St. Augustine of Hippo

• St. Augustine studied at Thagaste, Madaura, and Carthage; he had a profound knowledge of the Latin language and culture, but was not proficient in Greek, and knew no Hebrew.
• He received a Christian education from his very pious mother, Monica, but aged 19, he abandoned the faith.

• St. Augustine’s long and tormented interior evolution (373-386) began with the reading of Cicero’s Hortensius, which stirred his enthusiasm for wisdom.
• Shortly afterwards, having read the Scriptures without profit, he encountered, listened to, and followed the Manichaeans.
• The road back began at Milan with the preaching of St. Ambrose, which dispersed Manichaean difficulties, and taught him that the way which led to Christ was the Church.
• St. Augustine was thirty-three years of age at the time of his conversion, but his thoughts had long turned upon subjects akin to Christian theology. Like Hilary, he passed through Neo-Platonism on his way to Christianity.
• His conversion involved a greater break with the past, and a more complete recasting of the inner life.
• He was of Numidian birth and upbringing, and had inherited the passion and fire of the African nature together with the religious traditions of the Church of Tertullian and St. Cyprian.
• St. Augustine owed to St. Ambrose not only his conversion, but his initiation into Alexandrian exegesis and Cappadocian theology.
• St. Augustine’s African theology and Greek theology met, and the result was a system which, in its arrangement and proportions as well as in many of its details, was a new creation.
• In his doctrine of Sin and Grace we are conscious of some narrowness and an unwillingness to recognize facts when they are at variance with his position; in few instances he led the way to erroneous views of Scripture, of Church policy, or of the Christian life, which have left their mark on the history of Latin Christianity.

• There are two sources listing St. Augustine’s works, each of them incomplete: the Retractiones of St. Augustine himself and the Indiculus of Possidius.
• The first ten volumes of the Benedictine text contains the genuine works arranged in the following order: I. Works written before St. Augustine’s ordination, and

autobiographical writings. II. Letters. III - IV. Expositions. V. Sermons. VI. Writings on Faith and Morals. VII. The De Civitate Dei(The City of God). VIII., IX., X. Polemical writings: (1) against various heresies. (2) against Donatism. (3) against Pelagianism

• The immortal Confessions reveal the personal history of Augustine’s earlier life; the De Trinitate sets forth in a reasoned system his mature faith in God; theDe Civitate Dei argues the case of the Church against Paganism; the Tractatus in Evangelium S. Johannis forms the noblest of Latin commentaries on the noblest book of the New Testament.
• His sermons are not oratorical efforts like those of St. Gregory Nazianzus, or of St. John Chrysostom; but they are full of insight into the mysteries of Scripture and of human life, and the preacher of today will often find in them materials which can be adapted to the wants of a modern congregation.
• In his famous Confessions St. Augustine wrote: What therefore, is my God? What, I ask, but my Lord God? For who is Lord but the Lord? Or who is God but our God?...You love but without disturbance, are jealous but without care. You…are angry but tranquil. You change your works but not your purpose. You take what you find but have never lost anything, are never in need but take joy in gain, are never covetous but exact due return. Return is made to you abundantly that you may be the debtor, but who has anything that is not yours? 27