” He also wrote on the Church and the sacraments, arguing against the Donatists that sacraments are valid regardless of the merit of the person celebrating them. His work also contributed to just war theory.

His major writings include The City of God, On the Trinity, On Christian Doctrine, and the Confessions, which is described as the first Western autobiography. In The City of God, written against the backdrop of the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Augustine imagined the Church as a spiritual City distinct from the material Earthly City. His thought strongly influenced the Medieval worldview, and he was the most cited author in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae. He is recognized as a saint in the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Lutheran churches, and the Anglican Communion.

Augustine’s words still carry weight because they come from a mind that joined intellectual restlessness with candid self-examination. He wrote as a Roman African, a former Manichaean, a reader of Cicero and Neoplatonism, a convert, a bishop, and a theologian trying to explain grace, sin, love, truth, and the Church during a time of strain in the Roman world. Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, Eastern Orthodox Christians, and many Protestants continue to read him, even while some interpretations of his teaching remain disputed. Few writers have left so clear a record of thought tested by life.