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Augustine of Hippo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Augustine, Augustinus and Saint Augustine. Augustine of Hippo
Bishop, Confessor, Doctor of the Church
Born November 13, 354(354-11-13) in,
Thagaste, Numidia (now Souk Ahras, Algeria)
Died August 28, 430 (aged 75) in,
Hippo Regius, Numidia (now modern-day Annaba, Algeria)
Venerated in Catholic Church
Eastern Orthodoxy
Oriental Orthodoxy
Anglican Communion
Lutheranism
Major shrine San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro, Pavia, Italy
Feast August 28 (Western Christianity)
June 15 (Eastern Christianity)
Attributes child; dove; pen; shell, pierced heart
Patronage brewers; printers; theologians
Bridgeport, Connecticut; Cagayan de Oro, Philippines; Ida, Philippines; Kalamazoo, Michigan; Saint Augustine, Florida; Superior, Wisconsin; Tucson, Arizona; Avilés, Spain
Part of a series on
St. Augustine of Hippo
Original sin · Divine grace · Invisible church · Time · Predestination · Infant baptism · Incurvatus in se · Allegorical interpretation · Amillennialism · Augustinian hypothesis · Just War
Works
The City of God · Confessions · On Christian Doctrine · Enchiridion
Influences and Followers
Plotinus · St. Monica · Ambrose · Pelagius · Saint Possidius · Thomas Aquinas · Martin Luther · Cornelius Jansen
Related
Neoplatonism · Pelagianism · Augustinians · Scholasticism · Jansenism · Order of Saint Augustine
Augustine of Hippo (pronounced /ˈɔːɡəstiːn/ or /ɒˈɡʌstɨn/;[1] Latin: Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis;)[2] (November 13, 354 – August 28, 430), Bishop of Hippo Regius, also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, or St. Austin[3] was a Romanized Berber philosopher and theologian.
Augustine, a Latin church father, is one of the most important figures in the development of Western Christianity. He "established anew the ancient faith" (conditor antiquae rursum fidei), according to his contemporary, Jerome.[4] In his early years he was heavily influenced by Manichaeism and afterwards by the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus,[5] but after his conversion and baptism (387), he developed his own approach to philosophy and theology accommodating a variety of methods and different perspectives.[6] He believed that the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom and framed the concepts of original sin and just war. When the Roman Empire in the West was starting to disintegrate, Augustine developed the concept of the Church as a spiritual City of God (in a book of the same name) distinct from the material Earthly City.[7] His thought profoundly influenced the medieval worldview. Augustine's City of God was closely identified with the church, and was the community which worshipped God.[8]
Augustine was born in the city of Thagaste,[9] the present day Souk Ahras, Algeria, to a pagan father named Patricius and a Catholic mother named Monica. He was educated in North Africa and resisted his mother's pleas to become Christian. Living as a pagan intellectual, he took a concubine, with whom he had a son, Adeodatus, and became a Manichean. Later he converted to Catholicism, became a bishop, and opposed heresies, such as the belief that people can have the ability to choose to be good to such a degree as to merit salvation without divine aid (Pelagianism).
In the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, he is a saint and pre-eminent Doctor of the Church, and the patron of the Augustinian religious order; his memorial is celebrated 28 August. Many Protestants, especially Calvinists, consider him to be one of the theological fathers of Reformation teaching on salvation and divine grace. In the Eastern Orthodox Church he is blessed, and his feast day is celebrated on 15 June.[10] Among the Orthodox he is called Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed.[11]
Life
Early childhood
Augustine was of Berber descent.[12] He was born in 354 in Thagaste (present-day Souk Ahras, Algeria), a provincial Roman city in North Africa.[13] At the age of 11, Augustine was sent to school at Madaurus, a small Numidian city about 19 miles south of Thagaste noted for its pagan climate. There he became familiar with Latin literature, as well as pagan beliefs and practices.[14] In 369 and 370, he remained at home. During this period he read Cicero's dialogue Hortensius (now lost), which he described as leaving a lasting impression on him and sparking his interest in philosophy.[13]
Studying at Carthage
At age 17, through the generosity of a fellow citizen Romanianus,[13] he went to Carthage to continue his education in rhetoric. His mother, Monica,[15] was a Berber and a devout Christian, and his father, Patricius, a pagan. Although raised as a Christian, Augustine left the Church to follow the Manichaean religion, much to the despair of his mother. As a youth Augustine lived a hedonistic lifestyle for a time, associating with hooligans (Latin: euersores, literally meaning wreckers)[16] who boasted of their experience with the opposite sex and urged the inexperienced boys, like Augustine, to seek out experiences with women or to make up stories about experiences in order to gain acceptance and avoid ridicule.[16] At a young age, he developed a stable relationship with a young woman in Carthage, who would be his concubine for over thirteen years and who gave birth to his son, Adeodatus[17][18] (Milania).
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.[13] Disturbed by the unruly behaviour 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.
The young provincial won the job and headed north to take up his position in late 384. At age thirty, Augustine had won the most visible academic chair in the Latin world, at a time when such posts gave ready access to political careers. During this time, although Augustine showed some fervor for Manichaeism, he was never an initiate or "elect" but remained an "auditor", the lowest level in that sect's hierarchy.[19]
While he was in Milan, Augustine's life changed. While still at Carthage, he had begun to move away from Manichaeism, in part because of a disappointing meeting with the Manichean Bishop, Faustus of Mileve, a key exponent of Manichaean theology.[19] In Rome, he is reported to have completely turned away from Manichaeanism, and instead embraced the skepticism 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.[13] But it was the bishop of Milan, Ambrose, who had most influence over Augustine. Ambrose was a master of rhetoric like Augustine himself, but older and more experienced.