St. Augustine (354-430)
This famous son of St. Monica was born in Africa and spent many years of his life in wicked living and in false beliefs. Though he was one of the most intelligent men who ever lived and though he had been brought up a Christian, his sins of impurity and his pride darkened his mind so much, that he could not see or understand the Divine Truth anymore. Through the prayers of his holy mother and the marvelous preaching of St. Ambrose, Augustine finally became convinced that Christianity was the one true religion. Yet he did not become a Christian then, because he thought he could never live a pure life. One day, however, he heard about two men who had suddenly been converted on reading the life of St. Antony, and he felt terrible ashamed of himself. "What are we doing?" he cried to his friend Alipius. "Unlearned people are taking Heaven by force, while we, with all our knowledge, are so cowardly that we keep rolling around in the mud of our sins!"
Full of bitter sorrow, Augustine flung himself out into the garden and cried out to God, "How long more, O Lord? Why does not this hour put an end to my sins?" Just then he heard a child singing, "Take up and read!" Thinking that Godintended him to hear those words, he picked up the book of the Letters of St. Paul, and read the first passage his gaze fell on. It was just what Augustine needed, for in it, St. Paul says to put away all impurity and to live in imitation of Jesus. That did it! From then on, Augustine began a new life.
He was baptized, became a priest, a bishop, a famous Catholic writer, Founder of religious priests, and one of the greatest saints that ever lived. He became very devout and charitable, too. On the wall of his room he had the following sentence written in large letters: "Here we do not speak evil of anyone." St. Augustine overcame strong heresies, practiced great poverty and supported the poor, preached very often and prayed with great fervor right up until his death. "Too late have I loved You!" he once cried to God, but with his holy life he certainly made up for the sins he committed before his conversion. Hisfeast day is August 28th.
Augustine of Hippo (/ɔːˈɡʌstɨn/[1][2] or /ˈɔːɡəstɪn/;[2] Latin: Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis;[3] 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as St Augustine, St Austin,[4] or St Augoustinos, was an early Christian theologian whose writings are considered very influential in the development ofWestern Christianity and Western philosophy. He was bishop of Hippo Regius (present-day Annaba, Algeria) located in the Roman province of Africa. Writing during the Patristic Era, he is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers. Among his most important works are City of God and Confessions, which continue to be read widely today.
According to his contemporary, Jerome, Augustine "established anew the ancient Faith."[5] In his early years, he was heavily influenced by Manichaeism and afterward by the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus.[6]After his conversion to Christianity and his baptism in 387, Augustine developed his own approach to philosophy and theology, accommodating a variety of methods and different perspectives.[7] He believed that the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom and he framed the concepts oforiginal sin and just war.
When the Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate, Augustine developed the concept of theCatholic Church as a spiritual City of God (in a book of the same name), distinct from the material Earthly City.[8] His thoughts profoundly influenced the medieval worldview. Augustine's City of Godwas closely identified with the segment of the Church that adhered to the concept of the Trinity as defined by the Council of Nicaea and the Council of Constantinople.[9]
In the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, he is a saint, a pre-eminent Doctor of the Church, and the patron of the Augustinians. His memorial is celebrated on 28 August, the day of his death. He is the patron saint of brewers, printers, theologians, the alleviation of sore eyes, and a number of cities and dioceses.[10] Many Protestants, especially Calvinists, consider him to be one of the theological fathers of the Protestant Reformation due to his teachings on salvation and divine grace. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, he is also considered a saint, his feast day being celebrated on 15 June.[11] He carries the additional title of Blessed among the Orthodox, either as "Blessed Augustine" or "St. Augustine the Blessed."[12]
Life
Childhood and education
Augustine at the School ofThagaste by Benozzo Gozzoli
At age 17, through the generosity of fellow citizen Romanianus,[20] Augustine went to Carthage to continue his education in rhetoric. Although raised as a Christian, Augustine left the church to follow the Manichaean religion, much to the despair of his mother, Monica.[21] As a youth Augustine lived ahedonistic lifestyle for a time, associating with young men who boasted of their sexual exploits with women and urged the inexperienced boys, like Augustine, to seek out experiences or to make up stories about experiences in order to gain acceptance and avoid ridicule.[22] It was during this period that he uttered his famous prayer, "Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet."[23]
At a young age, he began an affair with a young woman in Carthage. Possibly because his mother wanted him to marry a person of his class the woman remained his lover[24] for over thirteen years and gave birth to his son Adeodatus,[25] who was said to have been extremely intelligent.[26] He abandoned her finally on his conversion in 389 when the boy was 17.
Teaching rhetoric
During the years 373 and 374, Augustine taught grammar at Thagaste. The following year he moved to Carthage to conduct a school of rhetoric, and would remain there for the next nine years.[20] Disturbed by the unruly behavior of the students in Carthage, in 383 he moved to establish a school in Rome, where he believed the best and brightest rhetoricians practiced. However, Augustine was disappointed with the Roman schools, where he was met with apathy. Once the time came for his students to pay their fees, they simply fled. Manichaean friends introduced him to the prefect of the City of Rome,Symmachus, who had been asked to provide a professor of rhetoric for the imperial court at Milan.[27]
Augustine won the job and headed north to take up his position in late 384. At the age of thirty, he had won the most visible academic position in the Latin world, at a time when such posts gave ready access to political careers. During this period, although Augustine showed some fervor for Manichaeism, he was never an initiate or "elect", but remained an "auditor", the lowest level in the sect's hierarchy and he became a teacher .[27]
While still at Carthage, he had begun to move away from Manichaeism, in part because of a disappointing meeting with the Manichaean Bishop, Faustus of Mileve, a key exponent of Manichaean theology.[27] In Rome, he is reported to have completely turned away from Manichaeanism, and instead embraced the scepticism of the New Academy movement. At Milan, his mother pressured him to become a Christian. Augustine's own studies in Neoplatonism were also leading him in this direction, and his friend Simplicianus urged him that way as well.[20] But it was the bishop of Milan, Ambrose, who had most influence over Augustine. Like Augustine, Ambrose was a master of rhetoric, but older and more experienced.[28]
Saint Augustine and Saint Monica(1846), by Ary Scheffer
Augustine's mother had followed him to Milan and he allowed her to arrange a marriage, for which he abandoned his concubine. It is believed that Augustine truly loved the woman he had lived with for so long and was deeply hurt by ending this relationship. In fact, there is evidence that Augustine may have considered his relationship with the concubine to be equivalent to marriage, though not legally recognized as such.[29] In his Confessions, he admitted that the experience eventually produced a decreased sensitivity to pain over time. He had to wait two years until his fiancée came of age, and he soon took another concubine. Augustine eventually broke off his engagement to his eleven-year-old fiancée, but never renewed his relationship with either of his concubines.
Alypius of Thagaste steered Augustine away from marriage, saying that they could not live a life together in the love of wisdom if he married. Augustine looked back years later on the life at Cassiciacum, a villa outside of Milan where he gathered with his followers, and described it asChristianae vitae otium – the Christian life of leisure.[30] Augustine had been awarded a job of professor of rhetoric in Milan at the time he was living at Cassiciacum around 383.
Christian conversion and priesthood
Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.[31]
He later wrote an account of his conversion – his very transformation, as Paul described – in hisConfessions (Latin: Confessiones), which has since become a must-read classic of Christian theology.
Ambrose baptized Augustine, along with his son Adeodatus, on Easter Vigil in 387 in Milan. A year later, in 388, Augustine completed his apology On the Holiness of the Catholic Church.[27] That year, also, Adeodatus and Augustine returned to Africa,[20] Augustine's home country, during which trip Augustine's mother Monica died.[32] Upon their arrival, they began a life of aristocratic leisure at Augustine's family's property.[33][34] Soon after, Adeodatus, too, passed away.[35] Augustine then sold his patrimony and gave the money to the poor. The only thing he kept was the family house, which he converted into a monastic foundation for himself and a group of friends.[20]
In 395 he was made coadjutor Bishop of Hippo, and became full Bishop shortly thereafter,[36] hence the name "Augustine of Hippo"; and he gave his property to the church of Thagaste.[37]He remained in that position until his death in 430.
Augustine worked tirelessly in trying to convince the people of Hippo to convert to Christianity. Though he had left his monastery, he continued to lead a monastic life in the episcopal residence. He left a regula for his monastery that led to his designation as the "patron saint of regular clergy."[38]
Much of Augustine's later life was recorded by his friendPossidius, bishop of Calama (present-day Guelma, Algeria), in his Sancti Augustini Vita. Possidius admired Augustine as a man of powerful intellect and a stirring orator who took every opportunity to defend Christianity against its detractors. Possidius also described Augustine's personal traits in detail, drawing a portrait of a man who ate sparingly, worked tirelessly, despised gossip, shunned the temptations of the flesh, and exercised prudence in the financial stewardship of his see.[39]
Death and veneration
Shortly before Augustine's death, Roman Africa was invaded by the Vandals, a Germanic tribe that had converted to Arianism. The Vandals besieged Hippo in the spring of 430, when Augustine entered his final illness. According to Possidius, one of the few miracles attributed to Augustine, the healing of an ill man, took place during the siege.[40] According to Possidius, Augustine spent his final days in prayer and repentance, requesting that the penitential Psalms of David be hung on his walls so that he could read them. He directed that the library of the church in Hippo and all the books therein should be carefully preserved. He died on 28 August 430.[41] Shortly after his death, the Vandals lifted the siege of Hippo, but they returned not long thereafter and burned the city. They destroyed all of it but Augustine's cathedral and library, which they left untouched.[42]
According to Bede's True Martyrology, Augustine's body was later translated or moved to Cagliari,Sardinia, by the Catholic bishops expelled from North Africa by Huneric. Around 720, his remains were translated again by Peter, bishop of Pavia and uncle of the Lombard king Liutprand, to the church of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro, in order to save them from frequent coastal raids by Muslims. In January 1327, Pope John XXII issued the papal bull Veneranda Santorum Patrum, in which he appointed theAugustinians guardians of the tomb of Augustine, which was remade in 1362 and elaborately carved with bas-reliefs of scenes from Augustine's life. By that time, however, the actual remains of Augustine could not be authenticated.[citation needed] The Augustinians were expelled from Pavia in 1700, taking refuge in Milan with the relics of Augustine, and the disassembled Arca, which were removed to the cathedral there. San Pietro fell into disrepair, but was finally rebuilt in the 1870s, under the urging ofAgostino Gaetano Riboldi, and reconsecrated in 1896 when the relics of Augustine and the shrine were once again reinstalled.[43][44]
Augustine was canonized by popular acclaim, and later recognized as a Doctor of the Church in 1298 byPope Boniface VIII.[45] His feast day is 28 August, the day on which he died. He is considered the patron saint of brewers, printers, theologians, sore eyes, and a number of cities and dioceses.[10]
Thought
Anthropology
Augustine was one of the first Christian ancient Latin authors with very clear anthropological vision.[46] He saw the human being as a perfect unity of two substances: soul and body. In his late treatise On Care to Be Had for the Dead, section 5 (420 AD) he exhorted to respect the body on the grounds that it belonged to the very nature of the human person.[47] Augustine's favourite figure to describe body-soulunity is marriage: caro tua, coniunx tua — your body is your wife.[48][49][50] Initially, the two elements were in perfect harmony. After the fall of humanity they are now experiencing dramatic combat between one another. They are two categorically different things. The body is a three-dimensional object composed of the four elements, whereas the soul has no spatial dimensions.[51] Soul is a kind of substance, participating in reason, fit for ruling the body.[52] Augustine was not preoccupied, as Plato and Descartes were, with going too much into details in efforts to explain themetaphysics of the soul-body union. It suffices for him to admit that they are metaphysically distinct; to be a human is to be a composite of soul and body, and that the soul is superior to the body. The latter statement is grounded in his hierarchical classification of things into those that merely exist, those that exist and live, and those that exist, live, and have intelligence or reason.[53][54]
